The Child Protection eNewsletter

Three moms in three different states kill kids…

An Ohio woman possibly drugged two of her four children with Benadryl and shot them through the heart, then put the gun to her chest and killed herself, a coroner said. Read More Hamilton County Coroner O'dell Owens said he believed that the mother was depressed because she was going through a divorce.

The bodies of Mary Ann Wittich, 44, her 7-year-old daughter, Sydney, and 10-year-old son, Jacob, were found in their suburban Delhi Township home late Tuesday afternoon by an older daughter who did not live in the home, Owens said. Owens said the children apparently were killed between 7 and 9 a.m. Tuesday.

Property records show that the house was owned by John Scott and Mary Ann Wittich. The couple divorced in June.

Owens said he believes the deaths were planned because the mother apparently drugged the children and obtained a gun, which was loaded. A large box of bullets was on the floor, he said. "There was a note, and the note confirms to me that this is a double homicide-suicide," said Owens. Owens also said that the children likely were drugged with the allergy medicine Benadryl, and Wittich then apparently slept with her son and daughter overnight before shooting them.

Meanwhile, the multiple-page, handwritten note left by a stay-at-home Texas mom who killed her husband, their children and herself does not reveal her motive, authorities said. Read More Shocked friends and neighbors in the Dallas suburb said they had known of no trouble between Andrea and Michael Lewis Roberts. The 41-year-olds and their two children -- Micayla, 11, and Dylan, 7 -- were found dead Tuesday morning, each with a single gunshot wound to the head.

Police Lieutenant Wendell Mitchell declined to release specific contents of Andrea Roberts' suicide note. "She explained in the note she was taking the lives of her family, but she did not leave anything we could determine as a motive," he said.

The victims were shot in their bedrooms, but police have not determined the order of the shootings. "They were shot sometime during the night. They were found in their beds. It did appear they had all gone to bed," Mitchell said.

Andrea Roberts was active in volunteer work while her husband operated a consulting business. Neighbors described them as a loving family whose lives revolved around their kids.

Officers responded to a domestic dispute call at the Roberts home in January after the couple had a verbal disagreement, but no one was injured or arrested, police said.

And a Boston woman hospitalized with self-inflicted stab wounds was charged in the deaths of her two children, who were found dead in her apartment. Read More Authorities say Angela Vasquez, 31, killed Yasmine Burgos, 13, and Dennis Burgos Jr., 10, then stabbed herself.

Vasquez was arrested at Brigham and Women's Hospital, where she was taken Sunday night after police found her in her Boston apartment with the children's bodies.

Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said Vasquez would be arraigned from her hospital room, and that she is the only suspect. "The evidence conclusively establishes that Ms. Vasquez is the individual responsible for the intentional killing of these two children," Conley said.

Friends and neighbors have said that Vasquez threatened suicide during the weekend and that she was distraught after recently leaving her job as an executive assistant at Children's Hospital.

The Department of Social Services had launched an investigation of the mother in 1998 for child neglect but considered the problems resolved when the case was closed in 2000.

Woman collected $2 million in welfare as adopted children starved…

A Florida woman accused of using aliases to adopt 11 New York children received as much as $2 million in child welfare payments even as she starved, bound and abused them, police said. http://www.foxnews.com/story/ Investigators initially believed Judith Leekin, 62, had adopted nine children, but authorities in New York said that Leekin adopted 11 children in all from New York City's foster care system.

Leekin gained custody of the kids by using four fake names, authorities said. She used the aliases at four agencies in New York City on six separate occasions to adopt the children between July 1988 and April 1996, said Sharman Stein, spokeswoman for the New York City Administration for Children's Services. Leekin received $1.26 million in stipends to help care for them, Stein said. Read More People who adopt special-needs children in New York City can get as much as $55 a day until the child turns 21. All the children Leekin adopted were deemed to have special needs, Stein said, but she wouldn't specify their disabilities.

Authorities in Florida say she received as much as $2 million from New York City. They say the children -- now between 15 and 27 years old -- told them Leekin never allowed them to attend school. Authorities allege Leekin used the children to line her pockets with subsidy payments while abusing and neglecting them. She is accused of handcuffing the children and tethering them together at night, forcing them to sleep on a cold tile floor and soil themselves because they weren't allowed to use the bathroom.

"It's abhorrent," said John B. Mattingly, commissioner of the New York City Administration for Children's Services. Leekin remained jailed in lieu of $4.5 million bail on 11 charges, including counts of aggravated child abuse, false identification and witness tampering, as well as four counts of aggravated abuse of a disabled adult. Leekin's lawyer said his client denies the allegations.

Sex-offender probe expands to Facebook…

Connecticut investigators are looking into “three or more” cases of convicted sex offenders who had registered on Facebook, a fast-growing social networking Web site, the New York Times reported. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20041040/ State investigators had “also found inappropriate images and content” on the service, the Times reported, citing Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. The inquiry continues and officials have asked Facebook to remove the profiles, the paper reported.

Last week, MySpace.com, another popular Internet social network, said it detected and deleted 29,000 convicted sex offenders on its service, more than four times the figure it had initially reported. Read More

In other news… 

Authorities in New Mexico are hunting for a runaway sister trio they believe may have fled their adoptive parents in search of their biological mother. http://abcnews.go.com/US/ The three girls disappeared Monday, leaving a note for their adoptive parents in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. The note explained that they ran away because of the abusive care they were receiving, Sergeant Glenn Hamilton, a spokesman for the Sierra County Sheriff's Office, told ABC News.

A Port St. Lucie, Florida man is accused of trying to hire a hit man to kill a convicted sex offender he said he did not want hanging around his daughter, police said. http://www.wpbf.com/news/ According to a police report, Dennie Wayne Dobbins, 36, was looking to find someone willing to kill James Lee Manack for $500. Dobbins allegedly told a police informer in prison that Manack was a pedophile and was hanging out with his pregnant daughter, police said.

An admitted pedophile chased out of Seattle for running a "how-to" Web site defended his right to post pictures of little girls, telling FOX News that he is considering a possible lawsuit against the Santa Monica, California police department for posting his picture on their Web site after he recently surfaced there. http://www.foxnews.com/story/ “I haven't really started the process," Jack McClellan, 45, told FOX News. "[Santa Monica police] questioned me last week in a restaurant, and right before they left one of the officers asked if they could take my picture. I figured this might be beneficial if a child is sexually assaulted in Santa Monica -- they could just pull that out and immediately eliminate me as a suspect," he said. McClellan admitted in an interview on "The Morning Show With Mike & Juliet," "I got to be honest with you -- if it was legal and if it was a completely consensual thing, I could see myself taking it all the way to a sexual [level].” He has said he is attracted to little girls between the ages of 3 and 11.

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