Mother diagnosed as bipolar kills 2 children — (nwitimes)
Tuesday,August8th,2006
SSRI Ed note: Mom experiencing severe mood swings on antidepressants beats her two boys to death in an uncharacteristic fit of rage. Gets 110 years.
Original article no longer available
nwitimes
Tuesday, August 8, 2006 12:32 AM CDT
BY BILL DOLAN, bdolan@nwitimes.com
Judge ponders mother’s sentence in sons’ deaths
Husband, father of dead Dyer boys wants no leniency
CROWN POINT | A Dyer woman will get an opportunity today to explain to her family and the public why she killed her two sons a year ago.
Magdalena Lopez sat stone-faced through three emotional hours of often poignant testimony from friends, relatives, in-laws and her former husband and children’s father, all of whom are trying to cope with the slaying of 2-year-old Erik Lopez and 9-year-old Anthony Lopez.
A packed courtroom heard graphic descriptions of how she fatally beat the older boy, then the younger in the back of the head with a barbell July 19, 2005, at their home at 1029 Cambridge Lane, Dyer.
Deputy Prosecutor Robert Persin played a recording of a message she left on her former husband’s cell phone after killing the boys. “I’m very sorry, but now you can start your life over. I did a terrible thing to Tony and Erik. But I’m at peace because they will be in heaven now. I will go to jail for the rest of my life.”
Lake Superior Court Judge Diane Boswell received a wide range of advice about what sentence to give the 31-year-old woman, if she sentences her today.
The boys’ father, Robert Lopez, said, “She showed no mercy or pity for my sons. I don’t think she should be given any, either.”
Maria Guillen, a cousin of Magdalena Lopez, said, “She was very kind and loving. She needs a hospital, not a prison.”
Boswell said the conditions of the agreement, under which Magdalena Lopez pleaded guilty but mentally ill to two counts of murder, require her to impose a minimum sentence of 45 years. Magdalena Lopez faces a maximum sentence of 160 years.
Magdalena Lopez can resolve questions about whether she killed the boys in the throes of a manic-depressive state of mind or out of spite at her former husband, who had a judge dissolve their marriage in May.
Maria Reyes, who said she has known Magdalena Lopez since their school days, described her as “the sweetest, kindest friend.”
Neighbors said the crime didn’t make sense based on what they knew of the suburban mother. Karen Larson, who lived on the same street, testified, “I saw a mom walking and playing, who loved her little boys. I saw a woman who was lonesome.”
Another neighbor, Sherry Vidal, said, “She was stuck in a marriage she felt she couldn’t get out of.” Court records show Magdalena Lopez twice filed for divorce in 1997 and three months before the killings, but the couple reconciled each time.
Magdalena Lopez was diagnosed as having bipolar disorder. Witnesses said she went through periods of manic speech and eating followed by periods of depression so deep she refused to leave her bed to care for her children.
Reyes said Magdalena Lopez told her before the crime that she had attempted suicide and was briefly institutionalized.
Robert Lopez, described his older son as athletic and driven to play basketball and baseball. He said his younger son was quiet, reserved and “lovable.”
He looked directly at his ex-wife as he read a prepared statement: “Why didn’t you take yourself or take me? You broke the trust between a child and parent. You manipulated it, and for that I will never forgive you.”
Lopez gets 110 years for killing her boys —(nwitimes)
BILL DOLAN, bdolan@nwitimes.com
LOPEZ CASE: Judge: Many people failed mother, her children
CROWN POINT | A judge said many are to blame for failing to protect two Dyer children from the murderous impulses of their mother.…
Lake Superior Court Judge Diane Boswell said her job is not to assign that blame, but rather find a just sentence that doesn’t diminish the deaths of 9-year-old Anthony Lopez and 2-year-old Erik Lopez last year.
She ordered 30-year-old Magdalena Lopez to serve 110 years in prison for the murder of her sons — 55 years for each boy.
Lopez had pleaded guilty to charges she fatally beat them with a 10-pound barbell July 19, 2005, at their home at 1029 Cambridge Lane, Dyer.
In her only public statement, Lopez told the judge she was insane when she killed them.
“I’ve been sick for three years now. I loved them with all my heart. I just wanted to protect them and somehow … I felt that if they were in heaven, they would be protected. In my sick mind, I really thought I was doing the right thing. I miss them every day. I feel numb. I don’t feel this is reality,” Lopez said.
Defense attorney Casey McCloskey said afterwards he will appeal that sentence as too harsh in light of Lopez’s years-long mental illness. She is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which brings on alternate episodes of depression and manic behavior.
Her brother, Frank Romero, said the sentence is unfair. “It all leads back to her not being in her right mind. This would not have happened if she had been in control of all her faculties.”
Romero said he blamed the boys’ father, Robert Lopez.
Magdalena Lopez twice filed for divorce before the slayings.
Hortencia McKenzie, one of Magdalena’s sisters, complained the paternal family “wouldn’t seek medical help for her. He didn’t believe she could be sick in her mind and that she should snap out of it.”
At one point in McKenzie’s testimony, Irene Lopez, the children’s paternal grandmother, stood up in the audience and screamed, “I have to go. I can’t take these lies.” She was escorted out by court security.
Her former husband, Robert Lopez, wept audibly during the sentencing. He said afterwards about his former wife, “She deserved the sentence she got.” He said he expected to be blamed by the maternal family.
The judge lectured both families to stop blaming each other. “A lot of people failed Magdalena Lopez. (The Department of Children and Family Services) was involved and did only the minimum action, She was misdiagnosed. Her doctors didn’t get it right until very late.”
Nevertheless, Boswell said she wasn’t convinced that Magdalena Lopez was insane the day she killed the boys.
Deputy Prosecutor Robert Persin argued Magdalena Lopez was sane enough to chase down the wounded 9-year-old as he tried to flee from her. She also had time to consider her options before killing the younger boy and then call her husband to tell him what she had done, the prosecutor argued.
“This case was about rage, not about (the mother’s) depression. It was a painful merciless death … done to send a message to Robert. She needed him to suffer,” Persin said.
They say hundreds of people have become victims of murder and suicide
Bonnie Leitsch, founder of “Prozac Survivors Support Group,” and Dr. Ann Blake Tracy, founder of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness, are calling for immediate federal action to warn the public that antidepressants not only can induce suicide in adult patients — but also acts of violence.
They point to 30-year-old Indiana mother Magdalena Lopez, who last week was charged with murdering her two young sons. Lopez, they maintain, had been taking an antidepressant.
