Frankfort mother Corie Walsh ordered held without bail in son Barrett's death, judge cites threat to husband

A Will County judge ordered Corie Walsh held without bail Tuesday after prosecutors said the Frankfort mother charged with murdering her 2-year-old son also talked about poisoning her husband when he returned home.

Walsh, 40, faces three counts of first-degree murder in the death of her son, Barrett, who was found hanging from a rafter in the basement of the family's home last week. A neighbor discovered the boy, cut him down and began CPR, but he had no pulse. He was pronounced dead later that day at a nearby hospital. The Will County Medical Examiner's office ruled his cause of death asphyxia due to ligature compression of the neck.

The same neighbor found Walsh in an upstairs bathroom, fully clothed and sitting in a bathtub of bloody water, with cuts to her wrists and thighs. She had taken a knife from Walsh and pressed a towel to one of the wounds before police arrived, according to court documents filed by prosecutors. Walsh was taken to a hospital with injuries described as non-life-threatening.

Prosecutors said Walsh later told police she killed her son because he was "the devil" and the "anti-Christ." She also told authorities she believed she had killed her other children, though an 8-month-old infant left unsupervised in an upstairs room and two school-age children who came home and found the scene were all physically unharmed. The older children ran to the neighbor for help.

In court Tuesday, prosecutors disclosed that Walsh made additional statements about intending to harm her husband when he arrived home from being out of state, saying she planned to "poison him with a drink." They said investigators found alcohol and a number of prescription bottles in the home. Citing the threat to her husband and remaining children, the judge ordered Walsh detained pending trial.

Walsh's defense attorney, Robert Kerr, argued for her transfer to inpatient psychiatric care instead, telling the judge she was "severely mentally ill at the time of incident and requires treatment." Kerr said doctors who treated Walsh after the killing and her injuries recommended immediate psychiatric care. Andrea Lyon, who joined Walsh's defense team and gained national attention representing Casey Anthony in her 2011 acquittal on charges of killing her 2-year-old daughter, has said Walsh was in the grip of a psychotic episode when her son died.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys sparred in court over comparisons between Walsh's case and that of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother convicted in a case involving the killing of her three children before a suicide attempt. Prosecutors said witnesses told them Walsh had "recently become very invested" in following the Clancy trial and had been messaging friends about it in a group chat up until hours before her son's death.

Kerr pushed back on any comparison, calling references to Walsh as a "Lindsay Clancy copycat" sickening. "Describing Corie to a copied Lindsay is to take an easy bait," he told the court.

Defense attorneys said friends in that group chat noticed Walsh's messages grow "confusing" and "out of character" in the hours before the killing. In one message, Walsh wrote that she believed Clancy's husband, not Clancy herself, had killed the children, adding, "it was manslaughter, please help I'm really freaking out." The neighbor who later found her in the bathtub told investigators Walsh seemed unlike herself that day, with dilated eyes and what she described as a "weird giggle." A firefighter who treated Walsh in the ambulance told detectives she appeared incoherent.

Kerr said Walsh had recently been seeing a counselor and had never shown any prior signs of abuse toward her children, according to family and friends. Walsh's husband and mother were not present in court Tuesday, but police said the husband has cooperated with them and with social workers since his son's death. Kerr said both the husband and Walsh's mother continue to support her.

Walsh, a mother of four, remains in custody at the Will County jail. Her attorneys are expected to pursue a mental health defense as the case moves toward trial, while prosecutors continue building their case around the statements Walsh made to police and hospital staff in the hours after her son's death. No trial date has been set.