A mother accused of murdering her two infant daughters over a year apart had a suspicious search history, typing in keywords such as “how to kill someone and not get caught,” investigators said.
Police in Fairbanks, Alaska, arrested Stephany Lafountain, 23, on Thursday afternoon in connection with the deaths of a 13-month-old girl in November 2017 and a four-month-old girl in 2015.
“This is just an unimaginable tragedy,” Fairbanks Police Chief Eric Jewkes told reporters at a Thursday press conference. “We have a family, and, of course, we have a baby, that has suffered in obscurity, in silence.”
The death of the second infant set off a nine-month investigation where police discovered Lafountain’s suspicious search history. Investigators say Lafountain entered several search terms into her computer an hour before she called authorities to report her 13-month-old as unresponsive, including:
- Ways to suffocate
- Best ways to suffocate
- Ways to kill human with no proof
- Can drowning show in an autopsy report
- 16 steps to kill someone and not get caught
- How to: Commit the Perfect Murder
- Drowning and Forensics
- Suffocating and Smothering
Authorities launched the investigation in November 2017, shortly after Lafountain called the police about her 13-month-old. The child’s father, who is a soldier, had been away on a deployment at the time, and she also called family to assist in CPR efforts.
Doctors pronounced the 13-month-old dead four days later at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital due to not getting enough oxygen to her brain.
The 13-month-old’s death prompted investigators to look into the death of Lafountain’s four-month-old child in 2015. Officials pronounced the four-month-old dead just over an hour after Lafountain called to report her daughter unresponsive.
Police said they suspect the four-month-old died by suffocation but did not officially determine the child’s cause of death.
Lafountain was indicted on first and second-degree murder charges and remains in custody at Fairbanks Correctional Center.