A Georgia mom convicted of murdering her toddler son and dumping his body in a landfill said she wants her brother to keep his remains.
"I want my baby home," Leilani Simon said, requesting 20-month-old Quinton Simon's body be released to her sibling, Paul Simon, according to Newsweek.
Last month, Simon, 22, was found guilty on all 19 charges brought against her, including malice murder, for the October 2022 slaying of Quinton, whose body was found at a Chatham County, Georgia dumpsite, two weeks after she reported him missing.
On Thursday, Simon was sentenced to life in prison.
"The one thing that I will say before pronouncing the sentence is clearly little Quinton Simon's life and death impacted many, many individuals but also the community at large," Judge Tammy Stokes said, according to WSAV-TV. "May there be peace, somehow."
In the time leading up to Quinton's death, the prosecution claimed Simon was getting high off of cocaine and Percocet while involved in a rocky relationship with her then-boyfriend. She also showed animosity toward the toddler, compared to her two other children.
"She treated Quinton differently, and not in a good way," Special Assistant District Attorney Tim Dean said in opening statements in October, according to WTOC-TV.
It's unclear how Quinton died due to the level of decomposition his body was found, said prosecutors.
"She killed him, her own son, got in her car with his body, drove to a dumpster, and threw him away like a piece of trash," said Dean.
Before authorities zeroed in on Simon as the primary suspect, she publicly pleaded for his safe return.
"We want him back in our arms, holding us. That's what we want," Simon told the station in 2022. "We're just hoping that he's in somebody's house and they're feeding him and maybe they wanted a baby or couldn't have a baby. Maybe they thought they were his savior. That's our best hope at this point."
