One Is a Tragedy, Two Is Suspicious, and Three Is Murder

What would you do if, out of the blue, your mother told you she had smothered her two-week-old son with a plastic bag before you were even born? What if the confession took place 35 years after the murder? It sounds like something out of a movie, but that is exactly what happened to Amy Brunka. And she went straight to the police.

Soon after she alerted law enforcement professionals, Amy learned that not only had her mother, Nancy Moronez, killed her older brother; she had also murdered two children she was babysitting — 6-month-old Brad Steege and 3-month-old Katie Kozniecki. And all three deaths were initially attributed to SIDS or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Ms. Moronez eventually confessed to all three murders; her explanation was that she couldn’t stand hearing the babies’ cry.

Nancy Moronez’s conviction seemed to support the adage in the title of this article, attributed to controversial British physician Dr. Roy Meadow. Meadow brought much-needed attention to medical child abuse but got into hot water after misusing statistics and advocating for the removal of children from parents later proven innocent. Recent research suggests that the causes of multiple infant deaths in a family are much more complicated than we initially thought and the line between deliberate harm and accident a lot blurrier.