How to (Not) Get Away with Murder

Last month in Berks County, Pennsylvania, Lisa Snyder, 41, was found guilty of a double homicide for killing her two children. Her defense had insisted that she couldn’t have understood that what she did was wrong. Yet, the staged suicide had to have been planned, and she’d created an elaborate story. From the types of staging behaviors most commonly observed, Synder appears to have been both a creator and a fabricator.

Snyder called 911 on September 23, 2019, to report that her 8-year-old son, Connor, and 4-year-old daughter, Brinley, were hanging from a beam in her basement. Snyder says she was unable to get them down because her anxiety attack had made her sweat too much. To several officials, she offered a story that Connor had been depressed from being bullied and that he’d persuaded his sister to do it with him so he wouldn’t go alone. An investigation turned up no evidence of bullying, but they found that Snyder had been telling others he was depressed. Still, on that day, Connor had seemed to others to be in a good mood. He’d waved to his friends. In addition, Snyder had searched for suicide methods on her phone and had told a neighbor she was depressed. She’d recently purchased the dog leash that was wrapped around her children’s necks.

Source: Photo and staging by K. Ramsland

In Crime Scene Staging Dynamics in Homicide Cases, criminologist Laura Pettler analyzed 18 staged homicides with 27 offenders and 19 victims to identify the most common behaviors among stagers. She grouped 62 behaviors into six types. Staging appears to be primarily a function of the victim-offender relationship since 16 of the 18 victims knew the perpetrator.

She named the types as follows:

• The Cleaner: more alteration than staging, because this person cleans the scene, removing evidence (sometimes for innocent reasons)
• The Concealer: hides or destroys items related to the incident to prevent discovery
• The Creator: adds items to the scene, or rearranges for a specific effect
• The Fabricator: relies on the verbal ability to deceive and deflect
• The Inflictor: might include self in the incident, with self-wounding, or might claim self-defense
• The Planner: spends time preparing the incident to appear as something else instead of relying on post-incident reactions

Ferguson (2014) examined 115 cases, with 188 offenders. She recommends focusing on whoever reported the body. Offenders often “discover” it. In 67% of the cases, a single offender (79% male) staged the scene. Around 14% were homicides staged as suicides. In 98% of the cases, the victim and offender had a prior relationship.

Ferguson and Petherick (2016) describe staging as a “precautionary act” by offenders to distance themselves from crimes. The stagers had typically introduced something into a scene to deflect investigative focus, for example, a fake suicide note, ransacking, or self-injury. Three-fourths of the victims were killed in their own homes. In half of the cases, the offender “discovered” the victim. In 56.3%, gunshot wounds were the cause of death, with 30% being some form of asphyxiation or strangulation.

The prosecutor theorized that Snyder had planned to kill just Connor, but her daughter had inadvertently seen what she was doing. Five years earlier when Connor was 3, Snyder had lost custody for six months when she confessed to thoughts about killing him.

Snyder fits the category of fabricator because she had a story ready, which she told to officers at the scene and the station. She repeated it to mental health professionals. She’d been telling family and school employees for weeks that her son was depressed (which several sources contradicted). Snyder also added items to the scene. She brought kitchen chairs down into the basement, purchased the leash, and wrapped it to a support beam.

After the seven-day bench trial, Judge M. Theresa Johnson rejected the defense that Snyder was not guilty by reason of insanity due to having “no recollection of what she did.” The judge stated that Snyder’s detailed account shows she hadn’t blacked out. Evidence supported that she’d laid the groundwork in advance, so she had not had a sudden psychotic break on the day of the incident, despite first responder reports that she’d said things that made no sense. Her deceptive narrative indicated she knew that what she was doing was wrong and had consequences.

Despite how unique this incident is (a female stager, two children involved, hanging), it bears enough behaviors seen in other staged homicides to place the offender in two of the typology’s categories.