A New Jersey woman will likely spend the rest of her life in prison now that a jury has convicted her of the murder of her son by 15 months in 2018.
Heather Reynolds, of 44 years of age, was convicted of murder, possession of methamphetamine and endangering the welfare of a child, according to a statement from Camden County prosecutors.
The Sicklerville woman will now be sentenced in October for suffocating her son, Axel, on 10 May 2018.
The murder of Heather Reynolds
Reynolds suffocated the boy by putting a cleaning cloth on his nose and the mouth. She then ran out of her house, carrying Axel in her arms and yelling at the neighbors for help.
Police from Gloucester Township in Camden County responded to the scene and “the child was pronounced dead a short time later,” the statement explained.
One year after the boy’s death, medical examiners determined he had died of asphyxiation and Reynolds was arrested on 13 of June of 2019.
Authorities said Reynolds killed Axel because he was “an impediment to the ongoing extramarital affair he was having with another man”.
“A review of the text messages between the accused da and her boyfriend from the night before reveals that the defendant was becoming frustrated by the boyfriend’s apparent lack of interest,” Deputy District Attorney Peter Gallagher alleged in court in 2018, NJ.com reported at the time.
“And the witnesses also told the detectives that the defendant had expressed the feeling that her young son…was an obstacle to her relationship with her boyfriend,” the outlet added.
Reynolds was married at the time of the murder, but her husband was mostly out of town for work.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Reynolds began to cry after the jury’s decision was announced in court. of the court; The outlet also noted that jurors deliberated for six hours before convicting Reynolds.
Authorities also charged Reynolds with conspiring with her boyfriend, Jeffrey Callahan. , to kill one of his exes, Domenic Caruso, after learning that Caruso had spoken to the police investigating Axel’s death.
Along with Reynolds, Callahan was also charged with conspiracy to commit murder and witness tampering. Prosecutors dropped the conspiracy charge after he agreed to plead guilty to witness tampering.
No exact date has been set for Callahan’s sentencing, of 45 years .
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