A Georgia mother allegedly murdered her two-year-old son for $50,000 worth of life insurance money. This week, opening arguments began in a case against a mother accused of murdering her disabled two-year-old son by injecting a lethal dose of codeine into his feeding tube. The son had been rendered blind and unable to walk on his own after he suffered severe brain trauma at only eight weeks old, when his father shook him violently and beat him. After the attack, the infant had to undergo expensive medical procedures, and required care that his mother was unwilling and unable to provide. Although the defense attempted to paint a picture of a doting mother who did everything in her power to help her son, the prosecution showed jurors five credit cards taken out by the mother in her two-year-old son's name. She used her child's social security number and a false birth date to apply for, and max out, several credit cards purchasing stuff for herself and her boyfriend, who was also charged in the death of the baby. One of the cards was not opened until six months after the boy passed away. The first charge on that card was $50 at a local liquor store. She had also taken out a $50,000 life insurance policy on her two year old, prior to his death.

According to warrants from the case, the mother told investigators that she had no codeine at the time of her son's death, but pharmacy records show that she filled a prescription for Tylenol three days before the death. Witnesses testified, though, that she was distraught and hysterical at the hospital when her son was pronounced dead, and had to be hospitalized herself that night. Her boyfriend has pled guilty to making a false statement, identity fraud, financial transaction card fraud, forgery, and racketeering, but he has not plead guilty to murder.