SETH KEHOE - 2 yo (2007) -Coralville IA

Two years ago, a Coralville driver and her two sons plunged into an icy
Iowa river and were pulled to safety by onlookers. One year later, she
staggered into a home near a remote Littleton pond and said her two
children were in danger.

Michelle L. Kehoe told rescuers on Oct. 27, 2008, where to find her
2002 Volkswagen Eurovan. They discovered 2-year-old Seth dead from stab
wounds to the neck and 7-year-old Sean wounded but alive.

Kehoe has been charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and
child endangerment resulting in serious injury. Jury selection begins
Wednesday in Grundy Center.

Her defense attorney filed notice that she intends to use insanity and
diminished capacity as a defense. Kehoe, 36, was injured during the
incident and spent several weeks in the hospital.

In a criminal complaint filed days after they were found, police say
Kehoe admitted to using duct tape to bind her sons. Sean Kehoe told
investigators his mother cut his neck and that he saw her "hurting" his
brother.

Buchanan County Attorney Allan Vander Hart said he and Andy Prosser of
the attorney general's office will soon determine which of them will
give the opening statement in the trial, which was moved from
Independence to Grundy Center because of pretrial publicity.

"We have no 'strategy,' other than present the evidence that we have
gathered in a way that will persuade the jury to find her guilty,"
Vander Hart said. "We're always tightlipped about our evidence, even in
relatively minor cases, and this case is certainly no different."

Vander Hart said he's grateful the Iowa attorney general's office has provided an additional prosecutor to help.

"It's an enormous amount of work to prepare a case like this, just
enormous," Vander Hart said. "If that resource were not available,
yeah, I think we'd be looking at hiring another assistant in this
office."

Kehoe's defense attorney, Andrea Dryer, was out of the office and did not return a call seeking comment Monday afternoon.

Kehoe is being held at the Buchanan County Jail on $2.5 million bond.

In December 2007, Kehoe said she was distracted by the boys when she
lost control, struck a curb and plunged into the Iowa River.

According to the criminal complaint filed in the murder case, police
found duct tape in and around the van, and found a knife in the pond.

Kehoe originally told investigators that she and her children had been
abducted, then said she bought the duct tape in August and in September
bought a knife and wrote a note detailing the abduction.

The criminal complaint does not specify whether the knife Kehoe said she bought was the same one found in the pond.

Kehoe then allegedly told Jon Turbett of the Iowa Division of Criminal
Investigation that she had bound both children with duct tape and "that
it all happened within (five) minutes."

"She stated that she couldn't explain why she had done it," Turbett
wrote in the complaint. "She stated she couldn't face anyone. She
stated that she wanted to die or be locked up where she couldn't hurt
anyone else."

The case of a Coralville woman accused of killing one of her sons and trying to kill another goes to court Wednesday.

Michelle
Kehoe is accused of killing her two-year-old son Seth with a knife and
wounding her older son Sean. That was nearly a year ago in rural
Buchanan County.

Jury selection is expected to take all day
Wednesday, if not part of the day Thursday. So, any testimony is at
least another day away.

Some of the significant decisions setting up the trial actually came last August.

That's
when Kehoe's attorney argued many people in Buchanan County were so
familiar with the case...or had opinions... the Coralville woman
couldn't get a fair.

The judge even allowed the unusual step of
calling a "mock jury" to consider pre-trial publicity. He later ruled
the trial would move to Grundy Center.

The prosecution should
present a fairly straight forward case, detailing how Michelle Kehoe
was driving the family's minivan with the children inside when she went
missing. Authorities found Kehoe and her children with knife cuts to
the throat. That wound killed the youngest child.

The
defense has indicated it will claim insanity. One University of Iowa
Psychologist...not connected with the case, say the defense will
probably try to get jurors to understand Kehoe's thinking.

"Imagine
yourself in a situation where you would actually do that...try to
imagine how she understood the world...maybe the defense will take the
jury through that intellectual exercise," said Dr. Michael O'Hara, UI
Clinical Psychologist.

The psychologist says the defense might
claim postpartum depression or present evidence that Michelle Kehoe was
prone to delusions.

That we won't know for sure until the defense begins later in the trial.

An emergency worker testified
Thursday about finding the body of a murdered 2-year-old boy in brush
near a northeast Iowa pond and a first-aid kit that the boy's brother
used to try to help him.
Jesup firefighter Shawn Even testified during an emotional opening day of
testimony in the first-degree murder trial of Michelle Kehoe, 36, in
Grundy County. The Coralville woman is accused of killing her son Seth
and injuring another son, 7-year-old Sean, near Littleton on Oct. 26,
2008.
Kehoe's public defender, Andrea Dryer, has said she intends to use insanity and diminished capacity as a defense.
Prosecutors said she covered her sons' faces with duct tape before she slit their throats.
Even testified Seth's body was found near the passenger side of the family's
van, parked near the pond. He said Sean was sitting with his knees to
his chest inside the van. Even told jurors Sean had a cut on his neck.
"He said that's from his mom," Even said.
Next to Seth's body was a first-aid kit, Even said. Sean told him that it was "from him trying to help his brother," Even said.
A recorded interview Sean Kehoe did with a state trooper was played for the jury as Kehoe and family members listened.
"Your mommy is the one who hurt you?" said Trooper Jim Smith. "Yes," Sean said.
Smith said Sean was in the family van at the time looking in the direction of Seth's body.
Paramedic Rebecca Smith testified that Sean Kehoe had a cut several inches long and a half-inch deep.
He was taken to Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo, where he told a Black
Hawk County sheriff's deputy that his mother cut his throat.
Debra Hinde, who lives near the pond, testified that Kehoe came to her door
about 7:30 a.m. on Oct. 27 with a cut on her neck and covered in blood.
"I opened the door and this person fell into my doorway," Hinde said.
Hinde testified that she called 911 as Kehoe crawled into her house. Kehoe
later wrote two notes, one with her husband Gene's phone number and
another that said, "A man killed my boys and tried to kill me."
Later she admitted to authorities that she cut her sons' throats after Sean told police what had happened.
Prosecutors said Michelle Kehoe began planning the killing up to two months before when she bought duct tape and a knife.
"Her elaborate and meticulous planning of the murder of her two children had
thus began," said Andrew Prosser, an assistant state attorney general.
The trial was moved to Grundy County because of concerns she could not get a fair trial in Buchanan County.

An Iowa jury found Thursday that a mother with a history of depression knewright from wrong when she slashed her sons' throats, killing one and leaving the other permanently scarred.
Michelle Kehoe of Coralville, Iowa, broke into tears as the jury of eight women and four men found herguilty of first-degree murder, attempted murder and child endangerment causing serious injury. The jury deliberated for just and hour and 40 minutes. Kehoe faces a sentence of life in prison without parole. Kehoe's
attorneys presented an insanity defense, arguing that she believed she
was trying to save her sons from a life of suffering when she cut their
throats and her own. Her first suicide attempt occurred in 1996,
according to testimony. Prosecutors countered that Kehoe
methodically planned to kill her sons and herself, but botched it. The
detailed planning showed she was not legally insane, Iowa Attorney
General Andrew Prosser said. The trial's dramatic highlight
came as prosecutors played an audiotape of the surviving son's police
statement. The boy, now 8, described how his mother slashed his throat,
then moved on to his younger brother. "She cut me," the boy said in a high-pitched voice. Police
found him covered in dried blood in the family van the morning of
October 27, 2008, near a pond east of Littleton, Iowa. Beside the van,
the boy's 2-year-old brother lay dead, his throat also slashed.The boy had locked himself in the van
overnight after his mother slashed him and his younger brother the
previous day and left them for dead, Prosser said. Kehoe then
walked to a nearby pond and attempted to kill herself by slashing her
throat with the same weapon, a Winchester hunting knife she bought the
month before, Prosser said. She later told a defense mental
health expert, Marilyn Hutchinson, that she had tried to pull out her
windpipe, according to testimony. When it became apparent she
was not going to die, the prosecutor said, Kehoe staggered half a mile
down the road to the nearest home and told a story she'd concocted
weeks before of how a stranger abducted the family, killed her sons and
tried to kill her. But when authorities went searching for the
stranger, they instead found her 7-year-old son in the car and his
younger brother dead outside the driver's side. "Do you know where you're injured at," Deputy Stephen Peterson asked the boy in the recording. "Just my throat," the boy said. "Who did that to you?" "My mom." The boy said his mother also put duct tape over his eyes, nose and mouth, but that he pulled them off after his mother left. "She was hurting my baby brother," he said. According
to testimony Kehoe began planning the attack the previous month, buying
the knife and the duct tape. She told her husband she was taking the
boys to visit her mother at a nursing home. Police found a
handwritten note laying out details of the the attack. It said a man
broke into the car when the family stopped at a gas station and forced
them to the area where the van was found. Kehoe tried to fight him off
with pepper spray, but he knocked her unconscious, the note said. Police
said Kehoe later told them she had written the note during the attack
to explain what had happened to those who would find the scene. According
to testimony, Kehoe also told Hutchinson, the defense expert, that an
incident a year earlier in which her car plunged into the Iowa River
with the boys inside was actually a suicide attempt.
She and her sons were rescued by passers-by, who were hailed as heroes.

INDEPENDENCE, Iowa — An Iowa woman
convicted of first-degree murder in the death of her 2-year-old son has
been sentenced to life in prison.
Michelle Kehoe also received 25 years for an attack on her other son.
Kehoe was sentenced during an emotional hearing Tuesday in Buchanan County District Court.
Tears streamed down the Coralville woman's cheeks as her husband Gene Kehoe
read a statement asking the court to forgive his wife. He also broke
down, saying he still loves his wife and describing her as an excellent
mother.
Michelle Kehoe drove her children
to a remote pond near Littleton where she covered their faces with duct
tape and cut their throats with a knife before cutting her own throat
on Oct. 26, 2008.
Seth died in the attack. His then 7-year-old brother Sean survived.