In 2017 Marci Webber appeared before her former judge to plead her case once again. She sought to prove to him that she was no longer a threat to either herself or society and was fit for release to a halfway house, hopefully in Arizona hear her ageing and ailing father.
While acknowledging "full responsibility" for the gruesome murder of her 4 year old daughter, Magdalene, known as Maggie, she stated that the actions were a result of a psychotic break brought on by withdrawal of anti-psychotic medications that she had become increasingly reliant upon.
According to the timeline, the New York native stopped taking her prescriptions in May of 2010 when she went on an extended visit to her mother in Chicago and 'forgot them.' She returned briefly to New York during the summer, and then was back to Illinois to visit family in the fall. During her time in Illinois, she resumed taking at least one of the prescriptions.
"Everyone's reaction is, 'How can a mother do something like that?'" she told the Chicago Tribune in a series of interviews. "I understand that. I couldn't imagine that I could have done this either, but anyone who has a true psychosis knows you don't have the ability to make a choice."
"In all my thoughts, in my crazy world of Satanists coming after us, lurking behind the bushes, in their cars ready to snatch us, the hallucinations, not once did I have a thought I was hurting anyone," she said. "That morning it was like I was in a driven frenzy with the most abject fear. And it was like a split second, in the blink of an eye, and it was over with." She continued, "I believed I was on a different plane and that we're just temporary bodies, like paper, like a jar of clay ... I had a tape recorder going to record angels taking us to heaven for posterity so that people could have evidence that there is a better world."
Her oldest daughter was the one that made the discovery and the call to 911 where she was recorded saying, "There's blood all over the bathroom. I think my sister is dead. Hurry up, please!"
Inside the bathroom at a family member's townhome, Webber had slashed her daughter's throat, nearly decapitating her. According to the records, she then wrote on the walls of the bathroom in her daughter's blood, "Divine Mercy = Satan" after which she proceeded to cut her own throat and wrists.
According to records from her 2017 hearing, Webber has refused to take any anti-psychotic medications for at least five years, and reports that she is doing well. When asked about conflicts with the staff at the hospital she is being held, she says that they are 80% the fault of the staff for being petty and seeking reasons to punish her. She also told the judge in 2017 that if he mandated anti-psychotic drugs as a condition of her release that she would not take them.
It remains to be seen if she will be granted release, or if the judge will order her care continued. As a part of being found Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity, (NGRI), people are often sentenced to psychiatric care not to exceed the time they could have been sentenced to prison. In Webber's case, she could be held for up to 99 years of care.