http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/grandmother-told-police-she-threw-granddaughter-to-death-because-she-felt-unloved-by-family/2011/09/27/gIQALIdp2K_story.htmlA grandmother who threw her 2-year-old granddaughter to her death from a sixth-floor walkway at Virginia’s largest shopping mall told detectives in a taped confession that she felt unloved by her family and jealous of the attention her granddaughter received. More than anything, Carmela dela Rosa told detectives, she was angry at her son-in-law James Ogdoc for taking her daughter away from her and saw killing the infant as a way to get back at him, according to the confession. The tape was played to jurors Tuesday at the woman’s murder trial.
In her confession, though, dela Rosa explicitly states that what she did was wrong. “I did a terrible thing,” she told the detectives. She also admits that her intent at the time was to kill Angelyn and that she hatched the plan several minutes before carrying it out.
She told the detectives that her anger boiled over at her family during a visit to the mall’s food court. She first became angry that her husband, son and daughter were speaking to each other in a sort of silent code that excluded her that day.
She admitted to detectives that she always disliked James Ogdoc, who was her daughter’s high school sweetheart at Bishop O’Connell High School in Arlington. The anger became more pronounced when he got dela Rosa’s daughter, Mary Kathlyn, pregnant out of wedlock. The couple married just before Angelyn was born in June 2008. “He took her from me too early. He didn’t give her a chance to explore,” dela Rosa told the detectives.