The women tried to poison the boy, who had autism, with sleeping pills. When that failed, Dorothy Spourdalakis stabbed her son four times in the chest with a kitchen knife, twice hitting his heart. She slit one of his wrists so deeply she nearly severed his hand, according to court records. Then she handed the knife to Jolanta Agata Skrodzka, who used it to kill the family cat so it wouldn’t have to live in a shelter after their arrests.
A year later, 11-year-old Raashanai Coley, another child in Illinois, died from a stomach rupture after her mother, Nicholette Lawrence, punched her repeatedly. The autopsy revealed scars and old injuries indicating previous physical abuse.
Alex was killed in River Grove in 2013. Raashanai died in Waukegan in 2014. Both were slain by people entrusted to protect them. But the respective outcomes of these first-degree murder cases ― one involving a child with disabilities, the other involving a child without medically documented handicaps ― speak volumes about an insidious bias in the justice system.
Alex’s killers pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, and served three years each before they were sentenced to time served and released. Raashanai’s killer, meanwhile, was convicted of murder and is serving 43 years.
Advocates for the disabled say such disparities are common in a legal system that seems to treat accused killers less seriously when the victim was a person with special needs who depended on the person charged with murder for care.
On average, at least one disabled person is killed each week by a parent or caregiver, according to a Ruderman Family Foundation report that documented more than 200 deaths from 2011 to 2015.