A 35-year-old woman in Montana will spend the rest of her days behind bars for killing her two young children, slitting both of their throats and telling authorities that she did it to “save her babies.” Missoula County District Judge Robert Deschamps on Monday ordered Leannah J. Gardipe to serve a life sentence in the custody of the Montana Department of Public Health & Human Services, authorities confirmed to Law&Crime.
Deschamps handed down two life sentences, one for each of the victims, ages 3 and 5, to run concurrently, meaning at the same time. The sentences came one day after the second anniversary of the children’s deaths.
Gardipe pleaded guilty in August to two counts of deliberate homicide in the double-slaying that took place inside the family’s home on Nov. 19, 2021.
Leannah Jean Gardipe (Missoula County Jail)
The Sentencing
Travis Sandberg, Gardipe’s ex-husband and the children’s father, read a victim impact statement before the formal sentencing in which he implored the court to send Gardipe to prison as opposed to a mental facility, according to Missoula, Montana, NBC affiliate KECI reported.
“Every second of the day, all I can picture is Leannah brutally murdering my kids,” he reportedly said. “I pleaded over and over that my children were in danger.”
As previously reported by Law&Crime, Sandberg had voiced concern about Gardipe’s mental health. For example, Gardipe went to an emergency room while experiencing a mental health episode and said she was hurting her children. She later claimed this was a “false report” borne from her mental health challenges.
Immediately after that, Child Protective Services put the children in the care of Sanders as the parents engaged in a protracted custody battle. Gardipe eventually showed that she received weekly therapy, regularly met with her doctor, and spent three weeks at Pathways Treatment Center in Kalispell. Finally, a court gave Gardripe primary custody, with Sanders getting visitation every Wednesday and two weekends a month.
Gardipe also addressed the court and tried to explain her tragic actions and how she was trying to keep them safe by brutally murdering them, KECI reported.
“I did not hurt my kids for any other reason other than I did not want them to get hurt by anyone else. I felt like I had to protect them forever, because I felt like we were not safe. I was supposed to die with them,” she reportedly said. “I loved them more every day, my life revolved around them. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I always knew how to ask for help besides this time.”
Gardipe added, “They visit me in my dreams, so I know they are OK. it makes me feel good to see them, I miss them every day.”
The Murders
According to documents, Gardipe’s mother called 911 on Nov. 19, 2021, and explained her daughter had just called her and claimed to have “saved” her 3-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son.
The children’s grandmother “asked the defendant if that meant she had killed Jane and John Doe, and the defendant began crying,” documents stated.
Gardipe, too, called 911 and said she wanted “to report a murder” and added that the dispatcher should expect a call from her mother as well. Gardipe told the dispatcher that she stabbed the children that morning on her bed using a knife and requested medical help, claiming she heard one of her children making noises.
“I was supposed to die today,” she said on the 911 call.
When deputies arrived, Gardipe — still on the phone with the dispatcher — briefly left her home but went inside and locked the door. The dispatcher then tried to tell her that the deputies were there to help her.
“No,” Gardipe responded. “They are not, not for what I did.”
Deputies found the children in a bedroom, tucked into bedsheets. They had suffered lacerations to their throats and other injuries, including defensive wounds to their hands and fingers. They were declared dead.
Investigators found a bloody serrated steak knife under the bed and a pool of blood in the 3-year-old girl’s bedroom.
They found a letter in the bedroom where they found the children, officials said.
“‘It was the only way we all wouldn’t burn, now I’m the only one of us that will,”” the note said, police wrote in the affidavit.
Alberto Luperon contributed to this report.
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