Corie Walsh, 40, sang “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” from “The Wizard of Oz” when Illinois detectives questioned her about her 2-year-old son’s death, according to court documents.
Walsh allegedly hanged Barrett Walsh, nicknamed “Bear,” from a rafter in the family’s Frankfurt home, a suburb roughly 30 miles southwest of Chicago. Two of her school-aged children discovered their brother with a rope around his neck and his feet off the ground, then ran to a neighbor for help.
The frantic neighbor called 911 and attempted CPR on the toddler, who had no pulse and was cold to the touch. Barrett was pronounced dead at the scene, and an autopsy later confirmed he died of “asphyxia due to ligature compression of the neck,” court records show.
Police found Walsh fully clothed and soaking in a bathtub filled with bloodied water. She had slashed her wrists and thighs with a knife in a suicide attempt. Officers reported she was so disoriented that she believed she had killed all four of her children, including an 8-month-old infant who was found unsupervised at the house.
Between her musical outbursts during questioning, Walsh allegedly confessed to killing Barrett, calling him the “anti-Christ” and “devil,” prosecutors said. She also admitted she had planned to poison her husband with a drink and had multiple prescriptions at the time, according to court documents.
Hours before the killing, Walsh sent friends “confusing” and “out of character” text messages about Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial, claiming she believed Clancy’s husband had killed the children, not their mother. “It was manslaughter, please I’m really freaking out,” Walsh reportedly wrote to a friend on Sept. 1, while jury deliberations were still ongoing in Clancy’s case.
Prosecutors have since claimed Walsh was infatuated with Clancy, whose high-profile trial gripped the nation as her defense argued she was legally insane due to postpartum psychosis when she fatally strangled her three children with exercise bands. That trial ended in a hung jury and mistrial.
Walsh’s defense attorney, Robert Kerr, pushed back hard against the copycat label during her first court appearance last week. “Describing Corie to a copied Lindsay is to take an easy bait,” Kerr reportedly told the Will County courtroom.
Kerr described the copycat accusation as “sickening” and argued his client was “severely mentally ill” and in the throes of a “psychotic episode” during the incident — arguments that echoed Clancy’s defense strategy.
Walsh’s husband was out of state during the horrific events but has shown “unwavering” support for his accused wife, according to Kerr. He has been fully cooperating with police and social workers, the attorney claimed.
Despite defense pleas that Walsh be placed in “immediate” care to prevent further self-harm, the judge ordered her detained, ruling she posed a risk to her three surviving children and husband.
A preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for Sept. 24.