Marybeth Tinning

What the record shows

Marybeth Tinning is a former nursing assistant from Schenectady, New York, whose nine children all died before the age of five between 1972 and 1985. Only one of those deaths was ever adjudicated: in July 1987 a Schenectady County jury convicted her of second-degree murder in the December 1985 smothering of her four-month-old daughter, Tami Lynne. She was sentenced to 20 years to life, served more than 31 years, and was paroled in August 2018. United Press International reported at the time of the verdict that investigators suspected her in eight of the nine deaths, but she was formally charged only in Tami Lynne's case.

According to the Wikipedia article on the case, the first three deaths came within about two months in early 1972. Jennifer, born December 26, 1971, died on January 3, 1972, of what doctors recorded as meningitis and brain abscesses that developed before birth; investigators later treated that death as natural. Joseph Jr., aged two, died on January 20, 1972, and Barbara, aged four, died on March 2, 1972, after a hospital admission the previous day. Timothy died in December 1973 at about two weeks old, a death attributed to sudden infant death syndrome, and Nathan died in 1975 at five months. Mary Frances died in 1979 after cardiac arrest and brain damage, Jonathan died in March 1980 after four weeks on life support, and Michael, a boy the couple had adopted in 1978, died on March 2, 1981. CBS New York, drawing on Associated Press reporting, listed the recorded causes as meningitis, seizures, cardiac arrest, SIDS, pulmonary edema, pneumonia and, in one case, undetermined.

Tami Lynne, born August 22, 1985, died on December 20, 1985. According to the Wikipedia account, Dr. Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist working for the New York State Police, determined that she had been smothered, and the medical examiner said no suspicion had attached to the family before that death. Social services officials and Schenectady police visited the home the same day, and the Tinnings were questioned separately. In early 1986 Tinning signed a statement admitting that she had smothered Tami Lynne and had also killed her sons Timothy and Nathan. CBS New York reported that prosecutors indicted her in all three deaths but pursued only the Tami Lynne case. She was released on $100,000 bail to await trial.

The trial opened in Schenectady County Court on June 22, 1987, before Judge Clifford Harrigan, with District Attorney John Poersch prosecuting. UPI reported that the defense, led by Paul Callahan, argued that Tami Lynne could have died of natural causes, including a rare hereditary disorder, and that investigators had intimidated Tinning into confessing. Her husband, Joseph Tinning, testified that she had told him privately, "I killed Tami," while saying he still believed she was innocent. On July 17, 1987, after about 23 hours of deliberation over three days, the jury acquitted her of intentional murder but convicted her of second-degree murder on the theory of depraved indifference to human life. Bail was revoked and she was jailed pending sentence.

In October 1987 she was sentenced to 20 years to life, five years less than the maximum, and entered Taconic Correctional Facility in Bedford Hills. On appeal she argued that her confession was involuntary and that the evidence was insufficient; according to the Wikipedia article, the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court rejected those arguments in December 1988. The six other children's bodies that were exhumed after Tami Lynne's death showed no physical signs of abuse, and no further charges were ever brought.

Tinning first became eligible for parole in March 2007 and was denied six times. The Associated Press reported that at her second hearing, in January 2011, she began to acknowledge the killing for which she was convicted, and Oxygen quoted her telling the board that after the earlier deaths she had "just lost it" and believed her daughter would die too. Parole boards nonetheless cited superficial remorse and the senseless loss of a young life in denying release in 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017. At her seventh hearing, in July 2018, the board granted parole. According to the Associated Press, she walked out of Taconic on Tuesday, August 21, 2018, at age 75, after more than 31 years in custody, and was placed under lifetime parole supervision in Schenectady County, where her husband said she would live with him in Duanesburg.

Born Marybeth Roe on September 11, 1942, in Duanesburg, New York, she married Joseph Tinning in 1965 and worked as a nursing assistant at Ellis Hospital in Schenectady. Commentators cited by the Associated Press and other outlets have described the case as an early example of what became known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy, and it is often credited with prompting hospitals, police and medical examiners to share information about repeated child deaths in a single family. Her 1986 admissions about Timothy and Nathan were never tested in court, and she later maintained that the statement was coerced.