Monifa Sanford Pleads Guilty To ‘Exorcism Deaths’ Of Two Toddlers

Monifa Sanford, of Maryland, plead guilty to charges of killing two children during what she claimed was an exorcism. Sanford pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder under a plea agreement, allowing her to be committed to a psychiatric hospital.

As part of the deal, the defense and prosecution agreed that Sanford was not criminally responsible, and Judge Cheryl McCally ordered that Sanford be committed to a maximum security psychiatric hospital indefinitely, according to prosecution spokesman Ramon Korionoff.

“Monifa Sanford’s descent into the depths of mental illness included hallucinations and voices, including one that she believed to be Satan. According to testimony, he told her he was going to ‘kill the babies. If she wanted them to go to heaven, she had to do it herself,'” according to WUSA 9.

Sanford was one of two women charged in the vicious crimes — the other is the mother of the two children who were killed, Zakieya Avery. Monifa Sanford was both Avery’s best friend and, at the time of the murders, her roommate. Avery, like Sanford, has also been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder. Her hearing is scheduled for early spring.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, the attack happened last January, and involved all four of Avery’s children. The older siblings, aged five and eight, were injured but luckily survived. Avery’s two youngest, however, died at the hands of their mother and Sanford. Norrell was one year of age, and his sister Zyana was only two.

Avery, 28, told investigators that she and Sanford believed that evil spirits had possessed the children and that an exorcism was needed to drive the demons out. The two women told detectives that they witnessed the children’s eyes “turning black” and also claimed to see a black cloud hovering over the four children. Then they say they saw demons jumping into Norrell.

“She tried to snap his neck,” State Attorney John McCarthy said in court of the child’s mother. “Then she began to choke him.”

Sanford and Avery stabbed the one-year-old baby boy repeatedly, then claimed to see the demonic spirit float over to the other children.

“She thought the devil was in the kids, and that’s sort of the thing she centered it around as to why she had to conduct an exorcism,” said Captain Marcus Jones, director of the police department’s major crimes division, last January after the murders. “She just thought that there were evil spirits within the kids.”

After the grisly murders, the two women reportedly washed the bodies of the dead children and wrapped them in blankets so that they would appear clean before God, McCarthy said.

What do you think of Sanford’s plea deal, and the idea that Monifa Sanford has, in essence, been found guilty, but not responsible for the deaths of two small children?