In 2017, then thirty-year-old mother Amber Pasztor was convicted and forced into mental health treatment after smothering her two children to death. Pasztor of Fort Wayne, Indiana abducted her children from their custodial grandparents’ house in 2016, prompting an Amber Alert. The children were found in a parked and stolen car that day, dead. Pasztor, who had previously been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, was also convicted of murdering her former neighbor who owned the stolen car the children were found in. Pasztor’s defense relied on claims of drug abuse and mental illness, but Pasztor was found guilty and sentenced to 130 years in prison.
Pasztor, like many other murdering mothers, was subject to the struggles of mental illness and substance abuse. This combination led Pasztor to have impaired judgement at the time of the crime, a common justification for the other mothers on this blog. Pasztor was clearly an unfit mother, as evident through her loss of custody of her children and further supported by her other actions.
Motherhood Complexities 