Couple Kills Their Son With Special Needs

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

The movie Manchester by the Sea allegedly inspired Ernest Franklin, 35, and Heather Franklin, 33, to murder and then burn her 16-year-old son Jeffrey Franklin, who was physically and mentally disabled. In the Oscar-winning film for best original screenplay, the protagonist Casey Affleck accidentally causes a fire in which his children die and is not sentenced in the end.

A New York prosecutor reported that the Franklin residents of that state had killed their adoptive son Jeffrey and attempted to cover the crime with a fire that they themselves set up shortly after watching the movie. According to the prosecutor, the evidence points to the fact that Jeffrey died before the fire on March 1 at the family's rural house in Guilford, on the outskirts of New York, since the minor - who is deaf - had no soot or smoke in the mouth or the bronchi.

As reported on the local television station, WBNG, prosecutor Joseph McBride said that upon arriving home after the tragedy, the father looked "very calm, calm" and had no marks on his body to show that he had been tried to save his son from fire.

The father - a veteran of the Iraq war - simply pointed to the room where Jeffrey's body was found, whom they adopted in 2012, according to McBride.

The mother, who is pregnant, told police that she had left the house to seek medicine at various stores and had not returned until early morning, after the fatal incident had already occurred. Press reports assure that there is no evidence that she has visited these stores.

As reported by People magazine, the mother's lawyer, Michael Trosset, "she is innocent until found guilty." Trosset added: “She has a high risk pregnancy. She already lost a child to a failed pregnancy a year and a half ago. She deserves to be released and to be able to defend herself.”