NASSAU — Police believe a 43-year-old Nassau woman stabbed her 4-year-old daughter to death in suburban Chicago Wednesday before attempting to kill herself.
Marci M. Webber, of 118 Uphams Corners Road in Nassau, is hospitalized under police supervision in Bloomingdale, a village about 25 miles west of Chicago, authorities there said.
While no charges have been filed, Bloomingdale Police Chief Frank Giammarese characterized the incident as a murder-attempted suicide and said charges are likely to come for Webber, who has had three children.
Webber was seen by a neighbor on Uphams Corners Road packing her things into her car early one morning and taking off about three weeks ago with her 4-year-old daughter, said Skye Schiller, who lives on the rural road.
"She was odd. She really didn’t make friends with anybody on the road," Schiller said of Webber.
On a page on the social networking website MySpace made by Webber, she depicts herself as a “very Catholic person” who believes the family court system is damaging to children and parents.
She wrote that she was attending law school to be a legal malpractice lawyer and is active in an organization called Reform Our Courts 4 Kids.
On the page, she blasts Family Court judges in Saratoga and Warren counties for “abusing their power in order to mess with me.”
Webber had told people in Illinois that she was in the midst of a bitter custody battle in New York when she left, the Chicago Tribune reported. She previously lived in Lake Luzerne in Warren County where she worked as an artist, according to years-old art exhibit listings in The Post-Star
Among the photos posted on Webber’s MySpace page is a 3½-year-old photo of her youngest daughter, then an infant.
The caption below the photo reads: “Life is a gift from God not to be messed with or taken away until it's (sic) natural death and journey into eternity!”
Police and emergency personnel were summoned to a Bloomingdale townhouse around 1:30 p.m. Wednesday and found 4-year-old Magadine M. Webber dead at the scene, Giammarese said.
A television station there, WGNTV, cited police sources who said the child had been stabbed and nearly decapitated.
The girl’s mother was hospitalized with what appeared to be self-inflicted injuries, Giammarese said.
A Bloomingdale neighbor told the Tribune that a teenage daughter of Webber’s came running from the townhouse Wednesday before police arrived, screaming, "There’s blood everywhere."
Four-year-old Magadine was "shy and polite," another neighbor told the newspaper.
Documents on file at the Rensselaer County Clerk’s Office indicate Webber owed $3,657.77 in back taxes to New York State as of March of this year on her home in Nassau. The outstanding tax warrants stretch back several years.
Giammarese would not discuss a possible motive for the crime and said the investigation continues. Detectives may soon head to Rensselaer County to gather information for their investigation, he said.
"We’re still following up on many leads," he said. "We’re looking at all angles at this point
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