1. “…He testified that McCarron never accepted their daughter’s condition. McCarron had even suggested several times that they give their daughter up for adoption…Lisa Hill, Katie’s occupational therapist from Easter Seals also took the stand. She testified Paul McCarron seemed to be more interested in Katie’s health. She said it was only because Paul was more hands on then McCarron, and added McCarron still seemed to be a loving and concerned mother. She said McCarron told her several times she thought Katie was doing worse in therapy, but Hill said she had seen an improvement.

Two young women took the stand during the last hour of the day. Both were to be full time caregivers for Katie, and both started working at the McCarron home the week before Katie’s death. Both testified McCarron conveyed to them that she thought Katie’s condition was getting worse. Both women said they thought Katie was in a much better condition than other autistic children they knew…”
http://centralillinoisproud.com/content/fulltext/?cid=5741
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“…So-called mercy killings, in which the altruistic reason is related to an illness, injury, or disability, make up only about 3% of child homicides (Richards, 2000), but experts in criminal psychology suggest that these cases hide a deeper and darker motivation. According to criminology’s most authoritative classification of homicides, “most often, the real motivation for mercy killing has little to do with the offender’s feelings of compassion and pity for the victim” (Douglas, Burgess, Burgess, & Ressler, 1992, p. 111). The authors, FBI profilers and criminologists, consider the deeper motivation for mercy killing to be a pathological need for “power and control” (p. 111). Acts of violence typically require two factors. First, there is an instrumental motivation, such as control or desire to be free of responsibility for a child. Second, there must be a disinhibiting factor, such as the belief that it is for the child’s good, to release potentially homicidal parents from normal inhibition (Sobsey, 1994). The social endorsement of mercy killing therefore acts as a disinhibiting factor to those who may have instrumental motivations, but might otherwise be restrained by inhibition…”
Health Ethics Today
Volume 12, Number 1, Fall/November 2001
http://www.phen.ab.ca/materials/het/het12-01c.asp