Woman accused of killing son had severe postpartum depression, lawyer says

Lakeview mom released after posting bail in infant death case.

A Lakeview mother charged with first-degree murder in the death of her 8-month-old son was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time, her lawyer said Thursday.

Janet Thies-Keogh, 30, is accused of suffocating her son, Colin, on Feb. 7 in the condo she shared with her husband in the 3900 block of North Ashland Avenue on Chicago’s North Side.

Thies-Keogh, a DePaul University graduate and former marketing account manager, kept her head bowed and cried quietly during Thursday’s bond hearing in the Cook County Criminal Courts Building as prosecutors detailed the frantic phone calls from her husband on the night Colin died.

Prosecutors said the woman’s husband left their Lakeview home at about 6:30 p.m. to play tennis with friends. About an hour later, he called and asked Thies-Keogh how she was doing. “Not good. You’d better come home,” she was quoted as saying.

“She kept saying, ‘It’s too late. It’s too late,'” said Assistant State’s Attorney Jamie Santini.

As he rushed home, the husband called 911 and told dispatchers he thought his wife “may have done something to his baby or herself,” Santini said. In a second call to 911, he said, “My wife just suffocated my baby,” the prosecutor said.

Read the entire article as it appeared in the Chicago Tribune here

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