HEATHER LEAVELL KEATON | Couple ‘killed their children with anti-freeze because they were too much responsibility’ | Sentenced to Death | Only Woman on DR in AL | Autographed Letter Signed

Heather Keaton. ALS. Pmk: August 31, 2015. SEALED. Contents unknown. Pristine.

“Heather had caught Natalie and Chase trying to eat a piece of Heather’s chocolate pie she left on the counter, and that just made Heather go completely ballistic. She was holding Natalie off of the ground by her hair with one hand, and beating her with a belt the same time with the other hand. And three-year-old chase – who was still in diapers – tried to intervene … she knocked him down to the floor.”

In December 2010, the partial skeletal remains of Natalie and Chase (hereinafter sometimes collectively referred to as “the children”) were discovered in heavily wooded areas in Alabama and Mississippi, respectively. All that remained of Natalie were 68 bones and 3 teeth, and all that remained of Chase were 21 bones and 2 teeth. It was later determined that Natalie had died approximately nine months earlier in March 2010, when she was four years old, and that Chase had died approximately six months earlier in June 2010, when he was three years old.

At the time of the children’s deaths, Heather was in a romantic relationship with the children’s father, John Joseph DeBlase (hereinafter referred to as “Johnny”), and was living with Johnny and the children. In 2012, Johnny and Heather were each charged with three counts of capital murder in connection with the children’s deaths—two counts for intentionally causing the death of a person under 14 years of age, and one count for intentionally causing the death of two or more people by one act or pursuant to one scheme or course of conduct. In November 2014, Johnny was convicted of all three counts of capital murder and was sentenced to death, and the Court affirmed Johnny’s convictions and death sentence.

Johnny’s friends testified to statements Heather had made that tended to demonstrate her contempt for the children. Specifically, Johnny’s friends testified that Heather had said she “did not want to help Johnny raise the children”; that, on separate occasions and to separate people, Heather had referred to the children as “demon spawns from hell” and the “spawn of Satan”; that Heather had said Natalie was “a discipline problem” who “thought she was a princess and … needed to be taught that she wasn’t”; and that Heather had said she “was concerned that the children were going to be jealous of” Heather’s then unborn child.

Testimony from Johnny’s friends also indicated that Johnny had treated the children cruelly, including testimony that Johnny had “struck Natalie in the head” with a hairbrush and had refused to feed the children adequately. Specifically, one of Johnny’s friends testified that he had seen Johnny give the children only “a few little pieces” of lettuce for dinner one night, despite their evident hunger, and that, for breakfast the following morning, Johnny had forced the children to share only a small, single-serving box of cereal. Other friends of Johnny similarly testified that the children appeared to be underfed and unusually hungry during the early months of 2010.

Heather “felt that Johnny had possibly poisoned” the children and specifically believed that Johnny “might have given the children antifreeze because Heather had seen Johnny give antifreeze to one of the dogs and enjoyed watching the dog die.”

Heather fed them antifreeze and she cooked for them and Johnny would pre-measure it before he would leave for massage therapy school and she would pour it in their food. She told me Princess Natalie acted like a princess and, you know, how she would discipline the children and….

Natalie would move when Heather was brushing her hair and Heather would hit Natalie with the brushes. Several times Heather told me that she and Johnny would burn the children with cigarette lighters and cigarettes and candle wax.

• VIDEO: John Deblase Trial Begins With Horrid Allegations | https://youtu.be/-tGcNYCi2G0

• VIDEO: Heather Keaton, convicted child killer, resentenced to death by lethal injection | https://youtu.be/CW4ZEy2bdlY

• VIDEO: EP124: Natalie & Chase DeBlase - The Princess and the Shadow | https://youtu.be/2sirxDfhyvQ

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