Constance Fisher

Constance Margaret Fisher (née Sirois; March 26, 1929 – October 1, 1973) was an American serial mass murderer. Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, she killed three of her children in Maine in 1954, and after spending several years in a mental institution, she was released, only to kill three more of her children in 1966.

Deemed unfit to stand trial, she was hospitalized at the Augusta State Hospital, from where she managed to escape in 1973, but died in an accident shortly afterwards.

Early life Constance Margaret Sirois was born on March 26, 1929, in Oakland, Maine. She was abandoned by her birth parents, and later adopted by the Sirois family. Neighbors described Constance as a pretty and nice girl, although she was also considered "moody".

In 1946, the 17-year-old Sirois married 24-year-old Carl Marion Fisher, a WWII veteran employed at a car shop in the Maine Central Railroad. Worried that something was off, he contacted Dr. Richard Chasse, the physician who had been treating his wife for recent bouts of depression, and the men broke down the door. Carl then went inside and went to the bedroom, where he saw the corpses of Daniel and Deborah tucked in their beds, at first appearing to be asleep. He then stepped into the bathroom, where he found that his eldest son Richard had been drowned in the bathtub. While hospitalized there, she calmly explained that she had drowned the children one by one and she had done it because, as she claimed to one psychiatrist, "I wanted someone to baby me." In order to cure her, Fisher was given insulin injections and high doses of hormones, which would sometimes cause her to experience seizures. Shocked by the discovery, he ran towards the home of neighbor Howard Wood to use his telephone, as his home did not have one. Police were called to the scene, and after examining the crime scene, officers found the bodies of Michael and Kathleen tucked in their beds. Local authorities sought to charge her with murder, and after she was discharged, Constance was brought to Skowhegan in Somerset County for deliberations between prosecutors, before a decision was made for her to be tried in Kennebec County.

Murder charges and hospitalization Following her arraignment and while she was being held without bail, Attorney General Richard Dubord announced that the State would not request that the defendant undergo psychiatric treatment. Skowhegan-based attorney George W. Perkins was appointed as her attorney, while Dubord would be assisted by John Benoit and Richard Cohen. During a formal hearing, Dr. Price Kirkpatrick, a psychiatrist, stated that he believed that Constance suffered from bouts of depression because she had not been taking her medication properly.

After a day of testimonies from the prosecution and the defense, the court ordered that Constance must undergo a psychiatric examination at the Augusta State Hospital in order to determine how competent she was to stand trial. The results of said examination concluded that she was stable enough to stand trial, and Constance was soon charged with the murders of Kathleen, Michael and Natalie. During the reading of the third indictment, she sobbed as she entered her pleas of not guilty by reason of insanity, but soon regained her composure.

During the testimonies, the prosecution questioned several witnesses, including Capt. Albert Dross of the Waterville Police Department and Dr. Joseph J. Hiebel of the Thayer Hospital. Both men claimed that during interrogations with the defendant, she had given clear and cohesive answers to their inquiries, with Dross adding that he had found a gun and a knife in the house which he said Constance planned to kill herself with.

On October 9, a group of duck hunters spotted the bloated body of a woman floating in the Kennebec River near Gardiner. An autopsy determined that the body belonged to Constance Fisher, and her death was listed as an accidental drowning, likely to have occurred on the day of her escape. Her death prompted the hospital's superintendent, Roy Ettlinger, to criticize the practice of milieu therapy on patients, as he believed this increased the risk of them committing suicide.

Constance's body was buried at the family's graveyard plot in Waterville. When Carl Fisher died in 1990, his body was also interred in the same plot as his wife and all of their six children.