MILWAUKEE — A Wisconsin woman was charged Friday with the murders of three infants in the 1980s, one her own child and two others she babysat, according to a criminal complaint.
Nancy Moronez, 60, of Oshkosh admitted drowning her 2-week-old son in Franklin in March 1980. She also told police she suffocated a 6-month-old boy she babysat in Milwaukee in March 1984 and a 2-month-old girl she babysat in Milwaukee in February 1985, according to the complaint filed in Milwaukee County Circuit Court.
The infants' deaths were originally ruled to have been caused by sudden infant death syndrome, but Moronez's daughter told Waukesha police in March 2015 that her mother had actually killed her brother, according to the complaint.
That prompted police to reopen investigations into all three deaths.
According to the criminal complaint:
Moronez's daughter told Waukesha police that her mother admitted killing her brother by suffocating him with a black garbage bag until he stopped crying.
After contacting the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office, police learned Moronez was also connected to the deaths of the other infants, and she was arrested by Franklin and Milwaukee police Tuesday.
During an interview, Moronez told investigators that the day her son died in 1980, he started crying for no reason, and when she called her doctor’s office a nurse just told her the baby was having a bad day. Moronez said that was "bad advice" and that she felt helpless.
She said she decided to give the boy a bath to "calm him down" and that he “was in the water too long” and turned purple. Later, however, she said she lied to her daughter about the garbage bag and said she held the boy down in the water until he was dead.
She then took the boy out of the tub, dried him off, diapered him and dressed him before calling rescue personnel.
During the same interview, Moronez admitted suffocating the 6-month-old boy who had been placed in her care in March 1984 by a couple looking for a babysitter in the newspaper.
She said the boy was crying when she took him upstairs with the baby blanket that he had been dropped off with and held it “real tight against the face.”
She then brought the baby back down to the first floor and put him in a carrier and told everyone that he had just stopped breathing.
On Feb. 15, 1985, Milwaukee firefighters went to Moronez's home and asked her what was going on.
She pointed to a plastic seat on the floor, saying, "There it is," before firefighters found the 2-month-old girl she was babysitting, who was cold, blue and not breathing.
Moronez recognized a firefighter who responded to the second boy's death the year before and asked, “Do you remember me?”
When the firefighter said he did, Moronez said, “I told my husband I didn’t want to babysit anymore.”
During the interview with police, Moronez admitted suffocating the girl the same way she killed the boy the year before, but also pinching the girl's nose and mouth.
“I can’t take kids that constantly cry,” Moronez told police.
She also said that when her daughter was born, she made a promise to God that she would not do anything to her daughter to hurt her if she was crying.
Later in the interview, she said, “I made a promise, but I broke it.”
Moronez was in the Milwaukee County Jail on Friday. State court records showed her bail set at $35,000, however, jail records show her bail set at $100,000.
If convicted, Moronez could be sentenced to up to 20 years for each killing, according to the complaint.
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