Was Waneta Hoyt a Serial Killer or Did Her Babies Die of SIDS?

Waneta Hoyt from 1965 to 1971 killed 5 of her 6 children in Oswego, New York by suffocation, claiming they had just stopped breathing. The case came on the discovery of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), and one of her children became the first in the nation to be placed on a special monitor at home. The child died anyway. Waneta said the machine malfunctioned. Dr. Alfred Steinschneider details the deaths of several toddlers who died from SIDS, which he believes is an advanced form of apnea, a failure of a child's internal breathing apparatus. Among the case histories examined are the deaths of Molly and Noah, the last two Hoyt children to die. Waneta and her family was the subject of a classic paper in the Journal of Pediatrics in 1972, used as evidence that SIDS runs in families. Pediatricians were misled for years, and probably made numerous tragic mistakes, because of these cases. According to Dr. Jerold Lucey, who was editor of the Journal of Pediatrics in 1972, "Huge amounts of time and money have been wasted over the last 25 years" because of Hoyt and the scientists that she misled.

One by one the Hoyt babies died and some health care professionals did grow suspicious at the time. Four nurses who testified at Hoyt's trial said that Waneta showed little interest her babies. "There was no bonding at all," said Thelma Schneider. "Most of us went to Dr. Steinschneider and expressed our fears. We had a gut feeling that something was going on. Either he was in total denial or not being very objective." Ambulance worker Robert Vanek, who went to the Hoyt residence when Julie, James and Noah died, recalled being stunned by the coroner's conclusion that all the babies died of SIDS. Vanek said, "I thought, three in a row? It bothered me." As for the faulty SIDS postmortem diagnoses, New York State Police forensic expert Michael Baden said that the children's bodies were examined not by dispassionate forensic pathologists but by family physicians. "Doctors," he says, "don't want to think parents harm children."

In 1986, New York State Prosecutor William Fitzpatrick was researching infant-death statistics for a case he was conducting against a mother who allegedly murdered her infant. He came upon Steinschneider's report and, in reading about the "H" case, was struck by stark similarities between the murder case he was prosecuting and the symptoms of the disease that killed the Hoyt children. The more he studied the mortalities, the more he truly believed that the Hoyt's children were murdered by someone in the family. Despite the professionalism of the medical verbiage and the excellent and the earnest work done by Dr. Steinschneider, he remained unconvinced that the five Hoyt babies, age ranging from six weeks to two years at the time of their deaths, died of natural causes.

The appointed District Attorney of Onondaga County, New York in 1992, secretly opened an investigation on the Hoyts. He asked for help from D.A. Robert Simpson of neighboring Tioga County, where the Hoyts lived. Medical files were reviewed, doctors were questioned and evidence was drawn from the investigative files. When the two district attorneys were sure they had accrued enough evidence, Simpson issued an arrest order for the children's mother in March of 1994. New York State trooper Bobby Bleck, a family friend of the Hoyts, approached Waneta at a local post office and asked for her help with research he was doing on SIDS. At the police station, Bleck, police investigators Susan Mulvey and Robert Courtright, talked to Hoyt, about the official version of her babies' deaths. At one point, Mulvey took Hoyt's hand and told her they didn't believe her.

About 15 minutes later, Waneta confessed to having killed her 5 babies. Her frankness was chilling. "I suffocated Eric in the living room. He was crying all the time, and I wanted to stop him. Julie was the next one to die. I cradled her up to my shoulder until she quit crying and I released her. She wasn't breathing." In September 1968, Hoyt said, she was dressing in the bathroom when a tearful, James tried to break in on her. "He kept screaming, 'Mommy, Mommy.' I used a bath towel to smother him. He got a bloody nose from fighting against the towel." Molly was next, suffocated with a pillow, at age 2 1/2 months. A year later, Noah, at 2 1/2 months old was the next to died. "I didn't want them to die. I wanted them to quiet down."

Jay, whom the Hoyts adopted when he was about 7 weeks old and whose crying apparently didn't bother Waneta in the same way, said, "I love her, and she shouldn't be here. The system sucks."

A trial in 1995 convicted her to life in prison. In the Tioga County courthouse, she told the court in a barely audible voice, "God forgive all of you who done this to me." Judge Sgueglia was not moved by her statement. He stared at her for a time, then handed down his sentence. "I only have one thing to say to you, and that is to consider your sixth child. Whatever you tell this court, your husband, your God, you owe it to that boy to tell him the truth." As four deputies escorted Hoyt from the courtroom, and her only surviving child bowed his head and wept.

Waneta Hoyt, at the age of 52, died on August 13, 1998, of pancreatic cancer at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York State, where she was serving a sentence of 75 years to life.

After a doctor diagnosed Mrs. Hoyt with pancreatic cancer, her lawyer tried to get her released from prison while she appealed her convictions. New York does not allow medical parole for anyone convicted of murder, first-degree manslaughter or certain sex offenses.