McCabe, 36, from Newport, pleaded guilty and was sentenced Monday to life in prison. (Representational Image)
Jillian McCabe had been researching ways to kill her 6-year-old autistic son - and get away with it - before she carried him onto Oregon's Yaquina Bay Bridge, told him she was "sorry" and threw him over the edge, prosecutors say.
Lincoln County District Attorney Michelle Branam said this week that the investigation uncovered search terms she had used - "stabbing, drowning and dropping from a 133-foot fall," according to the Oregonian.
McCabe also searched "hearing voices" and "insanity defense," the newspaper reported.
Then, she told police, she wrote a letter to her husband.
"You said I was an obligation and London was a burden. I want to give you a gift of taking the two away," she wrote, according to NBC News. "The voices said that you need this, you need a new fresh start and I can give it to you. You will be sad for a while, but in the [long run] you will be better off.
"You will be free!"
McCabe, 36, from Newport, pleaded guilty and was sentenced Monday to life in prison.
"Everyone hopes this can be explained by way of mental illness so we don't have to leave open the possibility that a mother could plan to so horrifically murder their child," Branam told reporters, according to the Oregonian. "But it appears from the evidence we have in this case that this was exactly what happened."
One November night in 2014, family members had said, McCabe simply snapped.
Police said McCabe parked her car at the end of the bridge in Newport, about 130 miles from Portland, and carried her son, London, to the arch.
An officer said he saw a woman matching her description carrying a boy and thought it was strange because the child was "too big to be carried," according to court documents.
After the incident, McCabe dialed 911.
"I just threw my son over the Yaquina Bay Bridge," she told the dispatcher, according to court documents.
After an hours-long search in two boats and a helicopter, authorities found the boy's body floating in the bay.
Branam, the prosecutor, said Tuesday that it wasn't the fall that killed the boy.
"He suffered broken bones from the impact of the fall and ultimately drowned," she said, according to the Associated Press.
Following London's death, family members spoke out about McCabe's struggles.
Some said she had been having a hard time caring for her autistic son and sick husband. Some said she had tried to raise money for them online. Some said she had talked about "pulling a 'Thelma and Louise.'"
At one point, a family member set up a crowdfunding campaign on YouCaring.com, asking for $50,000 to help McCabe care for her nonverbal autistic son and her husband, Matt, who had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
"If you are a praying person, pray for us," McCabe wrote. "I love my husband and he has taken care of myself and my son for years and years and now it's time for me to take the helm. I am scared and I am reaching out."
McCabe also posted videos on YouTube.
One seemed to show her husband in a hospital bed as her son played with the controls used to move it up and down.
Another showed the boy sitting in a hammock. When McCabe asked whether he was happy, he didn't respond. Then when she told him to say "help" if he wanted her to rock the hammock, he said, "Help."
Prosecutors said McCabe had been voluntarily committed to mental hospitals at least twice but had been given a "clean bill of health" each time and then released.
"When it suits her, she can fabricate the symptoms," Branam said in a statement, according to NBC. "When she hears that she may be restricted from something she may want, she turns off the symptoms."
Matt McCabe, who filed for divorce after his son's death, told reporters he has not been able to find closure.
"I can't say enough about this boy," he said Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. "He was my pride and joy. He was the center of my attention; his loss leaves a black hole in the center of my life.
"If you know an autistic individual, he needs love, too. Maybe more than you and I."
© 2016 The Washington Post
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)