Leannah Jean Gardipe pleaded guilty to killing her 3-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son. (Mug shot: Missoula County Jail)
A Montana woman has pleaded guilty for stabbing her two young children to death.
As previously reported, Leannah Jean Gardipe, 35, asserted she “saved her babies.”
Sentencing is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Nov. 20. The plea agreement stated that prosecutors will ask for consecutive life terms on two counts of deliberate homicide.
Gardipe must also pay court fees of $1,050.
According to documents, out of Missoula County, Montana, the defendant’s mother contacted 911 on Nov. 19, 2021. She said that Gardipe 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 on herself. She wanted “to report a murder,” and her mother should also be calling.
She said she stabbed the children that morning on her bed using a knife, officials said. Gardipe requested medical help, saying she heard one of her children making noises.
“I was supposed to die today,” she told dispatch. When deputies arrived, Gardipe briefly left her home but went back inside and locked the door, according to the affidavit. The dispatcher said the deputies were there to help her.
“No,” Gardipe said. “They are not, not for what I did.”
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Deputies said that once they got inside the residence, they 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, investigators said.
“The children were later pronounced dead after medical examination,” authorities said.
Investigators found a bloody serrated steak knife under the bed and a pool of blood in the 3-year-old girl’s bedroom.
There was also a letter in the bedroom where they found the children, officials said. From the affidavit:
Inside, they located a note at the threshold of the bedroom the children were found in that read “[i]t was the only way that we all wouldn’t burn, now I’m the only one of us that will.”
The children’s father previously voiced concern about the defendant’s mental health, according to local outlet Montana Right Now. For example, Gardipe went to an emergency room while experiencing a mental health episode and said she was hurting her children.
Later, she said this was a “false report” borne from her mental health challenges.
Child Protective Services put the children in their father’s care. Gardipe reportedly said she was receiving weekly therapy, regularly met with her doctor, and spent three weeks at Pathways Treatment Center in Kalispell.
Eventually, a court gave Gardripe primary custody, with the father getting visitation every Wednesday and two weekends a month.
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