Garnett-Paul Thompson Spears was just five years old when he died in a New York City hospital on January 23, 2014. The cause of death was encephalitis caused by an enormous amount of salt.
Suspicion quickly began to fall on the boy’s mother, Lacey Spears, and as the investigation progressed some scary things came to light.
A strange child
Lacey Spears was born and raised in Alabama. Her mother was cold and showed little or no attention to her daughter, let alone affection, and Lacey’s relationship with her father was mostly one of argument.
Lacey had few friends as she was considered an odd child. She loved dolls, and unlike normal kids love their dolls, she had them on her brain.
Once, when Lacey was around 8-9 years old, her classmate came home to play and of course they started playing with dolls. The friend accidentally dropped one of the dolls on the floor and Lacey got angry and tried to strangle her friend. When the friend came home blue and bruised around his neck, the friend’s parents were understandably shocked and wanted to sue, but Lacey’s parents managed to get them to change their minds.
But not a single parent in the school would ever allow their child to visit Lacey.
Refusal to name the father
When Lacey was 21, she had Garrett. She was then living with her parents, but did not want to talk about fatherhood, not even with her parents. She said it was a police officer who died in a car accident, but declined to name him.
After the boy’s death, it was revealed that a man who had a one-night stand with Lacey was actually the father. He had never known about Lacey’s pregnancy.
Lacey was a lonely single mother who constantly craved attention.
Garrrett was a newborn when Lacey started blogging about her son’s health issues and being active on all social media platforms. The subject was always the same, her son’s illness and all the ills that tormented him. Around the same time, she became estranged from her parents and grandmother in Florida.
She wrote endless articles about Garrett’s illness and posted gruesome photos of him unconscious on Facebook. Some with emoticons.
Endless hospital trips
Lacey constantly brought the baby to the ER there, which often acted strangely, and Garrett was only a few months old when Lacey told hospital staff that she wanted to harm him.
Staff then suspected Lacey of having Munchausen by proxy, a mental disorder in which parents or guardians harm their children, primarily in hopes of attention and sympathy. But no one could prove it.
Lacey took Garrett to the hospital 23 times before he was one, and most tests showed abnormal salt levels in his body. His eyes and ears were even bleeding. Doctors found no explanation, but thought it reasonable to inform child protection authorities. They visited Lacey but saw no reason to remove the child from the home.
Finally, the doctors made it clear to Lacey that there was no way the amount of salt that was making the boy sick was the cause of any illness. Staff were told to keep an eye on Lacey as almost everyone involved in the boy’s care was sure she was poisoning him with salt.
All that was missing was evidence.
Finally a witness
On January 21, staff saw Lacey inject saline solution into the boy’s feeding tube and immediately called the police. But this time Lacey had gone too far, Garret had a massive seizure and died two days later. Lacey then called her friend very upset and wasn’t upset because of her son’s death, no she wanted her friend to go to her house immediately and remove all the feeding tubes and saline solutions.
But the friend preferred to go to the police.
Lacey was arrested and charged with her son’s murder, and on March 2, 2015, she was convicted of Garrett’s murder. Doctors assumed she had been giving him salt since birth.
Lacey Spears was sentenced to 20 years to life but still maintains her innocence. She unsuccessfully appealed the sentence and will not be allowed to seek parole until 2034. On the other hand, few expect the child killer to ever be free.
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