A Texas mother who admitted to drowning her two children in a bathtub and hiding their bodies under a neighbor’s home in 2016 was sentenced to 40 years in prison on Monday, authorities said. Sheborah Latrice Thomas pleaded guilty to two counts of murder in connection with the deaths of her daughter, 5-year-old daughter, Kayiana Thomas, and 7-year-old son, Araylon “Ray Ray” Thomas, according to a press release from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
“This mother knew what she was doing, she knew it was wrong, and we vowed to seek justice for these two children,” District Attorney Kim Ogg said in the release. “This plea agreement means that family members will not have to testify and this woman cannot appeal her conviction or the sentence.” Thomas drowned her daughter, Kayiana, in the bathtub of the family’s home in southeast Houston on Aug. 12, 2016, the release states. She put her daughter’s body on a bed, then called her son, Araylon, to the bathroom and drowned him.
A day later, she put the children’s bodies into a garbage can behind the house and went to her job and tried to get her paycheck early, the D.A.’s office said. She then tried to dig a hole for the bodies, but when she couldn’t dig a hole large enough, she rolled the bodies under a neighbor’s house. Thomas then apparently told a friend she had drowned the children and had to leave town, but the friend thought she was joking. Once he realized she was serious, she showed him where to find the kids’ bodies, the release said.
Soon after, he contacted Houston police. According to Houston police, Thomas also had a 12-year-old son at the time of the murders, but he was not at home and was unharmed, PEOPLE reported. Thomas lost custody of the children in 2012 after one of them was found wandering the streets with a drunk homeless man, ABC 13 reports. CPS and Houston police also visited the family’s home the day before Thomas killed her children, a family friend said, per the outlet. Family members remembered the slain siblings on a GoFundMe page as “good children who just loved being kids.” Assistant District Attorney Sarah Moss said in the release that the guilty plea “gives the family closure, and the children can finally be at rest.”
