A Georgia woman who murdered her 13-month-old daughter with a knife from a butcher’s block has been found guilty of murder beyond a reasonable doubt, but also mentally ill. The verdict topped off one of the most disturbing cases of true crime filicide in recent memory.
Chloe Alexis Driver was just 20 years old and involved in a polygamist group when she stabbed her daughter Hannah Nicole Driver on Dec. 8, 2020. She was charged with malice murder, felony murder, first-degree cruelty to children, and aggravated assault. She pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
In a confession to forensic psychologist Dr. Jacquelyn Zahm, who took the stand in the trail, Driver gave a detailed account of what happened on the night of the murder.
Driver was married to Benyamin Ben Michael, also known as Brian Joyce, who had at least two other wives. Chief Assistant District Attorney Katie Gropper, who prosecuted the case, argued that Driver committed the heinous act so she could have Michael all to herself.
Forensic psychologist Dr. McLendon Garrett interviewed Driver after the murder and also testified in her trial. Driver said she felt separated from the other wives and kept “seeing signs” that those wives wanted her and Hannah dead. Diver was also seeing knives “in her vicinity” all the time and thought she possessed magic powers that let her read people’s thoughts.
Driver said she wanted a “normal life” for her daughter, but she knew that wasn’t going to happen in their current situation. When she went to Joyce and the other wives for some assistance, they gave her CBD oil, which made her more paranoid. Even worse, she believed she was “pouring evil” into her daughter every time she breastfeed the child.
At one point, she started referring to the child only as “a sin.” Driver believed “by having with somebody who was married — by having the child in this sort of open relationship — that it was a sin and that she passed that sin on to her daughter. And so they shared that — that they were both embodiments of sin,” Garrett said.
The specific moment she decided to kill the child was when she asked Joyce to give her something clean to change the child and he threw a dirty shirt at her. At that moment, Garrett testified, Driver didn’t feel worthy of being alive.
The day of the murder, she put Hannah down in bed after breastfeeding her and went downstairs and got a knife out of the butcher block. She walked back upstairs and stabbed Hannah and then stabbed herself three times in the throat. When that didn’t work, she tried to stab herself in the heart.
Witness Jason Spillars said he was outside the home when he heard a “guttural scream.” He ran inside and found a scene that was “like a massacre.” Authorities arrived and rushed mother and daughter to the hospital. Hannah died at the hospital, and Driver was in the ICU for weeks, but eventually pulled through.
Spillars also shared that Joyce and the other wives would drink urine and perform “dark therapy.” Driver’s lawyer argued that if Driver wanted Joyce to herself, she would have killed the other wives as well. That argument swayed jurors. Driver appeared emotionless as the verdict was read. She’ll be sentenced on Dec. 12.
