Mum brutally beat daughter, 2, to loss of life with ‘at least 40 blows in 24 hours’
WARNING, DISTRESSING CONTENT Sicko Jeanie Kassandra Ditty was found guilty of the tot’s murder and will never be released, a judge has ordered
Macy Grace was killed by her mother(Image: Supplied)
A mum who brutally beat her two-year-old daughter to death has been sentenced to life behind bars.
Sicko Jeanie Kassandra Ditty was found guilty of the tot’s murder and will never be released, a judge has ordered. The court heard how Ditty killed her own baby girl with a series of blows to the head and body, causing “extensive” injuries, before she then got in touch with a professional photographer and asked them to make ghoulish after life photos, depicting the tot as a “spirit”.
Ditty, 33, from North Carolina in the US, has been in the system for ten years and was this week finally sentenced for her baby’s death after the little girl, named Macy Grace, was first rushed to hospital covered in bruises in December 2015.
The court heard how the two-year-old had “suffered at least 40 separate physical blows” within the space of 24 hours and was found by doctors to be suffering extensive bruising and trauma.
Jeanie Kassandra Ditty was found guilty of her baby’s murder(Image: Fayetteville Police Department)
“The only part of her body which didn’t have a bruise was part of her face,” Macy’s paternal grandmother Tina Goodwin told CBS News.
The tot was diagnosed with brain injuries and she died on December 4, 2015, just days before her third birthday.
Doctors put her on life support while her father, who was on deployment with the US Army, rushed home to say goodbye before she passed.
Her mother, also an active-duty US Army soldier, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and negligent child abuse inflicting serious bodily injury in 2016.
Juries heard how just weeks after killing her daughter, Ditty contacted a photographer named Sunny Jo, to make a sickening request asking if she could make “after life” photos of her and Macy from his “One More Time” package that adds a deceased loved one into pictures with their surviving relatives.
They show the deceased person as transparent, depicting them as an angel or a ghost.
He agreed and included a snap of Macy holding her mum’s hand as they walked through a cemetery.
He said: “She told me her daughter had passed away by choking on a banana, and that choking gave her seizures which made her lose oxygen to the brain and then she passed away.”
He added that he then heard about the real circumstances of the child’s death and contacted the police about her request which prompted Ditty to hand herself in on March 24, 2016.
The first trial was held in 2020 but ended with a hung jury with a 10-2 vote in favour of her guilt. Her case then returned to trial earlier this month with more evidence being shown in court including 16 witnesses and she was found guilty.
Ditty filed an appeal immediately after the jury reached its verdict, and even needed restraining in the courtroom before sentencing, the district attorneys said.
“Justice has finally been served,” Goodwin told CBS.
