Casey Anthony’s Former Lawyer Takes On Familiar Killer Mom Storyline

Corie Walsh, the Illinois mother accused of a copycat killing of her 2-year-old son, was reportedly obsessed with the high-profile Lindsay Clancy murder case and has retained an attorney who helped defend Casey Anthony.

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“She was psychotic. And this is not a first-degree murder,” defense attorney Andrea Lyon told reporters.

Lyon previously helped defend Casey Anthony, who was famously acquitted in 2011 of killing her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. The case gripped the nation as prosecutors presented evidence of human decomposition and chloroform in Anthony’s car. Yet the jury was not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt and found Anthony not guilty of murder.

Lyon played a pivotal role in Anthony’s legal breakthrough. Her biography website dubs her the “Angel of Death Row” and touts her success defending clients in capital punishment cases, though she withdrew from the Anthony defense team a year before the trial began. Now, she’s deploying similar defense strategies for the Frankfort mom, who admitted to hanging her toddler in the basement in what her attorneys called a psychotic break.

“They are not correlated at all. It’s just accidental,” Lyon said, calling the alleged connections to Lindsay Clancy’s triple-murder case “baseless and cruel.”

Walsh, 40, has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the hanging death of her toddler, Barrett Walsh. The three charges are based on different legal theories of first-degree murder. Prosecutors use this method to pursue multiple theories of guilt at trial.

Disturbing new details continue to emerge about the horrific killing that shocked the relatively quiet suburb south of Chicago. During a court hearing Tuesday, prosecutors sought to keep Walsh behind bars pending trial. Her attorneys, however, argued she should instead receive inpatient medical care for an alleged psychotic episode.

Walsh told law enforcement she hung her son in the basement because she believed the toddler was the “devil” and the “anti-Christ,” The Daily Wire previously reported. In court Tuesday, prosecutors also said that her twisted plans extended beyond killing her toddler, saying she discussed poisoning her husband with a drink, according to NBC Chicago.

A judge ultimately ordered Walsh detained in jail, ruling that she posed a risk to her remaining children and husband. 

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“We’re disappointed with the ruling, but we are going to continue to work really hard to investigate this case and present the defense as correct,” Lyon told reporters. 

Officers were called shortly after 4 p.m. Tuesday to a home in Frankfort, Illinois, after receiving a report of an unresponsive child. Tuesday’s court hearing revealed that two other children returned from school, saw the horrific scene, and rushed to a neighbor for help, local media reported. The neighbor quickly pulled Barrett down from the basement and attempted CPR, but was unable to revive him.

Preliminary autopsy results indicated that the boy died from asphyxia caused by “ligature compression of the neck,” The Daily Wire reported.  

Walsh was home alone with the kids at the time of the killing while her husband was out of town. Local media said he flew back later that evening. Prosecutors said an 8-month-old infant was also inside the home at the time and had been left on the floor of an upstairs room.

Witnesses reportedly told authorities that Walsh had become “very invested in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial,” NBC Chicago reported. Her fascination with the case allegedly went far beyond simply watching it on television. Walsh “had been actively discussing the case via group text message with her friends” just hours before her toddler was killed, the outlet reported.

Inside the upscale, two-story home, officers were “directed to an upstairs bathroom located in the master bedroom,” where Walsh was found “fully dressed, surrounded by bloody water,” according to court documents. Police found Walsh with non-life-threatening, self-inflicted cuts to her thighs and wrists.

The alleged killing bears striking similarities to the deaths of Lindsay Clancy’s three children — 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan — whom prosecutors said Clancy strangled before attempting to take her own life. A judge declared a mistrial last Friday after a deadlocked jury failed to reach a verdict. 

“This is just absolutely devastating that this could be another Lindsay Clancy situation in our neighborhood, in our community. You never think it’s going to hit so close to home,” neighbor Carolyn Pappas told local media. “Just more people I think are struggling than we realize, and so we just need to be there for one another.”

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Walsh’s next court appearance is set for September 24.