A Rash of Parents Killing Their Children? Twenty-One Cases From 2025–2026 and What They Show
By Michael Phillips | Family & State
A news search turns up at least 21 cases in less than two years. It can’t tell us whether they’re increasing. It can show how often an institution already held a piece of the story.
Taylor Gosnell, 35, is accused of attacking her 3- and 6-year-old children in their Spartanburg County, South Carolina, home with a knife and a blunt object. Authorities estimate about fifty stab wounds between the two, some to the bone, and the 6-year-old may lose fingers and possibly an arm. He had called his grandmother to say he was hungry, and she and Gosnell’s ex-boyfriend went to the house and called police. Gosnell is held without bond on two counts of attempted murder. The allegations have not been tested in court.
She was already out on bond on a February 2024 case: two counts of unlawfully placing a child at risk of harm or willfully abandoning a child. The sheriff’s office says those charges are pending and gave no further details. Nothing published says whether they involved these children.
It is one of many. A news search covering January 2025 through September 2026 turned up at least 21 cases in which a parent is accused, or police say, of intentionally killing or trying to kill their children. It is a compilation, not a count, and it excludes accidental gun deaths and cases where the killing happened before 2025.
“It is a compilation, not a count.”
The 2025 cases
Van Nuys, California, April 11. Graciela Castellanos, 37, is charged with murder in the death of her 7-year-old daughter, Rebecca. The medical examiner found she died of asphyxiation from neck compression and drowning. The girl’s stepfather-to-be said Castellanos struggled with mental health and feared she might not become a legal resident. Those are his characterizations, not findings. She pleaded not guilty and is held on $2 million bail.
Zebulon, North Carolina, May–September. Wellington Dickens III, 38, is charged with killing three of his children (ages 6, 9 and 10) and an 18-year-old stepson between May and September, according to the sheriff. He called 911 on Oct. 27. A warrant affidavit says he also told investigators a fifth child, an infant, died around 2023 and was buried behind the house. He hasn’t been charged in that death, and the remains haven’t been found. The children were homeschooled. In 2016, WakeMed reported the family to social services after they refused care for a newborn, and he refused to let social workers see the child. He also had a 2015 misdemeanor child-abuse charge, dismissed. No motive has been announced.
Chicago, July 4. Wendy Tolbert, 45, is charged with stabbing her 4-year-old son, Jordan Wallace, to death and wounding her 10- and 13-year-old children before setting the house on fire. Prosecutors say she told police she believed the children were possessed. DCFS said the family had never received state services. Her public defender cited mental illness and said she had no criminal history.
Port Huron, Michigan, September 11. Jeffery Smerer, 44, shot his three children, killing his 17-year-old son, Kayleb. Bentley, 13, and Kinzely, 12, were critically injured. He pleaded guilty in May 2026 to open murder and related charges. He was due in court that morning to be sentenced on an indecent exposure conviction, and prosecutors said he told police he had planned the attack for about a week. His attorney cited a history of mental health concerns. Local reports say he was sentenced June 29 to life without parole.
Lompoc, California, and Utah, October. Ashlee Buzzard, 40, is charged with murdering her 9-year-old daughter, Melodee, who was shot and left in Utah. Investigators say the girl was last seen alive Oct. 9. A school administrator reported her prolonged absence Oct. 14, and her remains were found Dec. 6. The sheriff has not identified a motive. Buzzard pleaded not guilty, and proceedings are suspended after her lawyer raised doubts about her competency. In 2021 she was hospitalized for a mental health crisis, and relatives say social services became involved in arranging temporary family care for Melodee. The girl was enrolled in an independent-study program and hadn’t been seen by school staff since August.
Tiffin, Ohio, November 19. Police say Ryan Eagon, 42, shot two children (a 7-month-old who was his and a 7-year-old stepson) and the older boy’s father, then himself. The children’s mother was moving out over “ongoing domestic issues.”
Bonanza, Arkansas, December 2–3. Charity Beallis killed her 6-year-old twins and herself, the sheriff says, the day after a final divorce and custody hearing ordered joint custody. She had wanted to reconcile. Her husband had been arrested on a domestic violence charge and pleaded guilty in October 2025 to third-degree battery. She had asked for a protective order and represented herself at the final hearing.
The 2026 cases
Waverly, Tennessee, January 2. Heather Thompson, 32, shot her sons (4 and 13) and her 88-year-old grandmother, then herself, the sheriff says. She was estranged from the boys’ father. The sheriff said deputies had never been called to the home for domestic or mental-health issues.
Hillsborough, New Jersey, January 13. Priyatharsini Natarajan, 35, is charged with murder in the strangling deaths of her sons, 5 and 7. Her husband told police she confessed to him. No motive has been announced. She pleaded not guilty and agreed to detention.
Durham, North Carolina, February 12. Andrea Faust, 41, is charged with murder in the death of her 3-year-old son and attempted murder of her 2-year-old. A judge ruled her incompetent to stand trial in March, and her lawyers have given notice of an insanity defense. Her husband told the court it was a mental-health crisis. I found no court record of prior psychiatric care.
Las Vegas, February 15. Tawnia McGeehan shot her 11-year-old daughter, Addi Smith, then herself, police say. The coroner’s report notes drugs in the girl’s system and family accounts of severe depression. McGeehan and the girl’s father had fought over custody for nearly a decade, with a temporary loss of custody after a judge’s findings. Her age is 34 per the coroner and 38 per court documents.
Wellesley, Massachusetts, April 24. Janette MacAusland, 49, is charged with murder in the deaths of her children Kai, 7, and Ella, 6. Court documents say she confessed to strangling them. Her husband filed for divorce in October 2025, and both sought custody. Her lawyer has moved to dismiss, noting no medical examiner determination four months later. It isn’t known whether she has a history of mental illness.
San Antonio, May 15. Marlene Vidal, 34, is charged with capital murder in the deaths of Aleeza, 6, and Adrian, 5, who were found in a burning car. Police say they were stabbed first. In June 2025, after a psychotic break while driving with the children, CPS assessed the family. It confirmed neglectful supervision and returned the children to her, and she did not continue treatment. A DFPS report received May 13 described her saying the children were possessed. Edinburg police contacted her days before the deaths and found no basis for detention.
Orange County, Florida, June 5. Bryant Watts, 33, shot his daughters, 2 years and 11 months, then himself, the sheriff says. He had a misdemeanor battery trial pending from a November 2025 incident, and skipped a pretrial conference the day before.
Mechanicville, New York, June 10. Police say Sarah Myers, 44, and her mother, Amy Steadman, 64, killed Myers’ four children (Harper, 13; Hudson, 11; and twins Gavin and Gracelynn, 10) with poison and a knife, in a plan to keep them from their father, then died by suicide. The bodies were found June 23. Court records show Saratoga County CPS investigated Myers repeatedly between 2021 and 2024, with at least three investigations finding evidence of educational neglect and inadequate guardianship. In May 2024, the four children went to the hospital from school for a suspected Benadryl overdose. Reporting on the records says no neglect petition was ever filed in family court, and Myers declined voluntary services. The father, Brady Harmon, had filed a motion June 2 to enforce the parenting plan, with a hearing set for June 29. He has filed a $400 million notice of claim. The county says the CPS files are confidential, and the state is reviewing the county’s handling. Myers’ notes accused Harmon of abuse. Police could not verify it, and he denies it.
Mandan, North Dakota, August 6. Kailey Erhart, 22, is charged with murder in the deaths of Morgan, 3, and Ava, 5 months, and attempted murder of her 1-year-old son, Colton. She chased the father and grandmother out of the home with a knife before the attack. The affidavit says the couple was separating, the father had told mental health services she threatened to harm herself and the children, CPS was aware, and she had been committed within the prior 12 to 18 months. The “cleared to be with the children” detail is the father’s statement to police, not an agency finding. The following is the father’s account and is uncorroborated by the agency: CPS opened a safety plan that lasted a few months, ended it, and did not intervene as strongly when the threats returned. He also says CPS removed Colton from him four days after the attack. State HHS cites confidentiality and hasn’t responded to his claims.
Winfield, Kansas, August 11. Ronald Williams Sr., 53, and Kelly George, 44, are the parents of four children, ages 3 to 9, who were found dead with them. The KBI says both parents planned the killings and their own deaths, and that George bought the revolver in February 2025. Police say they had around 20 to 22 police reports involving the family, some initiated by the family itself, and had contact with Williams within weeks. A DCF employee reported aggressive behavior at the agency’s office in 2024. Williams was a registered sex offender, convicted in 1998 of attempted indecent liberties with a child, with felony charges through 2024. No motive has been announced.
Abilene, Texas, August 12. Anum Khan, 35, is charged with capital murder in the death of her 3½-year-old daughter, Mirha. A search warrant affidavit says she admitted using a knife and a ligature, and points to an ongoing divorce proceeding. The warrant also describes her father chasing her before she arrived at the police department. These are allegations.
Frankfort, Illinois, September 1. Corie Walsh, 40, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the death of her 2-year-old son, Barrett, who was found hanging in the basement. She pleaded not guilty. Her lawyers say she was in a psychotic episode. Prosecutors say she told officers he was a “devil” and had bottles set aside to poison her husband. She had been texting a group about the Clancy trial before the killing, but prosecutors said in court they didn’t think it was a copycat case. Illinois DCFS had no prior contact with the family.
Spartanburg, South Carolina, September 26. Gosnell, described above.
Houston, Texas, September 29. Police say a 30-year-old woman shot her 4-year-old daughter, Vivian Savella, at their west Houston townhome at about 5:45 p.m., then shot herself. Vivian died at the scene. Her mother was hospitalized in critical condition and is expected to survive. KHOU reported that no charges had been filed as of Wednesday, and police have not publicly named the mother in the reporting I reviewed. A family court hearing had been held earlier that day. The family’s statement says the judge placed Vivian in her father’s primary care and that she was to go home with him that evening, and his attorney says he followed every order and waited for the process to work. Police said the mother and child came home after the hearing, and that the stepfather and a babysitter were downstairs when they heard gunshots. Police have not given a motive or said why the court ruled as it did. The handover arrangements and the history and length of the custody case have not been reported.
The Lindsay Clancy case, the 2023 deaths of Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, ended in a mistrial Sept. 4. The district attorney has not said whether he will retry her.
What the cases have in common
Prior contact with a system. In at least nine of the 21 cases, a parent or household had some previous contact with police, child welfare, mental-health services, or the courts: Gosnell, Vidal, Erhart, Watts, Williams and George, Smerer, Buzzard, Myers and Steadman, and Dickens. The Dickens contacts date to 2015–2018. In at least four, a child-welfare agency had previously opened, investigated, or intervened with the family: Vidal, Myers and Steadman, Erhart and Dickens. A fifth, Buzzard, may also qualify: relatives say social services became involved during her 2021 hospitalization, but I have not confirmed the agency record.
“In at least nine of the 21 cases, a parent or household had some previous contact with police, child welfare, mental-health services or the courts.”
Family-court proceedings. In at least seven cases (Beallis, McGeehan, MacAusland, Vidal, Myers and Steadman, Khan, Savella), a divorce, custody, or parent-child court matter existed. For Vidal, the record’s date and status are unknown. In three more (Thompson, Eagon, Erhart), the parents were separating or estranged, though I found no evidence of a filed case.
“In at least seven cases, a divorce, custody or parent-child court matter existed.”
More specific warning signs. A smaller set goes beyond generic history. Reporting and records in four cases (Vidal, Erhart, Myers and Steadman, Williams and George) describe alleged threats toward the children, delusional beliefs involving them, a prior incident, or a pattern of nonsensical statements to police and neighbors. Those signals aren’t interchangeable, and they don’t establish that anyone could have predicted a killing. But they are more specific than “mental-health problems.”
“Those signals aren’t interchangeable, and they don’t establish that anyone could have predicted a killing.”
No prior agency contact identified in the reporting reviewed. This applies to at least seven cases (Thompson, Walsh, Tolbert, Natarajan, Castellanos, Faust, Savella). The Houston case is days old, so that may change. Absence from news stories doesn’t prove none existed. In three, an agency said so directly: the Waverly sheriff, Illinois DCFS, and Chicago DCFS. The PLOS study below offers a narrower comparison: only about 20% of perpetrators in that study had prior contact with mental health services.
None of this proves a failure. Several involved judgment calls that look different in hindsight, and confidentiality laws mean the public often cannot see the full record. Separation and custody fights are extremely common, and almost none end in violence, so a case list can’t show they raise risk. Abuse allegations also appear on both sides: in Mechanicville, the mother’s notes accused the father and police couldn’t verify it, while in Arkansas the father had pleaded guilty to a battery charge from a domestic violence arrest.
Why “a rash” is the wrong frame
“I found no source that publishes near-real-time national filicide counts.”
Filicide is rare enough that a run of widely covered cases can look like an epidemic. I found no source that publishes near-real-time national filicide counts.
The closest federal series is broader than intentional killings. Child Maltreatment 2024 reports 1,773 maltreatment fatalities, the lowest in its five-year window. But an independent analysis of the federal data found that five states (Texas, Maryland, North Carolina, Illinois and Virginia) account for a drop of 210 reported fatalities, more than the entire national decline, and the states acknowledged counting changes. So even this series is weak evidence that deaths fell.
The research also doesn’t support a mothers-versus-fathers story:
- A 2026 review of the literature in the journal Focus concludes mothers and fathers kill their children at similar rates.
- BJS data from 1976 to 2005 show 31% of murdered children under five were killed by fathers and 29% by mothers.
- A national study of England and Wales found 66% of perpetrators were fathers. Mothers were much more likely to have a history of mental disorder (66% versus 27%), yet the authors concluded that in most cases mental illness was not a feature. Only 20% of perpetrators overall had prior contact with mental health services.
- CDC data on homicide followed by suicide with child victims found about 76% of perpetrators were male, and parental discord preceded 81% of paternal and 59% of maternal cases.
Most of those datasets are old, from other countries, or narrower than filicide as a whole.
“The evidence doesn’t show that parents are suddenly killing their children.”
What this does and doesn’t show
The evidence answers three different questions differently.
Trend: are filicides increasing? We don’t know. The evidence doesn’t show that parents are suddenly killing their children, and there is no timely national system that could tell us whether they are.
Risk: do custody disputes, separation, or mental illness predict filicide? A case series can’t establish that. Those circumstances are common, and almost none end in violence.
Institutional history: did these families already have contact with systems that held part of the story? In at least nine of these 21 cases, a parent or household had some previous contact with police, child welfare, mental-health services, or the courts. That doesn’t mean the institution had enough information to foresee a killing. It does mean there was already a record to examine afterward, and confidentiality laws mean the public often can’t see it.
What would settle the trend question: year-over-year counts of filicide and attempts by perpetrator sex from the CDC’s violent death reporting system and state child fatality review boards. What reporting can do now: get the dockets, agency records, and autopsies in each case showing what was known, by whom, and when.
“It does mean there was already a record to examine afterward.”
Sources: Local and national coverage of each case, including reports by KSAT, Fox San Antonio, FITSNews, Fox Carolina, WHNS/Live 5, The State, the New York Post, WKMG, WFTV, Fox 35, the Times Union, the Daily Gazette, CBS6 Albany, WRGB, News10, Valley News Live, InForum, NewsNation, 701 Report, ABC News, KSN, KWCH, KCTV, KTSM/KTAB, CBS Chicago, CNN, WGN, WRAL, ABC11, 13abc, ClickOnDetroit, Fox 2 Detroit, CBS Detroit, KWTX, KSL, KHOU, KPRC, KTRK, the Boston Globe, Boston 25, Boston.com, the Johnston County Sheriff’s Office, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office, KSBY, the Los Angeles County District Attorney, the Somerset County Prosecutor, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, and others. Research comes from the abstracts of a January 2026 Focus review (Friedman, Friedman, Sorrentino), a 2013 PLOS One study (Flynn, Shaw, Abel), a 2013 CDC-authored study (Logan et al.), BJS Homicide Trends in the U.S., the federal Child Maltreatment 2024 report as summarized by The Imprint, and an independent analysis of that report by the Lives Cut Short project. This is a news compilation, not a systematic count. Ages and dates conflict in some sources; the discrepancies are noted. All criminal allegations are unproven.
Keep Family & State Free
Family & State exists to support parents navigating separation, custody, and systems that are often confusing, isolating, or overwhelming. This work is grounded in lived experience, careful research, and respect for the real stakes families face.
If this article helped you feel less alone, better informed, or more grounded, reader support helps keep these resources free and available to others who need them.
Need help reviewing or organizing court or formal documents?
Family & State offers non-legal document review and organization for people representing themselves. This includes clarity, structure, neutral tone, and timeline organization — not legal advice or representation.
Have a story, experience, or resource to share?
Submissions are reviewed with care and discretion. We respect privacy and handle sensitive information responsibly.
Discover more from Family & State
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
