John Jefferson
Inset: Joanne Zephir (Osceola County Sheriff’s Office). Background: Deputies escorting Zephir from the hospital after she killed her 3-year-old daughter (Office of the State Attorney for the Ninth Judicial Circuit).
A 39-year-old mother in Florida will spend the remainder of her days behind bars for killing her 3-year-old daughter, initially trying to poison the child with milk laced with bleach before ultimately strangling her to death.
Osceola County Circuit Court Judge Keith Carsten on Wednesday ordered Joanne Zephir to serve a life sentence in a state correctional facility without the chance for parole, records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
Zephir, who had been facing the death penalty, also allegedly made her 8-year-old daughter drink the bleach-laced beverage and stabbed her husband. She reached a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree murder with a weapon and one count of attempted first-degree murder with a weapon. In exchange for entering into the plea deal, prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty and dropped a third charge of attempted felony murder.
As Law&Crime previously reported, deputies with the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office at about 12:44 a.m. on May 8, 2022, began searching for Zephir’s Toyota Corolla after receiving a disturbing 911 call from the killer’s sister-in-law. The sister-in-law told emergency dispatchers that Zephir had called her, saying she “poisoned her two daughters and one was already dead,” adding that “her other daughter had taken the poison and she would be dead soon too.”
According to a probable cause affidavit, the sister-in-law asked to speak with the surviving daughter, an 8-year-old. Zephir gave the phone to the child and the sister-in-law told the child to “run” and “look for other people near the road and get help.”
Deputies soon found the 8-year-old girl who led them to a church parking lot in the 4900 block of Old Pleasant Hill Road in Kissimmee, Florida, which is where Zephir’s car was parked. Inside the vehicle, authorities found Zephir and her 3-year-old daughter inside a car.
“Joanne was found sitting in the driver’s seat of the vehicle and deputies noticed she appeared lethargic and was drooling from the mouth,” the document states.
The 3-year-old was unresponsive in a pink child seat in the rear of the vehicle.
“Deputies reported they could smell a strong odor of bleach emitting from the interior of the vehicle,” the affidavit states.
EMS attempted lifesaving measures on the 3-year-old but were unsuccessful.
The 8-year-old told investigators at the hospital that her mother picked up her and her younger sister from their aunt’s home and drove them to the parking lot, where they took a nap.
“After their nap, her mother made her and her sister drink a ‘special milk’ that she told them would clean their ‘bellies,’” authorities wrote. “The 8-year-old explained her mother first made her 3-year-old sister drink the milk, but her sister told [Zephir] that the milk was ‘yucky.’ [Zephir] told her the milk was good for her and she had to drink it and then proceeded to make the 3-year-old drink about half the bottle of milk.”
Zephir allegedly then gave the “milk” to the 8-year-old and told her to drink it. That child told investigators that she drank three big sips before vomiting. According to documents, she described it as smelling “bad, like pickles,” and that it burned her tongue, but her mother told her it was “good for them” and she “had to drink it.”
“The 8-year-old female stated her mother put her sister back in the car and she was no longer breathing and she had died,” they wrote.
Zephir allegedly admitted post-Miranda to stabbing her husband before picking up the girls from their aunt’s home.
“Joanne stated after she killed her ‘babies’ she decided to try to kill herself,” the affidavit said, later noting that she believed both daughters had died. “Joanne advised she drank a considerable amount of bleach in an attempt to commit suicide.”
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