A Mᴀssachusetts mother charged with the deaths of her two young children remains locked up without bail after a judge rejected her attorney’s unexpected bid last week to have the entire case thrown out or to set her free on bond. Janette MacAusland, 49, of Wellesley, appeared in Dedham District Court on September 10 facing two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the April 24 discovery of 7-year-old Kai and 6-year-old Ella inside the family’s Edgemoor Avenue home. Her lawyer, Joseph Krowski Jr., told the court that prosecutors still lacked official findings from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner on the cause and manner of the children’s deaths more than four months later, arguing there was insufficient information to keep his client detained.

Prosecutors confirmed they were waiting on those results and asked for more time; a grand jury that had already begun hearing the case would need to be reconvened once the medical examiner finished. Judge Jeanmarie Carroll denied both the motion to dismiss and the request for bail, ordered MacAusland held without bond, and continued the probable-cause hearing until October 29. MacAusland has pleaded not guilty. According to court records and police reports, she arrived that April night at an aunt’s home in Bennington, Vermont, roughly 140 miles away, with a serious wound to her neck and allegedly told officers she had killed the children and tried to take her own life because she wanted the three of them “to go to God together but it didn’t work.”

Vermont authorities notified Wellesley police, who found the children. MacAusland, an acupuncturist, had been in the midst of a contentious divorce and custody fight with her husband Samuel after he filed in October 2025 seeking the children and the family home; a guardian ad litem was appointed just three days before the children were found. The delay at the medical examiner’s office has become the central friction point in a case that has already stretched from spring into fall with no indictment yet issued.

Krowski expressed frustration that after four months the Commonwealth still did not have the reports and testing needed to move the matter forward, while prosecutors said the findings were expected within weeks. The ruling leaves MacAusland in custody as the investigation continues and as the community that knew the children as students at Schofield Elementary School continues to absorb the loss.

Source: https://nypost.com/2026/09/10/us-news/janette-macauslands-attorney-requests-child-murder-case-be-dismissed/?utm_campaign=nypost&utm_medium=referral