Corie Walsh, 40, has retained Andrea Lyon, the former Casey Anthony defense attorney known as the “Angel of Death Row,” to represent her in the murder of her two-year-old son.
Walsh, a mother of four from Frankfort, Illinois, is charged with murdering Barrett Walsh at their home on Sept. 1. Prosecutors allege she hanged the toddler in the basement before attempting to kill herself in an upstairs bathtub.
Lyon, who previously served on Anthony’s legal team ahead of her 2011 acquittal, issued a statement to The Post emphasizing her client’s mental state at the time of the killing. “This is a tragedy for the Walsh family all of whom are mourning the loss of this child,” Lyon said.
“It is also a tragedy in that Corie herself was experiencing a psychotic episode at the time this happened,” she continued.
“It is our hope that through a thorough presentation and investigation of the facts, that all of us will come to see this heartbreak for what it is.”
Court documents detail how a female neighbor discovered Barrett’s body hanging by a rope around his neck with his feet off the ground in the basement rafters. The same neighbor found Walsh upstairs in a bathtub, “actively harming herself” with a knife and bearing cuts to her thighs and wrists. The neighbor seized the knife and pressed a towel against a thigh wound. Walsh then asked why the neighbor had taken the knife, stating she had been trying to kill herself, according to the documents.
Walsh allegedly described Barrett to police as the “anti-Christ” and the “devil” following the discovery of his body.
The case has drawn national attention in part because of Walsh’s reported fixation on another mother accused of killing her children. Prosecutors claim Walsh was texting friends about the Lindsay Clancy case in the hours before Barrett’s death, even as jurors in Massachusetts deliberated in that trial, NBC 5 Chicago reported. Witnesses told investigators that Walsh had “recently become very invested in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial,” the outlet said, citing court documents.
Clancy admitted she strangled her three children with exercise bands in January 2023 before jumping from a second-story window, an act that left her paralyzed. Her defense argued she suffered from postpartum psychosis and overprescribed psychiatric medications. After more than six weeks of testimony, that trial ended in a mistrial last Friday when the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict on whether to convict or find her not guilty by reason of insanity.
Lyon’s involvement in high-profile cases extends back to the Anthony defense. The Chicago-based attorney, formerly of the Lyon & Kerr firm, joined Anthony’s team in May 2009 as a death penalty expert, according to the Orlando Sentinel. She departed in July 2010, with lead attorney Jose Baez citing “financial issues.” Anthony was ultimately acquitted of murdering her two-year-old daughter Caylee, whose remains were found months after she was reported missing in 2008, wrapped in duct tape inside a laundry bag in woodlands near the family’s Orlando-area home. The 2011 trial drew tens of millions of viewers worldwide.
Lyon earned her “Angel of Death Row” moniker through a record of wins in capital punishment cases.