Trial date set for a Horsham woman accused of strangling her son as he slept

A Horsham woman accused of strangling her 11-year-old son with her husband’s belt will have her murder trial heard before a judge, after opting out of a jury trial during a hearing Friday in Norristown.

Ruth DiRienzo-Whitehead, 51, will have her case on first- and third-degree murder heard during a bench trial with Montgomery County Court Judge William Carpenter on Feb. 12. The former Keller-Williams real estate agent said little during Friday’s brief proceeding.

During that hearing, her attorney, Eugene Tinari, said that DiRienzo-Whitehead is being treated for mental-health issues while incarcerated. Previously, Tinari has said that she killed her son, Matthew, during a “psychotic episode” in April. That episode came after DiRienzo-Whitehead had shown a “slow and steady deterioration of her mental capacities” that was left untreated, according to Tinari.

“There was no other explanation. She was a loving, doting mom,” he said in August at DiRienzo-Whitehead’s preliminary hearing.

After killing her son as he slept April 10, DiRienzo-Whitehead drove her Toyota Highlander into the ocean at a beach in Cape May, according to the affidavit of probable cause for her arrest. The vehicle became disabled in shallow water, and DiRienzo-Whitehead was taken into custody not long after in nearby Wildwood Crest.

She later told detectives her son had been “crying off and on all day over the family’s financial difficulties,” the affidavit said. She strangled him with her husband’s belt as he slept, she said, because she didn’t want the boy to “grow up with these struggles.”