Feb. 25--Mothers who take the lives of their own children commonly suffer from chronic depression and psychosis, sometimes even hearing voices that guide their actions, say experts who have studied such cases.

It is too early to say what was in the mind of Leatrice Brewer, charged yesterday with the murder of her three children in their New Cassel home. But experts say in cases involving women who murder their children, they "will possibly hear voices that tell them what to do," said Margaret Spinelli, an associate professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and author of "Infanticide: Psychosocial and Legal Perspectives on Mothers Who Kill." "It could be from God or it could be from the devil."

Experts say depression was a factor in the case of Andrea Yates, the Houston mother who drowned her five children in a bathtub in 2001, and it might have played a role in the New Cassel case.

"When people are severely, chronically depressed, the result is a feeling of hopelessness and that causes them to do things without any logic behind it," said Lawrence Koblinsky, chairman of the Department of Forensic Sciences at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Although Brewer's mental history remains unclear, friends and family members described her as troubled and sometimes having outbursts. One described her as "paranoid." She was also fighting efforts by relatives to remove the children from her care.

"In those types of situations, a retaliatory motive can occur, wherein the mother wishes to punish those who don't think she's a good mother," said Geoffrey McKee, a clinical professor at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine who wrote "Why Mothers Kill: A Forensic Psychologist's Casebook" after he evaluated Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother who drowned her two sons in 1994.

McKee said postpartum depression can also be a factor in these cases. The youngest of Brewer's children was 16 months old.

Mothers who killed

Two infamous cases from the past:

In June 2001, Houston-area mother Andrea Yates drowned her five children, age 6 months to 7 years, in a bathtub. At her trial, attorneys said she suffered from severe postpartum psychosis and, in a delusional state, believed Satan was inside her, and was trying to save them from hell. Yates told a psychiatrist that her children had not been progressing normally because she was a bad mother and that she killed them because "in their innocence, they would go to heaven." She was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2002. But an appeals court overturned her conviction three years later because of erroneous testimony. In July 2006, a second jury found Yates not guilty by reason of insanity. She was committed to a state mental hospital for treatment.

In October 1994, a South Carolina woman, Susan Smith, strapped her sons, ages 3 and 14 months, in their car seats and let her car roll into a lake. Smith told deputies they had been taken in a carjacking and cried on national television as she begged for their safe return. Nine days later, she confessed, and the boys' bodies were found in the car, submerged a few feet from a boat ramp at John D. Long Lake. Smith was convicted in July 1995 and sentenced to life in prison. At her trial, Smith's lawyers contended Smith was traumatized by her father's suicide when she was 6 and by the sexual abuse she endured at the hands of her stepfather. At the trial, they said she killed her sons while in the depths of emotional anguish and argued that Smith had intended to drown with her children but leapt out of the car at the last minute. Prosecutors painted her as a selfish manipulator who killed her sons for a lover who did not want children. -- Steve Ritea

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Last updated: 03/27/2008 - 08:46 AM