SC Mom Who Killed 2 Kids, Injured Husband in 2013 to Serve Life in Prison

Mike Simpson cried as his wife was sentenced to life in prison for killing their children in their South Carolina home. He has one of the bullets fired still in his skull, but he has lost almost all his memories of his 7-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son.



A jury found Suzanna Simpson, 38, guilty of two counts of murder Thursday along with attempted murder for trying to kill her husband. Circuit Judge Brian Gibbons immediately handed down the harshest sentence he could, saying Simpson deserved it.



All the while, Mike Simpson, in a wheelchair and with almost no short-term memory, dabbed away tears. His mother told the judge he was an amazing fighter, surviving not just more than one gunshot to his head, but the unimaginable grief of losing his kids and becoming dependent on others.



"His whole family has been taken away from him," Allison Simpson said.



The case is another example of guns and mental illness intersecting in a country that struggles with both. One month before the killings in this county of 120,000 people, the same prosecutors, defense lawyers and even psychologist were in the same courtroom. Susan Hendricks, a woman with multiple personalities, pleaded guilty but mentally ill and received a life sentence for killing her two adult sons, her ex-husband and her stepmother.



A year before the latest killings, Suzanna Simpson spent six days in the hospital for severe mental illness and her doctors urged her husband to get all of the guns out of their house for safety.