A 60-year-old woman serving a lengthy prison sentence for killing her young son in 2012 has been found dead inside her cell at a New York state correctional facility.
Manuela Maria Morgado was discovered unresponsive early Wednesday morning at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in Westchester County, according to corrections officials. An autopsy is pending to determine exactly how she died.
Morgado had been behind bars since pleading guilty to second-degree murder in September 2014, accepting a term of 20 years to life. She would not have been eligible for parole until she turned 68, according to People.
The crime took place on October 1, 2012, inside Morgado's condominium in the village of Mamaroneck. Officers arrived that morning to conduct a welfare check and found the boy, Jason "Jake" Reish, lifeless on a bed with signs that he had been deprived of oxygen.
Morgado was lying nearby in a semi-conscious state, having ingested a large quantity of prescription medication in an apparent effort to end her own life as well. Investigators recovered a note she had written before the incident.
According to court testimony, Morgado first administered over-the-counter medications to sedate her son, then attempted to use a small helium tank she had ordered online. When the boy resisted, she restrained his hands and feet and pressed his face into a pillow until he stopped breathing, Patch reported.
The killing occurred amid a prolonged custody dispute with the boy's father, Dr. Timothy Reish, a Manhattan-based surgeon. The two had never married and disagreed over basic decisions about their son's upbringing, including where he would go to preschool.
At the sentencing hearing in December 2014, the boy's father described the defendant as someone who was unable to put her child's well-being ahead of her own desires. The Westchester County District Attorney at the time said Morgado had carefully planned the act and carried it out against the very child she was supposed to protect, as per CBS News.
