‘Voodoo Ritual’ Child Murders Nets Massachusetts Mother Life Sentence

 

A jury in Brockton, Massachusetts, found a local woman guilty this week of stabbing her two young children to death in what she described as a “voodoo ritual.” The judge then sentenced her to two life terms in prison.

Latarsha Sanders killed her two sons, Edson Brito, 8, and La’Son Brito, 5, by stabbing them in February 2018. After killing the boys, she cleaned the scene by mopping the floor and then putting the two bodies in their beds. She then covered her children with bedsheets.

Later, she asked a neighbor to call an ambulance for her, but not for her children. The neighbor, a trained first responder, was suspicious and called the police after discovering the murdered children.

Investigators immediately interviewed Sanders. She was willing to talk but gave conflicting accounts of what happened before finally admitting that she intentionally stabbed each child 50 times as part of a ritual.

The autopsies performed on the bodies revealed that one child had been stabbed 80 times and the other 20 times. Sanders left the murder weapon in her kitchen sink, where investigators discovered it.

Members of Sanders’ family testified that she had a peculiar history of discussing occult rituals and human sacrifices. She was also heavily involved in conspiracy theories about numerology and the Illuminati.

The 48-year-old Sanders was sentenced on Wednesday to two life sentences by Plymouth Superior Court Judge William Sullivan on the two convictions of intentional first-degree murder. She was also sentenced to 9 to 10 years on a single conviction of witness intimidation.

During the sentencing hearing, Judge Sullivan said, “The pain of the father, the sisters, the brothers, the aunts, uncles, grandmother of La’Son and Marlon, that pain falls on their hearts every day, and that’s a life sentence for them.”

At the sentencing hearing, Sanders’ husband told the court that he favored the maximum penalty of the two life sentences. However, other members of her family asked for leniency toward Sanders because they believed she was insane at the time she killed her two boys.

Sanders has the right to appeal her convictions and life sentences under Massachusetts law.

https://capitalhillnews.com/voodoo-ritual-child-murders-nets-massachusetts-mother-life-sentence/