Michelle Lynn Kehoe
There is some justice is the word after all. Just when I get to the point that I think that everything I’m doing here might be a waste of time, and the fools who comment on this website and tell me that I’m just fooling myself, that no one really cares about right and wrong and honesty and truth, something like this happens.
On Saturday, December 15th, 2007, four bystanders rescued Michelle Lynn Kehoe, 33, of Coralville, Iowa and her two young sons after she drove her minivan into the icy Iowa River. Kehoe said she lost control of the car when she was distracted by her kids and drifted off the driving surface of the road onto the dirt shoulder.
No one suspected this was really her first attempt to kill herself and the two boys. There would be another, much more successful attempt approximately a year later.
On Sunday, October 26, 2008, Michelle Kehoe loaded Sean and Seth into her Volkswagen Eurovan and left her home in Coralville, Iowa for a trip to visit relatives in Sumner. They would never make it there.
Instead, Michelle Kehoe appeared at Littleton home near a pond owned by the Hook-N-Liner Sportsmen’s Club in a panic, bleeding from a bad cut to her throat. She collapsed on the floor of the home but police found a note which said she was hit in the head by a man after he snuck into the van while they were at a playground and tried to force them to take him to Chicago. Kehoe wrote she attempted to pepper spray him but he overpowered her and knocked her unconscious. When she awoke, Seth was dead and Sean was injured.
When cops located the minivan a short distance away, they found the youngest son, 2-year-old Seth, dead with his throat cut and his 6-year-old brother Sean locked in the car, still alive but with a similar wound. Both boys had their hands and eyes duct taped.
Needless to say, the police were a bit “skeptical” about the Michelle Kehoe’s story, especially after they were able to ask Sean what happened to him and his brother. Here is some testimony from the first day of Michelle Kehoe’s Trial for murdering her son Seth and attempting to murder her other son Sean:
Jurors this morning heard Sean Kehoe describe to Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Deputy Stephen Petersen what he saw when he pulled off the duct tape his mother, Michelle Kehoe, had placed over his eyes before cutting his throat.
“She was hurting my baby brother,” Sean said in a recording played for the jury Thursday morning.
Following the playing of the first part of Petersen’s interview with Sean, two photos Petersen took at Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo were displayed. The first depicted Sean, his face caked in dry blood, a breathing tube in his nose, facing the camera. The second showed the deep cut on the lower right side of his throat.
Various police, fire and medical personnel testified Thursday morning. When first responders found Sean Kehoe alive in his mother’s van last October, they asked him about the first-aid kit they had found nearby.
“He said the first-aid kit was from him trying to help his brother,” Sean Even, a firefighter who responded to the scene with the Jesup Fire Department, said.
But 2-year-old Seth Kehoe was already dead, Even testified.
Iowa State Patrol Trooper Jim Smith talked to Sean Kehoe at the scene. A recording from Smith’s patrol vehicle was played for the jury, though much of it was hard to understand.
“Who hurt your brother?” Smith asked.
“My mom,” Sean replied.
Later, Smith asked Sean who hurt him.
“Your mommy hurt you?” he asked.
“Yes,” Sean replied.
First responders testified that Sean was alert and articulate when speaking with them. However, Smith testified that Sean was often looking past him when he spoke and instead looked at the body of his brother.
Also at Michelle Kehoe’s trial, Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation Special Agent Chris Callaway testified about her eventual confession during questioning the day after the murder:
Originally, Kehoe told Callaway that she and the boys were headed to Sumner to see her mother, who was in a nursing home there. They left Coralville around 11:15 a.m. She stopped in Jesup around 12:30 p.m., for snacks and to let the boys burn off some excess energy at the St. Athanasius School playground.
It was there, Kehoe said, the man likely climbed into the back of her van and hid. She said he was in his 50s, with a beard and long, graying hair under a stocking cap. He had two scars on his face and was wearing a trench coat. She didn’t see him until his head popped up in the rearview mirror, she said.
Kehoe eventually ended up at the Hook-N-Liner pond, where she said she tried to fight the man using pepper spray. She hoped to escape, but the man kicked the canister away.
“I was trying, trying, trying to get away,” she wrote. “He’ll have nasty bruises on his shins.”
The man banged her head against the van and knocked her out. When she came to, she was in the back of the vehicle. Her wrists and ankles were bound with duct tape.
She also found the boys injured. Sean was still bleeding. Kehoe tried to administer first aid. Seth’s lips were already purple.
The man came back and assaulted her. He cut her throat and then she blacked out, she said. The next day, she managed to make it to Debra Hinde’s house a quarter-mile up the road. Hinde called 911, and first responders discovered the van.
Kehoe appeared worried in the interview about what family members said during hospital visits.
“When Aunt Colleen was here yesterday, Sean said I was trying to hurt him,” she said. “(I was) trying to stop the bleeding.”
Story Unravels
Callaway told jurors details of the story didn’t match up with the evidence they already had, including a statement from Sean Kehoe that Michelle cut him.
“The mystery assailant, we didn’t think was true,” he said.
He confronted her in the same interview, and she confessed she hurt the boys. She couldn’t say why.
“I want to die. I can’t explain this to anyone. Just kill me,” she wrote.
Kehoe said she intended to kill the boys and herself. She drove them out to the pond and told them she had to take care of something. She then bound Sean with tape and covered his eyes. She chose him first because he was older, she said. She killed Seth next, she wrote.
“I knew they would go up to heaven, and I would go to hell,” she said.
She cut her throat about 5 minutes later. Michelle Kehoe went to the road and curled up in a ball and “waited to finish dying.” In the meantime, Sean had crawled into the van to hide, though Kehoe didn’t see him.
Several family members had gathered at the hospital, though Kehoe declined the offer by Callaway to have them come into her room.
“I don’t want to see anyone, I don’t want to face anyone, once they know I’m not OK,” she said.
On Thursday, October 29th, 2008, Michelle Kehoe was officially charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and child endangerment causing serious injury. To view a copy of the Complaint & Affidavit for all three charges, click on the following three links:
Murder in the First Degree
Attempt to Commit Murder
Child Endangerment Resulting in Serious Injury
On October 28th, 2009. almost exactly one year to the day since Michelle Kehoe slit the throats of her two sons, he trial began. As is usually the case when the prosecution has a defendant cold, and the crime is so unbelievably heinous, Michelle Kehoe had pled insanity.
Her attorneys pointed to the previous attempt at suicide, when Michelle Kehoe drove her minivan into the Iowa River, and to an even earlier attempt when she was growing up. Besides, they argued, what mother in her right mind tries to kill her own children?
Unfortunately for them, and for Michelle Kehoe too, investigators found evidence that she had planned the murder of Sean and Seth almost a month in advance. Part of that evidence was receipts that proved she had bought the duct tape and the knife several weeks before making her move.
The jury didn’t buy the insanity defense. On November 5th, 2009, after only 2 hours of deliberation, Michelle Lynn Kehoe was convicted on all counts:
Coralville mother Michelle Kehoe cried and her family sobbed as a jury found her guilty of first-degree murder in the death last fall of her 2-year-old son in a remote area of northeast Iowa.
Kehoe used a white handkerchief to stem her tears as the jury of eight women and four men also found her guilty of attempted murder and child endangerment causing serious injury to cap the week-long trial.
It took jurors only two hours to come back with the three guilty verdicts against Kehoe, 35, who had been accused of killing her son, Seth, near Littleton on Oct. 28, 2008, and then trying to kill her then 7-year-old son, Sean, before also cutting her own throat. She had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
In a statement read by B.J. Franklin of the Cedar Rapids-based Horizon Survivors Program, the family said the ordeal caused them “a great sadness” and that they did not know the extent of Kehoe’s mental illness.
“This situation has been extremely traumatic for all involved,” Franklin read.
The family said they will now focus their attention on Sean Kehoe.
“There are no winners in this case,” Franklin read. “Lives have been irreparably damaged.”
As the verdict was read, Michelle Kehoe’s husband, Eugene, looked straight ahead and showed no emotion.
Defense attorney Andrea Dryer left the courtroom shortly after the verdict was read and was not immediately available for comment; her office said she would not be in for the rest of the day. Iowa Assistant Attorney General Andy Prosser, who prosecuted the case, said all homicide trials are difficult and “this one had its issues that were very tragic.”
Michelle Kehoe will be sentenced Dec. 15 in Independence; the trial took place in Grundy Center on a change of venue because of pretrial publicity.
Michelle Kehoe and her family seemed to predict the outcome of the short deliberation as they filed back into the courtroom and cried before the jury entered. Eugene Kehoe sat with his hands clasped and looked forward.
In closing arguments earlier in the day, attorneys for both sides argued whether Michelle Kehoe was mentally capable of distinguishing right from wrong at the time of the attacks.
Dryer said there was no contesting what Kehoe had done. However, her mental state at the time of the attacks prevents her from being held accountable, she said.
Dryer also reiterated what defense witnesses testified earlier about Michelle Kehoe’s reasons for attacking her children, attempting to kill herself and blaming it on a fictitious attacker — she would save her children the burden of losing a parent and living with mental illness and they would go to heaven. That was fixed, delusional thinking, Dryer said.
“There is absolutely no reason for this other than what she said,” Dryer said. “She wanted to die, she thought it was right. She thought it was right for the kids, too.”
In his closing, Prosser countered that “thinking it’s right is not the same as losing the capacity to tell right from wrong.”
Legal insanity does not have a cause and effect relationship with Kehoe’s mental illness nor does the incomprehensibility of her acts mean Kehoe is legally insane, Prosser said.
“Failing to comprehend why she did it does not mean she’s legally insane,” he said.
Michelle Kehoe will be automatically be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
This was another story that took me several days to finish, because it was just too difficult to keep my anger in check for more than a hour or two at a clip. People who choose to take their children with them when they commit suicide – especially the ones who fail miserably at their own attempt to end their life – have earned special status in the place in my mind where I store my rage. What gives them the right to take the lives of these children before they’ve even had a chance to start living it? Who are they to make that choice?
I hope Michelle Kehoe spends the rest of her life in abject misery. I hope she never, ever finds the peace she is looking for in this life. Most of all, I hope that life is a long one, full of painful memories of Seth.
Does Michelle Lynn Kehoe Deserve Hell?
- Yes (92%, 536 Votes)
- No (8%, 47 Votes)
Total Voters: 583
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75 Comments »
So this psycho is willing to kill her children, but when it comes to her own life she chickens out and runs for help. What a fucking cowardly little bitch.
You said it perfectly! This was exactly what I was thinking as I read the story! What a crappy human being!
Exactly!! I hope she fuckin succeeds in jail or maybe someone can “help” her with that… What a disgusting specimen of a human being AND quite possibly “Worst Mother EVER.”
I don’t even know what to say that I haven’t already said here a thousand times. RIP baby Seth, and god bless little Sean. Hopefully he will be able to get some massive therapy so that he will have some sort of a chance to bounce back from this. :( Those poor babies.
What a worthless piece of shit waste of a human being. Killing her kids because she doesn’t want to live anymore, because by her logic, not wanting to live somehow means that her kids don’t deserve to live either… Sickening.
This is my first post here. I have no idea why I come to this site so much. I usually check every day for updates, if there are no updates, I go back through the archives. It has become a routine for me. What is it that makes me want to read about all these horrific crimes? I seem to have become addicted to it. Who knows? Too bad my health insurance doesn’t cover therapy.
These mental illness ones always depress me, mainly because I know what these people go through. Note that I only consider mental illness involving psychosis a legitimate excuse for the insanity defense. You’re actually LESS likely to commit murder(suicide is another story) if you have a mental illness. According to some studies you’re also more likely to BE murdered if you have a mental illness.
From this article it sounds like she had mental illness number 296.34 in the DSM: Major Depressive Disorder, severe, with pyschotic features. There’s not enough in this article to suggest schizoaffective or bipolar disorder.
I’m not sure there’s much hope for Sean, he’ll probably end up with same mental illness as his mom, gotta hate genetics. Parent with a mental illness + extreme trauma = lifetime of suffering quite often.
What I don’t get is Elyse J. Mamino claims she has a fucking personality disorder(which one? narcissistic? God, I hope it wasn’t NOS) and she gets 6 years(she’ll be out earlier than that I’m sure). I know personality disorders can be severe, but still, I don’t think hers was.
Sad article, that’s for sure.
I agree with you Max. I hope she lives to be a hundred and ten and thinks about what she did to those poor little boys every single day.
I hope that she hears babies crying every day of those 110 years she has left to complete. I hope she wakes up hearing ‘mama!’ only to realize she’s in prison – - over, and over, and over again.
Sounds like Susan Smith or Diane Downs case without the false accusation. I wonder if she is related to Andrew Kehoe, the Bath Consolidated School Bomber that killed 45 people on May 18, 1927.
I love this site, the title says it all: people YOU will see in hell. Yep, it’s all YOUR fault. When YOU judge people never having known their position in life, or ever tried to see things from their perspective. Have you ever allowed someone to continue down a dangerous path because it was more convenient for YOU? Everytime YOU ignore someone who just needs some attention, you’ve missed an opportunity to lighten their load thereby delay any negative outcome. If someone else was to follow your lead YOU could pull these people out of the downward spiral that greed and lust in the world has put them on. Our ignorance of each others needs and feelings is causing these bad things to happen, but in the end YOU’ll all ignore me and see each other in hell after all, won’t you?
Given your advice, I can’t ignore you any longer. I need to help you see. Take a step back and look at the human race.
1 million years ago, we were tool using tribalists who had a high child mortality rate and an average lifespan, removing outliers, of around 24 years.
Today we’re a 70+ year lifespan people who intend to escape from this planet before the next meteorite hits the reset button on evolution. To get here we have a variety of tools, ranging from the ball point pen, to the high developed work ethic derived from a host of religions and social backgrounds. Many of these features are “socially new” some are constructs of age. One of these tools is our legal system. Once upon a time, if someone wronged you, you hit him, if you could get away with it. That system continues to this day, but has become less survivable thanks to another system that favors the group over the individual. It’s functionally the “point at the bad guy” solution. We all point, the bad guy gets dealt with in some way, and we all move on, resting assured that everyone now knows who the bad guy is. The system should sound familiar, not only are we using it, but you are too–every time you get “holier than thou” and blame us for all of the problems “you see.”
This site is an extension of public outrage. It’s the modern day version of the pillory, without the neck cramps and the wasting of rotten food. Take a look at the artifices and see if you can’t figure this out.
I second that. This is a place where people can comment and discuss what has transpired with the people in these articles. Some of us have stronger reactions than others, but it’s not like we’re “judging” this woman with her having done nothing wrong – she definitely DID do something very very wrong, and therefore has basically opened the door to “judgement” from peers/society. You can’t kill someone and then expect NOT to have people think some pretty shitty things about you, ESPECIALLY when you kill a baby, YOUR baby! If and when you fuck up one way or another in life, you are going to be “judged”!
Adolph, I can see by your post that you believe you speak from a higher moral plane than the rest of us Neanderthals, but please, allow me to help bring you back down to reality. You asked is we could have helped any of these people we write about on this site out of the supposed downward spiral that caused them to commit their crimes. That is what you’re asking, isn’t it?
Forgetting for a moment that none of use knew who, for example, Michelle Kehoe was until she decided to end the lives of her two young sons, do you honestly think for one moment that any one of use would not have done whatever we could have to save those little boys, up to and including placing our own life at risk? So if Michelle had asked for help, I think it would have been easy for anyone to get her that help – of course, there was no evidence that she ever let anyone know about what she was planning, or even about how much she was suffering.
Most criminals are like that – they don’t ask for help and they don’t let other people in on their plans. That would be foolish if they were serious about carrying out those plans. The people we feature on PYSIH are the worst of the worst usually, and, after quite a bit of research by myself and the other writers, are usually almost certainly guilty.
So what if we leave comments venting our anger at their heinous crimes. It’s human nature to be angry at a child killer, or a baby raper, or a wife abuser and murderer. If you say you’re not angry about these things, and would like to do what we do, I say you’ve found another way to vent.
Your assessment of us is judgmental, harsh and dishonest, and if you’re right that we are going to hell for what goes on at this website, I’m betting that sooner or later you and you superiority complex will be joining us. We’ll save you a seat.
Adolf, I don’t know who YOU are talking to. I’m mentally ill and no amount of talking or caring or judging or attention keeps me from killing myself. No, that’s all pharmaceutical. My meds keep ME from doing something stupid like this. Although I must admit I am much less suicidal than I am homicidal – towards people who bug the living shit out of me.
You idiot Adolph Ghandi,
No I will NOT see you in hell. It appears you have already made your reservations and I on the other hand have not. I know right from wrong and dont kill or torture children or anyone for that matter. I treat people the way I want to be treated. I believe in GOD and Heaven. I dont count “good deeds” as a way of getting there but I try to remind myself each day that someone gave me the opportunity to choose my own path in life. I choose to do good, and not do things I dont want written on the front page of the paper.
Let me guess…you have an ‘A’ right smack in the middle of your forehead don’t you?..hmmmm…
First of all God has not hired us as advisors, so whatever we say has very little impact on the world outside of this web site….
Secondly many of us have had a lot happen in our lives, and yet we do not feel the need to do such, in fact many of us who have been victims are more sensitive to the unique needs of other victims….
Speaking as one who has been assaulted by teachers in first grade and seventh grade I do not feel any need to beat anyone up just because I can, but at the same time if any teacher assaults my daughter, I may be a little more angry than the average parentbecause victimizing my daughter makes me a victim all over again as well.
I don’t blame God for issues I have had for the clergy, nor do I feel the beed to beat up a friar now that I am finally the size of my attacker, but if I ever see the “ppriest” that hurt my sister on the street, yes I may start some shit with him, but not anyone else.
So boo fucking ho – I have stress and trama in my past, such does not give me the right to be an asshole.
I don’t care what happened in this POS life either. If her kids were 22 and 26 and they were raping kids in the neighborhood and yet the police could not make charges stick, then I would say that she was doing the right thing, but at 2 and 6 they have not done anything to deserve what their sperm hatcher (because she’s not a mother) did to them.
If God feels that she’s that mentally ill and does not deserve hell, well there is nothing that we can do – none of us are God’s advisers. But here on Earth we can pressure our government officials to arrange an earlier meeting between God and Michelle Lynn Kehoe.
Huh. Adolf. Interesting nym choice.
I had a hamster named ‘Adolf’ once. After Hitler, because the hamster was a pissy buck-toothed little bastard with balls bigger than his head, who liked to bite and scratch for no reason. He was horrible and unlovable. Really, just a bad seed. I’ve never hated an animal before, but I sure hated that fucker. I was just waiting for him to die so I could get a nicer hamster. What can I say, I was 8.
When my brother was 10, he tried to feed our hamster. Adolf bit his thumb so badly it bled. So my brother put him into his clear plastic running ball and spun him a few times on the linoleum in the kitchen. My dad happened to be rushing through the kitchen, and accidentally kicked the ball across the room and into a wall. Between the spinning and kicking, Adolf met his maker.
I want to say I was sad. I want to say I had to stay home from school the next day out of grief. The truth is, I was relieved because no matter how much I tried to feed and love that damn bastard hamster he still tried to eat my face off whenever I opened his cage.
The whole point of this story is, I hear they make those plastic balls big enough for adults now… you pompous ass.
THAT is one of the best replies I have ever READ VCBECKY!!!
I have to agree to you hazzard2myself. A first class shot at a first class asshole by a first class lady.
I just lol’d at work, that was freakin awesome!
Best reply I’ve ever read. Neither adolf knew what hit him. Gold star for you!
I’m thrilled you guys enjoyed my story of childhood terror! ;) LOL!! That little bastard used to hiss at me the moment it saw me in the morning, just to start my day out right. Have you ever heard a hamster hiss? What a jerk.
i’m sorry for your traumatic childhood pet, but ur memory made me laugh my ass off in class. my hat is off to you mi’lady
Wow just blew my image of gentle, peaceful meek little hamsters all to hell!
There will be a special place in Heaven for you VCBecky for having to endure that trauma – unfortunately, adolf won’t be there to console you…..Boo Hoo….Hoo Hoo Hoo…..Hoo Hoo
VCBecky, brilliant retort!LOL…
u r a dick, seriously, get a fucking life u moron x
You said at the beginning of the story that there was justice. I kept reading hoping that at the end this (sorry excuse for a) woman would end up suffering the same fate as her poor children, perhaps at the hands of another prisoner.
Well, maybe it can still happen.
what a miserable excuse for a human being. I hope she rots. I can never, ever understand these women who are so selfish and so full of themselves to believe that if they want to kill themselves, they should take their kids with them. You ain’t special hunny! the kids would have been better off without your stupid ass in their lives. Now one’s dead, the other traumatized and your in jail. Good job! do us all a favor, hang youself in your cell!
I think its so pointless to put these kind of people in jail…. have them sit and think about what they did…. dont people understand.. that these kind of people dont have souls… they feel nothing. To hurt your own babies this way. To kill helpless innocent beings….. you have no soul to be able to do such things. These people dont think about it. How sad they are b/c of it or how it hurts them. You can see on this women’s face… in her eyes… that theres nothing there. No white light… just darkness. Shes just a souless shell of a person. These people dont deserve to breath. I find it funny how some of them.. who kill kids or anyone for that matter… rape them… torture them… will sit in jail and claim that they have founnnnd Jesus!! They are forgiven. They will go to Heaven and siiinnng with the Angels. They are delusional. I believe.. God doesnt forgive certain deeds… this is one of them. Maybe you think you are forgiven b/c some guy holding a Bible tells you so…. but with certain things… how can God forgive you? He doesnt. So yeah let them sit… rot in jail…. pray for forgiveness…. and the Devil will be the only one waiting for them. Rest in Peace baby Seth…. sends some Angels down for your brother.. he needs them right now.
Oh SaintBella, they don’t have souls or feelings, but maybe the other prisoners do and it will feel good to their souls to perform various acts of torture and baptism on this pathetic POS……there is always a silver lining…
I say if the bitch wants to die then lets give it to her….no warm, secure jail cell…..no guaranteed 3 square meals a day…no languishing on a cot reading the latest magazines while she gobbles candy from the cantina. Save the waste another suicide attempt and do it right this time. Put a bullet in the whore’s head and it’s all done quicker than that!
Max your are the man…just wanted to let you know there was a spelling error in the first sentence…i think you meant to type world but it came out word…just thought id let you know…keep up the good work we all appreciate it very much
She wasn’t crazy or delusional enough that she couldn’t come up with a cover story to try to save her pathetic self from prison….I agree, she wants to commit suicide, let’s assist her in her endeavor and make sure she gets it right this time
ur right Ferret over use of the insanity plea……
What is it about us as a society…Americans i mean…We just have a knack for producing these demonic monsters that kill children, their own at that! My anger cannot be described. I am trying to focus on the thought of that precious boy in God’s hands now. Good for the older boy, Sean, to step up and tell what happened. Very brave and tough for a 7 yr old. He is a great big brother.
God i can hardly contain myself..i hope that bitch is beaten everyday in prison
its not just americans. there are plenty of stories on here and in the news about people killing kids that are fosters, steps, or just family members. recently there was an iranian? guy on the news who had run his own daughter over because she became too ‘westernized’ she died at the hospital
I take it you have never heard of Baby P? Google it…they are from England…there’s plenty of people besides Americans that are morally corrupt in society’s eyes.
for me the saddest and most innocent image is that of six year old Sean trying to help little Seth with that first aid kit….that is an image that will be hard to not think about for a long time,poor poor babies.
That lady need some serious Pro Active Acne shit.
Or the belt sander in the prison workshop….Tee Hee Hee….Hee Hee……Heeeeeeee……
I hope someone hols her down in prison, and uses that dull knife to digg out every zit on her greasy raunchy face.
Well that is a “PROACTIVE” model if I have ever seen one!
Haha…maybe….just maybe.. I should have read some of the other comments before I made mine.
Max The Cat: Never ever think that you are wasting your time and effort, there are countless of victims who you touch every day, there is no way I could describe how up uplifting your comment about my niece was to her and the family who sided with her. And I am positive that every day you have victims who benefit from your dedication to the cause. Thank you again
Has anyone stopped to think that this may be a severe case of Postpartum Psychosis (which is NOT the same thing as Postpartum Depression)? I’m not saying that she isn’t guilty and she definitely deserves to spend her remaining days behind lock and key. But I just feel bad for women in this situation (Andrea Yates is another example), if they had gotten help the first time they started showing symptoms of this illness perhaps these children would still be alive.
I was also surprised that wasn’t her defense, at least at first, but I soon found there were alot of things that pointed against it. Most importantly, she spent nearly a month planning to kill herself and the kids. She was under no delusions, and she wasn’t hearing voices or hallucinating. If you remember, Andrea Yates suffered from all those symptoms and more. Michelle Kehoe was certainly depressed, but not to the point of insanity, at least not in my opinion.
GO back to Med School – oops, can’t go…..well pre-planning does not a psychosis make……perhaps in your world…is it fun there? Are there more liberals to talk too….? Help ‘M’ MAX THE CAT, you’re our only hope…….
I’m going to assume you’re new and misunderstood my post, because no one has ever insulted me and called me a liberal before – LOL. It should have read:
“…Most importantly, she spent nearly a month planning to kill herself and the kids.
She was under no delusions, and she wasn’t hearing voices or hallucinating. If you remember, Andrea Yates suffered from all those symptoms and more….”
Sounds a little different now, right?
Once you’ve been here a while, you’ll see that the last thing I would do is make excuses for a baby-killer like Michelle Kehoe. She knew exactly what she was doing the day she cut Seth’s and Sean’s throats, and prison is exactly where she belongs. Perhaps this tragedy could have been avoided if Michelle had gotten some help for her depression, but in the months between the suicide attempt at the lake and the murder of Seth she never once made an attempt to seek any out.
Max, Sit down and Have a Cocktail for Gods Sake – I was responding to “M” – and asking you to save us – Perhaps in my hurry to write my rant, that wasn’t made clear – I would never call you a liberal – I would vomit first!!!! So when you post “once i’ve been here a while….” – Let me assure you, I have been here a long while..AND – adore your posts – they are my favorite – NO BS, NO PULLING PUNCHES, RIGHT TO THE JUGULAR!!!!!!!!!!
I hope this counts as a make up!!!! My Identical Twin Sister couldn’t take it if we didn’t make up…..She adores you too.
You know, I just replied to one of your posts in another thread, and didn’t recognize who I was responding to this time. Please forgive me buddy, I obviously need some sleep.
Boy, I’m glad I was nice about it, or I would have made a real asshole out of myself.
All ok – glad we cleared this up – Haste makes Waste….but I hope you see now to whom I was replying. All this typing can get whirled around and ‘Homo-cidal-atesticularis-fucktardious-demonous-sapiens’ don’t get their fair amount of attention because shit like this happens when discussing cases that really hit a nerve. Love Ya Max!!!! Don’t ever Change, then I would have to call you a foul name, like liberal!!! Eewww!!!!!!!
Not that I’m having a go at you M, but there is no..and I mean no excuse for killing her child and trying to kill the other one, especially when it was planned, that screams she was ‘in the right state of mind’. It shits me to no end that killers try and come up with anything they can find in a med book that might help them get of…now that fucks me of….
Post-partum psychosis?
The thread clearly states that she had issues when she was younger.
Another thing…it doesn’t take over a year to present itself.
I think this bitch was acting upon her own selfishness, and tried using mental illness as a scapegoat to get her less time.
As much as we don’t want to believe it, there are sick people like that out there.
You know something, I am not underestimating post-partum psychosis, I am not saying it doesn’t exist. I am just going to say this: For every murder, there is at least one in three of the culprits who are saying “The voices told me to do it”. Much as I would like to feel sorry for this psycho hose beast, and Andrea Yates, I just don’t. I am not saying they are not nuts. I think anybody who commits murder is at least on some level insane. Those of us who function even as semi-normal human beings could never imagine doing such a thing, let alone to our own children. Whatever it was that drove Andrea Yates to drown her babies, including her oldest who’s last words to her were “I’m sorry.” or whatever drove this girl to slit her baby’s throats, they still did it. It just seems to me that someone who was at some point sane, and slips into the stages of an abnormal state of mind, would have enough sense to stop and think “These aren’t normal thoughts. Perhaps I should get some help?” But even more so than that, if these women had reached such a severe point of insanity, why the hell did nobody around them notice that something was wrong and intervene? Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s why this makes me so angry. And this excuse has become a fad for mothers who kill their kids: Casey Anthony, Susan Smith, Andrea Yates, Michelle Kehoe, the list goes on. I am just so tired of hearing about things like this. It really does break my heart.
I have known people who suffered from post-partum depression and none of them turned out bad. They were just depressed after giving birth and nothing more. Many people who suffer from depression of all forms do not kill.
That’s true, and I understand that post partum psychosis is much more serious. But, that’s why I say, if these women were at one point normal/sane people, even if they themselves were too gone to notice that they were losing their minds, how did nobody around them notice? And if they did, why in the hell were these children left in the care of these women? This particular woman had PLANNED on killing her children for a long time, and NOBODY saw any red flags? It just frustrates me that all of these poor kids keep losing their lives because of other people’s stupidity and carelessness.
Man, I feel bad. I know I always comment on out of line shit but I can’t imagine holding a child down to slit his throat, much less my own child. It’s heart wrenching. I really hope she is fucked in the ass with a hot poker. As well as any other piece of shit who hurts a child. Post Partum Psychosis/Depression or not. I don’t believe in that AT ALL! I think it’s a quick excuse for someone to use when they don’t want their kids anymore. Don’t debate me. They should all die.
our justice system is so fucked up. if i ran things, her punishment would be a solid year of electro-torture, followined by douching by acid. then i’d drive hooks through her knees and and hang her there for weeks, and like a bbq underneath her, on slow broil. i’d douse her baked skin in rubbing alcohol over and over again for another 3 months and then chop off her limbs, slice by slice like bologna (from the toes up) and finally throw all the pieces in a volcano.
then she would have hell to look forward to!
(Dec. 16) — An Iowa mother was sentenced to life without parole Tuesday for slitting her 2-year-old son’s throat and leaving him to die near a remote pond in October 2008, a prosecutor said.
Michelle Kehoe, 36, also received 25 years on one count of attempted murder for slashing her older son’s throat. She left both children outside the family van before attempting to kill herself.
The 7-year-old survived and provided key testimony against his mother, whose attorneys argued that she believed she was trying to save her sons from a life of suffering when she cut their throats and her own.
A jury rejected her insanity defense and convicted her of first-degree murder, attempted murder and child endangerment on Nov. 4.
John Gaps III, AP
Michelle Kehoe, seen at her trial in November, was sentenced Tuesday to life imprisonment for the murder of her 2-year-old son.
Kehoe also received a 10-year sentence for child endangerment for the injuries she inflicted on her older son, who survived for the night locked inside the family van, Buchanan County Attorney Allan Vander Hart said.
Against the wishes of Kehoe’s husband, Judge Bruce Zager also granted an extension of the prosecution’s request for a no-contact order, which prohibits Kehoe from contacting her surviving son or anyone with whom he lives.
Kehoe’s son lives with her husband, Gene Kehoe, who regularly visited his wife until the order went into effect in April. The judge’s decision to continue the no-contact order, which includes written contact, will remain in effect for five years, and extends to father and son.
“When [the victim's] therapist tells us he is ready and it might be beneficial, then that’s the time to revisit the no-contact order. He’s pretty fragile right now,” Vander Hart said.
Prosecutors countered that Kehoe methodically planned to kill her sons and herself, but botched it. The detailed planning showed she was not legally insane, Iowa Attorney General Andrew Prosser said.
Kehoe began planning the attack the previous month, buying the knife and the duct tape, according to testimony. She told her husband she was taking the boys to visit her mother at a nursing home.
Police found a handwritten note that Kehoe admitted to writing to support the story she initially told police.
The note said a man broke into the car when the family stopped at a gas station and forced them to the area where the van was found. In the note, Kehoe said she tried to fight him off with pepper spray, but he knocked her unconscious.
Kehoe’s lawyer, Andrea Dryer, asked the court to run the sentences concurrently on account of her extreme mental illness.
The judge sentenced Kehoe consecutively for first-degree murder and attempted murder and concurrently on attempted murder and child endangerment so that the sentences would represent the two boys.
“I asked for consecutive time because there were two victims and because of the extensive planning and premeditation of these crimes,” Vander Hart said.
Filed under: Nation, Crime, Top Stories
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sorry admin, couldnt wait. was excited. you can delete my posts and put it in the story if you want…thanks
That’s OK dani, Life w/o Parole was the only sentence she could get, since the prosecutor chose not to seek the Death Penalty for Michelle Kehoe. I wasn’t going to follow up on this, so I’m glad you posted the story like you did.
aw shucks *complete with Goofy laugh*
Iowa doesn’t have the death penalty, Max…I think it has been kicked out of the options section for the past…..oh…100 years.
Too bad though…the prisons are becoming overcroweded here…
I am sad to say that I am from Iowa…and I don’t live too far from Coralville either.
Also..too bad the gallows at Iowa State Penn are operable, but no longer in use…I would have loved to personally strung this chick up.
Thanks for the clarification motherof3. I thought I read that they didn’t seek the death penalty against her, but that was obviously wrong. I wouldn’t mind stringing her up myself, since I also didn’t buy the post-partum depression angle or any of the other mental health issues she tried to use as excuses for killing her son. I think she’s a devious, evil person who plays pathetic for the sympathy factor.
Actually, Iowa had the death penalty until 1965, and has had several motions to reinstate the penalty in the last two decades.
Thanks for clarifying, Jason…I got confused with my hometown…there hasn’t been a reinforcement of the death penalty there since the early 1900′s. It’s also the home of Iowa State Penn. Ever hear of the riot of 81? They say it was one of the worst riots in U.S. history…
’63 was the last year a death sentence was carried out…just wanted to correct my last post…
No worries, given that one of my causes is equating DUI homicides with first degree murder and additionally making those punishable by the death penalty, I know far too much about the Death penalty in the few states that do not practice it in some form. It also helps that one set of my Grandparents is/was from Iowa as well.
I can’t believe that her husband wants to maintain contact with her after what she did…I can’t imagine being able to visit and speak to her after she killed one of my kids and almost killed the other.
This is why Iowa needs the death penalty.
This is the most horrible crime I have ever come across, and I have heard some really heinous crimes in my day. What a brave boy Sean Kehoe is! Sean has so much to deal with! He’ll never get over having his own mother hold him down, tape him up and then cut his throat! I’m sure the pain was horrible! Then to escape to the van and after taking the tape off himself, looking out the window to see his mother, doing the same thing to his baby brother! Then he survived the night inside the van suffering unbearable pain and fear that his mother would come back to do it again to him. Every time he looked out the window he would see little Seth laying there dead and bleeding with his eyes open. Sean tried to help his baby brother with the first aid kit, but Seth was already dead. I pray for Seth and I pray for Sean every day that God will help him. I’ll continue to pray for them for the rest of my life! I hope Michelle Kehoe remembers every detail of this for the rest of her life in prison!
Well, I would say- do not judge her before you know for sure her motives. What if she was truly delusional and had voices in her head telling her to kill her children and then herself? I wonder how much of psychiatric check-up they did on her before bringing out the verdict. I mean, even if the murder/suicide was planned, that does not remove the possibility of insanity: depressed people often carry on their suicidal plans very carefully and slowly, over several weeks or even months. You do not know (and probably will never know) what was going through in this woman’s head as she was planning her deed. Unless they ever find legitimate reasons for what she deed, I’d kindly ask you all to refrain from judging her actions.
You miss the point, but at least you do it politely. This woman received the trust each and every one of us gets by being born. She defied that trust and killed one and wounded the other with the intent to kill. She tried to hide from her children what she was doing. She covered their eyes with duct tape and in her heart, she murdered them and left them for dead. The six-year-old, in a truly selfless act you just so rarely see in the soul and mind of a six-year-old, tried to save his little brother’s life. No, we get to judge that. We don’t have a plank in our eye and this is a splinter, none or I hope none of us reading this can be called baby killers in this sort of context. We get to judge her, regardless of the personal demons she carries around inside of her, because despite all of the demons, something inside of her said to hide what she was doing from her children and slit their throats like she was a Columbian drug lord, and these babies, owed her money.
We cashier this sort, out of the human race. Void their warranties, notify everyone around them that this is not someone you can trust to be a human being. We don’t qualify the sign that says the bridge is out, so under the circumstances, we damn well better not qualify what we call this woman. Baby Killer rings true. Murderer rings true. Psycho Bitch even rings true, but it doesn’t excuse what she did. Was she conflicted over this? I hope the hell so, because I like to think that giving everyone a fair trial is worth a damn, but if she did this with no conflicts, we have more than an icy road or a bridge out, this woman would be a catastrophe on an epic, epic scale and nothing and no one could ever be okay around her. I’d send cookies to her guards in prison with my sincere condolences that they had to deal with this kind, and oh, one other thing, the 6 year old would never have had a chance, if she’d been one of these catastrophes–she’d have enjoyed killing him too much.
Given that you paraphrase the biblical styling of Christ, I beg of you to go look for the chapters where this resides and finish the whole chapter. It’s all I ask of anyone who spouts off about this sort of thing. You could claim to understand the rest of the words, but I’d argue that Jeremiah 8:8 trumps everything you ever thought you knew about the Bible.
“‘How can you say, “We are wise,
or we have the law of the LORD,”
when actually the lying pen of the scribes
has handled it falsely?”
I usually follow up this quote with something about the Vulgate of Jerome, a rewriting of the Bible to suit one of the wealthier Constantins, but the short and the final of it all is what you think you understand about the Bible has been spoon fed, and should you finish chapter 8 of Jeremiah, after you finish a few other chapters from the New Testement, I think you’ll sit there and let your head spin, but fundamentally you’ll never be able to work yourself into the sort of bullshit it takes to tape the eyes shut of your own 2 and 6 year old, and slit their throats, so they can die in agony. If I’ve misjudged you, I hope you take this very earnest chance to seek help, right now.