Marybeth Tinning – Gianna Gullace : Passion Blog

In this week’s blog, I will be discussing Marybeth Tinning.

Marybeth Roe Tinning was born September 11, 1942, in New York State. Despite her childhood, Tinning had a history of mental health issues from a young age. Her father fought in World War II, and that was a significant part of her youth. Her mother worked and she was often passed from relative to relative. Marybeth had an older brother, and many relatives would often compare them, saying that she was an accident and they only wanted her brother. Tinning was beaten by her father and was locked in a room when she cried. She lacked any sort of positive attention and craved it, which is important to the later story. Marybeth was always angry, but beneath that, she was so unhappy and had several suicide attempts as a child. Her grades were not good enough for her to go to college, even though she wanted to. Tinning longed to feel wanted and have any sort of attention, and when she met Joe Tinning, her dreams came true. Marybeth and Joe met on a blind date and two years later, they were married and had two children, Barbara and Joe Jr. Marybeth’s father passed away shortly after her son was born. His death took a huge toll on Tinning’s mental health.

To outsiders, Marybeth was a good mother. They thought that it was deeply upsetting that her children kept passing away, one after the other. The couple had a third child, Jennifer, who had complications in the womb and died a week after birth. A few weeks after Jennifer’s death, Joe Jr. a now two-year-old suffered from a seizure. Doctors could not find a cause for this seizure, so they sent him home. Marybeth and Joe returned to the hospital soon after when Joe Jr. fell into cardiac arrest and then died. Their only living child, Barbara, was sent to the hospital for convulsions, which doctors believed was from an extremely rare brain disease. It may seem suspicious that all three of Marybeth’s children died in a row, but no one wanted to say anything to a grieving mother.

On November 22, 1973, Tinning had a fourth child, Timothy, who was found dead in his crib at one-month-old. She had another son named Nathan, who died in her car while she was driving. Everyone in her town felt so sorry for her, as she had five children who all died at a young age. The couple then adopted a baby named Michael, and everything seemed normal until they gave birth to another daughter, Mary Frances. Mary Frances died with the same conditions as their son, Joe Jr. There was one more son after Mary Frances who also passed away. People thought that Tinning’s children just had a genetic condition that caused them all to die so young, until Michael, their adopted son, passed away suddenly.

A total of 9 children died in Marybeth’s care. The doctors suspected foul play, but the police played all of them off as having Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). The police eventually got autopsy reports. However, this was still considered circumstantial evidence unless she confessed. At first, she took no responsibility, but she eventually confessed to killing three of the children and said that she had nothing to do with the other ones. She was sentenced to murder in the second degree due to the lack of clarity of the evidence.

Marybeth Tinning enjoyed the attention she received when each of her children passed, making up for the attention she did not get as a child. In 1987, Tinning was sentenced to 20 years in prison. She and her husband are still married and he believes that she is completely innocent.