Karen McCarron

Karen Frank-McCarron (born December 20, 1968) is a German-born American pathologist convicted in Illinois of first degree murder of her autistic daughter Katherine "Katie" McCarron.

Background

Early life, education and career Karen Frank-McCarron was born Karen Frank to Erna and Walter "Robert" Frank on December 20, 1968, in Germany. She graduated from Maine South High School in Park Ridge, Illinois and from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield, Illinois in 1995 with a Doctor of Medicine degree. Frank-McCarron, a pathologist, worked at Methodist Medical Center and Proctor Hospital, both in Peoria, Illinois.

Marriage and family Karen Frank met her future husband, Paul McCarron, when they were both students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Frank-McCarron and Paul's first child, Katie (born July 22, 2002), was diagnosed with autism in 2004. In September of that year, Paul and Katherine moved to Apex, North Carolina to live with Paul's mother, so that Katie could attend The Mariposa School, a special education school for children with autism and related conditions, in Cary, North Carolina. Paul and Katie returned home to Illinois on holidays. Frank-McCarron, who was a pathologist with the Peoria-Tazewell Pathology Group, stayed in Morton, Illinois with their younger daughter Emily, and visited North Carolina occasionally.

After 20 months, Paul decided to return full-time to Illinois with Katie.

Psychiatric issues Frank-McCarron was a patient of a psychologist while she was a resident doctor at a medical clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. In 2005, Frank-McCarron was a patient of a psychiatrist who treated her for depression. She had been prescribed antidepressants but apparently stopped taking them in early 2006. At trial, it was admitted into evidence that the psychiatrist she had been seeing from about August 2005 to February 2006 did not observe any delusional thinking in Frank-McCarron.

Katherine's murder

On the afternoon before Mother's Day, Saturday, May 13, 2006, Frank-McCarron killed Katie by suffocating her with a plastic bag. After killing her daughter, Frank-McCarron went to the grocery store to buy ice cream for herself. Hours later, Frank-McCarron told relatives what she had done. While awaiting trial, Frank-McCarron was free on home confinement on $1 million bond.

Trial and aftermath Frank-McCarron went on trial on January 7, 2008. Prosecutors said that before suffocating Katie, Frank-McCarron suggested institutionalizing her then-3-year-old daughter and putting her up for adoption. Frank-McCarron was sentenced to 36 years in prison, 30 months of supervised release after her prison term and was ordered to pay a $25,000 penalty to the state of Illinois.

Paul filed for divorce from Frank-McCarron in Tazewell County, Illinois Circuit Court in 2006, citing "extreme and repeated mental cruelty." Frank-McCarron's parents Walter and Edna sued Frank-McCarron for money they loaned her for attorney fees during her January murder trial, and her parents won the lawsuit against her in December 2008.

In 2010, Frank-McCarron appealed her conviction to an Illinois appellate court but the appellate court upheld the original conviction. In November 2011, her petition for a new trial was denied. She is serving her sentence at Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln, Illinois.

Media coverage and activist response

News articles and weblogs have emphasized the difficulties in raising a child with autism, and some suggested that Frank-McCarron may have been stressed by lack of support and dealing with Katherine's autism—even though at the time of Katie's murder, she had two paid, "full-time caregivers" in addition to being in a home with Frank-McCarron, Walter and Edna Frank and her younger sister.

A number of autistic people rallied in favor of a conviction of Frank-McCarron, and Katie's death garnered intense scrutiny within the autism rights movement and among disability advocates. Autism Hub held a memorial on May 24 and the disability rights group Not Dead Yet led the charge to reveal the facts of the case.