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Dareyonne Banks (7-year-old victim)

A mother in Addis Louisiana killed her 7-year old son then killed herself on Thursday allegedly over her husband’s infidelity. Police say Lavinia Banks, 34, shot her son Dareyonne at least three times, put his body in a tub filled with water then shot herself in the head with a .38-caliber revolver.

The gruesome scene was discovered by the woman’s husband, Don Banks Jr., when he arrived home from work. Police say the murder suicide was planned as the mother carefully laid out funeral clothes for herself and her son on a bed.

Police also say they had been called to the home on a previous occasion and that there had been an ongoing feud between Lavinia DeShawn Banks and her husband over a child her husband fathered with another woman during the course of their marriage.

Family of Lavinia Banks claim the woman with whom Don Banks Jr. had an affair and fathered a child had been harrassing Lavinia Banks.

Minnet Bowman, Jasimine Bowman

What makes a mother kill her child? I’ve asked the question before and my answer now is the same as then, who knows? Mothers are just people. We want to think every mother loves her child or children but that’s just not the case. Not all mothers love their children. Not all mothers are nurturing. Not all mothers have an instinct to protect their children. Some mothers, in fact, hate their children and intentionally hurt their children. Some mothers kill their children, and police in Maryland suspect Renee Bowman of killing two of her children and attempting to murder a third.

Renee Bowman

Back in September Rockville Maryland police found the bodies of Jasmine Nicole Bowman and Minnet C. Bowman in a freezer while they were investigating a child abuse complaint. They believe the girls’ adoptive mother Renee Bowman killed them since at least last November. They believe she strangled them to death.

In this case it’s not a biological mother killing her children; but that really doesn’t make it any less outrageous. In fact, I would argue it’s even more outrageous because, if you know you don’t want children, why adopt three of them?

Renee Bowman has been indicted on attempted murder charges related to the abuse of the third daughter who was found wandering about on a gravel road back in September. That was how police came to find the other two girls in the freezer.

What can be done about mothers killing their children? No more than can be done about anyone killing at all.

Nicole Beecroft

Nicole Beecroft has been sentenced to life in prison for the April 2007 stabbing murder of her newborn baby. Apparently Nicole hid her pregnancy for 9 months, secretly gave birth to a baby in her mother’s house in Oakdale, Minnesota, then killed the baby she gave birth to by stabbing it 130 times. Afterward she threw the body into a trash bin.

It seems like such a shame that a pregnancy had to result in the murder of an innocent baby and life in jail for a teenager who was so convinced that having a baby is such a horrible thing she couldn’t under any circumstance let anyone know she was pregnant. She hid her pregnancy for as long as she could but then the baby wouldn’t stay inside her any longer.

What must she have been going through all alone with her secret for 9 months and then all the pain and torture of giving birth all by herself in a her bedroom. She must have built up so much rage and self hatred in all that time and it all just came to a climax the day she gave birth. Her rage exploded. Now her life is over. There’s temptation to pity her; but then you think about the baby. She stabbed it 130 times. Aborting it when she learned she was pregnant have been more humane.