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- Your call has been forwarded
to an automatic voice message system.
- Mum, I just need you to call me back, please.
I really need to talk to you as soon as you get a minute,
if you could just call me back that would be great.
I love you, bye.
- I heard the voicemails that Carol left my mom
the morning of May 20th.
My mom of course, didn't get these voicemails
till later in the day.
- Please, please.
- Your call has been forwarded
to an automatic voice message system.
- Mum, I don't know what to do anymore, mum.
Mom, I think I really need some help, I'm so scared,
things are so weird over here.
Can you just, call me back.
I just need you to call me back, I can't live by.
- It's absolutely heartbreaking to hear my sister,
it's so much pain, she was hurting so bad.
She needed out, and unfortunately, she didn't call me.
- When I first heard that Carol harmed her daughters,
I knew she was sick,
I knew there's something wrong with her.
She would never harm her child.
You don't do this on purpose.
- Who in their right mind
could do this to their own kids? Who?
If there's a person out there, I hope I never meet over,
Carol wasn't that person to me.
- Hi, Yazzie I'm recording.
Yazzie and mommy.
Carol was one of the sweetest,
greatest people you would ever, ever can encounter with.
She was a great mom.
She was always there for my daughters.
- Carol was extremely beautiful.
She was not only beautiful but she was also very sweet.
She was very genuine.
What you see is what you get with her, she was very gentle.
Even her voice is very soft.
I can't imagine Carol ever raising her voice.
- Yazmine what you doing,
lemme see that
Yeah, mummy see that.
- Carol was an amazing mom.
She loves her baby girls so much.
- Sophia, Sophia hide, hide. - Where's Sophie?
She probably cooking.
- You now you're gonna wait for me to turn.
- She always had either Yazzie or Sophie in her arms, right.
So she adored her kiddos.
I felt very comfortable around her.
And I think that if she was available,
I would most certainly ask her
to watch my kids for a few hours and so forth.
Just because I knew how gentle she was with her kids.
- There's times when my son would go out to her house,
she would take them out to San Pedro to go see the boats.
She took my kids something that I've never even done
till this day, she took them out to go see the stars.
- Carol's compassion for others
is probably one of the biggest things about her.
She loves people, she wants to help.
She was in the CCCs, California Conservation Corps.
She was in army briefly.
She got honorably discharged for a problem with her hip.
She then moved on to the Naval Reserve.
- She was very ambitious, always trying to educate herself
reading books, asking a lot of questions.
She was very curious about the professional world.
I know for sure that
she did become a certified X-ray technician.
And she was very proud of that.
She had goals and ambitions.
Eventually she wanted to run the radiology department.
- She always got herself into something, school.
She was taking online classes.
So she was still going to the university while feeding
and breastfeeding and changing diapers
and caring for them girls.
- If she was ever feeling anything, any type of depression
or she's feeling sad or even stressed out,
I did not sense it,
I did not see it, the only thing I saw in her was joy
and pride, and just happy to be a mom
and just happy to have her daughters.
- There is no more sacred relationship,
in our sense of how the world should work
than the relationship between a mom and her child.
We rely on that relationship.
It's what's kept the species going.
- When we hear that a mother has taken
the life of her child, we're horrified.
The public is horrified, they see her as the devil.
They see her as evil.
- The initial reaction is one of repulsion, one of anger.
The actions so defy what we all hold,
as being the pedicle love of a daughter and child.
- The idea that a mother who's supposed to love her child
would kill that child, in any way harm
and neglect that child is really difficult to grasp.
Until you understand, what I've learned to understand
is that it's absolutely not her fault.
- The numbers of women who suffer is shocking.
It is horrifying.
We now know that suicide is the leading cause
of maternal death in the first year.
Women are committing suicide and we're not still addressing
this as a major public health issue.
- Motherhood is full of paradoxical feelings.
I love this child, this child is you know,
getting on my nerves, I love motherhood
it's the hardest thing I've ever done.
Every day is a series of paradoxes
which can build up to create no-win situations.
The more stress that a person has in their lives
and having multiple children, having economic stress,
having work stress, relationship stress,
then our ability to manage and hold all of that
is severely compromised
and so it's actually not surprising that some women snap.
- I always kinda get the same kind of colors for them,
We used to kinda have colors for them,
Sophie's color was purple.
Yazzie's color was yellow.
Xenia's was white.
They were what loved the most in my life.
I miss them so much.
They were bright, anywhere they showed up
they illuminated the place.
I can't see their beautiful faces anymore.
Oh my God.
I'm so sorry I didn't help, I'm so sorry.
- This afternoon, in this driveway,
is where sorrow still lingers.
Over here you will find a growing memorial
for three young girls who were found dead in a bed
and now their mother is facing criminal charges
- We know they're all in heaven.
Pray for my babies, pray for Rudy
and even pray for that woman,
she had a demon inside her that day.
- The suspect in this case is 30 year old Carol Coronado.
Carol had called her mom saying she was going crazy.
When the grandmother came to help,
she found the bodies of her three grandchildren in one bed.
Carol, the grandmother said had been stabbing herself.
- We're going to the Twin Towers right now to see Carol.
She's housed in the Medical Ward inside the jail
we visit her about the upcoming trial we have.
I'm looking for the right result which I believe,
and our experts believe is that she's not guilty
by reason of insanity, yes, the act was done.
I don't think there's a real question as to who did the act.
We're not really arguing that, the argument comes down to
what was her state of mind at the time of this incident.
You know, everyone agrees
that there was something going on with Caroline,
something that was going on at the time of this incident.
You know, she wasn't herself.
The prosecutor Ms Spears and her team of police officers
that are working on this case are very set
on convicting her of first degree murder.
But what keeps me going is knowing that
Carol wouldn't have done this, you know,
knowing her as a person and knowing more and more
about postpartum psychosis keeps me going,
it keeps me doing everything I can
for the right result for her.
- I met Carol Coronado upon her arrival
at Twin Towers Correctional Facility,
roughly maybe six days after her crime.
When I met her she was similar to a catatonic patient.
She appeared extremely depressed, she barely moved.
We had placed her in a suicide gown, a Kevlar material.
It's not comfortable.
Most inmates ask right away,
how long am I going to be in the gown,
When do I get out of the gown?
She didn't mention the gown,
it's like it wasn't even there.
She seemed very thin,
she looked like she had not been eating.
And even though she'd just had surgery
and had given medications, you know, to help her sleep,
it sounded like she hadn't slept in over a week.
And she looked like it.
The diagnosis that I gave her
in layman's term is postpartum psychosis.
There were three psychiatrists who had seen her
in those first five or six days, and the consensus was that,
you know, this is a very sick patient.
Also, I screened her for depression,
and it did appear that she had had depression
after both of her pregnancies actually, and, you know,
wasn't treated, so that actually
elevates her risk significantly during a third pregnancy.
So she had that risk factor, there.
- We got this Alpine Village Swapmeet,
I sell auto parts here.
I've been here for seven years.
A lot of people come through, a lot of people come through.
For me this is the hardest part of the day is picking up,
getting ready to leave to go home.
I used to be in a rush to go home,
I couldn't wait to get home to my girls.
And now it's just like the part that I miss the most is
my hi daddy's, my smiles they used to run to me
when I got home, and I don't get none of that no more.
As a father I was kind of raised to work, you know,
provide for your family.
We didn't really have no luxuries.
Like we didn't have a lot of extras
but we weren't like struggling we were okay.
I loved the fact of having to provide for my family
'cause that made me, I loved the fact that waking up
in the morning coming to work before I left to work,
I would look around and I'd see my little girls
and that was my energy, that was my power to push
and I pushed for them, I pushed.
It's hard for parents with one child you know,
let alone two and then three and then back to back,
it's very hard.
Carol did most of the duties when it came to my daughters,
I would help her but she did mainly 95% of it.
Now I did like going to work and you know,
providing but she did most of the maintaining, you know,
so it was very difficult for Carol as well for,
it was very difficult.
Carol's babies were very close together,
Sophia and Yazzie were 14 months apart
and Yazzie and Xenia were only 13 months apart.
Shortly after they got engaged,
she found out she was pregnant
and she was so excited about it.
She'd send pictures
and tell me when her doctor's appointments were
and oh, we're gonna go see the baby today.
She was always super excited about it.
When Sophia came, it was probably the happiest day.
I don't know that I've ever seen her happier.
She was full of joy.
She was definitely very excited
about meeting her, holding her,
she didn't wanna let go of her baby, it was her baby.
I don't think she had any difficulties with it.
She didn't complain about being overly uncomfortable.
- Blow it, yeey.
I don't know that she was necessarily ready
to have more babies,
I don't necessarily think any of them were planned.
I think they were kind of more surprises, welcome surprises.
- Yazmine what you doing, lemme see that.
- When Carol became pregnant with Yazmine,
she was having problems maybe because
they were too close together, I don't know.
There's points when she was bent over
and she couldn't get up
in the kitchen, I had to help her up, put her in bed.
- I didn't notice any changes in Carol after Yazzie,
other than the fact that she was tired but, you know,
I'm a mom too, I'm tired all the time.
She didn't seemed sad.
- I know that she was very, very stressed
because the kids were so close in age.
My kids are two years apart, so I understood
what she was going through when you have little kids.
But she was always very patient,
she would never yell at the girls.
- Good job Sophia, high-five.
- Carol did confide in me that it was very difficult for her
because she was trying to better herself.
She was trying to finish her bachelor's degree.
She was trying to do a lot of things
that were already difficult as it was
and still trying to be a mother and a wife.
When you know she was with the children all day,
Rudy was working and when he would come home,
she would expect him to take over
so she could try to do things, make dinner or study
or do whatever she needed to do,
but Rudy expected certain things.
His mother was a stay at home mom,
and so he expected dinner to be set
and to take care of the kids and he would go to work
and come home and things should be done.
- When Carol was pregnant with Xenia,
we went to a baby shower and she was already,
she was probably like, seven months or so,
and she couldn't walk.
And so then I looked at her and then I said, are you okay?
And and then she says, yeah, she's like,
I get a lot of pain and she's like,
it happened with my second pregnancy
and I don't know what it is,
but it's like I can, like almost like she was crippled
'cause she was limping and she couldn't walk straight.
- Carol was in a lot of pressures after the third baby.
When Xenia came into the picture,
she just was tired, more tired and hungry.
She would say all the time, mom, I'm tired, I'm hungry.
Xenia was real hard on her.
And then she fell into like a depression.
- When we had Xenia we argued a little more than usual,
taking care of a newborn child and you know,
the lack of sleep, the lack of rest,
and plus its the third child
it's not the first and the second,
so it's a lot more intense.
- I was I nervous for her,
I was nervous about Xenia coming so quickly after Yazzie.
I mean, that's stressful on anybody.
Rudy didn't help too much so, I was really hoping
that would change after Xenia any so she could at least
get a little bit more sleep than she was getting.
- Sometimes I would go there and help them out
and talk to him and tell him, hey,
you have to help your wife, you have to be a team player.
It's okay for a man to wash a dish.
It's okay for man to change a diaper.
- She seemed to get more angry maybe towards Rudy,
like she would describe he would get upset with her
when the babies woke him up in the middle of the night,
so she had to be on constant baby duty
which made her more tired.
- As I look back, I do look back at the whole situation,
I wish I would have done more,
to help her, to relieve of her duties.
- Where's daddy? Where's daddy?
- Yeah she was a good wife, she was a good woman.
She was a good woman,
she was always attentive of everything.
She was always there, she helped out a lot.
She was a better wife than I was a husband.
She was a better person than me.
She's a way better person than me.
She just went through this,
she went through this psychotic disease
and it ruined both of our lives.
- Perinatal illness knows no boundaries.
It can strike anyone rich, poor, male, female,
it doesn't matter what culture you're from, what ethnicity,
how old you are, no one is immune.
- There is a full spectrum of mental illnesses
or mental health struggles that arise
in the aftermath of childbirth.
There's the baby blues that happen
when the hormones are just crashing and burning
after you have a baby, you'll go from a real high
to a real low where you're suddenly weepy
and just uncontrollably sad.
- The baby blues is very common among women,
about three out of four women who give birth,
are gonna experience this.
Symptoms usually go away in two to three weeks.
- Aside from that, there's the more serious
postpartum depression that sets in
for a percentage of the population.
And it's generally within the first six weeks.
- One of the Hallmark characteristics
of postpartum depression is the inability to sleep.
- Sleep deprivation is absolutely key.
Sleep deprivation is used as a torture technique.
And so sleep deprivation is one of the key risk factors.
- Then one of the other ways in which we see
postpartum depression present is with panic attacks.
Women feel as though they can't cope,
they feel totally overwhelmed,
in some severe cases, women feel suicidal
and they're not able to take care of their baby.
- Postpartum psychosis is at the far end
of that spectrum of mental illnesses
that happens in one or two women
out of every thousand babies that are born.
- It's a common misconception that postpartum psychosis
is just really bad depression.
But baby blues doesn't get worse
and then it's depression and then it gets worse
and then it's psychosis, they're different.
- Mental illness is a beast,
and postpartum is a nasty bitch.
- The words postpartum depression to me mean living hell.
- I had never heard of the term postpartum depression,
and when this baby came around I was hit by a bus.
- It hit me like a ton of bricks.
I went in working 80 hours doing well,
I came out wanting to kill myself.
- I noticed I was really irritable.
I felt down, I was angry, I would lash out.
- I'm experiencing daily anxiety attacks,
something I'd never experienced in all of my 40 years.
- The anxiety just kept getting worse and worse
then it was just these constant thoughts
that you just could not shut up in your own mind
that was part of the living hell.
And it would be anything from like I said,
the baby wipe to not wanting the kid,
to having to make dinner, to do the laundry,
to she's crying again, to I gotta feed her,
to I gotta get up, my husband's coming home,
people are visiting, I'm exhausted.
- He would cry, I would cry.
And we would just cry together.
- I fell 5 million feet down.
I wanted to be the mother that I had always dreamed of being
and instead of being able to be that mother,
I was on my knees and I could hardly function.
- My wife was getting to a depressed stage
so she would basically just not take care of herself,
my daughter, even the animals in the house
like the dogs and cats wouldn't get fed,
like my daughter would be still in the same diaper
since I left for work in the morning.
- I stopped eating, I lost 55 pounds in two months.
But I also was really struggling with intrusive thoughts
about harming my baby.
- I would be holding her and I would think,
I wonder if I just thought banged her head into the counter.
And then I'd be like, what, what do you mean?
Like I don't wanna bang her head into the counter.
- I would pass an electrical cord
and I would suddenly imagine it around my baby's neck.
I would pass a microwave,
I would imagine putting the baby in the microwave
any possible harm.
- These thoughts are alien to these women.
It's not that they really want to do it.
And in fact, they feel terrible.
They are just tortured.
- I was horribly ashamed
and really quite afraid of telling anyone.
I kept the scariest of the images and thoughts to myself.
And it was a horrible, deep secret.
- And all I could think of was,
if I just close my eyes and go to sleep, she'll be fine.
My husband and my mother are here to take care of her,
I did my job, I brought her into this world.
I am not equipped to take care of her.
My job was just to be a vessel and bring her here.
There's no way I can even try
to take care of this young baby.
- Most women feel like they're going off the deep end,
they have absolutely no idea what's happening to them.
- And again, the shame of feeling depressed
at a time when you're expected to feel really happy,
tends to exacerbate the problem of postpartum depression.
Women tend not to name it,
they tend not to talk to their doctors
or even their spouses about it.
- And we blame ourselves,
and we think there's something wrong with us.
And we silence ourselves and the stigma piles on
and it piles on and it piles on.
And I'm not gonna say out loud
that I don't feel connected to my child.
I'm not gonna say out loud that I don't feel attached.
I'm not gonna tell you that I'm terrified to be a mother,
that I'm afraid that I made the worst decision,
that my child would be better off without me.
I'm not gonna say any of those things.
- The father of those three young girls
allegedly murdered by their mother in Torrance,
came face to face with his wife in court today
for the first time since that family tragedy.
No cameras were allowed in court but reporters were.
Carol Coronado was brought out in a wheelchair.
We watched as Rudy Coronado shook uncontrollably
and wiped away tears every time her name was mentioned.
- This obviously was a big story.
The public was very interested.
There are hardly ever stories like this,
where a mother is accused of killing her own children.
- I just wanna thank everybody for their support, everybody.
- I first found out about the case
when my boss called me in the evening,
and she told me that to turn on the news,
and I turned on the news
and started watching some of the facts of the case.
Cases aren't typically assigned personally
like this particular case was,
usually they just arrive on my desk
and I prosecute them from that.
But given the media attention to the case,
and given the other difficulties
of prosecuting this particular case,
she offered me the option of prosecuting it.
And I did wanna take it I mean,
those little girls deserved my efforts to get them justice.
- Coronado has pleaded not guilty
by reason of insanity, but the prosecutor,
she's accusing Coronado of planning the murders,
even though her family insists,
that she was a good and loving mother.
- I know Carolyn, she would never ever in a million years
do anything like that to no one I'm not,
again I don't have a lip of hate I love her.
That's the mother of my children
and she doesn't know what she did.
That's why I'm gonna stand behind her 1,000%
because I know she didn't do,
it is a disease out there that destroys families.
- Can you tell me whether she depicted any sort of signs.
- There was a lot of signs that I didn't know how to read.
Here's the reason why we need to bring awareness to it
because I was never educated on nothing like this
and didn't have a clue.
And we need to bring awareness to this disease
because there is a disease out there that needs to be known
for everybody to save more lives,
save more babies, save more families, thank you.
- Thank you guys for being here today, thank you.
- Rudy was the victim.
He was the family member of the children who were killed,
and yet he wasn't calling her evil or anything
and distancing himself from her and showing anger
or anything, he was standing by her.
I was surprised I'd really never seen a case like that.
- People affected by the postpartum psychosis,
they're not themselves anymore.
They don't know what's real, they don't know what's fake.
There's no way Carol could have hurt her babies
knowing that they were her babies, not a chance.
- Carol, I went to visit her at the Twin Towers,
and trying to find out what actually happened.
You can't talk because of things being tape recorded.
She goes, mama her voices, I went like what voices Carol?
'cause I'm interested now, what voices?
She just shook her head and mumbled, I can tell you mum.
Someone was telling her to kill the children.
So of course that's lingering in my head
like that happened to me.
But when I heard that, telling me to kill my child
when I was breastfeeding them, well, I didn't take action.
So I like said I don't understand,
if it's hereditary, yeah, I had the symptoms of that.
- Postpartum psychosis is an awful illness to have.
Often, it will occur very abruptly.
The symptoms include confusion.
They may not know where they are or what day it is.
- These are women who have a complete break with reality
in that they are hearing voices
or even seeing delusions, seeing things that aren't there.
They lose the ability to distinguish between what's reality
and what's just a hallucination.
- There are delusions associated with postpartum psychosis.
Sometimes it's about the baby being evil.
Sometimes mother is feeling terribly inadequate.
- Postpartum psychosis is a psychiatric emergency
and these women must be separated from their babies
because we don't really know what's going on in their minds.
- The statistics are that about 4% of these women,
will commit infanticide,
and about 5% of these women, will commit suicide.
- I've never heard about postpartum psychosis,
nor were we ever spoken to about that, after Shane was born.
- Postpartum psychosis, I had never heard of that.
In fact, until I don't even know,
four or five, six months ago when I started looking into
postpartum depression after my wife was dead.
- I suffered postpartum psychosis.
I had it with my first child in 1980.
During my first prenatal visit,
when I saw my midwife, I told her,
I had done some pretty crazy things after Alison was born,
and I was hospitalized in the psychiatric unit.
And her advice at the time was,
you don't have to worry about that happening again.
- I had a daughter named Melanie,
who wanted a baby more than life itself.
And when Melanie delivered her baby,
she went into postpartum psychosis immediately.
I had no idea how deadly it was.
I had no idea how many mothers had killed their children
under the influence of postpartum psychosis.
I had no idea that I wasn't gonna be able
to save my daughter.
- Everything really was picture perfect.
Until I stopped nursing Michael at nine months,
little did I know that,
that was going to drive me completely insane.
And that's what happened.
- I really only noticed anything
a little less than two weeks prior to their deaths.
It happened so quickly.
It really started after she took a birth control pill.
And she was never the same person from then on,
extreme paranoia, abnormal anxiety,
that I've never witnessed in my wife.
- I started to think that Michael was the devil
and that it was really my calling
that I need to drown him.
I remember kneeling, begging God to tell me what to do.
And I took him and filled up the bathtub with lukewarm water
and I just placed him down until he died.
- It seemed like Melanie was determined to die.
She said, Oh, Mommy, I'm such a bad mother,
the baby doesn't deserve to have a mother as bad as I am.
And I shouldn't live.
She checked in a hotel, and she went up
to the 12th or 13th floor I don't really wanna know,
and she jumped out of a window.
- My wife, Charlene I believe she did in the end,
take her life and Shane's life,
because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.
Just the fact that there was not enough information
that could have prepared us for what's going on,
there's a failure, you know, with our system.
- My wife is dead, my kids have no mom.
- What I wanna tell guys out there or husbands,
if you know or you feel something's off,
you need to go talk to somebody you need to go get help
and I would go even so far as to say,
you need to get her in the car
like right fucking then and go somewhere like a hospital.
- You wanna go by Carol's house
where she kinda grew up? - Sure.
- Right now we're in Compton,
Compton is still Compton, still not a safe place.
Carol grew up around the corner.
They were like the little white,
the white kids in the neighborhood.
She was in the Carson area.
- I've known Carol for 20 years.
She was a sweet, quiet little girl.
She would sit to herself, play by herself.
- She's very passive like her mother,
very sweet thing, she was very obedient.
This is Carol's old house where she grew up.
They used to live this way.
That was all beat up like this.
And then here's this house over here,
every time we'd come by here, she would either start crying,
or she'd kinda go like this, this house right here.
She said she got molested in this house right here.
She said she was like five years old.
So yeah we'd come by the street right here
and she'd either shrivel up or if we came walking,
she would run past this fast like a little girl,
like she would have flashbacks of when she was young.
- Carol did have some traumatic events in her life.
She was molested a couple different times.
Once by a family member.
She had a gang rape scenario in the,
when she was in the army briefly.
To my knowledge, she didn't report it to anybody
but she did tell us about it.
- She was always stuck in the past,
of all the traumatic things that happened to her.
So every time something happened,
she would always compare it to
something that happened in the past.
And her past, she was real fearful of.
- We know now, the science is there,
that there is a significant correlation
between early childhood trauma and later psychotic illness.
I think we have to look back at the psychiatric history
or trauma history so that we can understand
how did she get from this place where she gave birth
to this child that she really wanted
to the events that occur.
- You know what's so fascinating about this case,
and tragic, of course, at the same time
is that there were three babies lost not just one.
- And because it's three babies and not one,
we vilify her three times as much.
- Instead of recognizing that that's a risk factor.
They were all under three and what mom doesn't understand.
- And a woman with mental illness,
a woman who is seriously mentally ill,
I mean, you're familiar with Carol's case.
You've spoken with Rudy you're very well vast in,
you know, her own trauma history.
And it's like a textbook, I mean, she checks all the boxes,
she has, first of all, was hearing, you know,
voices from the time she was age five,
has been a witness to domestic violence has been repeatedly,
you know, sexually abused, gang raped.
And so all of us can only withstand so much.
- When I look at the facts around Carol's case,
the mental illness piece actually isn't just the psychosis,
it's every bit of the baggage that she brought with her
into the work of parenting.
Yeah, who would have thought that it'd be a great idea
to have a woman who had as much trauma as she did as a child
at home by herself, with a two and a half year old,
a one year old and a newborn.
I mean, who should be alone in the house
with a two and a half year old, a one year old
and a newborn for hours at a time?
That's a prescription for disaster
and yet we expect this of mothers every day.
I mean, who among us is so hardy and healthy and strong
that we can go into parenting
three little, little kids in isolation that way?
That's a system that's set up for failure.
The expectation that moms can do this alone
and that they don't need support needs to change.
It's that expectation that motherhood is a solitary sport
that needs to be shifted.
- It's hard for any of us who haven't experienced this
or lived with this firsthand to like,
understand how could this happen,
and yet at the same time, I think we can understand
if we put ourself in Carol's shoes.
Maybe that could have been me.
Like, I wasn't such a strong mom when I had my babies,
it was so hard, so it could have been me,
it could have been me.
- Now thinking back, knowing about postpartum
I see the signs now.
- She was getting depressed,
just about a month or two before the incident.
- Her eyes were drooping and she just kept saying,
Oh man, Robin, I'm so tired.
She would just describe her nights.
As soon as she got Xenia down, Yazzie would wake up
and then Yazzie screaming would cause Rudy to wake up
and then he would yell at her,
which would then wake up Xenia
and then now she has two babies to deal with.
It was rough, I told her,
I was like, you need to get him to help you.
- In May, I sensed that Carol was very overwhelmed.
She was depressed, she was trying to do the best she could.
She was trying to help put the girls in daycare
and go back to work, 'cause that was the only way
that she would be able to further her annual salary.
She didn't like where they were living.
They were living in a back house that was a garage
converted into a room, you know, room and a half.
It was very small.
It wasn't a place for the girls to play in the front yard.
Given the childhood that she dealt with,
she wanted more for her children.
She wanted to give them a safe environment to grow up in.
Her children were her motivation.
- The week before my son's birthday party, she was there.
She only had the baby because Sophia and Yazzie,
were with their godmother.
She's like, Oh, I'm just so tired, I just needed some help.
She was there physically
but it didn't seem like she was there mentally.
She was rude, she didn't hold Xenia.
It seemed as she was not Carol.
- Days before it happened, she was acting weird.
Going outside and shutting off the power to the house.
One day she jumped on me, the day before she jumped on me,
and she's not a violent person, she's not a physical person.
- The day before when she was at my house,
even the look in her face, her eyes were dilated.
I remember telling my daughter, her eyes look funny.
But never have I imagined that they were funny
because of something she was going through.
- Your call has been forwarded
to an automatic voice message system.
- Mum, I think you should call me back please.
- She was acting weird since the morning,
since we woke up she was acting weird.
She woke up screaming like a crazy person.
I didn't know how to deal with it or how,
so I just kinda walked out and then called her mom.
- I felt guilty about that day
because I couldn't answer my phone,
I was driving school buses
and it kept ringing and ringing and ringing.
- Your call has been forwarded
to an automatic voice message system.
- I need help mum, I'm just nervous,
I've been having anxiety, I can't sleep.
And everything just feels really wrong.
I think I just, I just need you to call me back
when you have a second, okay, I love you.
- The day of, I was supposed to watch the baby.
I was gonna watch it, Sophia and the baby.
She was supposed to bring them over
so I that could watch them.
And I have guilt because I'd tell myself
if I would had a car,
I could have picked them up and they still would be here.
- Your call has been forwarded
to an automatic voice message system.
- Mum, if you could call me back,
I think I really need some help,
we had this really big fight this morning
and I don't know what to do anymore.
We're running out of money and I'm just left home tired.
- In the afternoon I was outside working on the car
in the afternoon I went to the Auto-parts
to get a part for the car.
But before I left I called her mom again
and told her that she was acting weird,
Carol I was acting real weird.
- I get off work at 4:15,
I parked in the driveway, I went to the house,
and she's nude, I asked her, Carol are you okay?
The girls are dressed they're all three laying on the bed
and I thought they were obviously asleep.
I said oh, and I hugged her.
How about your day Carol?
Oh it wasn't a good day mom.
- Her mom cornered me screaming at me across the street.
She didn't want me to go in the house,
and told me Carol had killed my daughters.
And I went inside, and I see my little girls dead.
Carol was naked holding a knife
and I wanted to kill her,
I wanted to kill her but I don't know what stopped me.
She backed up and went around that bed.
She did have a knife in her hand.
She was the animal backed up in the corner
that's how I'm gonna say it.
She's calling come on, come on, look at me, Rudy.
I'd never seen my daughter act like that.
She sat on her bed and three kids,
the three children there and she went like this.
She took a breath, she lift up her left breast
and she stabbed herself.
- Carol had a pretty significant suicide attempt,
check, she ruptured the sack around her heart.
She got pretty close, actually to her heart.
So that tells us she wanted to die right away.
- In a surprising number of cases
of mothers who kill their children,
there's also an attempt at suicide.
It's all a product of a decision that the mom has made,
that she's failed in her job
and that she has to kill herself.
And then this again distorted thinking
about what a good mom would do
if she's actually going to kill herself,
which would be to protect her children
by taking them with her.
And it's a pattern that is not always recognized
because the crime of killing the children,
is so heinous and shocking,
that we ignore the suicide attempt.
We just sort of,
yah, it was like not even a serious attempt.
But we actually strip ourselves then of the ability
to understand these cases.
That the genesis of the crime comes from the moms decision
that she can't go on anymore.
- It's been over a year since we started on Carol's case,
and were prepared for trial at this point.
Well, it's a big case, it's an important case.
You know, Carol's life is on the line here
and it's basically an area of law
that's really not touched a lot.
It's not seen a lot.
And I don't think the laws are necessarily in line
with what the defense is,
so we're hoping that
we can get the right result and change things.
Change the way that it's seen.
And maybe things will change in the future.
That's what we're hoping,
we're hoping for a change in the law.
- Although people will describe this country
as the most civilized country in the world,
when it comes to issues of postpartum depression psychosis,
resulting in the death of a child,
we're backward were not progressive were regressive.
- The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia,
and 29 other European countries have infanticide laws.
And these infanticide laws,
provide for the biological vulnerability of childbirth.
If a woman kills her baby under one year of age,
and she is found to have a mental illness,
she is charged with manslaughter instead of homicide,
and she sent to a psychiatric hospital.
- Here in the United States,
we think of these issues very, very differently.
And the laws are in direct conflict
with how we think about psychosis,
and what we know about postpartum psychosis
as mental health professionals.
- The way that the criminal justice system responds
to mental illness, is to have a statute,
every state has its own statute
for deciding who's insane and who's not.
If you're insane you have a 100% defense
against the charge of homicide or of murder, right?
So the stakes are really high
for the criminal justice system
'cause you're gonna walk away
with a not guilty, for reasons of insanity.
That possibility makes many states so nervous
that they have clung to
a 19th century definition of insanity.
- About half of our states has something called,
the M'Naghten's statute and what that states is that,
in order to be found, mentally ill,
the person did not know right from wrong
at the time of crime.
- These laws assume that a person who is in the throes
of deep mental illness is actually capable
of thinking logically about right and wrong.
And from the medical point of view, by definition,
somebody who is in the throes
of this profound psychotic episode
is not capable of rational thought.
Our doctors laugh at it when we tell them,
oh, this is how you decide who's insane and who's sane.
- There were two phases to this trial,
the first was the guilty phase to determine whether
Carol was guilty of committing the murders
and then the sanity phase.
- Let's go ahead on the record now
people versus Coronado.
Mrs Coronado is present represented by Mr. Allen
and we have Ms Spear here for the people.
- Certainly this is one of the most heinous crimes
I've seen, and I've seen quite a lot in 10 years.
But those little girls, they were absolutely slaughtered.
I actually went to the girls autopsies
and those girls are babies
and to see babies laid out on a cold slab like that
was just absolutely terrifying
and something I will never ever forget.
- The prosecutor had investigators
describe the knife they found
including three knives laid out on a table.
She's accusing Coronado of planning the murders.
- We heard from corners and evidence
related to blood splatter and autopsies.
It was just a hard day overall
seeing all the photos and the evidence.
Carol's demeanor and emotions,
change very drastically and very rapidly
when she hears something because for her,
it's like the first time she's hearing it and you know,
not having any memory of the incident
when you're confronted with some of these issues,
it's very traumatizing to her
and she just doesn't know and doesn't believe
that she could have done this.
We got to court this morning,
we were supposed to go right into our closing arguments,
but Carol had some type of psychotic break.
You know, she's confused, she's asking for her mom,
asking for her kids and asking for Rudy.
- At this time,
the court reporter cannot hear Mr. Allen,
make a record because of the disruption by Mrs. Coronado,
at this time the court is gonna order
that she be removed from the courtroom.
- Stop, stop saying my name.
- While you're doing that
go ahead and make a record.
- Your honor, during the course of the morning,
my client became more despondent--
- Excuse me, Steve, Steve.
- Let me talk, I need to talk,
withdrawn, confused and got furious
and her overall behavior is altered.
- Excuse me, excuse me, I--
- Mrs. Coronado!
- Stop moving the table.
- Alright, let's go ahead and remove her,
remove her from the court please.
- She was lifted and removed by handcuffs.
They lifted her off the ground.
She screamed through the hallway, it was terrifying.
You know, I've never never seen her like this before.
I don't believe she understands the nature of
why she's there anymore.
She's having a severe psychotic break.
I declared a doubt as to her competency
and the judge didn't find
substantial evidence of that today.
She feels alone, you know she feels trapped.
And I'm afraid for her safety and her well being right now.
- People versus Caroline Coronado BA425234,
the court finds as follows,
the court finds the defendant guilty of murder
upon Xenia C guilty of murder upon Yazmine C,
guilty of murder upon Sophia C.
The court finds the murder to be in the first degree.
- Carol Coronado gave up her right to a jury trial
instead decided to have a judge decide her fate.
Today that judge decided that
she was guilty of first degree murder
and the deaths of her three young daughters.
During her last court appearance a week ago,
Coronado had a breakdown and had to be dragged
from the courtroom kicking and screaming
and crying out for her mother, husband and children.
Do you have a couple minutes? - Yeah
- Okay let me just ask you to, can you give us
just your impression of the judge's decision today?
Your attorney was saying, you know,
it was not really unexpected the decision today.
- She physically did the action,
but she mentally didn't do it.
She lost her mind.
It tears me apart because it's my little girls that I lost.
I lost my whole family,
my three little girls.
And Carol, she didn't mean to do that.
I strongly believe that. - Thank you.
The sanity phase of the trial that begins tomorrow,
now, since the DA is not seeking the death penalty
in this case, the sanity phase
will decide whether Carol Coronado,
spends the rest of her life in prison
or sent to a mental hospital.
- I've never spoken to Miss Coronado personally,
so it's very difficult for me to give you
an accurate description but from what I've read about her,
and her employment records her records in the army,
the military she seemed nice
and she seemed like a nice lady.
I don't know that I can tell you exactly how
you get from being this nice lady
to committing this types of heinous crimes.
- It was hard to see from behind her
but her lawyer says Carol Coronado did shed a few tears.
Deputies were describing what they found in her bedroom
in Carson in May of last year, when one deputy saw her,
he said quote, she just had a blank stare on her face.
Another said quote,
I don't know if she knew we were there or not.
- They saw her in a state of confusion, you know,
and that confusion is very important
for major depressive disorder, postpartum psychosis,
the blank stare everything that shows
she's just not all there.
- Well, my role in the trial was to help explain
Carol's state of mind at the time
that she took the life of her three children.
I met with Carol three or four times,
it was very clear to me
that with the birth of each of her children,
her perinatal mental illness became more and more severe.
It was very clear to me after I left her the first time
that this was a woman who had suffered
with postpartum psychosis.
- I saw Carol at Twin Towers Correctional Facility,
once a week over the course of about a year.
In my professional opinion, Carol Coronado,
was psychotic at the time of her crime.
The two psychiatrists who saw her in the first few days,
both, you know said she was psychotic.
They mentioned in trial that we kept her on suicide watch,
for over a year in a gown with 24 hour,
one to one observation,
and her risk for suicide was one of the highest
if not the highest at the time at Twin Towers,
for any of the 15,000 inmates.
You're looking at somebody
who is in need of severe psychiatric treatment.
- She needs help, she'd be rising somewhere where
they can get her help.
She's a role model person, this disease took over her mind
and she needs mental help.
- The court finds as follows,
the record should reflect that the court did
consider Rule 4.423 Subsection B, subsection two,
that the defendant was suffering
from a mental or physical condition
that significantly reduced culpability for the crime.
The difficulty the court had with that rule
was that although the court found the defendant
was suffering from a mental or physical condition,
the language significantly reduced culpability
is something where the court believed it lacked.
She is ineligible for probation and probation is denied.
The defendant is sentenced to three consecutive life terms
of imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
- And a South Bay mother
is going to spend the rest of her life behind bars
for murdering her three daughters.
Her lawyer says she suffered from postpartum psychosis.
Well today the judge said that he believes
Coronado needs treatment but he said,
quote that treatment will have to be in state prison.
- I can't tell you why the judge wasn't able to understand
the role that mental illness played in Carol's case.
That just doesn't seem like a just outcome to me.
And I don't know how it's serving justice really at all
to have her spend the rest of her life in prison.
- How is she doing?
- Not good, she told me to tell the family that
she loves you guys and it's not your fault.
I failed, you know, I failed Carol.
I don't know what else I needed to do.
You know, I mean, obviously I respect the judge
and his opinion, but he got it wrong.
I just, I think the evidence was there.
I just don't know what was missing.
When you look at this and you look at postpartum psychosis,
and you recognize that it's real,
and it's placed right in front of our face,
and there's no other rational explanation
and they still won't even consider it.
- This incredibly difficult case of Carol Coronado
shows the need for there to be a law.
There is a gap, when the judge says,
I understand the individual
was suffering from mental health challenges,
but we don't have any regulations to address this,
and you're gonna ride in a jail cell
for the rest of your life and we're not gonna address
the actual issue, makes no sense to me as a civil society.
- We failed her twice, we failed her twice.
When she reached out and knew she needed help,
we weren't there for her.
And then to know that she's facing a life in prison,
is gut wrenching and we have two broken systems,
a broken medical system and a broken legal system.
- The idea of Carol being in jail, it's unreal.
It hurts me, i wish I could help her, she needs help.
- It pains me to know that she's sitting there.
Because guess what, it can happen to you,
it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.
It's unbearable, and it's something that,
we should fight for her.
- I have sympathy for what happened to Mrs Coronado
leading up to the murders.
She was in an extraordinarily bad situation,
her family was financially strapped for cash,
she was stuck caring for these kids every single day,
So I have sympathy for her situation
up until the time of the murders.
But obviously I have no sympathy
for a person who commits those types of crimes.
- It seems obvious to me
having studied these cases for so many years,
that the right response is one of empathy.
Because unless we try to put ourselves in their shoes,
we strip ourselves of the ability to stop crimes like this
from happening in the future.
So if we care about the babies, if we care about the babies,
then we need to actually put ourselves in her shoes
and figure out what she would have needed
in order to be able to succeed at parenting
under these circumstances.
- I am not spending my life behind bars,
I think I've been given a great opportunity.
After I lost Michael, I was tried by a judge,
who found me not guilty by reason of insanity.
I went back to school, got my master's degree in nursing.
I wrote my thesis on
screening for postpartum mental illness.
I think my story is one of hope.
I've lived that horrible story
and I've been able to overcome it.
- My wish would be that
we could look at these women differently,
and that we stop blaming women and punishing them
for an illness without recognizing that they are truly ill.
And that it is the illness
that's driving their behavior, not them.
What we need to do is care for these women
through the mental health system.
We need to get them treatment,
because we know that when these women are properly treated,
they're going to get well, they're going to get well.