Killer Moms

How can a mother kill her children?

But it happens with amazing frequency. Criminologists long have known what many view with shock, revulsion and morbid curiosity: A child is more likely to be killed in his home by a parent than by a stranger.

The bond between a mother and child has almost mythical powers. But a look at the scores of stories of murdered children in recent years shows that mothers, far more often than fathers, kill their children.

On Monday, a 25-year-old Daly City woman was arrested on suspicion of the suffocation deaths of her three little girls. That same day, in Sonoma County, a 49-year-old mother was charged with attempted murder for allegedly drugging her two young daughters. In each case, the children were found in their mother’s bed, and the mothers were suicidal.

Despite the coincidences in these two cases, mental health professionals and crime experts say there is no cookie-cutter psychological profile to describe such mothers or why they might kill.

There are the mothers who abuse their children to death. New mothers with postpartum blues who just snap. Teenagers in denial who hide their pregnancies, then, after an at-home birth, dispose of the newborn with the trash.

And, perhaps the most shocking, the seemingly happy, devoted mother with older children who one dark day does something that society views as absolutely nuts.

“Out of touch’

Not so surprisingly, psychologists and psychiatrists say mothers who kill their children must be mentally ill.

“If you kill your kids, you are, by definition, out of touch with reality,” said Dr. Thomas Brady, chairman of psychiatry at St. Mary’s Medical Center in San Francisco.

“These are lines you do not cross.”

“The bond between mother and children is so strong, the women cannot possibly be in their right minds,” said Diane Sanford, a St. Louis psychologist and author of the book “The Postpartum Survival Guide.”

Almost without exception, mothers who kill suffer from depression, experts say.

The mother in the Daly City case, Megan Hogg, was under psychiatric treatment when she began suffering from seizures and headaches after a recent car accident, said her attorney. The Sonoma County mother, Debra Gialdella, reportedly had a long history of drug abuse.

But depression, drug abuse, suicidal impulses and other mental conditions rarely help a defense attorney during a criminal case, said Jeff Brown, the San Francisco public defender. A “diminished capacity” defense was abolished in California, he said. And an insanity case is difficult to prove.