PEDIATRICS Vol. 95 No. 6 June 1995, pp. A32
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A HOUSEWIFE IS CONVICTED OF MURDERING HER FIVE CHILDREN

J. F. L. MD

For nearly a quarter century, the fact that Waneta Hoyt, a housewife in rural New York, had lost five babies to sudden deaths was taken as medical evidence that sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) had a genetic basis.

A leading SIDS expert, Dr Alfred Steinschneider, had studied Mrs. Hoyt's last two children, and in a pioneering research article in 1972 (Pediatrics, Vol 50, Number 4, page 646) he cited them as evidence that SIDS ran in families. His study offered hope that children at risk could be identified and saved.

But some doctors found the odds of five siblings dying of SIDS impossible. For years one skeptic, Dr Linda Norton, a forensic pathologist from Dallas, mentioned the case to every district attorney she met.

Finally, one of them, Robert Simpson, listened. In 1994, Mrs. Hoyt was confronted by state troopers, and she confessed to smothering the infants with a pillow to still their crying.

On Friday a jury in Tioga County, in upstate New York, accepted Mrs. Hoyt's belated explanation of her babies' deaths and convicted the 48-year-old woman of five murders.

Sudden infant death is real, but the import of multiple deaths can be badly misinterpreted. These deaths were certainly familial, "but not because of genetics," Dr Norton said. "It's because there was a murderer in the family."