Mother Pretended to Be The Son She Murdered

 

This case undoubtedly defies some of the most common beliefs about mothers and children. We wouldn't find it hard to understand a woman who defends her children like a bear mom, risking her life in fightings to hold her cubs safe, but a mom who kills her son "on the spur of the moment", is unfathomable to most of us. The fact that she at one point also "borrowed" his identity, pretending to be him, holds such a lot of "how could she"-moments that it's almost as if this tragedy turns into some kind of sick joke. Almost, that is because all of this is tragic ....  

 

John Gaither: The Victim

According to his mother, her 42 years old son, John, was depressed, and that's the reason why she "put him out of his misery". He was living with her in her house, and he may have had problems of various art, but presumably not something that might call for her kind of euthanasia. Actually, she may have been depressed herself. Anyway, her actions don't strike one as what she called them, namely "a spur of the moment"-killing, as she handled his dead body in an almost professional gangster-manner, by hiding it in the wall. Not until relatives of the mother-son-couple made a report of John's disappearance that started an investigation was he found and retrieved. Before that happened she had sent text messages in his name, as if he were still alive.

 

The police found out that she had bought 15 bags of sand, straw, tape and dumpster bags at a certain Home Depot. All of it had been for hiding her dead son behind the fake wall she had built. Also, the police found out that she had a prior conviction of killing her drug dealer in 1993 and hiding his body in her car trunk. Strangely enough he wasn't found until several months later, and when he was, she attempted to kill herself. So she did, when her son's body was found, but both times she was saved. Her first murder landed her with a sentence of 17 years, and the second one, namely of her son, lead to a life sentence without any possibility of a parole.  

 

https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/mississippi-mom-killed-son-hid-1951561