A lady in Illinois has confessed to murdering her 7-year-old son, with court documents revealing that the kid was always afraid of being suffocated by the woman, telling his grandmother, “Mama is going to kill me.” The youngster stated that his mother tried “several times” to hold pillows and couch cushions over his head while he was playing and sleeping before his death in 2021.
“I can’t breathe, grandma, she won’t let me breathe,” Nathaniel Burton told his paternal grandmother of his mother, Sarah Safranek, and her repeated efforts to suffocate him, according to court documents and Ogle County prosecutors.
Safranek, 38, of Oregon, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder this week and received a 35-year jail sentence for her son’s suffocation death in February 2021, according to local CBS station WIFR.
According to the Shaw Local News Network, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services paid over a dozen visits to Safranek’s home in the two years preceding Nathaniel’s death. DCFS closed the case each time after determining there was no evidence of parental wrongdoing, Shaw Local reported.
According to court records, Nathaniel came to his grandmother “about two months prior” to his death and told her that his mother had “come into his bedroom and put a pillow over his head while he was sleeping,” according to police.
Nathaniel’s maternal grandmother recalled similar statements Nathaniel made about his mother, including charges that Safranek attempted to “drown him in a bathtub.” Prosecutors said the youngster “constantly told her he was worried that [Safranek] was going to suffocate him.”
Nathaniel’s sister also said she saw Safranek “choke him and hit him with a belt.” The boy’s foster parents, who he stayed with for many months when he was five years old, claimed he informed them about similar instances. According to court filings, his foster mother stated that he once “told her he was kneeling by the couch with the cushion off and playing with toy cars when [Safranek] threw the cushion over him, sat on it, and refused to get off.”
On February 17, 2021, Safranek smothered Nathaniel at their house on the 400 block of S. 10th Street in Ogle County. He was hospitalized and died the following day.
Authorities initiated an investigation and discovered extensive evidence incriminating Safranek, including terrifying online searches and journal entries “reflecting that she hurts her kids,” according to prosecutors.
“What is it called when a parent is obsessed with the thought of killing their child?” Court filings show that Safranek Googled on November 1, 2020.
“How much does cremation of a child cost?” Safranek asked on February 17, 2021, the day Nathaniel died. “How long does an investigation take after a child dies?” she Googled the same day.
According to prosecutors, Safranek also conducted searches on Scott Peterson and Laci Peterson, a Google search on “how to quickly kill someone,” a Wired article about the “best deadly poisons,” a Vice article about “why some mothers kill their children,” and a Google search on “how to murder someone with a voodoo doll.”
Safranek first pleaded guilty in March 2024, but then retracted her plea and was due to stand trial last August. Her trial, however, was withdrawn off the court calendar in July 2024 after prosecutors appealed various rulings made by the case’s presiding judge, who retired.
Safranek was ordered last week to complete her 35-year sentence before being allowed mandatory supervised release.
