The trial for Lacey Spears, the so-called mommy blogger accused last year of poisoning her 5-year-old son with deadly doses of salt, took an even more disturbing turn earlier this week when a friend testified that as Spears’ son lay in a hospital bed, unresponsive, Spears “seemed a little withdrawn” and did not shed a tear.
“I did not see her cry,” Danielle Grossenbacher, a friend of Spears said on the eighth day of the trial in describing a scene where her son, Garnett Spears, was “flailing all over the bed” at Nyack Hospital days before his death, the Journal News reported.
Garnett was transported from Nyack Hospital to Westchester Medical Center after doctors found large amounts of sodium in his system. He was pronounced dead on Jan. 23, 2014 from high levels of sodium, which led to swelling in his brain. Spears, 27, was accused of force-feeding her son lethal levels of salt through a stomach tube, and prosecutors charge that she phoned a friend while her son was in the hospital, asking the friend to get rid of one of Spears’ feeding bags. She was charged with manslaughter and second degree murder last June and has pleaded not guilty.
Since Garnett was a baby, Spears took to social media sites Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and a personal blog, to share updates on his heath, which led to the nickname “mommy blogger” across the Internet. She shared photos of Garnett weeks leading up to his death.
Related: Lacey Spears trial begins: She’s a ‘calculating child killer’
Garnett’s pediatrician at Nyack hospital testified Tuesday that when blood results showed a spike in sodium levels, Spears “had a smile on her face,” the Journal News reported.
Also on Tuesday, Ramapo police Detective Gregory Dunn testified that one day before Garnett was taken off life support, an open container of sea salt was found in Spears’ apartment during a search. Eight days later, during another search, an open container of Himalayan salt and two unopened containers of salt were also found, according to the Journal News. The defense attorney questioned the reliability of the bags of salt taken into evidence after the second search, implying that they may have been contaminated being in an unlocked apartment for more than 40 hours since police found it.
While being cross-examined, Spears’ friend Grossenbacher recognized that Spears was “crying and flailing” for more than an hour when she was told of her son’s impending death.
A feeding tube was inserted into Garnett’s body before he was a year old for what Spears previously called a “failure to thrive,” the Journal News previously reported; experts who spoke with the publication said that implanting a feeding tube at such a young age was a concern in itself. Spears in 2014 told authorities her son may have caused his own death, that ”the victim would once in a while play with his feeding tube and could have put something into it,” according to documents obtained by PEOPLE magazine.
During opening statements earlier this month, the prosecution called the 27-year-old Spears a “calculating child killer,” while the defense cited a lack of evidence and urged the court to put emotions aside.
Anna Brand