Perstephanie Simmons, 30, charged with two counts of murder, did not speak at her bond hearing except to ask the whereabouts of her one surviving child, according to the Berkeley County Sheriff's Department.

Simmons is accused of stabbing to death her 10-year-old daughter, Ingrid Simmons, and using an ax to kill her 2-year-old son, Justin Bennett.

Simmons of Cainhoy was also charged with four counts of resisting arrest. Berkeley County Coroner Wade Arnette said Simmons attacked the arresting officers. 

Counselors from several agencies including the Berkeley County Mental Health helped children and teachers at Cainhoy Elementary School deal with Ingrid's death. 

There were tears, anger that someone would do this to their friend and even some laughter, said the school's principal, Elizabeth Goldiner. They remembered Ingrid's pretty smile and how much the quiet girl loved to draw. 

"We gave them the chance to talk about it, write letters or draw pictures," Goldiner said. "Some wanted to know why a mother would do this to her children." 

The counselors did not have the answer and neither do investigators. 

It's still unclear what happened in Simmons' mobile home, but investigators believe the killings began about noon on Saturday. 

Ingrid died from a stab wound and cut to the neck, Arnette said. The third-grader also had stab wounds in the abdomen and was hit in the head with an ax, but the blow was not enough to kill her, Arnette said. 

Justin was hit twice with an ax, once with the blade and once with the blunt side, Arnette said. The boy, who turned 2 last month, also had stab wounds to the lower part of his body, the coroner said. 

The children's 11-year-old sibling, Amber, also had a bruise on her face believed to be a glancing blow from an ax before she escaped to a neighbor's home, Arnette said. 

"I've had terrible homicides involving family members before, but this is a mother," Arnette said. "It's a horrible experience." 

Investigators got the call after 1 p.m. and found the 2-year-old clad in a diaper and his sister's naked body off a trail near an abandoned building, Arnette said. 

Berkeley County sheriff's Capt. Ricky Driggers said the children were killed inside the mobile home, placed in a car and driven about 75 yards down the road where they were dumped in tall grass. 

"Everybody was somber," Driggers said. "It was a very quiet community that day." 

Simmons walked outside the home to investigators when they arrived, Driggers said. 

"She shed no tears," Driggers said, adding Simmons did not respond when questioned. "She gave us the 1,000-yard stare. She is looking at you, but way past you, not understanding or listening to anything you say." 

Each child had a different father. All three have been notified about the killings, Driggers said. 

The state Department of Social Services placed Amber in protective custody on Saturday. 

The department's spokesman Jerry Adams said social workers have responded to the home before regarding Amber, but he did not know when or why. None of the children was removed from the home at the time, Adams said. 

Goldiner said the school, which also taught Amber, had some suspicions that something was wrong at home. 

"She was a very distant type mother," Goldiner said. "She loved her children, but she lacked parenting skills.

Often there were times we needed to do things with Ingrid and she disagreed." 

The children were always clean and well-dressed, Goldiner said. 

"But they were objects more than children," Goldiner said. "She didn't sit down or do things with them. She didn't help them with their homework or read to them." 

Still, Goldiner said, "I never thought she would do that to her children." 

The school had referred Simmons and her daughter to other agencies to get help, but Goldiner would not say what agencies or what kind of help.

Ingrid had also sought help through the school's counselors, Goldiner said. 

"She was a very quiet, very beautiful girl," Goldiner said.

"She didn't talk a whole bunch. She expressed herself through pictures. 

"She drew a lot of trees. She loved trees," the principal said. 

One student who remembered the many trees the 10-year-old drew suggested the school plant one in her honor, Goldiner said. 

She said the tree will be planted soon. 

A high court in Liverpool, northeast England, ruled that it was ``lawful, rational and fair'' that Brady, who was jailed for life in 1966, be stopped from killing himself by refusing food. 

Brady, 62, had argued that he should be allowed to starve himself and not be force-fed through a tube by staff at the Ashworth high security mental hospital where he is serving his sentence. 

Brady and his accomplice and lover Myra Hindley were convicted of killing Lesley Ann Downey, 10, and Edward Evans, 17. 

Brady was also sentenced to life for murdering 12-year-old John Kilbride. 

The couple became known as the ``Moors Murderers'' because they buried their victims' bodies on the bleak Saddleworth Moor near Manchester in northern England. 

Twenty years after their conviction, Brady and Hindley confessed to killing Pauline Reade, 16, and Keith Bennett, 12. 

The killers recorded the cries of their victims as they tortured them. One tape heard in court during their trial featured the voice of Lesley Ann, filled with pain and fear, whimpering ``I want to see my mummy. Please God, help me.'' 

More than almost any others, the crimes of Hindley and Brady still prompt deep public revulsion in Britain and the issue of how long they should spend in jail has become a political decision. 

With public opinion so strong, no Home Secretary (interior minister) has ever felt able to rule that the couples' life sentences should mean anything other than imprisonment until death. 

Hindley, who has always refused to give up hope of being freed, has launched a fresh appeal against her sentence. 

But Brady seems resigned to the fact that he will die in jail and, faced with that future, has battled for the legal right to starve himself to death. 

The murderer has described Ashworth as a ``penal dustbin'' and complained that his treatment there is unpleasant and demoralising. He said staff were pumping cold liquid food into his stomach through a tube inserted into his nose. 

Brady was told of the judgment before it was announced in open court and returned to Ashworth to continue his sentence. 

Myra Hindley's lawyers will present a dossier of new evidence to the Appeal Court in London in an attempt to prove that she was forced to murder children by her accomplice Ian Brady. 

She is trying to overturn a ruling that life imprisonment means she should die in prison, and win the right to a parole hearing. 

Hindley claims that she can prove that she took part in the Moors murders only because Brady abused her, and threatened to kill her mother, grandmother and younger sister. But Brady has already retaliated, claiming that "33 years of duplicity" had driven "her into the realms of psychotic delusion and absurdity."

 Hindley's lawyers will allege that Brady bit, strangled, whipped, drugged and even blackmailed her into taking part in the murders. 

The new material includes photographs taken by Brady showing her naked with bruises and injuries caused by bites, whips and canes. 

But her tactics are expected to backfire because Brady, 60, now a patient at Ashworth Special Hospital in Merseyside, is threatening to release "sick" letters she wrote to him up to six years after they were convicted. 

Hindley, 56, who is held in Highpoint category C prison in Suffolk, has been granted legal aid to go to the Court of Appeal in London. She is not expected to appear in person for the hearing, which follows her unsuccessful challenge last year to the decision by Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, that she should stay in prison for the rest of her life. 

A 35-page judgment was delivered at the High Court in London by Lord Bingham, the Lord Chief Justice, ruling that Mr. Straw's decision was lawful. Hindley's lawyers were granted leave to appeal. At the hearing she will attempt to challenge Mr. Straw's ruling and the decisions of successive Home Secretaries who have decided that she should spend her life behind bars despite the fact that she had served more than an earlier "tariff" of 30 years. 

She was jailed for life in 1966 for the murders of Edward Evans and Lesley Ann Downey. In 1985, she confessed to involvement in three additional murders. 

Brady's alleged treatment will be one ground in the appeal. The other will be evidence that she is not likely to re-offend. But Winnie Johnson, the mother of one of Hindley's five victims, 12-year-old Keith Bennett, said: "If she ever tries to get out she will be dead." 

This latest court action represents the third strategy Hindley has adopted since conviction. 

At first she stayed silent, and then later revealed evidence of other murders in a fruitless bid to convince the public that she had reformed. Now she is claiming that she took part in the crimes unwillingly. 

In a series of interviews given from jail earlier this year to a newspaper, Hindley said Brady had forced her to take part in the crimes. 

Her new evidence includes allegations that Brady drugged her grandmother to show he could commit the "perfect murder" and also drugged Hindley so that he could take pornographic photographs. He threatened to blackmail her with them. 

She is also claiming that Brady beat her with a stick, raped her and bit her. Hindley also said that Brady threatened her with a rifle and a knife, beat her with a broom and strangled her until she was unconscious to practice for the murders. 

Their first victim was Pauline Reade. She said:

 "After the murder, as we were driving home, he told me that if I'd shown any signs of backing out, I would have finished up in the same grave as Pauline . . . I just said, 'I know'." 

Asked why she had never made the claims about Brady before, she said:

 "I suffered dreadful abuse at Brady's hands but I didn't say anything about it for a long time. I felt so guilty and, frankly, I felt I deserved what I got." 

Brady has retaliated by saying the pictures were faked and the bruises were lipstick marks. He has threatened to release letters she sent to him after their arrest in which she suggested Brady should get someone to throw acid on Brett, the four-year-old son of Ann West, mother of victim Lesley Ann Downey. 

Only three years ago Hindley said: 

"I am not seeking to blame Ian Brady for what I am personally responsible for, or even to apportion blame. And whatever mitigating factors there were, my own conscience and acute awareness of my own culpability tell me the unpalatable truth that - excepting God's mercy - I have no excuses or explanations to absolve me for my behavior after the first offense." 

Brady has condemned Hindley's attempt to blame him for the killings and released a six-page letter he sent to the Home Secretary. Brady wrote: 

"Hindley, in her usual Barbara Cartland prose, has created a Victorian melodrama in which she portrays herself as being forced to murder serially, by being drugged, blackmailed, whipped, raped, battered, having her family threatened with slaughter, bitten, strangled etc., etc. At first I was staggered and appalled, then as the catalogue of feverish crimes mounted to stultification level, I slowly realized that desperation had finally driven her over the top. It appears that the neurosis bred by her own pathological machinations has developed into psychosis. 

She appears to be suffering from a histrionic personality disorder, adopting manipulative attention seeking behavior . . . an obsessive compulsive personality disorder, concealing a strong tendency towards rebellion and acting on impulse." 

Brady said that he will offer Hindley's "sick" letters to the highest bidder. 

Any payment, he says, should go to victims' families. 

Legal experts predicted that Hindley would fail in her attempt to appeal against Mr. Straw's ruling. One said: 

"I think this is the legal equivalent of clutching at straws." 

Privately Home Office officials speculate whether it would be possible for any Government to release Hindley. The court case is expected to last two days. A ruling will be delivered later. 

Hindley, jailed for life for her part in the Moors murders, was told that she will never be freed. 

Official notification of the decision by Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, was given to Hindley in Durham jail, where she is now in the 31st year of her sentence. She is among about 25 life prisoners, ranging from serial murderers to those convicted of some of the worst terrorist atrocities of recent years, who are regarded as subject to a "whole life tariff"."

Alan West, the husband of Lesley Ann's mother, said the family was delighted that Hindley would not be freed. 

"We're absolutely over the moon," he said. "It's totally the right decision. She should never be let out and I'm glad she knows that." 

Hindley's lawyers, Taylor Nichol, said Mr. Howard's decision was both unlawful and inhumane, and that she was taking legal advice on a possible challenge in the courts. 

In a statement, the firm accused Mr. Howard of bowing to political pressure and public opinion rather than considering the merits of her case. 

"It fails to reflect the views of all the judiciary consulted in her case that she serve less than her co-defendant, Brady," the lawyers said. 

"It represents an unjustifiable and irrational leap from the 30-year period originally fixed by the Home Secretary in 1985." 

The decision failed to take account of "her exceptional progress in prison and genuine remorse" and fettered the Home Secretary's discretion under the 1991 Criminal Justice Act to release her, the statement said. 

The lawyers pointed out that Hindley's trial judge had said only that she should be kept in prison for a very long time. 

In 1978, the advice of Lord Widgery, then Lord Chief Justice, was that she should serve a shorter term than Brady. 

In 1982, eight years before Mr. Waddington imposed the "whole life" tariff, Lord Lane as Lord Chief Justice had recommended that she serve 25 years. He reiterated this advice in 1985 but the Home Office increased the provisional tariff to 30 years in the same year. 

The Rev Peter Timms, a south London Methodist minister who has taken a keen interest in her case, described Mr. Howard's decision as "disgraceful." 

Mr. Timms, a former prison governor, said:

 "The Home Secretary's decision to give a natural life tariff in the case of Myra Hindley is a gross injustice. It treats her differently to every other life sentence prisoner and it's now clear that she is a political prisoner." 

He said it was a sad reflection on the system of justice that one woman had been singled out because of "concerted adverse publicity over 30 years." 

The decision to keep her in prison without any justification under normal rules had been taken "for no other purpose than votes."

Mr. Timms added: 

"She is not dangerous and every report on her has confirmed that for almost 20 years. This is an injustice, and injustice for one in a civilized society is injustice for all, and ought to be resisted by all thoughtful people."

Witnesses have said they saw a young blond girl walking her dog with two men in their early 20's the afternoon she disappeared 

The dog was found tied to a tree the following day. 

No arrests have been made.

Although the girls' mother, Carmen Hernandez, was working nearby he did not shoot her.

Hernandez-Alberto then fled the scene and was apprehended 16 hours later, 1,000 miles away from the scene.

As Gonzalez was being treated, friends working on the family van, discovered Donna's body and her 2-year-old sister crying nearby. The toddler, who is Hernandez's daughter was not hurt. 

The shootings took place shortly after the girls' mother told Hernandez-Alberto, who has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder, she wanted a divorce.

 According to police there was a history of he and the girls not getting along and it seemed he may have blamed the marital problems on them.

UPDATE

August 27, 2001 -- A man who thought he could defend himself better than his attorneys, then changed his mind just before closing arguments, was swiftly convicted of first-degree murder for shooting his two stepdaughters.

Pedro Hernandez-Alberto was found guilty Friday of murdering 29-year-old Isela Gonzalez and 11-year-old Donna Julssa Berezovsky, in Apollo Beach in January 1999. Detectives said Hernandez shot them in the back because his wife had asked him for a divorce, and he blamed the sisters.

Hernandez chose to defend himself during the trial. He delivered his opening statement, and he was expected to cross-examine witnesses, though he questioned only one. He mostly rambled about his bad childhood, his poor health and the abuse he claims to have suffered in jail.

With testimony finished and summations close at hand Friday, Hernandez changed his mind and recalled his attorneys, Danny Hernandez and Charles Traina, for the closing arguments.

The jury deliberated for one hour before returning with the guilty verdict.

``Justice has been done for my two daughters,'' said Carmen Gonzalez. ``Nothing can bring back my daughters, but this at least is a small relief.''

Hernandez, who could face the death penalty, would be the first Mexican national on Florida's death row, said Enrique Romero, Mexico's deputy consul in Orlando.

Marissa was found in the cab of Bermea's tractor-trailer rig. He and Rivera, were living and sleeping in the truck along with Rivera's older child. 

Prosecutors believe Marissa was killed by a blow to the head after she would not stop crying. 

She also had signs of previous injuries and had not been fed for at least 18 hours before her death. 

UPDATE

Aug. 15, 1998 -- The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has denied the appeal of a Texas truck driver, who was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of his young niece.

The court on Thursday denied Edwardo Bermea's argument that errors occurred during his trial.

The Nazareth resident was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison in the death of 5-month-old Marissa Bermea.

The infant was found dead in January 1995 in the cab of Bermea's tractor-trailer rig outside a truck stop in Oklahoma City.

The child died from brain swelling and prosecutors believe she was killed by a blow to the head.

Bermea testified during his trial that he dropped Marissa in a motel room about 10 days before her death. He said he noticed some swelling.

In a separate trial, Marissa's mother, Rachel Rivera, was convicted of first-degree murder for permitting the abuse to occur and was sentenced to life imprisonment as well.

Rivera's mother, Irma Rivera of Dimmitt, had no comment on Thursday's ruling.

In his appeal, Bermea said errors occurred when the judge gave the jury a general verdict form without requiring specification of whether jurors found him guilty or not guilty of causing or permitting the death.

The appeals court said that was not an error.

Whether the crime of child abuse murder was committed because Bermea permitted the abuse or because he caused it goes only to the factual basis of the crime of child abuse murder, the court said.

The jury's unanimous verdict that he was guilty of the crime satisfies due process, the court said.

Bermea also argued that errors occurred because the trial court allowed prosecutors to introduce portions of Bermea's videotaped statement that included references to Rachel Rivera's statements. The court rejected that argument. 

Cassie Bernall 17 
Steven Curnow 14 
Corey Depooter 17 
Kelly Fleming 16 
Matthew Ketcher 16 
Daniel Mauser 15 
Daniel Rohrbough 15
Rachel Scott 17 
John Tomlin 16
Kyle Velasquez - 16
Isaiah Shoals 18 
Lauren Townsend 18 
William "Dave" Sanders 47 

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