Police say woman charged in children’s death feared devil
Police say woman charged in children’s death feared devil
GERMANTOWN, Md. (AP) — A Maryland woman charged with killing two of her children told investigators she thought an exorcism was necessary to remove the presence of the devil and evil spirits, a police captain said Sunday.
Zakieya Latrice Avery, 28, of Germantown, is charged with first-degree murder in the stabbing deaths of the children, ages 1 and 2.
Montgomery County police responded to Avery’s home Friday morning following a neighbor’s 911 call. Police said they found the two children dead and two other siblings, ages 5 and 8, injured with stabbing wounds.
“She thought the devil was in the kids, and that’s sort of the thing she centered it around as to why she had to conduct an exorcism,” said Capt. Marcus Jones, director of the police department’s major crimes division. “She just thought that there were evil spirits within the kids.”
Another woman charged in the killings, Monifa Denise Sanford, 21, made similar statements during questioning, police said.
Couple advertises home as being ‘slightly haunted’
DUNMORE, Pa. (AP) — Between the mysteriously banging doors, the odd noises coming from the basement, and the persistent feeling someone is standing behind them, homeowners Gregory and Sandi Leeson are thoroughly creeped out by their 113-year-old Victorian.
So, when they put the house in northeastern Pennsylvania up for sale last month, they advertised it as “slightly haunted.”
Then things got really weird.
There were calls from ghost hunters. An open house attracted lots of curiosity seekers, but no legitimate buyers. And a former resident came out of the woodwork to tell the couple when he was a kid, he found a human skull in the basement — the same basement whose door Sandi Leeson once barricaded because she swore she could hear the clicking of a cigarette lighter emanating from the subterranean depths.