Lacey Spears
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Lacey Spears was a single mother from Decatur, Alabama, who is notorious for killing her five year old son, Garnet Spears, via sodium poisoning. She was thought to have poisoned her son with sodium from as far back back as when was an infant. She was also found by authorities to have used various social media accounts across multiple different websites posing as a many types of people, from a physical abuse victim to a wet nurse, in order to gain sympathy from people on the internet. It was determined by the judge in the case that Spears suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental illness in which a parent or other caretaker creates health problems for their child to gain attention from others and manipulate doctors. Lacey's son Garnet was born on December 3 2008, and died at only five years old, on January 23rd, 2014. The sodium was suspected to have lead to swelling within his brain. The salt used to poison Garnet is thought to have been table salt.