Baby, 3 wks. old stabbed/decapitated-San Antonio, TX (Mother chgd-cap. murder)

[MuffyBee]

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/Vigil_remembers_baby_mom_too.html
 Web Posted: 07/31/2009 12:00 CDT
Vigil remembers baby, mom too

A woman holds a candle during a vigil Thursday outside the near North Side home where police say Otty Sanchez confessed to killing her baby, Scotty Wesley Buchholz Sanchez.
Relatives of jailed Otty Sanchez joined friends, neighbors and strangers in a candlelight vigil Thursday evening outside the near North Side home where Sanchez confessed to killing and mutilating her baby boy last weekend.

While nearly 100 people gathered outside the home in the 300 block of Wayside Drive to pay respects to the slain baby and his family, Sanchez's aunt, Mary Bethel, asked the crowd not to forget her niece.

“Thank you for all your prayers,” Bethel said before the vigil. “We want everyone to support her ... I love her very much and I will not abandon her.”

Family members arranged family photographs and childhood pictures of Sanchez as they asked for people not to think of her as a “monster.” They wanted to reinforce in everyone's minds that Sanchez was a loving person whose cries for help went unanswered.

Bethel also said that previous reports of Sanchez ingesting parts of her child, Scott Wesley Buchholz Sanchez, were untrue, referencing a forensic report the family received from authorities.

Carol Aguero attended the vigil because she said she felt a connection with the family, even though she didn't know them.

“I'm taking it hard because I can't have kids,” said Aguero, 37. “It's a tragedy that the mother was not able to get medical assistance. She just became another case and that's sad because if she did get help the baby would still be here today.”

Several people held white candles and carnations as they stood in silence and prayed. Many individuals embraced one another as they shed tears for the mother and the child some call “baby Scotty.”

“I came to show support for the family,” said Robert Martinez, who attended with his wife, mother and three kids. “The baby's death is horrible. You're supposed to love and protect your kids, but it's good all these people came out to pray.”

Relatives were emotional while they thanked the crowd and read prayers aloud as spiritual music played softly in the background. The vigil lasted nearly one hour before people individually paid their respects to the family.

A memorial in the front yard of the home has grown considerably as friends, neighbors and strangers visit the site to mourn Scotty's slaying. They have left cards, stuffed animals and flowers.

“We appreciate all the community support,” said Greg Garcia, Sanchez's cousin.

The Buchholz family is still working on funeral arrangements, although they have announced the funeral would be private.

Strangers and neighbors had gathered for a small, impromptu vigil Wednesday night. Sanchez's family members were not present, but the people who attended said prayers for the family.

“We're overwhelmed with sadness and grief, but we're not giving up on this community,” said Pastor Richard Kidd of Gethsemane Lutheran Church, who led a prayer Wednesday night.

San Antonio resident Joseph Walton said he visited the vigil Wednesday because he was deeply affected by the tragedy.

“I think a lot of people realize that we can learn from this,” he said. “We need to get help for those with mental illness.”

Sanchez had cried out for help from family and doctors, but no one considered her a threat to herself or her baby, so she wasn't hospitalized in the days before police say she killed the nearly month-old baby.

Buchholz called 911 hours before the slaying to report that Sanchez had driven off with the child without first securing him into a car seat.

“She left crazy,” the father told Bexar County sheriff's dispatchers July 24. “She just freaked out all of a sudden and said, ‘I gotta go.'”

Forensic psychologists will soon evaluate Sanchez in the Bexar County Jail to determine whether she is competent to stand trial. Sanchez, who police said confessed to the killing, is being held on a capital murder charge in lieu of $1 million bond.

Sanchez's physical condition is stable, but because of her injuries and undetermined mental state, she remained in the jail's medical section Thursday under close supervision, according to the Bexar County Sheriff's Office. She is confined and will remain in that section until the medical staff deems her fit to move into a special-needs unit, authorities said.

Sanchez's attorney, Ed Camara, who spoke for the first time Thursday morning about the case, has had two meetings with his client. Camara, along with James Tocci, was appointed Tuesday to represent Sanchez. Camara wants to be present during the competency evaluation.

As for his client's state of mind, Camara would only say that she is “very unhappy” and declined to elaborate further.

He did say he would consider requesting her trial be moved because of the attention the case has received.

[Nut44x4]

Sep 24, 3:27 PM EDT

Attorney: Jail says Texas mom competent for trial

By PAUL J. WEBER
Associated Press Writer
 
SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- The attorney for a Texas mother accused of killing and mutilating her 3-week-old son says a jail psychiatrist has deemed her competent to stand trial.

Ed Camara said Thursday that a judge will consider that recommendation at a November competency hearing for Otty Sanchez. She's charged with capital murder, and police say Sanchez cannibalized parts of her infant during a July attack at her home.

An autopsy report for Scott Wesley Buccholz-Sanchez shows the toddler was nearly decapitated and missing several body parts and organs.

Sanchez remains in a Bexar County jail on $1 million bond. Camara tells The Associated Press that Sanchez will likely plead not guilty by reason of mental illness.

 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TX_BABY_DECAPITATED_TXOL-?SITE=TXSAE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[Nut44x4]

Jury to decide mom's mental health in murder trial
Nov. 12, 2009, 2:42PM

SAN ANTONIO — Otty Sanchez got two weeks in a state mental hospital after she was found wandering around a drug store last year, shopping for an imaginary trip to China.

She got a few hours in an emergency room, then a ride home, in July as a new mom hearing dark voices.

Three-week-old Scott Wesley Buchholz-Sanchez was dead six days later, decapitated and missing fingers and toes, while police say his mother wailed about how the devil made her do it. A judge ruled Thursday that a jury will decide whether Sanchez is mentally competent to stand trial after Sanchez's attorney said her mental condition is worsening.

"In addition to her psychotic condition, her schizophrenic condition and her postpartum psychotic condition, she may also be affected by post-traumatic stress disorder," Ed Camara, Sanchez's attorney, told the court.

Sanchez, 33, is charged with capital murder in the death of her son. His father said Sanchez should "burn in hell" and deserves the death penalty for dismembering their only child. He watched quietly as Sanchez shuffled into court with her head down, wearing glasses and her black hair cropped short.

Two psychiatric evaluations concluded Sanchez was competent to stand trial, but Camara said he received a medical report Tuesday that was more bleak. A date was not immediately set for a jury to settle the issue.

The autopsy report spells out the attack in nauseating detail: mutilated genitals, the head nearly decapitated and the skin flayed. Authorities said Sanchez ate parts of her son, including the brain, and medical examiners found apparent bite marks across the body.

Sanchez's sister made the horrifying discovery before sunrise, and Otty can be heard screaming, "I didn't mean to do it! He told me to!" while her sister pleads for an ambulance in a desperate 911 call. Sanchez later wailed to her sister that she thought everyone was dead.

Bexar County prosecutor Yvonne Gonzalez has said her office would seek the death penalty on the legal presumption that Sanchez was sane. Although prosecutors were still gathering medical records, she said there were signs Sanchez had been "functioning quite well," including holding down a job for several years.

"We're not really sure she had a long history of mental illness," Gonzalez said earlier in the week.

Scott Buccholz, the baby's father and a self-described schizophrenic, insisted that Sanchez had appeared fine and gave no hint of a severe mental illness.

An estimated one in 1,000 women are afflicted with postpartum psychosis. Unlike postpartum depression, which occurs in as many as one in five new mothers, women with postpartum psychosis can suffer dangerous delusions and desires to hurt their child.

The same illness tormented Andrea Yates, the suburban Houston mother who drowned her five children in a bathtub in 2001, and Dena Schlosser, another Texas mother who cut off her baby's arms in 2004, according to the women's attorneys.

Doctors say the risk of developing postpartum psychosis is 50 percent or higher for women with schizophrenia who are not taking medication. Camara says Sanchez fits the bill: although Sanchez was prescribed the antidepressant citalopram after giving birth, she only took it once — the day before her son was killed. Such drugs take weeks to begin working.

It was one of a handful of times that Sanchez appeared to try reining in her mental illness.

She wound up shuffling around an Austin drug store for eight hours last summer, Camara said, only after going to the city with a friend who said an acupuncturist there could help her mental problems.

A week before the killing, Camara said an ambulance rushed Sanchez to a hospital from a counseling center where she had made an appointment because she was feeling depressed and having hallucinations.

Advocates say resources for indigent women with mental disorders are sparse in Texas, which is ranked 49th in per capita mental health expenditures, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

At the Center for Health Care Services in San Antonio, where Camara said Sanchez was referred for outpatient treatment, about 2,000 more people are served each year than the state pays for, CHCS President Leon Evans said.

State mental hospitals are no less overwhelmed.

"My job here is to get people out, bottom line," said Dr. David Gonzalez, a psychiatrist at the San Antonio State Hospital. "They have hired me to treat people so I can get them out of the hospital. I'm here to keep people out."

Recently, Camara said, music coming from a jailhouse speaker triggered Sanchez into a flashback of the night her son died. The hallucinations returned, Camara said, and Sanchez called over a guard for help.

A jailer handed Sanchez some more medication. She calmed down.

"If only that had been available to her that evening," Camara said.

(This version CORRECTS that Sanchez was in hospital for two weeks.)

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/6717268.html

[Nut44x4]

Mom accused in killing baby enters plea
By ELIDA S. PEREZ Associated Press Writer © 2010 The Associated Press
July 1, 2010, 1:47PM

DALLAS — A woman accused of mutilating and killing her newborn in San Antonio has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Catherine Babbitt, a spokeswoman for Bexar (BAYR) County District Attorney Susan Reed, defense lawyers entered the plea on behalf of Otty Sanchez. If a judge accepts the plea agreement, Sanchez will be sent to a state mental institution.

The 33-year-old San Antonio woman is charged with capital murder in the death of her son, Scott Wesley Buchholz-Sanchez. The baby was six days old when her sister called 911 and authorities found the baby's mutilated body and Sanchez wailing that the devil made her do it.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/7089979.html