KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – Authorities say a Missouri woman confessed to killing her blind and autistic son, telling investigators she tried to abandon the severely disabled 19-year-old to the care of God before leading him into a field where he eventually died and where she was found lying half-naked nearby.
Prosecutors in southwestern Missouri’s Polk County charged Kimberly Lightwine, 42, on Saturday with second-degree murder in Austin Anderson’s death, although information about the case wasn’t released until Tuesday. Lightwine, whose bond was set at $250,000, also is charged with elder abuse, a crime that also pertains to acts against disabled adults.
Lightwine made her first court appearance Wednesday, entered no plea and was scheduled to be returned to court Sept. 21. Her public defender, Dewayne Perry, didn’t immediately respond to a Wednesday phone message seeking comment.
Lightwine, of Aldrich, was found Aug. 29 lying face-down in her underwear in a field near the body of her son, who was wearing only a soiled diaper. Investigators believe Anderson, who was incapable of tending to himself and was described by his father as having the cognitive abilities of an elementary school student, may have died as many as three days earlier from dehydration and the lack of hydrocortisone for an adrenal gland issue.
In a probable cause statement that accompanied the criminal complaint, Polk County sheriff’s Detective Billy Simpson wrote that Lightwine told him she took her son to a stranger’s field near Morrisville while high on methamphetamine.