Lacey Spears: Mother gets 20 years in prison for killing son by force-feeding him salt

Lacey Spears killed her son by feeding him salt (AP Images)

Lacey Spears, a mother who blogged about her son’s health problems, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Wednesday for killing her son by force-feeding him salt.

Spears was convicted of second-degree murder last month and now faces 20 years to life in prison. She poisoned her son, 5-year-old Garnett-Paul Spears, using salt fed through a stomach tube and prosecutors said she killed the boy because she was afraid he would say she was poisoning him.

On social media, Spears played the role of loving mother, often tweeting about how much she loved her son.

But prosecutors in the case painted a different picture, telling the jury that Spears loved the attention she got from her son’s medical issues.

“She apparently craved the attention of her family, her friends, her co-workers and most particularly the medical profession,” Assistant District Attorney Patricia Murphy said in closing arguments.

Video cameras caught Spears on two occasions taking her son into a hospital bathroom with a feeding tube. A search of her apartment also turned up two feeding bags contaminated with salt. One of the bags had the equivalent of 69 salt packets.

Prosecutors called Spears a “calculating child killer” and told the jury that she searched the internet for the effects of sodium on children. They also said that Spears would lie to doctors about her son’s health.

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