'Jealous' father confessed to beating, burning and burying cancer-surviving toddler
A toddler who survived cancer was beaten, burned and tossed in a creek by her jealous father who admitted to murdering her because he thought she was getting too much attention, prosecutors said.
Toddler Maddox Lawrence had spent the past year battling a rare form of eye cancer and beat the disease into submission and survived.
The blonde-haired baby's body was found in a watery grave in a creek in Syracuse, New York, 36 hours after she was reported missing.
Her father, Ryan Lawrence confessed to beating his 21-month-old daughter to death with a baseball bat, burning her body and anchoring her remains with cinder blocks before dropping them into a creek.
The 25-year-old father said he was jealous because everyone was concerned about her while she battled cancer.
He will be sentenced next month after confessing to first-degree murder and may face between 25 years to life behind bars.
“I don’t know why he did it - I know it was an act of evil,” Rick Trunfio, first chief assistant district attorney for Onondaga County said.
“When I look at this little girl and realise what he did to her, I have a loss of words to describe what could possibly be a motive.”
In February 20, Maddox and Lawrence went missing from her family's upstate New York apartment.
Maddox's mother, Morgan Lawrence, told police that her husband was supposed to pick her up from her job at the Destiny USA shopping mall but instead left the car and keys for her in a parking lot.
Mrs Lawrence returned home to find a note that indicated Lawrence might harm himself and their baby, which promoted an Amber Alert.
The following day, a tip-off led police to the arrest of Lawrence who was found wearing a disguise - a wig, hat and sunglasses - outside of a shop located 16 kilometres away.
Police divers found the toddler's body on February 21.
Detective Mark Rusin said in court that the father prayed before he killed his daughter: “God, if I’m not meant to kill her, make her stumble.”
“Without going into too much detail, (Ryan Lawrence’s) statements allude to almost a sense of jealousy about the attention that this child was getting, as opposed to the attention that he was getting,” Onondaga Country District Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick said.
"But it was expensive - the treatment - and it was time consuming. If that contributed to her demise, I don’t know."
Lawrence’s attorney, Michael Vavonese, told CNY that Lawrence was a "dutiful, caring and loving father for every moment of Maddox’s life up through the time this incident occurred”.
