Mom Charged With Killing Two Young Sons in Voodoo Ritual

02/07/2018 05:40 pm EST

A Massachusetts woman has been charged with the murders of her two young sons after taking part in a voodoo ritual.

Latarsha Sanders, 43, of Brockton, Massachusetts has admitted to stabbing and killing her two sons, 8-year-old Edson "Marlon" Brito, and Lason Brito, 5, the Boston Herald reports. The bodies of the two children were discovered on Monday after Sanders asked a neighbor to call an ambulance. Authorities said that the two boys had been in beds in separate rooms and their mother had cleaned them sometime before asking the neighbor to call for help.

Sanders allegedly told authorities that she had first attacked Edson "because of the voodoo stuff." She stabbed the child 50 times in the neck, chest and torso with a kitchen knife before attacking Lason.

"She said she stabbed him because she had 'failed' in the ritual with Marlon," Kenny said. "She responded to police that she felt bad about what she had done. She told police she mopped up the blood on the floor. She indicated she used a kitchen knife to stab both of them and left it in the sink. She also indicated she cleaned up both of the children and placed them in separate beds."

It is not yet clear when the two children were killed, though Kenny stated that they were last seen alive on Saturday when Sanders took them to visit their grandmother. Sanders returned to the house on Monday, just an hour before asking for an ambulance, but had made no mention of her children.

This isn't the first crime related to voodoo rituals. Two women in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts currently are being held on charges of torturing and disfiguring a 5-year-old girl and threatening her 8-year-old brother as part of a ritual to cast the "demons" out of the unruly children.

The case caught the attention of some Haitian Voodoo groups and anthropological experts, who say that the actions described in these police reports does not reflect the religion as a whole. Haitian Voodoo, rooted in the African diaspora, does not condone violence of any kind.

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