Top News Story  Sunday, August 19 2001:

Inner Voice Tells Mom to Murder Her Baby

STUART, Fla. (AP) -- A woman who says inner voices told her to repeatedly slam her infant son to the ground and down a flight of stairs believed he would rise from the dead if her faith was strong enough, a prosecutor said. Jennifer Cisowski, 21, allegedly told investigators after the boy's death Tuesday that voices in her head told her to test her faith in God. "She is told allegedly by these voices to throw her baby down on the ground and he will be healed," prosecutor Tom Bakkedahl said. "She was of the opinion it was God speaking to her." Eight-month-old Gideon Fusscas, whom sheriff's office deputies found lying dead on floor of an upstairs home office, died of multiple head injuries, an autopsy found. Cisowski, of Marlborough, Conn., and her sister were vacationing at their mother's home in an upscale subdivision in Palm City. The night the boy died, authorities say, Cisowski asked her 17-year-old sister Tabitha to help drive away demons she said were possessing her boyfriend, Christopher Fusscas, 29. He is the baby's father. "They were grabbing each other and pushing and pulling in an effort to keep him from leaving the house so she could get him to sit down and remove the demons," Bakkedahl said. Fusscas and Tabitha Cisowski told investigators they were scuffling when Cisowski took her child outside. Cisowski told deputies that she was to blame for the boy's death, she deserved to die and made a reference to Andrea Yates, the Houston mother accused of drowning her five children in a bathtub in June. "There's no question that this young lady is seriously ill, and we're going to be looking at that in the days and weeks to come," said her attorney, Richard Lubin. She is being held on charges of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse.

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