This podcast details true crime cases.

It contains adult themes and may contain descriptions of violence.

It is not intended for children.

Listener discretion is advised.

Thank you for joining me for today's episode of Once Upon a Crime.

We're in the series Deadly Therapy.

In these episodes, I detail cases of people who sought help from experts,

but instead met their demise in strange and tragic ways.

In today's story, a young girl grows up in poverty and instability and ends up in the foster care

system. After being adopted and having trouble adjusting to her new home, she is subjected to a

new type of therapy with tragic results. This is the case of Candice Newmaker.

When Candice Elmore Newmaker was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina in 1989,

she would be at least the fourth generation of her family born into poverty, dysfunction,

and instability. While she was greatly loved by her mother and grandparents, no one was quite

equipped due to their own struggles to provide Candice with a stable home.

Candice's maternal grandmother, Mary Clinton, was abandoned by her own mother when she was just a

toddler. She was left on a street corner with her older sister and soon found herself in foster

care. Foster care is a system in which a minor has been placed into a ward, group home, or private

home of a state certified caregiver referred to as a foster parent, or with a family member approved

by the state. It's a government-run safeguard that is designed to help abused, neglected,

or abandoned children, for example, when their parents are unable to care for them.

But for many children, it creates even more instability in their lives.

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