WHEATON – A DuPage County judge has found a former Woodstock woman not guilty by reason of insanity for the murder of her 4-year-old daughter in 2010.
Marci Webber told police that she killed her daughter, Magdalene, out of fear that the girl would be sexually abused and killed by Internet predators, prosecutors said.
Her oldest daughter, Mallory Webber, now 19, found her sister dead in a bathtub and her mother covered in blood.
Mallory Webber said she absolutely believes her mother was insane at the time. The mother she knows would never have killed her younger sister.
"I know a completely different mom than everybody else does," she said. "It's very unfortunate that the mental health system has failed her."
Marci Webber now will be transferred to the custody of the Illinois Department of Human Resources, where she will be evaluated and receive treatment in a secure, inpatient facility.
The psychologist who evaluated her three times since the murder said that she should remain in a facility for "a good, long time," but there is no set time frame.
Public Defender Jeff York said that by law, there is no minimum amount of time she can be held, but the maximum likely will be 100 years based on the first-degree murder disposition and that the victim was under age 12.
Her case will go before a judge about every 60 days, and a court hearing also must be held before she can be released, York said.
Weber waived her right to a jury trial, electing instead to have Judge George J. Bakalis determine the verdict.
Love can be a nurturing thing, he said, but “love apparently when coupled with paranoia can be a very destructive force.”
The prosecutors presented their entire case in less than half an hour by reading agreed-upon stipulations, or summaries of what witnesses would say if called to testify.
They said that in fall 2010, Webber returned to her mother’s house in Bloomingdale after living near Albany, N.Y.
When Mallory Webber found her mother and sister in the bathroom, Marci Webber said, “Shhh, don’t wake the baby.”
But Maggie was dead in the dry bathtub, lying on a blanket and unclothed except for a Pull-Up. A pathologist who performed the autopsy said that she was nearly decapitated.
Words and phrases such as "divine mercy," "Catholic" and "Satan" were written on the walls in blood.
Webber had a cut on her neck and wrists. She was taken to a hospital for treatment and, while there, admitted to cutting her daughter's throat.
She told police that it was better for Maggie to be dead than videotaped having sex and that she was the target of a secret society like the Illuminati.
Webber also said she had given Maggie medicine, possibly Benadryl and Tylenol, so that she would not feel the pain – which prosecutors argued showed premeditation.
Webber is a 1985 Woodstock High School graduate. In 1995, she was charged in McHenry County with child abduction, which was dismissed. In 1998, she was charged with misdemeanor battery and was sentenced to one year of supervision.