[3] On March 2, 2015, a jury found Spears guilty of murdering her son by poisoning him with table salt, which she had administered to him from infancy through his feeding tube.
The judge in the case, Robert Neary, acknowledged that Spears suffers from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, and therefore did not sentence her to the maximum of 25 years in prison before parole eligibility.
Lonely as a single mother and desperate for attention, Lacey constantly posted on social media about her son's health struggles, even going so far as to start a blog devoted to chronicling her search for a cure for whatever illnesses plagued him.
Telling friends she wanted to leave Alabama, Lacey moved with Garnett to Florida to live with her maternal grandmother, Peggy.
In explaining her son's paternity, she created a fictional character, police officer Blake, who died in a car accident, to be Garnett's father.