 Undated handout photos of Stacey Joy Bourdeaux and Sean Ronald Fewer.
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CALGARY - Disturbing diary entries detailing a mother's confession to killing her 10-month-old son were heard in court after she pleaded guilty in his death.
On Wednesday, Stacey Joy Bourdeaux pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the 2004 death of Sean Fewer.
She also pleaded guilty to attempted murder and failing to provide the necessaries for the devastating attack on another son, then five years old.
In that case, court heard this week diary entries describing his mother's prolonged and failed bid to take his life and "send him back" to his late father.
She will be sentenced in November.
Police were first involved in the heartbreaking cases in May 2010 after the older boy was taken to hospital.
In an agreed statement of facts, court heard the child had a temper tantrum on May 24, 2010, and said something to the effect of wishing "she had died instead of his father."
Edward (Ted) Fewer, the biological father of the boys and an older sister, died weeks earlier after being accidentally electrocuted.
Court heard Bourdeaux took the boy upstairs "for a long time," where his sister heard him crying sporadically.
That night, a woman stopped by to offer condolences about Fewer's death and learned from the sister her brother was "very sick and turning blue."
Offers of help were dismissed by the mother, but the concerned woman called a neighbour to check on the boy. Boudreaux again downplayed any need to go to hospital.
The next day the boy, whom Bourdreaux dubbed "a fighter," was shaking, couldn't feed himself, was falling over and in the hours to follow lost bladder and bowel control.
On May 27, three days later, his mom asked a neighbour to drive them to hospital.
On the way, court heard, she told the man "she had tried suffocating" the boy, his heart stopping a couple of times, with his sister asking "why she was trying to send (him) up to daddy."
Court heard Bourdeaux claimed the boy fought back so that "he could still be here with us."
She later told a doctor she put a hand over her son's face, eventually wrapping a pillowcase around his neck, during the two-hour ordeal with the boy who refused to die.
Soon after, Bourdeaux was charged in the attack.
It was during that investigation that police doing a search of the home stumbled across her journals, prompting them to revisit the earlier death of baby Sean, whom officials had deemed to have died of SIDS.
In what the courts dub "Dear Ted" journals, the mother confessed to killing that boy and fears she might have done irreparable harm, years later, to his older brother.
She wrote that the confession was a secret "till I am gone myself, which may be sooner than we all think."
The diaries detailed regret over her actions and increasing concerns about the well-being of the older boy, who fought so hard to live.
She writes about giving him Tylenol and cleaning him after he threw up, urinated and defecated.
In her diary, Bourdeaux wrote about "feeling bad," for what she did, rolling a joint and ending her own life.
"I feel really, really bad because his issues are my fault. I don't know why I did what I did," she wrote in her final Dear Ted journal entry.
The boy - who cannot speak, has lost motor control and suffers from seizures and his sister are now permanent wards of the province.
The diaries led police to revisit the death of his brother Sean, whom officials had deemed died of SIDS, several years earlier.
"The only evidence Sean's death was caused by the accused is found in a journal entry," court heard.
Defence lawyer Katherin Bayak said her client, who dabbed at tears during the proceedings before provincial court judge Terry Semenuk and is to undergo psychiatric risk assessment prior to sentencing, is doing as best as can be expected.
"She's certainly happy to have (it) moving along so everyone can get some closure," she said.
Nadia.moharib@sunmedia
