Happy Mother’s Day everyone! This is
the time of year that we celebrate our maternal parent’s infinite love and
eternal sacrifice in rearing us up from the time when we were babes mewling and
puking in our cribs to the sterling adults that we doubt are now. The image of
the mother figure is iconic throughout all of history and well represented in
art from the beginning of time. Click here for Volume 2 and Volume 3 and Volume 4 of this series.
However, as we all know, not every
female is cut from the same nurturing cloth and should have been sterilized at
birth. To counter the overwhelming schmaltzy female adoration that will be
plastered everywhere this weekend, I present to you a sample of the worst
mothers in history.
Kathrine
Mary Knight: She has the distinction of being the first woman in Australian
history to be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Knight's
father was an alcoholic who openly used violence and intimidation to rape her
mother up to ten times a day. Her mother, in turn, often told her daughters
intimate details of her sex life and how much she hated sex and men. As such
she grew up to be a violent bully who would fly into uncontrollable rages. She
went through a series of mutually violent marriages, whelping several children,
before meeting John Price.
One
night he returned home to find she had sent the children away, and after a romantic
night of booze, pills, and sex, she stabbed him to death and then skinned him.
She then put his skin on a meat hook, cooked his head and parts of his body and
placed them together with vegetables on plates with placecards with the children's
names.
Marie
Noe:
A wonderful example of someone with Munchausen-by-Proxy syndrome, wherein a
caregiver exaggerates, or induces mental or physical health problems of a child
in their care, usually to gain attention or sympathy from others. Noe was
convicted in June 1999 of murdering eight of her children. Between 1949 and
1968, eight of the ten Noe children died of mysterious causes which were then
attributed to sudden infant death syndrome.
All
eight children were healthy at birth and were developing normally. Her other
two children died as well, but this was shown to be of natural causes (or else
it couldn’t be proven otherwise). Ironically in 1963 Life magazine published a
sympathetic article on Noe (written by Mary Cadwalader and using the pseudonyms
Martha and Andrew Moore for Noe and her husband) after six of Noe's children
had died
Viola
Lucas: Mother of infamous serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. Giving
birth to nine children, then having to care for a husband who lost both his
legs in a train accident, was too much for this mother. She found a wonderful
way to vent her frustrations by beating her youngest child, one of which went
so far that it actually resulted in him being in a coma for three days. She
left an eye injury Henry had received unattended for four days. It became
infected and had to be removed then replaced with a glass eye. She often dressed
him up as a girl and curled his hair to embarrass him. She often forced him to
go to school in this manner. While earning money as a prostitute she often made
watch while she had sex with clients.
He
eventually repaid this attention by murdering her. On January 11, 1960, in
Tecumseh, Michigan, Lucas killed his mother during the course of an ongoing
argument regarding whether or not he should return home to his mother's house
to care for her as she grew older. He claimed she struck him over the head with
a broom, at which point he stabbed her in the neck and she fell. He stated, “All I remember was slapping her alongside
the neck, but after I did that I saw her fall and decided to grab her. But she
fell to the floor and when I went back to pick her up, I realized she was dead.
Then I noticed that I had my knife in my hand and she had been cut.”
Susan
Smith: On October 25, 1994, Smith, a South Carolinian with
a history of drunk-and-disorderly arrests, reported to police that her vehicle
had been carjacked by a black man who drove away with her sons still in it. For
nine days, she made dramatic pleas on national television for their rescue and
return. Her and her ex-husband, whom she had cheated on repeatedly, were subjected
to intense polygraph examinations.  |
| The murdered children of Susan Smith |
Following
an intensive investigation and a nationwide search, on November 3, 1994, she
confessed to letting her 1990 Mazda Protegé roll into nearby John D. Long Lake,
drowning the boys, 3-year-old Michael Daniel Smith, and 14-month-old Alexander
Tyler Smith. Her motivation was reportedly to be able to have a relationship
with a local wealthy man, even though the latter had no intention of forming a
family. She was sentenced to life imprisonment for her crimes (It’s amazing how
few of these women actually get the death penalty even for the most heinous of
crimes. It’s a clear example of the sort of sexism we’ve all been fighting against).
She will actually be eligible for parole in 2024, but due to lack of remorse it
is unlikely that will happen.
Sanae
Nakamura: A sex worker in Japan, she fought for custody of her
two children during her divorce then quickly grew tired of caring for them. She
had no time or inclination to do housework, as evidenced by the mountains of
garbage in the apartment. In March 2010 Sanae Nakamura got herself a boyfriend
and began to spend the nights with him, leaving her 3-year-old daughter and
1-year-old son home alone.
A
concerned neighbor contacted the Osaka municipal child consultation center 3
times because the children could be heard crying and screaming “mama, mama!”
every night. The first phone call was made on March 30, 2010. Two welfare
officials showed up on March 31, April 1 and April 2. Nobody answered the door
so they left. The neighbor called again early on April 8, 2010. The
children were still crying and screaming late into the night. The welfare
officials showed up that day but again nobody answered the door. So they left.
This happened again a third time.
In
early June, 2010, Sanae Nakamura locked the door to her apartment and walked
away. Little Sakurako Hagi and her baby brother Kaede Hagi were abandoned
inside and left to die. She later told the police that she wanted “to flee from
everything and have time to myself. I thought about a week later they might be
dead. I didn’t feel like I should return home to save them.”
 |
| Left to starve to death by Sanae Nakamura |
On
July 29, 2010 Sanae Nakamura did return to the apartment, but as soon as she
found her babies’ decomposing corpses she left again, just as if nothing
happened. On
July 30, 2010, police arrived at the apartment after somebody reported a
“strange smell coming from apartment 303”. The police had to enter the
apartment from the balcony because the door was locked. When they got inside,
they discovered the source(s) of the smell. The 2 tiny, emaciated corpses were
naked and lying face up in the middle of the room, surrounded by garbage.
When
arrested, she showed no remorse. “Since I divorced in May last year, I had
become tired of caring for my children. I wanted free time,” She openly told
police. “I wished I hadn’t had children. I knew that such young children
couldn’t live if I left them behind and refused to give them food or water.”
At
her trial, she used all of the usual tactics of blaming her actions on a poor
upbringing and false statements of being sexually molested when she was a
child. Which availed her as well as the rest of the women on this list. She was
given thirty years in prison.
I
hope you enjoyed this little segment. Have a happy Mother’s Day! Again, if you want more click here for Volume 2 and Volume 3 of this series.
For more weirdness try The Foot Doctor Letters: A Serial Killer Speaks Out by Rex Hurst. Available in paperback and on kindle.
