In the cruel roulette of life, Waneta Hoyt seemed to be an especially tragic loser. Nearly 30 years ago, she lost her first child, Erik, suddenly and inexplicably. The mother tearfully told doctors that she found him barely breathing in his crib and could not revive him. He was three months old. Waneta's second child, James, was a little over two when, according to his mother, he called out after breakfast one morning and expired. A daughter, Julie, died at 48 days; her mother was feeding the child when the infant choked, turned blue and died. Another daughter, Molly, died at home in bed at three months, and a similar fate befell another son, Noah, who was her last- born child.
Doctors were mystified and intrigued. A pediatrician who had closely monitored the last two children wrote up the family's history in a 1972 medical journal as a classic example of how sudden infant death syndrome (or SIDS) can run in families. As for Hoyt, she went on to adopt a son, who is now 17. But she never forgot her dead offspring. She kept their photos throughout the house and laid flowers on their graves every Memorial Day. "She'd say, 'I miss my children. They all died on me -- you know, that crib disease,' " recalls Martha Nestle, a family friend. "Then she'd cry."
Now it looks as if the bereaved mother may have been getting away with murder. Last week the 47-year-old Berkshire, New York, housewife sat in court charged with suffocating all five of her children. Authorities accuse her of smothering three with pillows, one with a bath towel and another by pressing its face against her shoulder (the specifics are based on a confession that Hoyt has now recanted). Says District Attorney William Fitzpatrick of Onondaga, New York, who initiated the investigation of Hoyt: "We have brought to justice a killer who preyed on her own children."
The Hoyt case is not an isolated instance. In Waukegan, Illinois, this month, Gail Savage, who is accused of smothering her three babies, goes on trial for a child's death. In Garden City, Kansas, last June, Diane Lumbrera was convicted of fatally suffocating her son; she had already pleaded no contest in Texas to killing a daughter. Across the country, authorities are taking a harder look at SIDS deaths. According to medical examiners, police and prosecutors, SIDS is a label that is too readily affixed to mysterious deaths. They say that anywhere from 1% to as many as 20% of the 7,000 to 8,000 U.S. babies who die of SIDS each year actually expire of other causes, including murder. Generally the killer is the mother. Sometimes she slays for insurance or from frustration, and sometimes in a twisted bid for attention and sympathy. These sympathy junkies, says Vincent Di Maio, medical examiner of San Antonio, Texas, "usually keep killing until they're caught or run out of children."