Mom who made young daughters drink ‘yucky’ milk laced with bleach then strangled 3-year-old when poisoning failed, learns her fate

Inset: Joanne Zephir (Osceola County Sheriff

Inset: Joanne Zephir (Osceola County Sheriff’s Office). Background: Deputies escorting Zephir from the hospital after she killed her 3-year-old daughter (Office of the State Attorney for the Ninth Judicial Circuit).

A 39-year-old mother in Florida will spend the remainder of her days behind bars for killing her 3-year-old daughter, initially trying to poison the child with milk laced with bleach before ultimately strangling her to death.

Osceola County Circuit Court Judge Keith Carsten on Wednesday ordered Joanne Zephir to serve a life sentence in a state correctional facility without the chance for parole, records reviewed by Law&Crime show.

Zephir, who had been facing the death penalty, also allegedly made her 8-year-old daughter drink the bleach-laced beverage and stabbed her husband. She reached a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree murder with a weapon and one count of attempted first-degree murder with a weapon. In exchange for entering into the plea deal, prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty and dropped a third charge of attempted felony murder.

As Law&Crime previously reported, deputies with the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office at about 12:44 a.m. on May 8, 2022, began searching for Zephir’s Toyota Corolla after receiving a disturbing 911 call from the killer’s sister-in-law. The sister-in-law told emergency dispatchers that Zephir had called her, saying she “poisoned her two daughters and one was already dead,” adding that “her other daughter had taken the poison and she would be dead soon too.”

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