Terry Borgia

Terry Borgia was charged with first-degree murder in the death of her grandson DeAngelo Tobia at about 6:30-7 a.m. Jan. 11, 2010, in the bathtub of her Clinton Township apartment. No motive has been put forth in the case.

Borgia lived with two of her daughters and four year-old grandson in Clinton, Michigan. An initial confession and guilty plea have been withdrawn, and a mistrial declared in June 2012. Borgia is currently awaiting a second trial. She faces a life sentence without possibility of parole. Update: After four trials, Borgia was convicted in March 2013 of Felony Murder. She was sentenced to Life With the Possibility of Parole.

Rebecca Jane Elrod

Albertville police have the grandmother of a 2-year-old child in custody after the child was struck by a vehicle and died Wednesday, October 17, 2012. Rebecca Jane Elrod, 52, is being held at the Albertville City Jail and is expected to be charged with criminally negligent homicide, a Class C felony.

Brayden Lukas Daniel was struck by a Ford Explorer driven by his grandmother about 3:30 p.m. while outside a residence on Diane Avenue. The child was treated at the scene by medics and then rushed to Marshall Medical Center South in Boaz, where he died a short time later.

During the investigation, it was discovered the child's grandmother allegedly was under the influence of prescription medication at the time of the accident. Elrod was taken into custody at the scene and charged with driving under the influence. Elrod is in the Albertville City Jail and is expected to be charged with criminally negligent homicide, a Class C felony.

Elrod had been arrested for DUI in 2003 and 2007, and after a court referred program charges were dropped. In August 2010, state troopers arrested Elrod for DUI of alcohol and a controlled substance and driving on the wrong side of the highway. In June 2012 charges were dropped with conditions.

Selena Denise Rivera

A DeKalb County grandmother was jailed without bond Monday, September 10, 2012, for allegedly beating her 3-year-old granddaughter to death. Selena Denise Rivera, 42, told police she was in bed reading the Bible when she noticed Neveah Pinckney’s eyes rolling back and a white foam coming from her nose. Rivera was the only one who cared for the child, and she immediately called 911 the evening of Aug. 21. An hour later, Neveah was pronounced dead at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston.

However, the child’s 8-year-old sister, whose name was not released, told police Thursday she watched her grandmother “beating the victim with a silver pipe on the day she died and shoved the victim in a closet."

Rivera was denied bond at her first court appearance Monday.

Shirley Ree Smith

In the fall of 1996, Shirley Ree Smith moved to Van Nuys, California, from Illinois to help her daughter Tomeka care for newborn Etzel, 14-month-old Yondale and 3-year-old Yolanda. On the night of Etzel's death, Smith was sleeping in the living room of her sister's apartment with the three grandchildren sleeping on the sofa and love seat. The baby slid onto the carpeted floor at one point, Smith said, but showed no signs of injury when she resettled him. When she later got up to use the bathroom, she found him lifeless and summoned paramedics.

Smith was arrested for murdering Etzel by violent shaking and sentenced in 1997 to 15 years to life. In 2006, Smith's guilty verdict was set aside on appeal and Smith went free after serving a total of ten years. By early 2011, Smith's appeal was overturned and authorities sought to have her returned to California. Gov. Jerry Brown commuted Smith's sentence to time served in April 2012. Shirley Ree Smith now lives with her daughter in Illinois.

Marcia Maglisco

A Connecticut grandmother who hanged herself days after claiming to have drowned her grandson in a bathtub told 911 dispatchers that she was psychotic and wanted the police to shoot her, according to a transcript of the call. Aidan Blake Halter, 2, drowned in a bathtub in his home in Foxbridge, Conn., Friday, October 5, 2007, while his grandmother, 62-year-old Marcia Maglisco, was babysitting. Maglisco said during the call that the toddler slipped and hit his head during the bath, and that instead of helping him, she left him under the water.

After repeatedly telling the dispatcher that her grandson was "deceased" and could not be saved, Maglisco described the events surrounding the boy's death. "I'm psychotic...he was in the tub, he slipped, he banged his head and I just left him," she said. "I want the police to shoot me, if they could."

Janice Robbins

An Arkansas nurse who adopted her granddaughter* after her son's death in Iraq stabbed the 7-year-old girl in the chest and then set fire to their home in an apparent murder-suicide on January 9, 2012. Janice Robbins, 63, left a suicide note in her pickup truck before killing her granddaughter, Abby Robbins, and herself on Saturday, Faulkner County sheriff's spokesman Maj. Andy Shock said. In the note, she wrote that she didn't want to leave the girl behind.

Officials said there were no indications Robbins was in financial trouble. However, she had dealt with depression. Authorities found a gas can next to each of the bodies inside the lakeside home, which was engulfed in flames by the time firefighters arrived early Saturday morning.

* It should be noted this case is dissimilar from others memorialized here since Robbins had become the child's mother.

Lisa Antoinette Humphrey

Lisa Antoinette Humphrey, 47, was charged with first-degree reckless homicide but pleaded no contest in June 2012 to second-degree reckless homicide. She was sentenced to 14 years in prison, followed by seven years of extended supervision.

Royality Sanders, 10 months old, was found dead April 28, 2011, on the mattress he had shared the night before with Humphrey and his 2-year-old sister. Humphrey told police she was baby-sitting the children in an apartment she shared with their mother in the 5100 block of N. 47th St., according to the criminal complaint. Humphrey said she fed her grandson from a yellow bottle before putting him to sleep on the mattress.

The Milwaukee County medical examiner's office tested the contents of the bottle and found that it contained morphine. A blood screen of Royality tested positive for both opiates and oxycodone.

Sandra Layne

Sandra Layne is a former schoolteacher, mother of five, grandmother of nine and at 74 years of age, an accused killer.  It was May 18, 2012, at 5:27 in the evening, when officers were called to Layne's upscale condo on Brookview Lane after a neighbor heard gunshots.

Officers arrived to the sound of more gunfire from inside the home. At the same time, Layne's grandson Jonathan Hoffman was on the phone with 911. It was determined ten shots were fired from Layne's gun, a Glock she recently purchased.  Half of the bullets hit Hoffman at close range. The 17-year-old was shot three times in the chest, once in the arm and once in the stomach.

Layne's attorney says Hoffman's drug use set off the argument that led to the deadly shooting. Dr. Reuben Ortiz Reyes testified Hoffman tested positive for K2 in his urine, but not his bloodstream, so he wasn't under the influence of drugs at the time.

"He tested positive for spice.  It was a violation with his probation.  He was concerned about going to jail and he wanted to do certain things, and that's when the argument erupted," said Jerome Sabbota, Layne's attorney.  "She was fearful.  She killed a person that she loved, that she tried to save.  There are no winners.  No matter what we do to her, it doesn't really matter.  Watch her.  She's in her own hell."

Sandra Layne is currently awaiting trial.

Theresa Fortner

Theresa Fortner, 47, was charged with second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, two counts of armed criminal action and endangering the welfare of a child. Associate Circuit Judge Barbara Peebles set bail at $300,000, cash only, court records show.

Police said Fortner's blood-alcohol content was 0.22 when she crashed her 2011 gray Toyota Camry the morning of July 4, 2011, as she exited the Loughborough Avenue exit from northbound Interstate 55, police said. The legal blood-alcohol limit to drive a vehicle in Missouri is 0.08.

The Arnold resident's car hit a street sign, a house, a tree and a fence and flipped over into a second tree. Police said an analysis of the black box from Fortner's car showed she never hit the brakes and was going 69 mph when she crashed. Fortner's granddaughter Bella Houston, aged 19 months, died of head injuries the next day at a hospital. According to a police search warrant for the airbag control module to Fortner's Camry, the car left the road and traveled 352 feet before stopping.

"A witness statement suggested Theresa Fortner had been drinking alcohol for several hours and was desperate to drop off the infant passenger at another family member's residence," the search warrant said.

Charlene Fears

On August 1, 2012, Buffalo police officers Robert Yeates and John Michael Mulderig were on routine patrol. At 4:00 p.m. they were flagged down in front of the home of Charlene Fears, 37, who had just stabbed her grandson. Fears was covered in blood and wielding butcher knives in both hands. She refused to drop her weapons after repeated requests from the officers, forcing Officer Yeates, a 20 year veteran on the force, to shoot.

Both Fears and her four year old grandson, Roderick Geiger III, were pronounced dead at a local hospital. A good friend of Fears said the New York woman loved her grandson dearly but that she was bi-polar and had not been taking her medicine.

Marianne Bordt

Marianne Bordt, 73, drowned her 5 year old grandson, Camden Hiers, in a Florida beach house bathroom the first week of January 2010 and could face execution. Her attorneys say she was legally insane before and at the time of the incident. David Hiers, the boys father and Bordt's former son-in-law is pushing for a trial. He feels that is the only way he will find out the details of the boys death.

Heirs divorced Bordt's daughter about 3 years ago and says her claims of insanity are just that, insane. He claims to have never distrusted her and says he never saw any signs of insanity in her in all the years he knew her.

Bordt and her husband, German citizens, brought the boy to Florida each year on vacation. This year something went terribly wrong. Bordt's husband claims that he went to the store and came back to the rented beach house to find his wife sopping wet from the waist down in a red jacket and long underwear. She said she drowned the child so he would not grow up in a divorced home.

Valerie Stenson

Valerie Stenson, 47, was arrested Wednesday, March 21, 2012, on charges that she killed her 18-month-old granddaughter last year. She was taken into custody at her Teller Village apartment. The Anderson County (Tennessee) Grand Jury indicted Stenson on March 6 on a first degree murder charge along with four counts of aggravated child abuse and neglect. Stenson's granddaughter, Manhattan Inman, died in April 2011. Police began an investigation of the death the same month.

The indictments say Stenson is accused of causing "serious bodily injury' to the child along with subjecting her to the use of a deadly weapon or a controlled substance. District Attorney General Dave Clark says in order for a death penalty to be pursued, the facts of the case have to meet distinct factors laid out by the state.

"Some of the factors include whether two or more persons or endangered, whether the person was endangered during the course of the homicide, the age of the victim." Clark says he can't discuss the details of the case at this time, but prosecutors will determine whether the evidence in the case will warrant the death penalty. "It will be those factors and the facts of the case that we will rely on for making a decision." Clark says that more often than not, the state actually decides not to seek the death penalty. 

Stenson is being held in the Anderson County Jail on bonds totaling $1 million. She was in court Friday morning for her arraignment and was appointed an attorney.

Virginia Sims

A South Georgia woman has entered a plea in the 2011 drowning death of her six year old granddaughter. 47-year-old Virginia Sims plead guilty yesterday and was sentenced to life in prison for the June 20, 2011, drowning death of her granddaughter Alexis Walker.

The incident occurred in June of 2011 at a pond in Norman Park. According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Sims took her granddaughter to the pond near Moye Rd. on the evening of June 20th where she then drowned her.

The official cause of death was asphyxia, which happens when the flow of oxygen is cut off from the brain by strangulation. Investigators believe that Alexis was being strangled by her grandmother while being held under water.

Virginia Sims had a troubled past prior to drowning her granddaughter. A police report indicated in 2010 that Sims was charged with first degree arson and less than 24 hours later was then involved in a single car crash with Alexis inside the vehicle. The Worth County sheriff's office indicated that the crash was a suicide attempt.

The Department of Family and Child services said at the time that they were never made aware of the incidents, or they would have stepped in.

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In February 2012, Virginia Sims was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of her granddaugher.

Carmela Dela Rosa

A grandmother was charged with murder November 30, 2010, after she allegedly threw her 2 1/2-year-old granddaughter off a fifth-floor walkway at the busy Tyson's Corner Center on the previous Monday night.

Angelyn Ogdoc of the 1800 block of Griffith Road in Falls Church, Virginia, was taken to Inova Fairfax Hospital in critical condition after plunging 50 feet or more to the pavement. The hospital notified detectives about 4:30 a.m. Tuesday that Angelyn had died.

Asked whether the death could have been accidental, Fairfax County Police spokeswoman Officer Tawny Wright said "our detectives looked at that and determined the act was intentional."

Carmela Dela Rosa, 50, initially was charged with aggravated malicious wounding, but the charges were upgraded early Tuesday afternoon. She is being held at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center.

Police offered no information about what could have prompted Dela Rosa, described by neighbors as a loving and warm caregiver to Angelyn, to cause her granddaughter harm. No one answered the door at either Dela Rosa's home or Angelyn's Tuesday, and neighbors said they were shocked and mystified by the grim allegations.

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In January 2012, Carmela Dela Rosa was sentenced to 35 years in prison for the murder of her granddaughter.