Mother Charged With Killing 2 Ill Sons

The two brothers lay side-by-side in a nursing home, their brains so racked with the same hereditary disease that had killed their father that they were reduced to incoherent mumbling.

Over the weekend, authorities say, their 63-year-old mother walked into their room, shot them to death with a small pistol, then calmly sat on a couch in the lobby and waited to be arrested.

On Monday, she bowed her head and apologized as a judge read the two murder charges against her. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” she said repeatedly.

Family members say Carol Carr was trying to end the suffering of her sons, Michael Scott, 42, and Andy Scott, 41. Both were in the advanced stages of Huntington’s disease, which slowly cripples the brain and the body, the family members said.

“She was depressed all the time. She didn’t know what else she could do for them,” said Carr’s niece, Debbie Harry. “We were always worried about what Carol would do. We were afraid she was going to crack.”

Their father, Hoyt Scott, suffered a slow death from Huntington’s, finally succumbing in 1995.

Before the two brothers entered SunBridge Care and Rehabilitation in January, Carr gave her entire life to her sons, family members say--dressing them, bathing them, helping them go to the bathroom.

“They were like babies,” said Janelle Scott, Carr’s sister-in-law.

Their only living sibling, 38-year-old James Scott, is in the early stages of the disease. He said his brothers, riddled with painful bed sores, had been in and out of nursing homes, were miserable and could only mumble to each other.

At Monday’s hearing, Chief Magistrate Rita Cavanaugh tentatively set a hearing for June 27; Carr did not have a lawyer present.

As she was led to jail, Carr told her relatives, “I love y’all.”