The crimes are dramatically different.
Two are accused of murdering their children, one is Doomsday Mom Lori Vallow, and another is a suspected black widow accused of masterminding a hit on their spouse.
Women kill a lot less often than men, although those numbers are climbing. But what doesn’t usually happen are four high-profile murder trials involving women unfolding at the same time.
Yet that’s what happening in Arizona now.
“I think whenever there’s a female killer involved the interest is heightened,” trial lawyer Tom Ryan told the Arizona Republic. “I think it’s even more shocking when a mother, who has an image in America as being a nurturer of the children, commits such a heinous act.”
The Arizona cast features accused homicidal cult mom Lori Vallow, alleged child killers Yui Inoue and Rachel Henry, and Kimberly Lacount, who faces the death penalty for orchestrating the murder of her husband with her new paramour.
Ryan said: “The reason we are seeing many trials of mothers right now is many times when there’s a case of filicide, a mother or father will also commit the act of suicide, so there isn’t going to be a follow-up trial.”
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Phoenix mom Rachel Henry, 27, confessed to killing her three children in 2020. She initially pleaded not guilty but a mountain of evidence changed her mind.
According to court records, Henry sang songs to her children, Zane Ezri Henry, Mireya Henry and Catalaya Kyeana Rios as she smothered them to death. Afterwards, she lined up their tiny bodies in her living room as if they were sleeping.
With the death penalty on the table, she pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and is expected to be sentenced to life in prison. Her children were all under the age of four.
Pearla Rebolledo, the children’s great aunt, told cops: “The girl is weird. I’m afraid we’re gonna come home one day and find her drowning the kids in the tub or something.”
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Cops claim Yui Inoue was furious with her husband. The Tempe mom of two was so furious that she allegedly killed her two children with a hatchet on May 15, 2021.
Prosecutors alleged in their opening statements last week that Inoue was “motivated by anger” in the wake of their separation. She was about to return to her native Japan and wanted her estranged husband to pay up. Tragically, that did not happen.
But the dad was worried and called the cops who saw what they believed were the children sleeping peacefully. When they returned later, nine-year-old Mia and seven-year-old Kai had been hacked to death with a hatchet.
Officers said their injuries “were too extensive to count.”
Yui Inoue allegedly told homicide detectives she heard voices that told her to kill the kids. At the time, she was being investigated for neglecting the children.
Inoue has pleaded not guilty. She skipped appearing in court because she didn’t want to be on camera.
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Kimberly LaCount, 39, was deeply unhappy when her lesbian spouse, began transitioning from a woman to a man. But she soon found a new playmate in Kipling David Harris.
On June 6, 2016, LaCount phoned 911 in Glendale with reports of gunshots being fired. She lived at the home with her former partner, Alex Kuhn, 47, his parents and their children.
Alex was dead in the driveway in his Jeep. Inside were his mother Peggy, 65, and father Robert, 69. Peggy died, and her husband lived.
Eventually, the pair confessed. Harris claimed Alex Kuhn had been abusive to his gal pal — and deserved it.
“They deserve a lot more, they’re monsters,” Harris told cops. “I’ll sacrifice myself for the happiness of anybody. All they (LaCount and her children) wanted was happiness and I gave it to them.”
Ryan said of LaCount’s children, who will testify against her: “In the circumstances where you’re testifying against your own parent who murdered your family, that is a vastly different emotional burden for these young people to be carrying around.”
If convicted, LaCount faces the death penalty.
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Then, there is the rock star: “Doomsday Mom” Lori Vallow. Her murder trial is for the death of her fourth husband along with the attempted murder of her niece’s ex-husband.
Vallow, 51, has already been convicted of murdering her two children in Idaho and was sentenced to consecutive sentences of life in prison. Her paramour, Chad Daybell was sentenced to die.
Wherever the couple went, people seemed to die. She will be repping herself in two weeks on two conspiracy to commit murder charges.
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Criminal lawyer Tom Ryan said the four cases are so wildly different that none of them will play out in the same manner.
“There’s not one unifying motive in all of these cases that you could use a singular defence,” Ryan told the Republic.
In Arizona and elsewhere, the outcomes will be closely watched. So much for the feminine touch.