Mom Admits Smothering 2-Year-Old Twins to Death Before Bodies Were Found in Backseat
Tenia Campbell pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of her daughters, Jasmine and Jaida
A Long Island, N.Y., mother has pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder more than four years after she suffocated her 2-year-old twin daughters.
Tenia Campbell, of Medford, pleaded guilty to the charges on Wednesday and is expected to be sentenced to 20 years to life in prison, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office.
In 2019, the mother, now 28, was arrested by police in Suffolk County, who found Campbell and her daughters Jasmine and Jaida parked in her minivan after Campbell's mother called 911 to report that she was threatening to kill her daughters. The toddlers were found unresponsive in cardiac arrest and were pronounced dead shortly after at a nearby hospital, PEOPLE previously reported.
“This is such a sad and tragic case. Those two little girls looked to this defendant, their mother, for protection and love. Instead, she executed them,” District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney said in a release. “The defendant has one thing those twin girls will never have again: life," he added. "But now, this defendant will get to live out the majority of her life behind bars.”
Campbell's attorney John Halverson told PEOPLE that Campbell “wanted to put this behind her" and "lives it every day of what her actions were and what she’s done."
"There was some closure to this," he said. "Part of her is now able to move forward.”
Related: Suicidal Mom Charged With Killing Her 2-Year-Old Twins: 'She Was Hysterical'
As the DA's office notes, Campbell’s mother first called police at 2:37 p.m. on June 27, 2019 to report that Campbell was threatening to kill Jasmine and Jaida. She also reportedly claimed that Campbell said she would end her own life.
Campbell "was at times hysterical" and would not share her location as she claimed the twins were already dead, now-former Suffolk County Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart said in 2019.
Police reportedly found Campbell's parked minivan at around 4 p.m. at the entrance of Montauk County Park in Montauk. As CBS News reported in 2019, police used cell-phone tracking to locate the vehicle. Hart said at the time that Campbell screamed for officers to shoot her.
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Citing a police statement based on the testimony of the victims' grandmother, CBS News also reported that Campbell claimed she killed the children "with my bare hands" and that she was "driving to a beach" to "find the ocean and walk into it so she could be with her babies in heaven."
The outlet also shared that the grandmother claimed Campbell had a "very long history" of mental disorder, depression, bipolar and anxiety and that she was "acting very irrational and angry."
Campbell's then-4-year-old son was in his father's custody at the time of her arrest.
Campbell, who pleaded guilty before Suffolk County Supreme Court Justice Richard Ambro on Wednesday, has a sentencing conference on Jan. 25.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text "STRENGTH" to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.
If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
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