Michigan mom says SpongeBob ordered her to kill her 3-year-old daughter

A Michigan woman, whose three-year-old daughter was found dead in a trash bag days ago, has reportedly confessed to the murder. 

Justine Johnson, 22, told an investigator that she had hallucinated the animated character SpongeBob on television, who had ordered her to either kill her daughter or face death herself, according to a report by the local news outlet, MLive. 

She allegedly stabbed her child, Sutton M Mosser, multiple times on September 16 and stuffed her into a black trash bag. It has been reported that days of heroin withdrawal and lack of sleep had been behind her hallucinations.

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Ryan Eberline, an investigator with Child Protective Services, testified to this on February 4, before Iosco County District Judge Christopher P. Martin. Johnson had told him during an interview on October 1 that she had left her mother’s Oscada Township house and passed out in a graveyard, before returning to her home. After a failed attempt at killing herself, she went on to kill her own daughter, who had turned three just two days before her death. 

County Prosecutor James A. Bacarella, asked investigator Eberline, “What did she tell you?”

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The conversation was very pieced out. We would review things and go back to those things. Overall, the conversation, from what I could conclude, was that near the date of the 16th she had left her mother’s house walking and passed out in the graveyard,” he said.

“She told me that she didn’t remember the specifics of what happened at the time of what happened to Sutton, that she was experiencing hallucinations due to heroin withdrawal and not sleeping for approximately two weeks. She was getting hallucinations from the TV that had instructed her to take her daughter’s life or they would kill her. It was SpongeBob who was saying these things on the TV. If she didn’t do what she did to her daughter they would kill her. She said she was afraid for her life and she had lost her mind,” he said during the hearing. 

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Johnson has been charged with felony murder and first-degree child abuse for the death of her daughter.

The case is set to be handed over to Circuit Court for trial and is scheduled for a pre-trial hearing on February 28. Johnson will be in jail without bond until then, MLive reported.