Case file
Christine Falling: the babysitter whose victims were ruled natural deaths
Six people died around her in two and a half years. Every death but the last was written off as natural, and she was hired again each time.
- Full nameChristine Laverne Falling, born Slaughter
- BornPerry, Florida, 12 March 1963
- Press nameThe Killer Babysitter
- Deaths in her careSix, between February 1980 and July 1982
- Confessed toFive children and one elderly man
- Convicted ofThree counts of first-degree murder, December 1982
- StatusServing life at Lowell Correctional Institution, Ocala, Florida
The striking thing about this case is not how the deaths happened. It is how many times they were explained.
Between February 1980 and July 1982, six people died while in the care of Christine Falling, a teenager in the Florida Panhandle who took work minding other people's children. Encephalitis. Myocarditis. A viral infection. Sudden infant death syndrome. Each was signed off as natural, and after each one she was hired again — sometimes by neighbours who knew about the last.
She was nineteen when the sixth death finally stopped it.
Perry, Florida
She was born Christine Laverne Slaughter in Perry, Florida, on 12 March 1963. Her father was sixty-five at her birth and her mother was sixteen. The family lived below the poverty line and she spent stretches of her childhood in orphanages.
In September 1977, at fourteen, she was married to a man of twenty. The marriage lasted about six weeks. In the two years after the divorce she was admitted to hospital some fifty times, reporting symptoms that were never resolved into a single diagnosis; she was diagnosed with epilepsy, and by sixteen had been formally recorded as incapacitated.
None of that explains what she did, and this article is not offering it as an excuse. It matters for a narrower reason: it is the reason no one in a position to ask questions treated her as an adult with responsibility for children, and the reason her own accounts of events were discounted in both directions — first as confusion, later as confession.
Six deaths in two and a half years
- February 1980Cassidy Johnson, 2, dies in Blountstown. The death is initially put down to encephalitis; a doctor's misgivings do not result in a full inquiry.
- 1980–1981Jeffrey Davis, 4, dies in Lakeland; his cause of death is recorded as myocarditis. Days later Joseph Spring, 2, dies in the same household. That death is recorded as a viral infection.
- July 1981William Swindle, 77, dies in Perry. She was working in his house that day.
- 1981Jennifer Daniels, 8 months, dies in Perry. The finding is sudden infant death syndrome.
- July 1982Travis DeWayne Coleman, 10 weeks, dies in Blountstown. This time the autopsy finds suffocation, and the case does not close.
Five children and one adult, across two counties, over about twenty-nine months. Considered one at a time, each was a plausible tragedy. Considered together, they were a pattern that nobody assembled until the last one.
The confession
She was arrested in July 1982, shortly after Travis Coleman's death. Under questioning she described smothering children with pillows and blankets, and used her own word for it — smotheration. She said she had heard voices telling her to kill.
On Travis Coleman she said: “I just choked him, no apparent reason. I just picked him off his pallet and choked him to death and laid him back down.” Asked why, she said: “I killed 'em. That's all I got to say. I don't know why.”
In December 1982 she pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder — Cassidy Johnson, Jennifer Daniels and Travis Coleman — and was sentenced to life. The guilty plea is the reason the state did not pursue the death penalty. The other three deaths she confessed to were never charged, and remain confessions rather than convictions. That distinction is worth keeping: she is a living person, and the courts found her guilty of three.
Where the sources disagree
Anyone writing a confident, precise timeline of this case is smoothing over real gaps in the record.
The exact dates. Cassidy Johnson's death is given as 22 February 1980 in some accounts and 28 February 1980 in others. Jennifer Daniels is placed in July 1981 by some sources and in the autumn of that year by others. The deaths of Jeffrey Davis and Joseph Spring are dated to 1980 in some accounts and 1981 in others. We have given months and years where the sources agree and stayed vaguer where they do not.
The count. Six deaths are attributed. Three are convictions. Five children and one man are what she confessed to. All three numbers are correct answers to different questions, which is why you will see all three quoted.
Her medical history. The fifty hospital admissions and the epilepsy diagnosis are widely reported and appear in the standard reference literature, but the underlying records are not public, and the accounts of what she was actually diagnosed with vary.
What the case actually shows
It is easy to file this under monstrous individual and stop. The more uncomfortable reading is in the paperwork. A two-year-old, a four-year-old, a two-year-old, a seventy-seven-year-old man, an eight-month-old and a ten-week-old died around the same teenager, in two small Florida towns, and five of those deaths were closed as natural causes.
Sudden infant death syndrome was a routine finding in the early 1980s and a genuinely common one. That is precisely what made it usable. The case is remembered partly because it sits among a group of cases from the same period that changed how repeat infant deaths in a single household are investigated.
She remains in custody at Lowell Correctional Institution in Ocala. Parole was refused in November 2017; her presumptive release date is recorded as 2254.
Questions people ask
How many children did Christine Falling kill?
She was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder — Cassidy Johnson, Jennifer Daniels and Travis Coleman. She confessed to five children and one elderly man. Six deaths in total are attributed to her.
Why weren't the earlier deaths investigated?
They were each recorded as natural: encephalitis, myocarditis, a viral infection and sudden infant death syndrome. SIDS in particular was a common finding at the time. No one connected the deaths across two counties until the autopsy on Travis Coleman in July 1982 found suffocation.
Is Christine Falling still alive?
Yes. She is serving a life sentence at Lowell Correctional Institution in Ocala, Florida. Parole was denied in November 2017.
What did she mean by “smotheration”?
It was her own word for how she killed — smothering children with pillows and blankets. She also told investigators she had heard voices telling her to kill.
Why did she not receive the death penalty?
She pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder in December 1982. The plea is the reason the state did not pursue a capital sentence.
The page this portrait comes from
The full page — Christine Falling at the size you color her, with the case details drawn in around the portrait — is in Bloody Alphabet II. Twenty-six portraits, one killer to a letter, printed single-sided so markers don't bleed through.
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Sources
Every date and name on this page was checked against at least two of the following. Where they disagree, the disagreement is stated in the text rather than resolved silently.
- Christine FallingWikipedia
- Florida Man Murders: Story Of Killer Babysitter Christine FallingOxygen
- “Killer Babysitter” will stay behind barsWJHG, 2017
- ‘Killer babysitter’ turned down for paroleNews4Jax, 2017
- Florida Baby Sitter Pleads Guilty to Murdering Three in Her CareAssociated Press / The New York Times, 4 December 1982