A Michigan woman whose infant daughter was found dead in a trash bag apparently told an investigator that the cartoon character SpongeBob ordered her to kill the girl.
Woman says SpongeBob ordered her to kill daughter while in heroin withdrawal
Justine Johnson, 22, said she hallucinated that the fictional character ordered her to kill her three-year-old daughter or she herself would die while in heroin withdrawal.
Johnson allegedly stabbed Sutton Mosser several times on Sept. 16, 2021, before putting her body in a black trash bag.
The girl had just had her birthday two days before her death.
The woman has been charged with felony murder and first-degree child abuse.
On Friday, Ryan Eberline, a Child Protective Services investigator, testified during a preliminary hearing before Iosco County District Judge Christopher Marin, Michigan media outlet MLive reported.
The officer, who interviewed Johnson on Oct. 1, 2021, said the woman had claimed she left her mother’s home in Oscoda, where she lived, and passed out in a cemetery the day the girl was killed.
“She told me that she did not remember the details of what happened at the time of what happened to Sutton, that she was experiencing hallucinations due to heroin withdrawal and not having slept for about two weeks,” Eberline told the court.
The investigator added: “She was having hallucinations of the television ordering her to take her daughter’s life or they would kill her. It was SpongeBob who was saying these things on TV. If she didn’t do what he did to her daughter, they would kill her.
She said she was afraid for her life and that she had gone crazy.”
Knesley Johnson Jr, the woman’s brother, said he didn’t notice anything unusual about his sister before he left for work that fateful day. When he returned on Sept.
17, 2021, he asked his younger brother about Johnson and Sutton.
When the 17-year-old brother went looking for them, he saw a girl’s foot sticking out of a bag. The teen testified Friday that when he found his sister in the bathroom on Sept. 16, he saw her “doing lines” of what he perceived to be cocaine, though he wasn’t sure.
