A mom has been sentenced to life in prison for murdering her two children, aged eight and four years old, and staging the scene to look like suicide.
Lisa Snyder, 41, killed Brinley, four, and Conner, eight, by hanging them in the basement of their home in Albany Township, near Philadelphia, in September 2019. She then tried to make it look like the children had killed themselves.
The victims were initially placed on life support but died three days later – just 14 minutes apart, Lehigh Valley Live reported.
At the time of the murders, Snyder told police Conner was being bullied and had threatened to take his own life. Police found no evidence to support her claims.
Surveillance footage from his school bus also captured Conner acting normally that day while an occupational therapist said the child was incapable of causing that level of harm to himself and Brinley, reported the Associated Press.
Investigators also found Snyder had googled “suicide”, “death by hanging” and “how to kill someone” before the killings, and that she had watched episodes of the docu-crime series I Almost Got Away With It.
The coroner ruled that the children died by homicide as a result of hanging.
Five years on, on September 26, Snyder was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder. In 2023, she tried to plead no contest but mentally ill to two counts of third-degree murder, but the judge rejected the plea saying “it doesn’t serve the interests of justice.”
On Thursday, Snyder was sentenced to two consecutive sentences of life without parole, said the Berks County District Attorney. She was also sentenced to 8.5 to 17 years in prison for child endangerment and evidence tampering.
At her sentencing, Snyder’s son Owen Snyder, 22, branded her a “monster” and said he no longer considered her his mom.
“If I could turn back time I would, just to hear their voices,” he said in a statement to the court.
Judge M. Theresa Johnson said the case was one of the worst she had ever come across and that Snyder had shown no remorse, reported AP.
