Mothers Who Kill: 100 Cases of Maternal Filicide in America

by James Gardner

Ebook $2.99

How does a mother come to kill her own child, and why did no one see it coming? It is the question behind the Lindsay Clancy case and hundreds of others that never made the news. Maternal filicide is among the most disturbing crimes a society can face, and among the least understood. Mothers Who Kill answers with facts, not folklore. Drawn from the Maternal Filicide Project database of more than 200 mothers, it presents 100 documented cases from across America. Each woman was convicted and sentenced, or died in a murder-suicide, after the death of her child or children. Together they form a national record of children who died and the systems that failed to protect them. Most murder books stop at the crime. This one keeps going. For every true crime story here, you learn who the child was, how the death happened, what the court decided, and, where records exist, which psychological, family, social, and agency failures came first. What sets this casebook apart: 100 real cases of child homicide, each tied to a documented legal outcome The Gardner typology, from the Dark Mother and Calculating Mother to the Shamed Mother and Altruistic Mother A clear comparison with the Resnick classification used in forensic psychology Case data current through 2026 Readable case summaries written for general readers as well as specialists A sober, respectful tone that never turns a child's death into entertainment Author Dr. James M. Gardner is a clinical psychologist, former university professor and department head, founder of the Maternal Filicide Project, and author of more than 40 books. His work turns scattered court records into a pattern readers can finally see. If you read true crime books, nonfiction only, and want the why behind the headlines, or you study with criminal psychology books and criminology books, this record was written for you. Not to excuse. Not to condemn. To understand, because prevention begins there.

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