Columbus mom convicted of killing 11-year-old son in Mississippi because he 'was a demon'
A Columbus mother who was drawn to voodoo and told investigators that she killed her 11-year-old son with a metal "stake" in a Mississippi hotel room because she believed he was a demon has been convicted of capital murder.
Latina Marie Lee Oates, 36, who lived on Columbus' Far North Side, was convicted Thursday evening in the brutal March 2020 death of 11-year-old Joshua Oates in the bathroom of a Hampton Inn hotel in Laurel, Mississippi, while his two younger brothers listened in the other room. Joshua Oates was a sixth grader at Liberty Elementary School in the Worthington City School District.
A Jones County (Mississippi) jury deliberated less than five hours before reaching its decision on the fourth day of her trial. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.
Circuit Judge Dal Williamson sentenced Oates to life in prison without parole.
Oates' defense attorneys acknowledged she killed Joshua but argued during trial that she was suffering from severe mental illness at the time of the killing, according to WDAM-TV, which was among the local Mississippi news media that covered the trial of the woman dubbed the "Voodoo Mom." Defense attorneys cited taped interviews with investigators played in court during which she said killed her eldest son with what she called a metal stake because "Joshua was a demon."
Prosecutors with the Jones County District Attorney's Office argued that Oates knew what was doing when she hit Joshua more than 60 times with a 1 ½-inch metal rod and left his body for a hotel housekeeper to find late on the morning of March 14, 2020, WDAM-TV reported. By then, authorities said Oates fled with her other two sons, then ages 9 and 6, to New Orleans, where police arrested her March 15, 2020, after Mississippi authorities issued an Amber Alert for them.
Oates' husband, Mark, testified for the defense at trial that problems with his wife began in January 2020, when she became overly religious and was struggling to the point that EMS personnel were called to the home in February 2020 because he did not know what to do, WDAM-TV reported.
Although Latina Oates' mother urged him to tell the medics that her daughter was a threat to herself and others when he called her, Mark Oates testified he did not feel that way at the time, WDAM-TV reported.
One morning in March, Mark Oates testified that his wife took the three boys hiking and then left for Mississippi because she said she had to get away, according to WDAM-TV. The boys told investigators their mother had told them they went to the South to trace her ancestry.
When police came to him a few days later to tell him that Joshua was dead, Mark Oates testified they asked him why his wife would go to New Orleans, WDAM-TV reported. He said he told them about Marie Laveau, a New Orleans woman famous for her practice of voodoo in the 1800s to heal and help others, with whom Latina Oates believed she shared ancestry.
Latina Oates did not testify in her own defense.
jwilhelm@dispatch.com
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus mom convicted in brutal 2020 death of son, 11, in Mississippi
