London McCabe was a six year old autistic boy when he was killed by his mother when she threw him from a bridge on November 3rd. The mother claimed to have heard voices, setting the stage for an insanity plea. A family member states that they had been trying to get Mrs. McCabe committed for a year but it has also come out that she had been performing internet searches showing she was thinking of a murder before the act.
Mother May Have Planned Son’s Murder
“We do have some information that Ms. McCabe has searched the Internet to actually evaluate or maybe educate herself on the criminal process,” said Michelle Branam, Lincoln County District Attorney. “‘How to restore competency’ was a website that she had searched. She has searched ‘state hospital,’ ‘guilty but insane,’ ‘involuntary commitment;’ ‘not guilty by reason of insanity.’
Also, in Prosecutors: Woman planned to throw son off Yaquina Bay Bridge we hear a family member state that they had been trying to get Mrs. McCabe committed.
London’s uncle, Andy McCabe, told KATU that he didn’t think losing London could hurt any more than it does already, but knowing London’s mother may have been planning his death makes it hurt even more. He said his family had been trying to get her committed to the state hospital all year.
If the latter part is true then, yes, there’s a failure in the system. Clearly there’s a failure when a murder occurs. And we do need to be careful to respect and not stigmatize those with actual mental illness. But these internet searches by Mrs. McCabe do point to a conscious and planned act.
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By Matt Carey
Horrible. Poor London. I hope this is taken into account and justice is done for him.
Holy-hell….
That search of Mrs. McCabe’s computer to find that she was searching for an insanity defense, before she tossed Landon off the bridge into the water below, just about eliminates her phony defense…in favor of a charge of premeditated murder by the prosecuting attorney.
“And we do need to be careful to respect and not stigmatize those with actual mental illness.”
And also to remember that actual mental illness isn’t mutually exclusive with having vile belief systems or with rational premeditation. It seems like all of the above could be true here.
I think beyond premeditation we also have evidence that she knew right and wrong. She saw that what she was thinking of doing was criminal.
And that is a core of the insanity defense. It isn’t just “I snapped” or “the voices told me to do this”. It’s “I didn’t understand at the time that this is wrong”.
Yep.
Mrs. McCabe absolutely positively knew right (providing loving care for her youngster) from wrong (eliminating Landon by tossing him off a bridge).
Her computer records show searches for ways for her to avoid a prolonged prison sentence for the brutal murder she planned, by finding what she believed might be her way to roll over on the criminal justice system, by securing a plea for insanity…then a reprieve through an early release from an inpatient psychiatric treatment center.
This is a cold callous woman, who refused psychiatric help (according to a relative), before she committed that heinous crime…who now wants that help to avoid a conviction for the premeditated vicious murder of her child.
Possibly genuinely mentally ill, aware she might do the unthinkable, being not thinking straight wondered if she’d get into more or less trouble because of it, did some googling (not the acts of someone truly cold and calculating necessarily), then did the unthinkable.
Not that doing it because of the voices is no less heinous than doing it because of evil without voices, whatever that is.