Mom charged in kids' mutilation may get freedom

[July 05, 2010]  EVANSTON, Wyo. (AP) -- A woman who has spent 20 years in a mental institution for beheading and mutilating her two young daughters because she said they were evil clones may soon get supervised release.

The Wyoming State Mental Hospital in Evanston has asked a judge to place Laura Lee Rice in a group home or an apartment on the hospital's campus, saying she has not shown signs of violent behavior and is a low risk to re-offend, The Gillette News Record reported Sunday.

Rice, 58, was declared criminally insane and found not guilty by reason of mental illness in the deaths of her daughters, who were 15 and 4 months old when they were killed in 1989.

Police found the children's decapitated bodies in plastic bags at Rice's home south of Gillette. After the children were killed, Rice cut various parts of their bodies in an effort to determine whether the girls were clones, authorities said.

Doctors said at the time that Rice told them clones were "taking bites out of her body with their eyes" and that was the reason she had chronic pain in her neck, chest and stomach.

Rice has Capgras syndrome, a schizophrenic condition where people believe imposters have replaced their relatives, the News Record reported.

She testified during her trial that on the day of the killings, a dark-haired woman wearing glasses knocked on her door with two children who looked like her daughters, and the woman told Rice she had to get rid of them.

A court hearing on the state's petition is scheduled for July 21.

Hospital officials said in a letter to the court that if Rice is released from the mental hospital, she would still have to check in throughout the day with hospital staff to verify she's taking her medications.

"There is no intention for Ms. Rice to have unsupervised access into the community," the letter says, but she would attend therapy groups and work in the hospital library.

Rice petitioned for her release in 1998 but her request was denied, with a judge saying that she had not "recovered from her mental illness" and that she was still "a substantial risk to others."

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Information from: The Gillette News Record -- Gillette, http://www.gillettenewsrecord.com/

[Associated Press]

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