An Illinois mother pleaded guilty last week to smothering her 7-year-old son in 2021 after a series of court motions aimed at discounting evidence against her failed.
Sarah Safranek, 38, was sentenced to 35 years in prison, WIFR reported. The judge in the case, Anthony Peska, ordered that she serve 100 percent of the sentence and afterwards serve three years of mandatory supervised release.
Safranek previously pleaded guilty to killing Nathaniel Burton in March 2024 but withdrew the plea.
Prosecutors say Safranek suffocated Burton on February 17, 2021. He was still alive when taken to a hospital, but died later that day with a ruptured liver, court documents reveal.
Those court documents detail the defense’s attempts to keep witnesses from testifying and to suppress Safranek’s internet searches from months before the boy’s death until the day he died. On the day he died, Safranek queried how long an investigation into a child’s death might take and looked up guides to investigating child abuse.
At the end of 2020, she searched how to kill someone with a voodoo doll and how to buy arsenic online. On November 1, 2020, she search “what is it called when a parent is obsessed with the thought of killing their child” and other searches related to killing children. In the summer, she made similar searches.
Then there was witness testimony, including from Nathaniel’s paternal grandmother and his 18-year-old half sister, both of whom said that Nathaniel told them of repeated attempts by his mother to kill him.
“Mama is going to kill me,” the grandmother said, quoting the boy. “Mama would take the pillow and hold it,” saying he told her couldn’t breathe whenever she did it. In another instance, Nathaniel told his grandmother that his other tried to drown him in the bath. Safranek denied what the boy said and told the grandmother he was lying.
The grandmother said she tried contacting child services, but never heard back from them.
The documents — an appeals court ruling from earlier this summer — also detail videos of some of Nathaniel’s statements which were ultimately excluded from evidence that could be shown to a jury.
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[Featured image: Sarah Safranek/State’s Attorney of Ogle County and Nathaniel Burton/handout]
