A mother accused of hanging her two young children with dog leads broke down in court as her surviving son testified against her, stating he no longer sees her as his mum. Lisa Snyder, 41, is alleged to have hanged eight year old Connor and four year old Brinley in the basement of their Pennsylvania home in 2019.
The children tragically died three days later after being taken off life support. In her defence, Snyder claimed that Connor was being bullied at school and had been making suicidal threats. However, police found evidence that Snyder had searched online for information about suicide, death by hanging, how to kill someone, and had also looked for episodes of a crime documentary series called “I Almost Got Away With It”.
Authorities were immediately sceptical of her suicide claim, stating they found no evidence to back it up. There were no signs of distress on school bus security footage recorded that day, and an occupational therapist later stated that he wasn’t physically capable of inflicting such harm on himself or his younger sister.
The coroner ruled that both children were killed by hanging and declared the deaths as homicides, reports the Mirror US.
Lisa’s son Owen Snyder, 22, took to the stand on Tuesday to speak about the killings, causing Snyder to break down in tears in court. Owen said: “I just don’t see her as my mother anymore,” when asked why he referred to Snyder as ‘Lisa’.
Owen also proposed that Connor had physical limitations that would have made it difficult to arrange the hangings. Initially, Snyder was also accused of engaging in sexual activity with her pit bull just before the killings, based on evidence found in her Facebook account.
However, a judge ruled that these allegations would not be included in the murder trial after the defence team argued that they would prejudice the jury.
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