In a horrifying case, a Michigan mom is being charged with her own child's murder.
Justine M. Johnson is the 22-year-old mother accused of killing her 3-year-old daughter, Sutton M. Mosser. She told investigators that the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants told her to commit the heinous crime.
The mom is being charged with felony murder and first-degree child abuse.
The child was stabbed to death on September 16, 2021. It was just two days after Sutton turned 3. On Friday, an investigator with Child Protective Services attempted to answer the question weighing on everyone's mind: why?
Ryan Eberline, the investigator with CPS, interviewed Johnson while in jail and testified about what she revealed. "She told me that she didn't remember the specifics of what happened at the time of what happened to Sutton, that she was experiencing hallucinations due to heroin withdrawal and not sleeping for approximately two weeks," he told a court, per MLive.
"She was getting hallucinations from the TV that had instructed her to take her daughter's life or they would kill her."
"It was SpongeBob who was saying these things on the TV," he added. "If she didn't do what she did to her daughter they would kill her. She said she was afraid for her life and she had lost her mind."
The mother and her child were living with her parents and brothers at the time of the alleged murder. Both brothers also testified. Knesley Johnson Jr. said he left for work at 2:30 p.m. When he returned home early the next morning, he asked his 17-year-old brother, whose name is not being made public due to his age, where the child and her mother were.
That's when Sutton's body was discovered. The two brothers found a human child's foot sticking out of a trash bag by the back of the house. They couldn't find their sister.
The younger brother also testified that he thought he saw his sister "doing lines" in the bathroom the day before. "As soon as I went to walk in, she brushed it away," he said, of a powdery substance. "But I'm not sure."
An officer responded to the scene and called emergency services. Jaya L. Sankaran, a pathologist who examined the body, said it had been wrapped in a comforter and said the child had suffered stab wounds to the neck, chest, and abdomen and had a huge wound that exposed part of her small intestine.
Several knives were taken from the bedroom as evidence. The accused's fingerprints were all over the bags, and surveillance footage from the day of the killing shows her wearing clothes that were also found in the bag.
