‘The Future Scares Me’ : Convicted Murderer Says She Wants to Help Other Mothers

One day after an Orange County jury convicted her of murder, Sheryl Lynn Massip conducted interviews and a press conference to take her case to the public and tell of plans for helping women who suffer from postpartum psychosis, the malady she says drove her to kill her infant son.

Massip, 24, of Anaheim said in an interview that she wants to write a book about her experience and start an organization to help new mothers adjust to child-rearing. And she said that someday she may want to have children again.

But Massip said all that is eclipsed by a court hearing scheduled for Dec. 23, at which she could be sentenced to 16 years to life in state prison for killing her 6-week-old son, Michael.

“The future scares me very much,” Massip said. “Right now I’m just trying to take each day one at a time and somehow hope I can make it through this.”

Massip remains free on $50,000 bail pending her sentencing and is living with her father, Ed De Lano, in Rowland Heights. She discussed her case in an hourlong interview with The Times at De Lano’s house and later in the day held a press conference to plead for greater understanding of postpartum psychosis.

‘Under the Rug’

“Postpartum has been swept under the rug for so long. The pediatricians treat the baby but not the mother, and I want to try and do something about that,” Massip told The Times.

Massip’s attorney, Milton C. Grimes, and medical professionals familiar with postpartum psychosis said Friday that they fear the verdict against Massip may prejudice public attitudes toward the malady, which has been gaining increasing attention nationwide.

In the trial, Grimes called several medical experts who testified that Massip’s was a textbook case of the maternal disorder. One of those who testified, San Diego psychologist Dr. Susan Hickman, on Friday called the jury’s verdict “barbaric and incomprehensible.”

Postpartum psychosis, a disorder that may be hormonally rooted, is thought to affect about 3 in every 1,000 new mothers. It is believed to cause severe mood swings, irritability, depression and, in some extreme cases, hallucinations and violence.

But Massip’s prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas J. Borris, argued that Massip was not insane when she ran over the child but simply had run out of patience.

Borris asserted during the emotional, 2-month trial that Massip killed the child out of frustration with the constant crying and the harm his birth had caused her marriage.

To find Massip innocent of murder, Borris told the jury in Superior Court in Santa Ana, would be tantamount to giving frustrated young mothers “a license to kill.”

The jury convicted Massip of second-degree murder and its members have been reluctant to discuss their reasons publicly.

‘Painful Flashbacks’

“I blame a lot on myself,” Massip said during Friday’s interview. “I keep going over and over (the day of the killing) in my mind, trying to figure out what I could have done differently,” Massip said. “But I just don’t understand how those jurors could say that I could have ever killed my child if I was sane.”

Massip said she still experiences “painful flashbacks” of the events leading up to her child’s death--such as her throwing the child into oncoming traffic on the morning of the killing.

She said that the images are vague and confused and that she still has trouble understanding what much of it means. “Trying to make some sense out of an irrational state is a very difficult thing for me to do,” she said.

Before her son’s death, she said, she saw signs that something was wrong: walls moving around her, images of flames engulfing her, voices that she attributed to Satan speaking to her.

Massip said she wishes now that she had pushed harder to get help from people around her, to find out what was happening to her.

But at the time, she said, “I kept holding on, thinking that things would be OK. . . . I didn’t feel at all like Michael’s life was in danger. I felt my life was the one in danger.

“I still don’t know why I’m here and my baby is gone. I would do anything to have him here and me gone,” she said. When she killed her child, Massip said, “I took a part of me.

“The time in jail is not half as bad as the burden of having to live without my son.”

Massip said she plans to fight the jury’s verdict, bolstered by the support of her family. Grimes said he plans to file a motion for a new trial and, if that does not succeed, appeal the conviction.

Massip’s father took 2 months off work as an engineer at IBM to watch his daughter’s trial every day from the front row, often joined by several other family members. The family also placed a lien against their house to post Massip’s jail bond.

“This has consumed the family. Our lives have not been the same since this happened,” said Cindy De Lano, Massip’s stepmother.

Massip trial hits a nerve with postpartum depression sufferers. Life, Page 6.