This Mom Told Police Her Toddler Strangled Her Baby, But The Truth Is Far Worse

It’s hard to think of anything more heinous than murdering your own child, but this mother capped off her terrible crime by claiming that her two-year-old son was the killer.

On November 10, authorities went to the Florida home of Kristen DePasquale. She told police that she was taking a shower and returned to find her one-year-old daughter, Mia, strangled to death with a set of Halloween lights. The only other person in the house at the time was her two-year-old son, and she blamed him for the crime.

No one knows what drove Kristen to murder her daughter. It’s believed that the baby was strangled for four to six minutes before going into cardiac arrest.

Medical examiners knew right away that the toddler could not have killed his younger sister. The marks on her neck made it obvious that force had been applied by someone much stronger.

This didn’t surprise authorities, who noticed that Kristen was wearing makeup when they went to her home and doubted her shower story from the start. She was taken into custody and charged with child neglect and first-degree murder.