sick. sick. sick

from saturday's pilot:

Each day when Corey Bryant and his wife, Heaven Smith, left for work, they left their 10-month-old twin daughters home alone, strapped into infant seats.

Sometimes the couple left the babies home alone so they could go out to eat or to the movies. Bryant gave the girls cold medicine so they would sleep.

That's according to testimony from Smith during Bryant's trial on charges of murder and child neglect. One of their daughters, Miracle, died of starvation and neglect on April 8, 2008, the day Bryant returned from a three-week Navy cruise. The other girl, Heaven, also suffered from starvation and neglect and remained in the hospital months after the discovery. She survived.

Smith has already pleaded guilty to murder and neglect charges and is scheduled to be sentenced next week. She spoke slowly during her testimony. She smiled when prosecutor Jill Harris asked her to identify a picture of one of her daughters, taken when the girls were chubby, healthy infants. "That's Heaven," she said. When Harris showed Smith a picture of her other daughter, Smith also said "That's Heaven."

...

Smith said she had considered abortion when she found she was pregnant, but decided against it. After the babies were born, she suffered from severe depression: She heard voices, stopped eating, became suicidal. She said she told Bryant she could no longer care for the babies and asked him about putting the girls up for adoption.

He wasn't interested, asking her what their parents would think and reminding her they would get more pay from the Navy if they had children, she said. ... She lifted them only to change their diapers, which she also did twice a day. Bryant told her to keep the girls covered when they went out so no one could see the rashes covering their bodies, she said...