CONCORD, N.H. — A Texas woman who suffocated her 6-year-old son in a New Hampshire motel room and left his body by a road in Maine may shed light on her motives Friday, before being sentenced to 45 years in prison.
The mother of 42-year-old Julianne McCrery told The Associated Press her daughter has prepared a statement.
Lu Rae McCrery, who visited her daughter in jail Wednesday, said she believes her daughter will read the statement rather than have someone else read it.
Julianne McCrery pleaded guilty in November to kneeling atop 6-year-old Camden Hughes as he laid face-down on their motel room floor. She told investigators she covered his mouth with her hand as he flailed for several minutes.
McCrery told prosecutors she had planned to kill herself and no one else was fit to raise Camden. But prosecutors in November said they have evidence she felt Camden was an inconvenience.
“She set out on a journey with her son across the country while contemplating how she would kill him,” Senior Assistant Attorney General Susan Morrell said during the plea hearing.
Discovery of Camden’s body off a dirt road in South Berwick, Maine, in May set off a nationwide effort to identify the boy. Meanwhile, McCrery called his elementary school in Irving, Texas, daily to report him absent with appendicitis.
McCrery was arrested at a Massachusetts truck stop four days after Camden’s body was discovered. A motorist who happened by the remote area where Camden’s body was found was able to describe a pickup truck she had seen with its doors open and a Navy insignia on its window.
When she was questioned at the truck stop, McCrery identified herself and told police she had killed her son at a Hampton motel and left his body under a green blanket by the side of the road.
During her plea hearing in November, McCrery answered the judge’s questions about her plea and her guilt in her son’s death, but did not elaborate on the killing or her motives.
Lu Rae McCrery says she and family members have been in contact with Julianne McCrery by phone, but have not been able to talk with her or her attorneys about the circumstances surrounding Camden’s death.
“In retrospect, I think we would have all healed much faster if we could have,” Lu Rae McCrery said Thursday.
McCrery’s lawyers did not return calls seeking comment.
Lu Rae McCrery said she arrived from Nebraska and visited with her daughter at the Rockingham County House of Corrections. The two were separated by a glass partition.
“It was surreal,” Lu Rae McCrery said. “We still can’t talk about the case until after Friday.”
Lu Rae McCrery said Julianne’s son —who is on leave from the Navy— will attend the hearing along with her father and brother. All three visited McCrery at the jail Thursday, she said.
Asked if anyone would make a victim impact statement on Camden’s behalf, Lu Rae McCrery said, “What I’m going to say will encompass that.”
Seeing her daughter for the first time since her arrest, McCrery said, has left her numb.
“I just feel like I’m on a piece of driftwood in the sea,” she said.
Just plain sick! I hope she’s very miserable the rest of her stinking life.
I agree, except she deserves to die, how the hell do you do that to any child, let alone your own?
This poor family, my heart goes out to them, as for Camdens so called mother…she needs to be left to rot, she let that poor little boy down, mummies and daddies are supposed to keep their children safe, be there for them when they are scared or upset, but instead she put him through everything she should have protected him from….she deserves NOTHING, except a room big enough to lay in, the minimum food she needs to get by, and water…..this breaks my heart!
To help prevent such tragedy in the future. Parents or guardians should be able to drop off any child under the age of 12 with no questions. Dropping the child at a safe location, police station, hospital or staffed church. Dropping only newborns doesn’t make sense as the newness of the baby hasn’t worn off yet. Maybe if she could’ve dropped him off at a hospital with very few questions asked, he would be alive today.
It seems that since she killed him because she didn’t feel that any one else was suitable to raise him ( and she planned to kill herself), dropping him off at some safe place would not have been an option.
It’s so sickening and horrible. I can’t imagine the fear of that poor child when his own mother was suffocating him. Makes me want to throw up.
So she says. Dropping, may be an option for some parents. I don’t want parents to ever feel cornered with no way out, then murder. Drop the child at my house, somehow, I will muster the energy to raise the precious child. No more deaths.
Heartbreaking to hear that he lost his whole life, and she gets 45 years. RIP little one, children are a handful to raise, but far from an ‘inconvenience’.
There are no winners here for any family member. The pain they feel is a lifelong one. It does no good to bad mouth Julianne as this only hurts her family more. I hope Julianne gets the mental health treatment that she needs. I truly hope the family too will seek counseling to help with the grief of two lives lost. May little Camden RIP and I hope this family knows they have an angel watching over them and the entire population of Maine shares their grief.
she came to maine/new england states cause we have no death penalty (texas does) she figuared she could plea insanity get a trip to the crazy ward and be out and on her merry way in no time. give her 2 life sentences let her sit their and rot. maine should have the death penalty we’d save a crap load of money
If you dont want kids- dont get pregnant. … There are laws in affect like that Tzuriel even in Maine- and if you can’t handle your child find someone that can help you out- OR just don’t have kids POINT BLANK.
If you dont want kids- dont get pregnant. … There are laws in affect like that Tzuriel even in Maine- and if you can’t handle your child find someone that can help you out- OR just don’t have kids POINT BLANK.
This is one of the saddest cases I can recall. At least she’s owned up to it and isn’t making the state go through a trial.
I agree with everybody here, but also want to know “Where is Camden’s FATHER?”
In a case like this it should be an eye for an eye, anything else is not justice. Why should the tax payers have to support her for the rest of her life and give her free medical and dental etc.?