House of horrors mother, 35, gets six to eight years in prison after police found the remains of three newborns stashed in her closet and two badly neglected children in her squalid Massachusetts home
The Massachusetts mother who lived in a squalid home where authorities found the remains of three babies was sentenced Thursday to six to eight years behind bars for child assault and battery and animal cruelty convictions.
SOURCE: DAILYMAIL
Erika Murray, 35, will get credit for nearly five years she has already served since her arrest in 2014, when the remains were discovered inside her home's closets in Blackstone. Four living children were also removed from the home.
Murray was cleared last month of second-degree murder but found guilty of harming two of her living children.
A cat and a dog were also found in the house filled with rodents, dirty diapers and trash.
Judge Janet Kenton-Walker said prosecutors did not prove that Murray caused the death of the one baby she was charged with killing.
Murray was initially charged in two of the babies' deaths, but the judge dropped one of the murder counts during the trial because she said prosecutors couldn't prove that baby was born alive.
Erika Murray, right, who lived in a squalid home where authorities found the remains of three babies was sentenced Thursday to six to eight years behind bars for child assault and battery and animal cruelty convictions
The home where Erika Murray lived and the remains of three babies were found in 2014
Neighbors say the property was full of 'dirty diapers, fleas and maggots' and images from the house show piles of trash filling rooms and squalid conditions
Cops found four children living in the horrific conditions and the bodies of three babies hidden in two closets - one still had its umbilical cord and placenta attached
The judge said her sentence had to take into account multiple factors, including Murray's mental illness and the fact that she was not convicted of any charges related to the babies' deaths.
'I cannot punish her, as some might want me to, for the fact that the remains of three babies were found in the closets,' Kenton-Walker said.
She called the case a 'senseless, tragic story about a dysfunctional parent and her family.'
Experts who testified for the defense said Murray had personality disorders, which her lawyer argued made it impossible for her to understand the severity of the conditions of the home.
'I would agree that punishment is deserved if the evidence established willfulness, if the evidence had established that she had intended to cause harm to these children and was aware of what she was doing and did it on purpose. But there is no evidence of that,' defense attorney Keith Halpern said Thursday.
During the two-week trial Murray's attorney said she suffered from mental illness and argued there's no evidence she caused the babies' deaths, suggesting they could have been stillborn.
Murray had four living children in the home ranging in age from five months to 13-years-old.
Her home, which was eventually torn down, was found in an astonishing state of squalor where the floor was covered with dirty diapers, trash, rodents and dead animals.
The house where the skeletal remains were found was torn down in 2014
The cleanup operation at Erika Murray's home in Blackstone in 2014. It took crews 90 hours spread over four days of work to clear out Murray's house before it was knocked down
Video footage from the scene showed police and forensic teams removing bags of trash and it took clean-up crews 90 hours spread over four days of work to clear out Murray's house before heavy machinery was brought in to raze it to the ground.
The children first came to the attention of police when a ten-year-old boy who lived in the house went to a neighbor and asked for her help to get a baby to stop crying.
The neighbor went into the house and found a crying baby on a bed, covered in feces, and no adults around.
Betsy Brown told the court: 'Horrible rotting food. Dirty diapers, lots of dirty diapers, baby bottles, maggots everywhere. It was really dark and hot. It was horrible.
'It was the worst smell I had ever smelt.'
Police were called on August 28, 2014 and officials removed four living children - the 10-year-old boy as well as 13-year-old, 3-year-old and 6-month-old girls - from the home.
Authorities later found the remains of the three dead babies inside cardboard boxes in two bedroom closets. Two of them were wearing diapers and clothing and the third still had the umbilical cord and placenta attached, authorities said.
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Medical examiners were unable to determine how the baby died.
Her defense attorney said that Murray was deluded rather than malicious and was driven by fear that her emotionally abusive boyfriend would discover the children so she let the home fall into a squalid state.
The defense said she genuinely believed herself to be a good mother.
However, prosecutors painted her as a neglectful mother who killed or severely neglected her younger children until they died. They said she kept her kids a secret from her own family.
'It all points to this idea of the two worlds that Erika Murray created. For [her youngest daughters,] there were obvious hazards in that home. Dangers. Children abandoned in that darkness,' Assistant District Attorney Christopher Hodgens said in closing arguments.
'It wasn't a decision she made to ignore the risks and jeopardize the health of her children. She didn't see anything else other than getting through the day and keeping the secrets,' her attorney Keith Haplern said.
Her partner Raymond Rivera, 42, has pleaded not guilty to assault and battery on a child causing substantial bodily injury, and reckless endangerment of a child.
SOURCE: DAILYMAIL
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