Mom and grandmother allegedly plotted to kill four kids in a custody dispute

**Ana Garcia** (0:00)
A word of warning. This podcast explores graphic and disturbing stories and includes some strong language. It therefore may not be suitable for our young listeners or other folks who may find it disturbing. Hello and welcome to True Crime News, The Podcast, covering high profile and under the radar cases from across the country every week. I'm your host, Ana Garcia, and our case this week, four children, their mother and their grandmother found dead inside their upstate New York home. Police believe that the mother and the grandmother killed the children to keep them from spending time with their father, whom they hadn't seen in six years because of a custody battle.
And in a note left behind both from the mother and the grandmother, they justify killing the children to spare them for the alleged abuse that they claimed their father was responsible for, which of course he denies. We are recording this on Thursday, August 13th of 2026
Our guest today, we have a new guest today. It's very exciting. Imran Ansari. Imran, you are a former prosecutor. You work criminal and civil cases. You are a frequent legal analyst on CNN, Court TV Fox. And here's the best part, he knew exactly where we were going today. You've been in this building so many times. You led me here to this studio, and thank you for that.

**Imran Ansari** (1:25)
Oh, yeah. And what a great studio it is, right?

**Ana Garcia** (1:27)
It is, it is. And for those of you who are listening, we are not in the family room at home. We are actually at Hudson Yards in Manhattan, and we are in one of the Warner Brothers' many podcast studios. So it's a very cool environment to be in. And let's get started with this case. Now, Imran, one of the reasons I wanted to tackle this case is because we're all talking about the Lindsay Clancy case right now. And here we have a situation where you have a mother and a grandmother who killed four babies.
First of all, there are no reasons that could ever be acceptable, but to say that you're doing it to protect them is insane.

**Imran Ansari** (2:11)
Absolutely. And this hitting the news now with the Clancy trial underway, it shows how these cases really strike a chord with the public, because it's hard to fathom how a mother or a father can do this to their children. Here we have a mother, we have Clancy on trial also, but it's hard to fathom that. I think that's why the public is drawn to these tragic, tragic cases and we see four young lives lost, allegedly to spare them from alleged abuse from the father, but you don't kill to spare from alleged abuse here. So it's something that we're looking at. It's a real tragedy and of course, there's no legal case here because the mother and the grandmother committed suicide, as Clancy tried to do, but here they were successful and they're also gone right now. So we may not have the ultimate answers to the many questions we have in this case.

**Ana Garcia** (3:09)
So we really can't get justice. Look, there can never be full justice when the lives of babies are taken from us. But in this case, it's even more complicated because the two people who the police have identified as the killers and based on their own writings, I believe them.
So what do you do with this? You know, the DA says that he's still investigating. The DA says maybe he's gonna put together like a task force or commission. Every time I hear those words, a task force, it's like, please, what are we gonna do? We're gonna look at how the system failed? Yes, the system failed without question. There were a lot of failures here.
But I don't know, reform, are we really? I just, I don't mean to be so pessimistic about it, but I'm not very optimistic.

**Imran Ansari** (3:58)
Right. I mean, there's not much in terms of legal recourse here, right? We have the two alleged killers who are now dead themselves. You know, the father is facing allegations. You know, I don't know if there's gonna be any investigation in that. Probably not. He's mourning the death of his four children, so that wouldn't be appropriate here.
In terms of looking how the system may have failed, there may be some internal review. I know that there were calls for wellness checks and all that, but based on the forensic evidence, even if they had executed certain wellness checks at the house, it would have been too late regardless, right? So I don't know how there's gonna be any legal recourse, but what we can see here is a tragedy all around, right? Four lives lost, you know, six lives lost, if you count the mother and the grandmother, and then a father now taking his kids not home for a long-awaited visitation, but to bury them. So it's a tragedy all around.