A Florida mom has been charged in association with the death of her four-year-old daughter in an allegedly botched attempt at a murder-suicide — but did the mom of the slain child truly intend on taking her own life?
Crime Online reports that Jacinda Decaro was arrested in January after police were called to her home to do a welfare check. She was found unconscious in her bed alongside her four-year-old daughter. According to police, a note that said “I’m sorry” was found near the Florida mom. This note, they say, is what led to the belief that this was a murder-suicide attempt. According to several people who know Jacinda, she’d been talking about suicide for a couple of days leading up to the January incident.
Police say that Jacinda Decaro gave her child a fatal mix of Benadryl and Tylenol, which led to the girl’s death, and what the coroner has called an intentional poisoning. Police are not saying how the Florida mom attempted suicide, but they have acknowledged that she hasn’t been cooperative in the investigation. She hasn’t shared why she attempted suicide, and she hasn’t shared her motive for killing her own child.
Did this Florida mom really intend on taking her own life?
There are multiple cases of mothers killing their own children and using suicide attempts in order to appear remorseful or to garner some kind of sympathy in order to lighten their responsibility in this otherwise unforgivable act. Christina Marie Riggs was notoriously convicted of killing her children with a lethal cocktail of injectable drugs before botching her own suicide. She became the first woman to be executed in the state of Arkansas in 150 years at the time of her 1997 execution. Prosecutors — and a jury — rejected the narrative that she was a severely depressed and mentally ill person, and they rejected the notion that her suicide attempt was anything more than a thin and transparent attempt at trying to distance herself from legal responsibility. In Riggs’ case — as well as many others, similarly — it was legally determined that the killer mom simply wanted to do away with the responsibility of her children, and wanted to come across as a sympathetic figure instead of what she was: A callous, selfish murderer.
Did Jacinda Decara kill her daughter because she no longer wanted the responsibility of motherhood, or was the Florida woman truly so depressed that she felt that murder-suicide was her only option? If she was truly depressed — and not setting up a possible defense prior to killing her child, by discussing suicide in the days leading up to the incident — then why kill her daughter?
Chelsea Hoffman is a true crime writer with over a decade of professional writing experience. She is best known for her coverage of missing people including the tragic disappearance of Madeleine McCann as well as the heartbreaking cases of Dylan Redwine, Heather Elvis and many others.
