*possible trigger* NYT: MA town shudders after discovery

[LoveTrains]

So, so sad. I can't believe no one noticed anything was amiss before this?


www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/us/bodies-of-infants-found-in-massachusetts-home.html?ref=us


Massachusetts Town Shudders After Discovery of Dead Infants

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMSSEPT. 12, 2014


When officers responded to a report of a crying, possibly neglected child at a modest house a block from police headquarters in Blackstone, Mass., they unwittingly uncovered a situation so horrifying that the police chief on Friday said it had tested the entire town.



During the last few days, the authorities have found the remains of three dead infants hidden inside the house on St. Paul Street, as well as piles of soiled diapers and the skeletons of several cats and a dog.



“The house is filled with vermin,” said Joseph D. Early Jr., the Worcester County district attorney. “We have flies. We have bugs. We have used diapers — in some areas, as much as a foot and a half to two feet high. The house is in a deplorable condition.”



Four children have been removed from the home, and Erika Murray, the 31-year-old woman who the authorities believe is the mother of all seven children, has been ordered held without bail.


“This has been a trying, difficult week for our investigators and for the residents of Blackstone,” Ross Atstupenas, the police chief of the town of close to 9,000 about 50 miles southwest of Boston, said Friday. “This is not the kind of thing anyone would expect in our community, or in any other place for that matter.”


Ms. Murray was arraigned Friday in Uxbridge District Court on two counts of permitting substantial injury to a child and intimidating a witness. During her brief court appearance, which was televised, she was handcuffed and looked around nervously at times, but did not speak.



The State Department of Children and Families said initially on Friday that the agency had not been called to the home before the four surviving children were removed and taken into custody about two weeks ago. But later in the day, the department said a complaint of child abuse or neglect had been filed in 2007, but no evidence had been found of children having been harmed.



Early Friday morning, teams of investigators were seen entering the house wearing hazmat suits and removing items. As the officers and firefighters left, they were decontaminated, the authorities said.



The episode began Aug. 28, when a neighbor told the police that a child who lived in the house asked her how to quiet a crying child, officials said. The neighbor found the child lying on a bed covered in feces, Mr. Early said.



Responding police officers found four children in the house, along with Ms. Murray, the department said in a statement. Officers were said to have “found the interior of the home to be in a state of squalor, with garbage, debris and dirty diapers stacked over a foot high in places, and an out-of-control rodent and pest infestation.”



Child welfare officials said they arrived in less than an hour and removed the four children from the house.


Alec Loftus, a spokesman with the Department of Children and Families said, the children — a 6-month-old, a 3-year-old, a 10-year-old and a 13-year-old — remained in state custody.



The house was subsequently condemned and sealed, but the authorities said they did not know that the bodies of the infants were still inside.



On Wednesday, 13 days after the children were removed, the police returned with a search warrant to conduct a more thorough examination of the house. What officers found, the department said, appeared to be the body of a newborn baby that had been “tucked into the back of a closet in one of the rooms of the house.”



Overwhelmed by the odor and concerned for their own safety because of the squalor, the officers left the house, the authorities said, and returned on Thursday with hazardous-materials teams from the Fire Department. It was then that the bodies of two more infants were found.



Ms. Murray was arrested Thursday at the home of a relative, the police said.



Mr. Early said that the two oldest surviving children belonged to Ms. Murray, but that no birth documents were on file for the two younger children. It is also not clear yet how the three infants died or how long they had been dead.



According to The Associated Press, Ms. Murray’s lawyer, Keith Halpern, citing the conditions in the house, suggested that his client was mentally ill.

[curbsideprophet]

That is disturbing.

[zoidberg]

I thought this was going to be about a disco.

[StrawberryBlondie]

Ok, I expected a very different story with the subject line of "shudders at disco"

[sugarglider]

Sept 13, 2014 15:19:07 GMT -5 StrawberryBlondie said:

Ok, I expected a very different story with the subject line of "shudders at disco"

I read it as "shutters disco" and was wondering how that required a trigger warning.

[LoveTrains]

Oh sorry, it was "shudders at discovery" but I think it ran out of text. Should I edit the title???

[mcfelix]

I hadn't heard about this, but how terrible. Those poor kids, living in such awful surroundings.

[lasagnasshole]

Holy fuck.

Holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck.

Holy fuck.

[borinquen57]

These poor kids! I can't even imagine how they've had to live like this. So many questions...

[soxin2]

OMG! One of my college friends grew up there.


And I haven't seem the news today.


So horrific.


This is worse than the story from my hometown that Wally Lamb mentions in his books (involves mummified remains)

[jeaniebueller]

How awful. Poor kids. I don't know why I read this. Those poor babies


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[onomatopoeia]

One of the articles I read (I live in ma so this is being reported widely) said that the father of the 4 children lived downstairs (a basement apartment, I guess? It didn't clarify) and had no idea the younger 2 kids even existed. The mother would tell people the babies were just kids that she was babysitting if they asked. I'm not sure how accurate any of that is, obviously there are a lot of rumors and speculations.

Her lawyer is making statements regarding some significant mental illness factors at play. Yes, I would agree there.

[Kattey]

This is horrific. I can't imagine the woman's state of mind.

[cinnamoncox]

I'm in Ma too, so it's in all the news. It's so disturbing.
The mother created alternate personas and sometimes would tell people she was the babysitter to the two youngest (3 and 6 mos I think), even though they were hers.

And the charge is pretty weird, something about concealing infant death "out of wedlock", it seems if she had been married, concealing it wouldn't be a crime. What I read said that the concealment is to prevent or lessen the ability to determine if it was a still birth or if the infant lived at all.
It's very sad, and it's clear she's mentally ill. There were cat and dog bodies too.

[jillboston]

I was watching the local news this morning in MA and a family friend was saying how great her parents/ the family was. She seemed dumbfounded by the situation. But that's not the first time people who think they are close to a situation get it completely wrong.

[onomatopoeia]

Sept 13, 2014 19:38:37 GMT -5 cinnamoncox said:

I'm in Ma too, so it's in all the news. It's so disturbing.
The mother created alternate personas and sometimes would tell people she was the babysitter to the two youngest (3 and 6 mos I think), even though they were hers.

And the charge is pretty weird, something about concealing infant death "out of wedlock", it seems if she had been married, concealing it wouldn't be a crime. What I read said that the concealment is to prevent or lessen the ability to determine if it was a still birth or if the infant lived at all.
It's very sad, and it's clear she's mentally ill. There were cat and dog bodies too.

The concealing an infant death out of wedlock law was written in the 1700's (maybe even the 1600's?), so probably reflective of those times.  The article I read said that law enforcement here basically just charged her with the closest thing on the books they could find that could apply, since they don't have a lot of info yet ( when they were born, how long they've been dead, how they died, etc).  I'm sure the charges will change.

Stories like this always make me wonder if there is a house of horrors in my town, that I pass every day on my way to work, and just have no idea, you know?  

[cinnamoncox]

Sept 13, 2014 22:16:00 GMT -5 onomatopoeia said:

Sept 13, 2014 19:38:37 GMT -5 cinnamoncox said:

I'm in Ma too, so it's in all the news. It's so disturbing.
The mother created alternate personas and sometimes would tell people she was the babysitter to the two youngest (3 and 6 mos I think), even though they were hers.

And the charge is pretty weird, something about concealing infant death "out of wedlock", it seems if she had been married, concealing it wouldn't be a crime. What I read said that the concealment is to prevent or lessen the ability to determine if it was a still birth or if the infant lived at all.
It's very sad, and it's clear she's mentally ill. There were cat and dog bodies too.

The concealing an infant death out of wedlock law was written in the 1700's (maybe even the 1600's?), so probably reflective of those times.  The article I read said that law enforcement here basically just charged her with the closest thing on the books they could find that could apply, since they don't have a lot of info yet ( when they were born, how long they've been dead, how they died, etc).  I'm sure the charges will change.

Stories like this always make me wonder if there is a house of horrors in my town, that I pass every day on my way to work, and just have no idea, you know?  

Yes, it's a very old law, from 1649 or something in the 1600's.
Either way, she's not right in the head, there can't be any disputing that.

DCF has been involved there as recently as a few weeks ago. They said there was nothing going on.
Something tells me someone lied about going there, and didn't obviously realize they picked the wrong case to lie about :/

No way that place was ok a few weeks ago, so yet another failure at the hands of DCF here in Ma.

So sad. And you're right these houses of horror come up every so often and they look so normal from the outside in most cases.

Remember the one in Everett like 13 years ago? (Idk how long you've been in ma or where you are here)
That was horrible! My niece was in daycare with one of the kids from that house at the time and there was nothing to indicate she was from a house or horrors home. She was dressed like everyone else and had proper food and everything.
So it's bizarre they can keep up a front sometimes.

[kdubs923]

I live just over the RI border about 5 minutes away from here. It's absolutely insane here right now. There's been news helicopters flying overhead and news vans lining the street. From the outside it seems like a normal house.

Even more disturbing, the police station is literally 3 houses away. Help was so close for those poor babies, but there was just no way of knowing.

[lizlemon19]

Sept 14, 2014 9:28:08 GMT -5 cinnamoncox said:

Sept 13, 2014 22:16:00 GMT -5 onomatopoeia said:

The concealing an infant death out of wedlock law was written in the 1700's (maybe even the 1600's?), so probably reflective of those times.  The article I read said that law enforcement here basically just charged her with the closest thing on the books they could find that could apply, since they don't have a lot of info yet ( when they were born, how long they've been dead, how they died, etc).  I'm sure the charges will change.

Stories like this always make me wonder if there is a house of horrors in my town, that I pass every day on my way to work, and just have no idea, you know?  

Yes, it's a very old law, from 1649 or something in the 1600's.
Either way, she's not right in the head, there can't be any disputing that.

DCF has been involved there as recently as a few weeks ago. They said there was nothing going on.
Something tells me someone lied about going there, and didn't obviously realize they picked the wrong case to lie about :/

No way that place was ok a few weeks ago, so yet another failure at the hands of DCF here in Ma.

So sad. And you're right these houses of horror come up every so often and they look so normal from the outside in most cases.

Remember the one in Everett like 13 years ago? (Idk how long you've been in ma or where you are here)
That was horrible! My niece was in daycare with one of the kids from that house at the time and there was nothing to indicate she was from a house or horrors home. She was dressed like everyone else and had proper food and everything.
So it's bizarre they can keep up a front sometimes.

A few weeks ago was when DCF did the removal of the remaining children. DCF's last involvement with the family was in 2007.