Death Penalty for Alabama Woman Who Murdered Children

Heather Leavell-Keaton (right), the woman who murdered her common law husband’s 3-year-old son four years ago, has become the first woman in Mobile County history to be sent to death row. Yesterday, following approximately 75 minutes of testimony, Circuit Court Judge Roderick P. Stout sentenced Leavell-Keaton to death by lethal injection.

In his ruling, Stout said Keaton failed to protect the children from “needless suffering and death and unexplainable malice.” He followed the prior sentence recommendation of the jury, which found that Leavell-Keaton intentionally killed Chase DeBlase in 2010, but only recklessly caused the death of his 4-year-old sister, Natalie DeBlase. Prosecutors allege that Leavell-Keaton cooked anti-freeze into the children’s food. Their father, John DeBlase (left), was convicted on multiple counts of capital murder in the children’s deaths in late 2014 and sentenced to death. Two jurors from the John DeBlase trial and five jurors from the Leavell-Keaton trial attended the hearing. Leavell-Keaton, who kept her hair in a braided ponytail, displayed no emotion during her sentencing.

The crime. According to prosecutors, the little girl was fatally choked March 20, 2010, after being duct-taped and placed in a suitcase which was set in a closet for 12 hours. It was reported the day she died, the little girl was “screaming like she was stabbed with a knife,” and she was unresponsive when John DeBlaze got home from work. The two initially put the body in the bathtub with a pillow and tarp, and then placed it in the closet. The child’s body was later dumped in a wooded area near Citronelle.

Leavell-Keaton, who was pregnant with DeBlaze’s child at the time, dosed Chase with anti-freeze. The little boy had been taped to a broom handle and left in the corner of the couple’s room overnight. He died Sunday, June 20, 2010 – Father’s Day. He, too, was choked to death, and his corpse was located in the woods outside Vancleave, Miss.

DeBlaze and Leavell-Keaton met through an online dating site in October 2008 while Leavell-Keaton was a student at Spring Hill College. They had moved to the home of Leavell-Keaton’s mother in Louisville, Ky., when, Jim Emery, the mother’s boyfriend, mentioned to a neighbor that Natalie and Chase (pictured above) were missing and the neighbor called police.

Corrine Heathcock, John DeBlase’s ex-wife and the biological mother of both children, began to sob hysterically and had to leave the courtroom when Stout read the horrific facts of the case. Following the hearing, DeBlase said Chase and Natalie “are in a better place right now.”

Prosecutors claimed Leavell-Keaton was jealous of Natalie and bristled when friends and family members called her a princess. Additionally, Natalie reportedly did not like her stepmother and was “cold” toward her. Later, Chase was killed because he kept asking about his sister.

The Death Penalty. “We believe that Heather Keaton ... is a domineering, manipulative, deceitful and morally unhinged woman,” said Mobile District Attorney Ashley Rich. “Her actions are worthy of the death penalty.” During the hearing, Rich and her co-counsel, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Wright, kept a sculpture of two faceless children on their desk called “Sister and Brother.” Rich said it was representative of Natalie and Chase during the sentencing phase of the trial.

Greg Hughes, Leavell-Keaton’s attorney, argued that his client should be spared the punishment because “she’s a spiritual person now. She’s into reading the Bible and writing songs and poems and she keeps to herself,” Hughes said. “She’s not going to be someone causing problems.” He added that Leavell-Keaton grew up in a dysfunctional family, developed bipolar disorder at a young age and lived with a partial blindness throughout her life. “A death penalty is never required no matter how atrocious, how horrible how anything is,” he said.