A Frankfort woman is facing murder charges after she is alleged to have killed her 2-year-old son Tuesday, according to Will County prosecutors.
Corie Walsh, 40, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder, according to Will County prosecutors.
Walsh had reportedly recently become interested in the case of Lindsay Clancy, who was on trial in the deaths of her three children in January 2023. Walsh had been discussing the case in a group chat with friends three hours before her own child was found unresponsive, prosecutors said.
The case, which ended in a mistrial Friday, has been live-streamed the last several weeks and drawn national attention.
Frankfort police responded to a call of an unresponsive child at Walsh’s home in the 22700 block of Brook Stone Court around 4 p.m. and found a neighbor performing CPR on a small child in the basement, prosecutors said. The neighbor said Barrett Walsh, 2, had been hanging from the rafters and was already without a pulse when he was discovered.
A medical examiner’s report determined the child died due to asphyxia, prosecutors said.
Police then found Walsh upstairs in a bathtub fully clothed and surrounded by bloody water, prosecutors said. The same neighbor said she had taken a knife from Walsh and held a cloth to the inside of Walsh’s leg where she had harmed herself.
Walsh reportedly told police her child was the “devil” and “anti-Christ,” and described to officers the way she had killed him, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said Walsh explained she intended to harm her other children and husband when they returned home. Another infant in the home was not harmed. Walsh’s two other children were away during the incident, and her husband was not in Illinois at the time.
Despite the rarity of the occurrences, there have been several recent cases in the Chicago area in which parents have harmed or killed their children.
In July 2025, Logan Square mother Wendy Tolbert was similarly accused of killing her 4-year-old son and seriously injuring her two other children before attempting to burn down their home.
Tolbert had also said her children were “possessed by the devil” while admitting to police that she had harmed her children, according to prosecutors. She had previously struggled with mental health and recently been diagnosed with cancer. A date in her ongoing trial is set for next Wednesday.
Experts previously told the Sun-Times that many injuries and deaths of children could have been prevented had more support — specifically mental health care — reached parents sooner.