A New Jersey mother serving a pair of life sentences in Arizona for the murder of her two young daughters was found dead in her prison cell last week.
Retta Cruse committed suicide Feb. 21 at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Perryville, a suburb of Phoenix, officials from the Arizona Department of Corrections said in a statement.
Cruse — who fatally drugged her children — hanged herself and was unable to be revived, authorities said.
Cruse, 38, admitted killing her kids, Aleyah McIntyre, 9, and Royal McIntyre, 4, shortly after moving from Pleasantville, New Jersey, to Arizona in 2021.
The girl’s father found the bodies of Royal and Aleyah lying on a bed, facing each other, in the family’s Phoenix home, on Sept. 9, 2021.
A GoFundMe campaign set up to cover the girls’ burials noted the family had moved to Arizona for “spiritual reasons.”
Cruse pleaded guilty to the murders, and was sentenced in 2022, reported AZCentral.
