When Carol Coronado killed her three young daughters on May 20, 2014, no one could believe it. Everyone who knew Carol swore she was a model mom - loving, attentive and engaged. Sophia (2 1/2), Yazmine (1 1/2) and Xenia (6 weeks) were Carol’s pride & joy, her greatest treasures. So when her husband Rudy and her mom Julie found her hovering above the dead bodies of her three little girls, their horror collided with a realization that the person in front of them with the knife in her hand was not the person they knew. She was not Carol. Like hundreds of other mothers who kill their children or themselves each year, Carol Coronado was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time of her crime. Yet no one was able to spot it, so no one was able to stop it. NOT CAROL takes a deep dive into the taboo world of maternal mental health, blowing the lid off of a national epidemic that is ravaging families at a shocking rate. Over 800,000 new mothers suffer from postpartum depression every year. And out of every thousand births, one to two moms will suffer a psychotic break. Of those, 4% will kill their child, and 5% will kill themselves. NOT CAROL looks at this unreported epidemic through the prism of the Carol Coronado murder case.
Carol’s case has attracted national attention. Emotional outbursts, expert witnesses, antiquated legal statutes - these are among the deciding factors that will determine whether Carol Coronado is headed to a hospital ward or a prison cell.
Carol’s courtroom prosecution begins; a murder trial in all it’s gory glory. The LA District Attorney’s office goes full steam ahead to put Carol Coronado away forever.
Carol Coronado checks just about every box when it comes to postpartum complications - 3 children within 30 months, sleep deprivation, domestic strife, financial hardship, childhood, trauma, isolation, and the list goes on. Disaster is imminent, but no one knows it.
What happens if you don’t feel elated after you have your child, the way everyone tells you you should be feeling. What happens when you feel helpless, anxious, overwhelmed and detached? Are you a horrible mother if you hide your feelings?
With none of her family or friends trained to look for warning signs, Carol Coronado slips into a postpartum psychosis and takes the lives of her three precious daughters.
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