Lisa Snyder has remained silent for most of the first four days of her murder trial.
The 41-year-old Albany Township woman, accused in the 2019 hanging deaths of her 8-year-old son, Connor, and 4-year-old daughter, Brinley, has, for the most part, sat stoically behind the defense table in a Berks County courtroom.
A handful of times she has leaned over and whispered to her two lawyers. And on a few occasions she could be heard sniffling or sobbing in reaction to testimony.
Outside of that, she hasn’t uttered an audible word.
But just because she hasn’t spoken doesn’t mean Snyder’s voice hasn’t had a prominent role in her trial.
For the second day in a row, prosecutors Thursday played a lengthy video of Snyder being interviewed by state police in the wake of her children being found hanged in the basement of her home in the 2400 block of Route 143 on Sept. 23, 2019.
While the video played Wednesday was from an interview conducted just hours after Snyder’s frantic 911 call in which she claimed she had found the children hanged and unresponsive, Thursday’s video was of an interview done four days later, the day after Connor and Brinley were pronounced dead at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest near Allentown.
There were many similarities between the two interviews, with Snyder claiming Connor had been depressed and suicidal because of bullying at school and with her sharing details about her own long history of mental illness. That illness includes a 2014 incident in which she had homicidal thoughts about her children, who were subsequently taken away from her for six months by Berks County Children and Youth Services.
One aspect of Thursday’s video that was different was how it ended.
Near the close of the more-than two hour interview, one of the investigators asks Snyder, very directly, if she killed her kids.
Snyder, through heavy sobbing, says no. She also denies helping Connor to plan to commit suicide.
The investigators persist, asking again a few minutes later if Snyder was involved with her children’s deaths.
“No, I swear to God I had nothing to do with this,” she says, her words coming out halted as she gasped for breath between sobs. “They were my world, I have no purpose now.”
One of the investigators than challenges Snyder and her claim that Connor was responsible for his and his sister’s deaths, saying “it’s clear something else happened.”
Snyder, who was doing the interview of her own volition and without representation, responds by saying she wants the session to end and that she won’t speak with investigators any further without a lawyer.
One of the investigators can be heard telling Snyder that, while she is free to do so, if she walks out of the interview everyone will think she’s a child killer. Snyder responded by saying she has been cooperative and has not held anything back.
The interview then ends. Snyder was arrested and charged a little more than two months later, on Dec. 2, 2019.
The emotional conclusion to the interview was a stark contrast to the rest of the session. For the large majority of it Snyder sounded calm and collected, speaking quickly but clearly and intelligently in response to the questions she’s asked.
She said her own mental health struggles have popped up off and on since she was 16. She blamed the 2014 incident on a birth control device she had implanted in her arm, claiming that since she had it removed she never again thought about harming her children.
She talked about the children, saying that at the time of their deaths she had already put aside Christmas presents for them. Connor was interested in making YouTube videos, so she had bought a GoPro camera, some studio lights and a green screen. She bought some dolls for Brinley, she said.
Snyder also discussed Connor’s mental health, repeating the claims she has made since the day of the hangings that he was depressed and suicidal. Several other witnesses — family members, school employees, friends — have disputed those claims.
When asked where Connor could have gotten the idea to hang himself and his little sister, Snyder turned to the internet. In particular, she cited a 2017 video by YouTube star Logan Paul that featured him discovering an apparent suicide victim hanging from a tree in a forest in Japan.
Also on Thursday, prosecutors presented internet searches Snyder performed through Google in the days and weeks leading up to her children’s deaths. Those searches included topics such as how to hang oneself, whether or not a hybrid car produces carbon monoxide while idling, how much it takes to overdose on various prescription drugs and how long it takes to die from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Snyder was also shown to have visited a website that detailed the same type of hanging death that took the lives of her children. She visited that site the day before their deaths.
The trial will continue Friday morning.
Snyder is facing two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of second-degree murder, two counts of endangering the welfare of children and one count of tampering with evidence.
Berks prosecutors have said they will seek either a life sentence or the death penalty in this case.
Source: Berkshire mont
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