Ronald Shanabarger Kills Baby Tyler

In June 1999, on Father’s Day in Franklin, Indiana, Amy Shanabarger found her 7-month-old son, Tyler, dead in his crib, and a coroner first ruled the death as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Ronald L. Shanabarger soon confessed that, on the night of June 19, he had wrapped plastic around Tyler’s head and face and left him to suffocate as revenge because Amy refused to cut short a cruise when his own father died in 1996, a killing he said he had planned even before the child was conceived.

Two days after Tyler’s funeral, he told his wife what he had done and then repeated the same confession to police several times. In May 2002 a jury convicted Shanabarger of killing his son, and the next month a judge sentenced him to 49 years in prison.

Previous Fact Next Fact