The New York Post reports that a former teacher who laced her two young children’s grape juice with windshield wiper fluid, then drowned them in a bathtub promised on Tuesday to raise awareness of postpartum depression before a judge sentenced her to eight years in prison.
Dressed in an all-white suit, her hands cuffed behind her back, Lisette Bamenga spoke quietly to Judge Martin Marcus, who found her guilty in April of manslaughter in the July 2012 deaths of 4-month-old Violet and 4-year-old Trevor. She had been charged with murder, but her attorney argued she suffered from crippling undiagnosed postpartum psychosis. The judge agreed she suffered from an emotional disturbance severe enough to knock down the charges.
Bamenga was portrayed as a model mother and dedicated third-grade teacher at Public School 58 in Carroll Gardens, a leafy brownstone Brooklyn neighborhood. About a dozen supporters, some of whom were former parents of children she taught, attended the sentencing in Bronx State Supreme Court and helped raise about $20,000 for her defense.
The children’s father, Trevor Noel, didn’t attend. His aunt Susan Boose stormed out of the courtroom as soon as the judge announced the sentence.
Bamenga’s attorney Michael Dowd had argued during her trial that she wasn’t in her right mind when she killed her children. After Bamenga drowned the children, she turned on the gas stove and slit her wrists. Emergency crews responding to the smell of gas at their Bronx apartment found her and the children’s bodies.
But prosecutors argued that Bamenga acted in a jealous rage after learning her boyfriend had fathered a child with another woman and that she coldheartedly pulled off the killings to punish him. They asked for 20 years on each manslaughter charge.
The judge gave her eight years on each count to run concurrently, saying it was the most difficult sentencing he’s done during his 26 years on the bench. He received 18 letters from psychiatrists, 32 letters from friends, colleagues and parents of her former students, and nine from jail staffers who said she’s been a model prisoner.
“Postpartum psychosis is very real and a devastating illness … especially when undiagnosed,” he said.