Mother who tortured girl, 5, to death as youngster wailed ‘I’ve been good’ avoids prison because she’s insane
By Anna Wright,Editor
Copyright dailymail
A Texas mother who confessed to strangling and stabbing her five-year-old daughter while the little girl wailed in terror has been found not guilty of murder.
Melissa Towne, 40, was acquitted by reason of insanity in the horrific killing of her four-year-old daughter, Nichole Bradshaw-Towne.
Towne was charged with capital murder for slicing her daughter’s throat and suffocating her with a trash bag at a park in the Tomball area back in October 2022.
She will be evaluated for her current mental state and a court hearing will be held within 30 days to determine what happens next, according to Texas Code of Criminal Procedure.
The 40-year-old has a history of schizophrenia, with neighbors telling ABC13 that she would arguing their mailbox and smash her own car with a baseball bat.
Charging documents described how Towne drove to the wooded park to torture and kill her daughter.
Towne told detectives at the time that Nichole pleaded with her mother ‘but I’ve been good’ as she strangled her.
She ignored her daughter’s pleas and told her not to ‘fight her’. Towne then drove to a nearby hospital and asked for help.
Hospital staff found the four-year-old’s plastic-wrapped body in her car in the emergency room parking lot.
The 40-year-old allegedly told police she had killed her daughter because she felt the girl was ‘evil and [she] didn’t want to deal with her anymore.’
Melissa has three other children and did not have legal custody of Nichole at the time. Nichole’s father, James Bradshaw, had sole legal custody.
Child Protective Services told ABC 13 that Towne previously had run-ins with the agency.
The 40-year-old mother had an arrest history for assault, trespassing and vandalism. Her bond was set for $15million at the time of the murder.
The Bradshaw family asked for privacy at the time of Nichole’s death while they ‘figure out how to grieve her horrible loss and try to figure out how to go on from here.’
‘Nichole has grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and a father that all loved her dearly and never thought such a tragic event would happen to such an innocent child. She will always hold a special place in all of our hearts,’ the family said in a statement.
‘She didn’t deserve, she had not even had a chance to live,’ Amber Bradshaw, Nichole’s aunt, said.
‘She never hurt anybody. She would step around an ant. She loved animals.
