Evil soldier mom beat daughter, 2, to death — then got twisted ‘afterlife’ photo memorial
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An evil soldier beat her 2-year-old daughter to death — then lied about it to get gifted an eerie series of photos of her posing with her murdered tot’s ghost in the afterlife.
Jeanie Kassandra Ditty, 33, was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without the chance of parole after a jury in Fayetteville, North Carolina, took just three hours to find her guilty of the first-degree murder of her daughter Macy Grace, who died just 10 days before her third birthday.
Macy had been rushed to a hospital in December 2015, where medics quickly notice “extensive bruising and trauma indicative of severe physical abuse,” according to prosecutors.
“A CT scan revealed non-survivable brain injuries sustained within the prior 8 to 24 hours — a period during which [her mom] was the sole caregiver with access to the child,” prosecutors said of the youngster who suffered “at least 40 separate physical blows.”
Macy — whose dad was also a soldier, as was her killer mom — died two days later.
Before she was charged, her mom commissioned a series of “afterlife” photos showing her walking side-by-side with the outline of her dead daughter from a photographer who had offered her condolences, not knowing the horrific way the young girl had died.
“She told me her daughter had passed away by choking on a banana, and that choking gave her seizures which made her lose oxygen to the brain and then she passed away,” the photographer, Sunny Jo, previously told WRAL.
Jo freely offered his “One More Time” package, in which a translucent image of a dead loved one is superimposed onto a photo to look like an angel, to Ditty, waiving the normal $300 to $500 cost, he told ABC News at the time.
“She offered to pay, and honestly, I couldn’t do it. It was a gift for what I thought was a grieving mother at the time,” Jo said.
One of the photos appears to show the former Fort Bragg-stationed soldier walking hand-in-hand in a graveyard with Macy Grace, while another shows the mother reading to her daughter while sitting on a picnic blanket.
A third shows Ditty staring at a makeshift memorial while her daughter places a hand upon her shoulder.
Ditty’s father, Zachary Keefer, took the photos and sent them to Jo, who spent two to three weeks creating the images.
Jo called working with Ditty the “biggest mistake” of his career, but added that he was pleased that he had at least given the slain child “a voice.”
Ditty’s case initially went to trial in 2020 but ended with a hung jury following a 10-2 vote in favor of her guilt, Law & Crime reported.
Jury selection for her second trial began earlier this month, with 16 witnesses testifying during the multiweek process, WRAL reported.
Ditty was found guilty on Thursday after less than three hours of deliberation and sentenced to life behind bars without the possibility of parole for the first-degree murder charge, followed by 157 to 201 months for child abuse.