MOTHER’S DEPRESSION APPARENTLY WAS DEADLY — (The New Jersey Record)

Original article no longer available

The New Jersey Record

January 2, 2000

Author: The Associated Press; Wire services

Note: Ann Tracy, Ph.D., Executive Director of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness, confirmed that this young mother was taking Zoloft at the time of the murder-suicide.

Postpartum depression and the loss of her secretarial job helped drive a woman to kill her 5-month-old daughter before taking her own life, Middlesex County Prosecutor Glenn Berman said. Autopsies on Friday confirmed that Eileen Ladislaw, 42, suffocated her baby, Kaitlyn, with a plastic bag in her crib, and then died of asphyxiation after hanging herself with an extension cord in the garage below the infant’s room, Berman said. The deaths were classified a murder-suicide, Berman said. Their husband and father, James Ladislaw, 44, discovered the bodies when he returned home 5:15 p.m. Thursday, Berman said. No suicide note was found.

Ladislaw had been taking antidepressants to treat her condition, the prosecutor said. She had been laid off Nov. 9 as an executive secretary at TRM Inc., an insurance company in South Plainfield, he said in a report published Saturday. The company’s phone system said it was closed New Year’s Day. A message left was not immediately returned.