Waneta Hoyt

What the record shows

Waneta Hoyt was a woman from Tioga County, New York, who was convicted in April 1995 of murdering her five biological children, who died between 1965 and 1971. For more than two decades their deaths were attributed to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), and two of the children became case studies in an influential medical paper. After confessing to police in March 1994 and then recanting, Hoyt was found guilty by a jury in Owego and sentenced in September 1995 to 75 years to life. She died of pancreatic cancer at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in August 1998, aged 52, while her appeal was pending.

Hoyt was born Waneta Nixon in Richford, New York, in 1946 and married Tim Hoyt in 1964, according to the Wikipedia article. Between 1965 and 1971 she gave birth to Eric, James, Julie, Molly and Noah. Each died suddenly, at ages ranging from 48 days to 28 months, according to the forensic psychologist Charles Patrick Ewing, who later evaluated her for the defense. The Wikipedia article gives the deaths as January 1965 (Eric), September 1968 (James, aged about two years and four months, and Julie, aged about seven weeks), June 1970 (Molly) and July 1971 (Noah). Each was recorded at the time as a natural death. The couple later adopted a son, who was a teenager living with them when Hoyt was arrested.

Molly and Noah had been studied before their deaths by Dr. Alfred Steinschneider, a research pediatrician at the Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse. His 1972 article in the journal Pediatrics, which identified the children only by their initials, used their histories of prolonged apnea to argue that SIDS could be linked to apnea and could run in families. Ewing writes that the article was quickly challenged in letters to the journal, including one from the medical examiner Vincent DiMaio, who wrote that the deaths were most probably homicides. The paper nonetheless stayed in the medical literature for about twenty years, according to Discover magazine, and Ewing writes that it helped spur the wide use of home apnea monitors.

In 1986 Dr. Linda Norton, a Dallas forensic pathologist consulting on a case in Syracuse, told prosecutor William Fitzpatrick that she believed the mother in the paper had smothered her children, according to the Los Angeles Times. In 1992, by then Onondaga County district attorney, Fitzpatrick traced the family through hospital records. Because the children had died in Tioga County, he referred the case to District Attorney Robert Simpson, who directed the New York State Police to investigate. Pathologists consulted by investigators, including Dr. Michael Baden, concluded that the deaths were not consistent with natural disease, though none had been classified as homicide at the time.

On March 23, 1994, a local officer she knew approached Hoyt near the post office and introduced her to a state police investigator, who said she was gathering information about SIDS. Hoyt was taken to the state police barracks in Owego, given Miranda warnings and questioned for several hours. By late afternoon she had signed a statement saying she had caused the deaths of all five children, and she told police she could not stand their crying, according to the Los Angeles Times. She was arrested that day and charged with ten counts of second-degree murder, according to the Gale reference Great American Trials. Soon afterward she recanted, saying the police had tricked and pressured her into agreeing with their account.

Her trial ran from March 30 to April 21, 1995, before Judge Vincent Sgueglia, with public defenders Robert Miller and Raymond Urbanski representing her. The admissibility and reliability of the confession were central issues. Ewing testified that she had dependent and avoidant personality disorders and that her statement was not made knowingly or voluntarily. Steinschneider testified for the defense and, under cross-examination, conceded that for all he knew the children could have been suffocated. Hoyt testified and denied killing her children. The jury convicted her on five counts of murder; the Wikipedia article describes all five as second-degree murder, while the Deseret News reported one count of first-degree and four of second-degree murder. On September 11, 1995, she received consecutive terms of 15 years to life for each child, 75 years to life in total.

Hoyt's lawyers sought her release while her appeal was pending, but New York did not permit medical parole for prisoners convicted of murder, the Deseret News reported. She died in August 1998. The Wikipedia article states that because she died before her appeal was decided, she was formally exonerated under New York law. The case is frequently cited in discussions of how a single published study shaped thinking about SIDS for two decades.