MI - William Summerfield, 8 mos, smothered, Battle Creek, 29 May 1961 *Arrest*

An elderly Michigan woman living in a nursing home has come forward with a startling confession: She killed her 8-month-old son 53 years ago. Two of the women’s other children now wonder if she also killed their twin sisters years later.

Janice Summerfield, 77, recently confessed to killing William Earl Summerfield III. In a story Sunday, the Battle Creek Enquirer said Summerfield confessed to smothering little Billy during interviews with her 54-year-old daughter Paula Gastian, a detective and a reporter...

Phil Summerfield said he was 4 ½ when he awoke that day and found his little brother lifeless in the bed next to him. “After she allegedly smothered the baby, she put the baby in bed with me,” the 58-year-old Alabama man told the Enquirer. “I was shy of 5 years old. I woke and he was dead. I picked him up and took him downstairs. She told me it was my fault.” Summerfield said he believed his mother.

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His body is now in a morgue at Western Michigan University where pathologists and anthropologists are trying to determine how he died. His tiny casket was exhumed Oct. 16 from a grave marked only with a number at Oakridge Cemetery in Marshall...

For years Gastian and her two brothers have wondered about the death of their infant brother and later their twin sisters, who died as small children while the family was living in Battle Creek. A fourth child, a baby boy, died on Aug. 20, 1961, at Oaklawn Hospital in Marshall, five days after birth.

Gastian said she was raised in an abusive home with a mother who used drugs and neglected her children. Their father, William Summerfield, 86, was a truck driver, often absent from the home. He was sentenced to prison in September after he entered a plea to a sexual assault of a friend's child.

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OkieGranny said:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/11/23/michigan-mom-confesses-to-killing-her-infant-son-53-years-ago/



http://www.freep.com/story/news/loc...ther-kills-baby-michigan-confession/19424629/

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Five months after a Battle Creek woman confessed to killing her son 53 years ago, her other children are waiting for what’s next.

The three adult children of Janice Summerfield, 77, have met with Calhoun County prosecutors, a detective from the sheriff department and the county medical examiner but still don’t know if their mother might be charged...

The family understands that the remains of Billy Summerfield may not reveal a cause of death, especially since their mother said she smothered the infant. “There might not be an ending,” Gastian said. “You can talk and talk and talk, but if the evidence is not there...”

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