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Cruel Deception: A Mother's Deadly Game, a Prosecutor's Crusade for Justice (St. Martin's True Crime... |
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<div>In and out of hospitals since birth, angelic nine-month-old Morgan Reid finally succumbed to what appeared to be Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Morgan's Texas-born mother Tanya, a nurse and devoted wife, pulled up stakes with her grieving husband Jim, and moved on. It was the best way to put the past behind them. Until their son Michael, a boy who by all accounts was terrified of his mother, began showing signs of the same affliction that stole the life of his baby sister
First, the suspicion: Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. Then, Tanya was charged and convicted with felony child abuse of her son. She was later tried and ultimately convicted for first degree murder of Morgan. It would become a landmark trial that unfolded in a series of reversals and bizarre twists of fate as it gradually revealed another side of Tanya Reid-of her own troubling childhood and the dark secrets that drove a woman to the cruelest deception of all
Tanya Thaxton Reid was a mother who almost got away with murder. When her infant daughter, Morgan, died at 9 months of age, the death was attributed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. It was not until Tanya's young son began to suffer from a mysterious illness characterized by recurrent respiratory distress that medical personnel began to think the unthinkable. Was a mother making her own child ill to gain attention for herself? And, years earlier, did a baby die needlessly at the hands of her own mother?
Gregg Olsen tells the riveting story of a young mother driven by overwhelming and compulsive obsessions to harm her own children. Oddly calm and unaffected each time emergency responders reached her home, Tanya would report that her son had suddenly stopped breathing and that she was forced to administer CPR to save his life. Had there not been so many 911 calls and unanswered questions about the child's misunderstood medical problems, Michael Reid may have eventually suffered the same fate as his sister.
In a masterful collaberation by police investigators and prosecutors in two different states, Tanya Reid was finally brought to justice. In chilling black and white detail, using 911 call records as well as existing hospital admission records, an unmistakable pattern emerged that could not be reasonably explained or denied. On almost every documented occasion, Tanya Reid called emergency responders while her husband was at work and there were no other adults present in the home. In a pitiful and shameful attempt to remedy her own feelings of boredom and lonliness, Tanya forcibly smothered her son on multiple occasions. Once at the hospital, Tanya visited with the nursing staff and medical doctors as if greeting old friends. Odd behavior for a mother whose son was on the brink of death moments earlier.
As the mother of 3 little girls, my youngest named Morgan, I was horrified by the images repeatedly witnessed by emergency medical responders. Sweating profusely and limp with exhaustion from the physical struggle of wrestling with his own mother, young Michael Reid gasped for breath and turned a terrified gaze upon his mother. Using the tried and true methods employed by other Munchausen by Proxy mothers, Tanya Reid used several different doctors and admitted Morgan and Michael to different hospitals to disguise her actions and obliterate any suspicious pattern of illness. In the end, her own odd behavior and her inability to stop smothering her son finally garnered more attention than Tanya Reid had anticipated... resulting in a felony conviction for child abuse and the long awaited conviction for the first degree murder of baby Morgan.
Complete with a detailed history for this murderous mother and the denial that permeated her family of origin, Gregg Olsen writes a compelling story about deteriorating mental health, neediness, obsession, and the alarming behavior that defies the laws of nature and morality. True Crime lovers will not be disappointed. Without spoiling the intrigue of the book, I will state that there is a very interesting piece of Tanya Reid's past that was unearthed during the lengthy investigation that served as a symbolic point of reference for all that came after it. Shocking!
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