She followed the Lindsay Clancy trial with an obsession that bordered on worship, authorities say—until a 40-year-old Illinois mother allegedly reenacted the unthinkable, killing her own two-year-old son in what police are calling a deliberate copycat murder.
Frankfort resident Corie Walsh was arrested last week and charged with first-degree murder after her son, Barrett Walsh, was discovered asphyxiated in her basement by a neighbor.
“A neighbor was performing CPR on the boy when officers arrived. Documents state the neighbor told police that the boy was hanging in the basement on a device from a rafter,” reports WGN9according to court documents.
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The neighbor found Walsh in an upstairs bathroom with a knife attempting to cut her thighs and wrists, and took the knife from her.
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Walsh later told investigators she killed Barrett because he “was the devil and the anti-Christ.”
Prosecutors say prior to the killing, Walsh was “very invested” in Clancy’s trial and had talked about it with friends in a group chat just hours before the child was reported dead.
Walsh’s other three children were reportedly unharmed.
Andrea Lyon, Walsh’s lawyer, told CNN that Walsh “was experiencing a psychotic episode at the time this happened.”
“It is our hope that through a thorough presentation and investigation of the facts, that all of us will come to see this heartbreak for what it is.”
“Prosecutors have sought to deny her pretrial release, alleging Walsh ‘made statements regarding harming her other children and statements that she intended to harm her husband upon his return home,’” according to CNN.
Alex Jones Live wrote last week that the Frankfort incident could be a copycat murder styled after Clancy’s killings, where the mother from Massachusetts strangled her three children to death with elastic exercise bands after she sent her husband out of the house.
In Clancy’s case, a judge declared a mistrial last week after a deadlocked jury failed to come to a unanimous decision on whether to find her guilty of murder.
A GoFundMe donation page was set up to support the rest of the Walsh family.
