A Horsham woman who killed her son struggled with undiagnosed mental health issues, lawyer says

A lawyer for a Horsham woman accused of killing her 11-year-old son said Thursday that the death came during a “psychotic episode” fueled by her recent mental health struggles.

Ruth DiRienzo-Whitehead, 51, has been charged with first- and third-degree murder after investigators say she admitted to strangling her son, Matthew, with a leather belt inside their home in Horsham. After the April 11 killing, 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.

DiRienzo-Whitehead 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.”

» READ MORE: Horsham mother charged with murder in strangulation of 11-year-old son

Her lawyer, Eugene Tinari, waived her preliminary hearing Thursday, sending the case to a county judge. Afterward, Tinari said he plans on fighting the charges “extremely aggressively,” given DiRienzo-Whitehead’s mental state at the time.

“There was no other explanation. She was a loving, doting mom, and all these people will come to court in support and advance that,” Tinari said referencing the more than a dozen of his client’s loved ones and friends who attended Thursday’s brief hearing. “They know her, and they will absolutely attest to the fact as to what was going on with her and her mental infirmity.”

DiRienzo-Whitehead, a longtime Realtor in Montgomery County, had never formally been diagnosed with a mental illness before her son’s death, Tinari said. But those around her told him that there had been “a slow and steady deterioration of her mental capacities” that went untreated.

Since her arrest, DiRienzo-Whitehead has received treatment and medication, and has shown significant improvement, according to Tinari.

After months of evaluation, DiRienzo-Whitehead was ruled competent to stand trial by experts for both prosecutors and the defense, Assistant District Attorney Gwendolyn Kull, who is prosecuting the case, said after Thursday’s hearing.

The case, Kull said, is bolstered by “overwhelming evidence.”

“As a mother, it’s unfathomable, almost incomprehensible how she could do this,” Kull said. “But as a prosecutor, she did, and she will be held accountable.”

DiRienzo-Whitehead will remain in custody, denied bail, until her arraignment in county court, which has been scheduled for Oct. 11.