A woman who killed her children in a California hotel room rather than surrender custody of them to their Cobb County father was sentenced Friday to two life sentences for her crime.
A judge in Santa Ana, Calif., passed the sentence: Marilyn Edge will stay in prison for two life sentences for the Sept. 13, 2013, killings of Jaelen Edge, 13, and his 10-year-old sister, Faith.
Edge, according to court testimony, rented a room at an Orange County hotel, where she used sleeping pills to sedate her children. She then filled the room's tub with water. Jaelen struggled as he drowned. Faith succumbed only after her mother suffocated the child with a pillow.
Her children dead, Edge then tried to kill herself. She failed. Edge drove her car into an electrical box outside a shopping center. As rescue workers toiled to free her from the car, Edge tried to choke herself with an electrical cord.
Edge chose to kill the children, prosecutors said, rather than surrender custody to her former husband, Cobb County resident Mark Edge. Earlier that month, a Cobb judge had ordered the mother to turn the children over to their father. Instead, said police, she borrowed a car from a relative and headed toward Arizona. She'd moved there a year earlier.
But she didn’t stop in Arizona. Instead, Edge continued west, buying sleeping tablets along the way. When she and her children checked into a Santa Ana hotel room, she put them to use.
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