Just a few days before Chelsea Thornton was booked on two counts of first-degree murder after allegedly confessing to shooting her 3-year-old son in the head and drowning her 4-year-old daughter in the bathtub, she told a friend she wanted to return to a mental institution. Thornton, 23, had previously been hospitalized for bipolar schizophrenia but had recently stopped taking her medicine, said her mother, Eleanor Chapman.
Even Thornton's new neighbor noticed she "was acting really weird, she seemed crazy and paranoid." Myra Washington, 31, lived in the downstairs apartment and was at home at the Gert Town fourplex on Wednesday afternoon when the children were killed.
That afternoon about 3, Washington said she saw Thornton return home from nursery school with her son, Kendall Adams, and daughter, Kelsey Adams. Washington said she heard bathwater running in the apartment upstairs, then, as she said she listened from her apartment below, Thornton allegedly shot her 3-year-old with a semiautomatic gun. Police said the gun jammed after the boy was killed, so the mother drowned her 4-year-old daughter.
"I saw a flash of a gun through the window and then I heard, 'Boom, boom, boom,' like if someone was fighting and slamming you on the ground -- a lot of falling," Washington said. "Then I heard the boy give a soft cry, and then I heard the girl give a soft cry.
"Then I heard her say, 'Momma, you want me to die?' And she said, 'Yeah, die. Die.' She said it two or three times, over and over."
About 10 minutes later, around 4 p.m., Washington said, Thornton turned off the bathwater, walked out her back door and calmly descended the stairs. She walked to a nearby bus stop, rode the bus to Interim LSU Public Hospital and checked herself in, complaining of "abdominal pain and a headache," according to documents filed in state court.
On her way to the hospital, Thornton called the children's father, Kenneth Adams, 29, and asked him to meet her there, said Nicole Hammons, a cousin of Kenneth Adams. Once the father arrived at the hospital, he asked Thornton where the children were. She said they were at day care, but Adams sent his mother with a key to the apartment in the 3300 block of Audubon Court to check on them anyway.
Judy Andrews, the children's grandmother, said she found blood tracked through the house and the children's bodies in the bathtub, family members said. The downstairs neighbor, Washington, said she heard Andrews outside on the phone with 911 dispatchers, crying, "I can't give them CPR! They're already dead!"
On Thursday, Andrews would say only: "I found the babies. I was their grandmother. I can't talk about this right now. I just can't."
Police arrived at the scene Wednesday about 5:30 p.m. Holding up large white sheets, detectives shielded coroner's investigators from view as they carried the children's bodies out of the apartment.
"It's a terrible, terrible tragedy -- two young children," Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas said at the scene. "It's a very, very sad case."
Thornton, who police say has confessed to the killings, is being held at Orleans Parish Prison. On Thursday morning, a magistrate denied bond for her. She was appointed an attorney from the Louisiana Capital Defense Project, who filed standard defense motions, including one to prevent anyone representing the government from questioning Thornton without her counsel present, and another to preserve case evidence, such as audio or video recordings, notes and transcripts. The crime she is accused of is punishable with either life imprisonment or death.
On Wednesday evening after the bodies were discovered, NOPD detectives from the child abuse division met with Thornton. NOPD officers said Thornton gave a recorded statement admitting that she killed Kendall and Kelsey, including details of the attacks. .
Meanwhile, on Audubon Court, mourners left flowers, stuffed animals and dolls on the handrail of the exterior staircase leading to the second-floor apartment Kendall and Kelsey had shared with their mother.. One boy left his toy car, and a woman prayed. .
Tenants of other apartments in the two-story complex remained bewildered at the violence that occurred so close to their living spaces. They said Thornton and her children had moved in about a week ago. .
On the morning of the killings, at about 7, Thornton had made an urgent phone call to one of her longtime friends. "I need to talk, can you come pick me up?" she asked , Oblique Weavers. But Weavers was busy with her own kids, and promised Thornton they would catch up later in the day.
A few days earlier, on Saturday, the two women had sat and talked in Weavers' front yard in eastern New Orleans, watching as Thornton's children played with light-up Star Wars swords. On that sunny afternoon, Kendall and Kelsey chopped at the bushes with their swords, laughing and yelling, Weavers said.
Thornton told Weavers that she felt like she needed to go back to a mental institution. "She was going through a lot," Weavers said. "I guess she felt like she was starting to lose it."
Although Weavers recalled Thornton's demeanor that day as "very happy, very jolly," she said her friend was also known to have sudden attacks of depression, during which she would lock herself and her children inside for entire days. "Ain't no telling. One day she's normal, the next moment, she's someone else," Weavers said.
"It's so hard because you know the whole world's looking at her like she's a cold-blooded murderer, which she is, but we're looking at her like, this is not the Chelsea we know," Weavers said. "How can you do this? What triggered that? Why didn't you call somebody? All we can do is pray for her."
Thornton's mother, Eleanor Chapman, told reporters on Thursday that her daughter had recently stopped taking her medication for her bipolar schizophrenia. Nonetheless, "my child (loved) her children," Chapman said.
Kenneth Adams, has lately been living in Houston, working in construction and furniture-moving jobs. The parents have been together, off-and-on, for about five years, family members said. Thornton does not work, but she had enrolled at Cameron College in New Orleans and was studying to become a medical assistant, Chapman said. "My child was doing good," Chapman said. "She was in school."
But Adams family members said they had long worried about Thornton, and about her care of the children. "I wish she would've opened up more to us," said Hammons, Adams' cousin. "As family members, we could've pushed harder. We were concerned for the kids. We obviously didn't know this would happen."
Another cousin of the father, Stella Adams, said she was horrified to find out about two years ago that Thornton was living with the children in a house where there were drugs. Adams allowed the family to move in to one of her rental properties and did not charge them rent. "I even put them in a situation where I lost income to allow her to live in my house," Adams said. "She had the kids in an environment that wasn't good for kids."
The father's family tried to invite the children to as many family parties as possible. "We wanted to show them what a happy environment is," Stella Adams said.
Anthony Knighten, 24, said he had passed by the apartment house on his bike Monday, and he saw Thornton with her children. "They were normal," he said. "You know, normal stuff when the child does something, the mom kind of spanked 'em. It wasn't nothing serious."
While watching the murder investigation on Wednesday night, Shirley Schmidt, 37, said government leaders "need to be here to see this. They keep cutting mental hospitals, you're going to see a whole lot more of this."
Staff writer Ramon Vargas and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Source: http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/10/chelsea_thornton_wanted_to_go.html
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