LA - Kelsey, 4, & Kendall Thornton, 3, murdered, New Orleans, 17 Oct 2012 *Arrest*

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Police: Mother kills 2 children, then gets on a bus

From Tina Burnside, CNN

updated 8:58 AM EDT, Thu October 18, 2012

(CNN) -- A New Orleans mother shot her 3-year-old son, drowned her 4-year-old daughter and took a bus to a hospital, complaining of stomach pains and a headache, police said.

The children's bodies were found in the bathtub of her home Wednesday evening, the New Orleans Police said in a statement.

The mother, identified as Chelsea Thornton, 23, admitted to officers that she killed the young children, police said.

After the killings, she said she boarded a bus to a nearby hospital.

Thornton faces first degree murder charges.

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More at the Source http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/18/justice/louisiana-mother-killings/index.html
 
What a tragedy! Why do people with mental illness like this stop taking their medicine? And knowing of their mental illness, why are they allowed to care for their children with no supervision as to whether or not they are taking their medicine and doing okay? If they would only reach out for help BEFORE harming their children. And if she wanted to go back to the mental hospital, if only someone had helped her do so in time. She will probably get off due to mental illness. I hope she gets the treatment that she needs and that she never has more children. Those poor babies.
 
What a tragedy! Why do people with mental illness like this stop taking their medicine? And knowing of their mental illness, why are they allowed to care for their children with no supervision as to whether or not they are taking their medicine and doing okay? If they would only reach out for help BEFORE harming their children. And if she wanted to go back to the mental hospital, if only someone had helped her do so in time. She will probably get off due to mental illness. I hope she gets the treatment that she needs and that she never has more children. Those poor babies.

You are asking someone with MI to be rational. that is not realistic, but I will tell you what I DO KNW from experience because my daughter is MI.

When they are on meds they do very well, and can live a full and wonderful life.
The problem is, that meds have some side effects (all meds vary), and sometimes they need to be twicked.
What often happens is when they are doing well, they sometimes start to say, "I am fine, I do not need the meds" and while the meds are still in their system for a while.
THEY SEEM TO say after a week, tow three, "SEE I am doing great and have not taken any meds in a few weeks" but they do not understand that there are accumulative effects in the body.

Suddenly the accumulated effects start to wear off and slowly they begin to not act right, once they don’t act right they are not in the mindset that they need meds, and actually fight you on this.
IMHO they should not live with children unless there is another adult in the house too, that can realize when they are off the meds, and how they are doing.
 
There is one part I do not understand. She had the mindset to get on a bus to go to the mental hospital. :waitasec:
Why didn't she have the mindset to call someone and say, I am going to the hospital, I am leaving the kids here, someone has to come to take care of them.
She did not want the kids to go from home to home :waitasec:
but the kids were at one point with grandma, what is wrong with that?
DID grandma say? I can’t do this anymore, I am an old lady?
WHY would she know to go to a hospital? I think there is more to it.
MAYBE more like I can’t take this responsibility anymore :please:
They do not do well with any kind of accountability, especially if not medicated.

:(:(
 
I know this sounds harsh but IMO if you REQUIRE medicine to control severe mental illness, you should not be allowed to keep custody of children, i'm sorry.
 
Two children share coffin at double funeral

Posted on October 26, 2012 at 6:50 AM
Updated Friday, Oct 26 at 1:16 PM

NEW ORLEANS - The New Home Ministries Church was packed with friends and family members. Many stepped outside, shaken and moved to tears by seeing siblings Kelsey Adams, 4, and Kendall Adams, 3, sharing one coffin, lying side by side.

"There's no excuse for these babies to be lying here, no excuse," said L'Tanye Forde, stunned by the funeral. "I am just torn. I have one godchild. I would hurt myself before I hurt one child. I would turn myself in. This should not be. They are our future, we are losing too many of our children."

Read more: http://www.wwltv.com/news/local/orl...r-toddlers-murdered-by-mother--175952171.html


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Lunacy hearing ordered for mom who killed young children

Posted on November 9, 2012 at 11:08 AM

NEW ORLEANS - A New Orleans mom accused of murdering her two small children is getting a hearing to determine if she is competent to stand trial.

...

Thornton's lunacy hearing is now set for November 13 at 10 a.m.

Read more: http://www.wwltv.com/news/local/orleans/Lunacy-Hearing-Ordered-In-Baby-Killings-178113371.html
 
Woman Accused Of Killing Her Own Kids Unfit To Stand Trial

12/13/12
by WGNO.com Web Desk

thornton650.jpg


A judge ruled Thursday that a mother accused of killing her two young children is incompetent to stand trial.

Chelsea Thornton faced two counts of murder. Her lawyer said she would plead not guilty by reason of insanity.

Thornton will be sent to the East Louisiana Mental Health System.

Police say she confessed to shooting her three-year-old son and drowning her four-year-old daughter in a bathtub inside their Gert Town home in October.

At the scene, friends and neighbors said Thornton struggled with mental illness. During a preliminary court hearing, Thornton’s family members expressed similar concern about her mental health.

Source: http://wgno.com/2012/12/13/woman-accused-of-killing-her-own-kids-unfit-to-stand-trial
 
April 2013:

A mother accused of shooting her 3-year-old son and drowning her 4-year-old daughter in the bathtub was found competent to stand trial Thursday after four months of treatment in a mental hospital.

Chelsea Thorton, 23, will proceed toward trial on two counts of first-degree murder...

Thornton's mother, Eleanor Chapman, said she noticed her daughter's mental health begin to decline after she had her second child, the 3-year-old boy. Mental illness runs in the family, Chapman said, and she had tried to help her daughter. Thornton had been hospitalized, sometimes for a months at a time, at Southeast Louisiana Hospital in Mandeville...

She was initially found incompetent to stand trial and was sent to the state mental hospital in East Feliciana Parish for treatment.

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/04/chelsea_thornton_found_compete.html
 
After being sent to East Feliciana, Thornton was stabilized with medication that acted as a mood stabilizer, an anti-depressant and an anti-psychotic, psychiatrist Dr. Richard Richoux testified in April. Thornton's depression became manageable, and her paranoia subsided; but she likely had a severe mood disorder, an illness subject to worsening with the stress of a trial, Richoux said.

Thornton entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity to two counts of first-degree murder. She could be facing a death sentence if found guilty as charged.

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/07/chelsea_thornton_accused_of_mu.html
 
Forensic psychiatrists Dr. Sarah Deland and Dr. James McConville said Thornton knew she was breaking the law but thought it best to kill her children anyway.

Thornton, 25, has a lengthy history of mental illness, having been diagnosed at various times with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, with psychotic episodes, as well as depression. Hospital records showed she had been off her medication for several months before the killings.

“She was tired of seeing her kids suffer. She felt they were poor and things were not going to get better and she didn’t want them to go from pillar to post,” McConville testified at a hearing Thursday. “It was almost as if she felt this was some sort of mercy killing. … She did feel that what she was doing was the right thing to do.”

http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/10309167-123/experts-chelsea-thornton-legally-insane
 
Court heard taped confession recorded less than two hours after the children's bodies were found:


“(Kendall) was like, ‘You about to shoot me, mommy?’ (I said) ‘Close your eyes, baby.’ And I shot him. But I wanted to shoot Kelsey, too, so neither of them would suffer. But the gun, like, it was broke some type of way. So I just drowned them. He was breathing some type of way, and I didn’t want him to suffer, so I put him in the tub with her.”...

But the hearing came just a week after a pair of forensic psychiatrists hired by the defense reported that Thornton was legally competent when she gave the confession, telling detectives she didn’t want her kids to “go from pillar to post their whole life like I did.”

A disturbingly cogent, if irrational, Thornton told the detectives she had wanted to surrender immediately after the killings but couldn’t muster the strength.

I felt so bad because that’s the only two I have. And I love them. So I went to the police station and I was going to turn myself in, but I was like, no. I just ain’t know what to do,” she said in the recording.

“How you tell somebody that you killed your children? How you kill your children?”...

he same two mental health experts who found she was competent when she confessed had testified last month that Thornton was legally insane at the time of the killing.


http://theadvocate.com/news/neworle...7599-123/in-taped-confession-chelsea-thornton
 
According to reports, family members say the young woman suffers from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and had not been taking her medication. They believe Thornton could have gotten more help if not for state budget cuts and letdowns in the social system. According to the report, Thornton’s mother said her daughter was committed to mental health hospitals around the region two times—stays that lasted a few weeks before her daughter was released after which she would stop taking her meds. According to the same report, Thornton’s family said she was denied disability assistance because the government decided her mental illness was not severe. Without money or assistance, Thornton’s mother said her medicines, follow-up and rides to the clinic stopped.

http://www.theneworleanstribune.com/main/the-mental-health-care-blues/
 
September 2016:

4 years, 5 sanity evaluations later, no trial date for woman accused of killing children

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2016/09/chelsea_thornton_children_sani.html

Five doctors have evaluated whether Chelsea Thornton was sane when New Orleans police say she fatally shot her 3-year-old son and drowned her 4-year-old daughter in a bathtub. The children were killed at their Gert Town home nearly four years ago, on Oct. 14, 2012.

Since that time, Thornton, 27, whose family said she was treated at a mental hospital for bipolar schizophrenia before her children's deaths, has been at the Orleans Parish jail.

Thornton is facing trial on two counts of first-degree murder. She has entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. A trial date has not yet been set.

Burns accused prosecutors of chasing a "rabbit trail" and making "figure eights" with pretrial proceedings to prolong the case.

"(Thornton) has sat in jail ... waiting to go ... hopefully to a mental hospital," said Burns. "I'm ready to go to trial."

Tucker said she was "not sure what these theatrics are about today," from Burns, and added the state is ready to proceed.
 
Gert Town mother accused of killing her children set for trial in August

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2017/05/gert_town_mother_accused_of_ki.html

Chelsea Thornton, the Gert Town mother accused of killing her two young children nearly 4 1/2 years ago, will stand trial in August, a New Orleans judge said Tuesday (May 2).

Judge Robin Pittman set Aug. 7 for the start of Thornton's capital murder case, the fifth trial date to be set since Thornton was arrested on Oct 17, 2012.

Court proceedings have been snagged for years over a series of evaluations by mental health professionals working on behalf of the state and defense attorney Lionel Lon Burns. But on Tuesday, state prosecutor Tiffany Tucker said one of the final case impediments could soon be removed: completion of a long-awaited report by state-hired forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael Blue, who first interviewed Thornton in July and August 2015, then left all parties waiting for his written evaluation.

Tucker said at a hearing last September that Blue had moved and was no longer expected to participate in the case. But over Burns' objections, she said Tuesday that Blue was back on board and ready to complete his report -- after he interviews Thornton one last time on May 15.
 
She is only 26/27 I hope she never has any more children. She cannot cope with the responsibility or dependency of them. (She cannot cope with the responsibility of her own life).
 
IMO - guilty but sadly, insane, at the time of the killings. Such a sad story on so many levels.
 
Was she sane? Trial opens for mother accused of killing two young children in Gert Town in 2012

However mysterious that justification might seem, it does not make her legally insane, Assistant District Attorney Tiffany Tucker said.

“People kill people every day in this city for reasons we cannot understand, and that does not moot out the culpability that they have,” Tucker said. “Those kids dying was for nothing, it was for no reason, and they did not deserve the brutal end that they received at the hands of their mother.”

Thornton’s defense attorney, Lionel “Lon” Burns, argued that there were well-documented signs that Thornton was suffering a mental breakdown in the days leading up to her children’s deaths. He said it was misleading for the state to begin its narrative on the day they were killed.

“It would be nice, it would be neat, if we started the case there. You’re going to hear testimony that for days, this young mother had exhibited signs of someone slipping back into being bipolar, paranoid schizophrenic, having effects of major depression,” Burns told the judge.

Chelsea Thornton, mother of slain Gert Town toddlers, 'not a monster,' lawyer says

NOPD child abuse Detective Nijel Baddoo described Thornton as tearful but alert and responsive when she was interviewed at the hospital.

"I didn't want them to go pillar to post they whole life like I did. It's just not right," Thornton said in her recorded statement to police. "I just didn't want my children living like this. ... I killed my children, in the tub. ... I didn't want them to suffer."

She described her son's confusion when she pointed the gun at him.

"He said, 'Are you going to shoot me, Mommy?'" Thornton told investigators. "I said, 'Close your eyes, baby,' and I shot him."

:(

Death not immediate for either of Chelsea Thornton's kids, pathologist testifies

Dr. Samantha Huber, testifying at Thornton's bench trial before Criminal District Judge Robin Pittman, said 3-year-old Kendall Adams was killed by a bullet to the head and his 4-year-old sister Kelsey died from drowning, but neither perished instantly.

Huber said evidence gleaned during the children's autopsies indicated the boy lived "for a short period of time" after being shot. His sister likely struggled between 3-5 minutes, Huber said, while being held underwater in the bathtub of her family's Gert Town apartment on Oct. 17, 2012.
 

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