Mother Promised to Murder Her Son Before His Birthday

Your brother turns eighteen tomorrow. Your mother has spent weeks saying he will never make it there

At 4:15 a.m you hear her tell 911, “My son won’t stop breathing”

Then you realize she is not calling because Austin is dying. She is calling because he is still alive.

From the hallway, you hear the operator ask if Austin wanted her to kill him.

Your mother says yes.

Then she says she has been trying for hours.

The pills were supposed to make Austin fall asleep and never wake up.

Instead, he kept breathing.

Your mother sounds almost confused by that.

She tells 911 it was supposed to be easy.

Then the operator asks what happened when the overdose failed.

Your mother goes quiet.

“It got out of hand.”

Then she starts talking about the knife.One cut was supposed to be enough.

It was not one.

The operator keeps her talking while police race toward the apartment.

Your mother keeps explaining the same thing.

She did not do it out of hatred.She says she did it out of love.

She says the world would not be okay for Austin.

Then someone pounds on the door.

Your mother opens it holding a kitchen knife near her shoulder.

Officers order her to drop it.She does not.

They tase her.

The knife hits the hallway floor.Then she reaches for it again.

After they restrain her, she tells police one more thing.

She thought they were supposed to kill her too.

Then officers enter Austin’s bedroom.He is seventeen.

His eighteenth birthday is one day away.

And now the promise your mother kept repeating finally has a body attached to it.

In court, Katie can no longer hide behind the word love.

The judge asks if she drugged Austin.

She says yes.

He asks if Austin lost control of his body.

Yes.

He asks if she used the knife while Austin was helpless.

Yes.

Then comes the question every excuse has been avoiding.

Did what she did cause Austin’s death?

“Yes.”

Katie had said she was saving him from turning eighteen.

But February 22 arrived anyway.

The birthday came.Austin did not.

The court sentences Katie to 60 to 90 years in prison.

She tells the judge that, in her broken thinking, she believed she was saving him.

But protecting someone cannot mean taking every tomorrow away from them.Austin was afraid of a future he never got the chance to outgrow.

Katie tried to stop one birthday.

Her sentence will carry her through decades of birthdays Austin never received.

She thought she was saving him from tomorrow.

Tomorrow came anyway. Austin didn’t.