Killer mom Marci Webber who almost decapitated four-year-old daughter moans about psychiatric hospital and defends Lindsay Clancy as parole hearing looms

A killer mother who slashed her four-year-old daughter’s throat before trying to kill herself has complained about hospital conditions and defended Lindsay Clancy as her own parole hearing looms.

Marci Webber, 59, stabbed her youngest child, Magdalene ‘Maggie’ Webber, to death in November 2010 while visiting family in Bloomingdale, Illinois.

The mother-of-three drugged the little girl and then cut her throat before slashing her own wrists while suffering from a psychotic episode.

Webber was charged with five counts of first-degree murder, but in June 2012 an Illinois judge found her not guilty by reason of insanity.

She was placed into state mental health custody and has remained institutionalized ever since after filing two failed petitions for release.

Webber, an Army veteran, is now seeking release again from a hospital that she told The New York Times is the ‘most untherapeutic place you could ever be in.’

In a phone interview with the newspaper, Webber alleged the involuntary institutionalization is harming her physical and mental health.

‘God, I can’t stand living like this. Do you hear this?’ she asked as a fellow patient could be heard screaming in the background.

Webber has said that while she takes full responsibility for her actions in Maggie’s death, she believes they were caused by a temporary psychosis resulting from her prolonged use, followed by a sudden withdrawal, of antidepressants and anti-psychotic medications.

She argues that years of imprisonment will not protect children from dying at the hands of their ill parents, even citing the recent case involving Clancy.

The 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse strangled her three children to death at her Massachusetts home in 2023 and then tried to kill herself.

Clancy said she heard voices instructing her to kill five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson and eight-month-old Callan Clancy, her trial heard.

Prosecutors acknowledged that Clancy had mental health problems that included months of treatment and a stay in a psychiatric hospital, but argued that she knew what she was doing when she killed the children.

The state pointed to Clancy’s journal entries and Apple Notes which they alleged showed she made a calculated, premeditated decision to kill her three children.

The defense argued the writings demonstrated her severe postpartum psychosis and declining mental health.

Webber, in her interview with the Times, echoed the defense’s claims, alleging that writings do not prove Clancy’s state of sanity.

‘Planning has nothing to do with whether a person is psychotic and insane,’ she said. ‘You will have things that you’re doing that seem totally normal, but on the inside –unless people ask questions – you’re not normal.’ 

Webber added that when she was in her own state of psychosis, she was convinced that a satanic group of sex traffickers, or Satan himself, wanted to kidnap Maggie and sell her on the Internet as a sex slave.

She then went on to kill the child in order to prevent her from being exploited, Webber’s murder trial heard.

Webber told the newspaper that while in that state she kept a knife under her mattress for protection and felt ‘evil’ as a ‘physical sensation’ on her skin.

She even went to the grocery store seeking a pill to end her and Maggie’s lives before they ended up being captured by the alleged Satanists.

‘You think you can handle it,’ she said, noting that she repeatedly denied being unwell when questioned by concerned loved ones. ‘You think, “Oh, it’s going to go away or something.” Until it’s too late.’ 

The judge in Clancy’s three-week-long triple-murder declared a mistrial in September after the jury split 11 to 1 in favor of acquitting her.

Prosecutors have yet to decide whether they will put the case in front of a jury for a second time. They could retry her on first-degree murder charges, seek lesser charges or drop the case entirely.

Clancy remains charged with murder and is expected to stay at a psychiatric hospital until her case is resolved.

Webber opted not to have a jury and her trial lasted one day. Although he found her not guilty, DuPage County Judge George Bakalis ruled that she be confined to a secured mental health facility for up to 100 years, telling the court: ‘Love, when coupled with paranoia, apparently can be a very destructive force.’ 

She will appear in court again next month in an attempt to convince the judge that she no longer benefits from institutionalization and is not likely to harm herself or others. 

But prosecutors, citing an attempted suicide, say Webber is still dangerous and demonstrates ‘aggressive, unruly and hostile behavior.’ They also argue her symptoms worsen when she stops taking her medication.

It is unclear which specific judge Webber will appear before, but it will not be Bakalis as he retired in 2020.

On November 3, 2010, Webber was visiting her family in Bloomington, Illinois, when she began experiencing what later would be described in court as uncontrolled paranoid delusions. 

She drugged Maggie with Benadryl before cutting her throat with a four-inch knife with such force that she almost severed the toddler’s head. 

She then scrawled the words ‘Divine Mercy,’ ‘Satan’ and ‘evil’ in Maggie’s blood on the bathroom wall and set up a recording device to capture the sounds of angels carrying her and her daughter to heaven.

It was Webber’s eldest daughter, then 18, who found Maggie’s body in the bathtub and called 911, telling a dispatcher there was blood everywhere and that the little girl appeared to be dead.

Before Webber was taken into custody by Bloomingdale police, she had slashed her own wrists and throat in an apparent attempt to end her life, but survived.

Webber previously told the Chicago Tribune that she ‘had no concept of pain’ she was inflicting on Maggie or that she was hurting her.

‘I thought I was saving her,’ she said. ‘I believed I was on a different plane and that we’re just temporary bodies, like paper, like a jar of clay.’