SIDS: Revisisted

U.S.
Wisconsin Woman Charged in 3 Infant Deaths From the '80s

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FEB. 23, 2018, 7:46 P.M. E.S.T.

MILWAUKEE — A Wisconsin woman has been charged with suffocating three babies more than 30 years ago — cases that investigators initially attributed to sudden infant death syndrome, prosecutors said Friday.

The cases were reopened in March 2015 after Nancy Moronez's daughter told police her mother confessed to suffocating Moronez's son with a garbage bag in 1980, prosecutors say. The two other infants died in 1984 and 1985 while Moronez was their baby-sitter.

Moronez, 60, told a Milwaukee police detective this week she was responsible for the three deaths and said at one point that she "can't take kids that constantly cry," prosecutors said in charging documents that provide chilling details. She faces three counts of second-degree murder.

She didn't dispute what her daughter told police, but said she actually killed her son by drowning him, putting him in bath water until his face turned purple. Moronez said she "put him in the water and saw bubbles coming out of his nose and mouth" and that she "held him down and felt him wriggle a little under the water," charging documents say. Her son was 18 days old.