EXCLU: Drew Hoenigke told The Daily Beast that the decision not to immediately call the police when their son started looking sick—and wait three days after he died—was rooted in a distrust of medicine.
It was bitterly cold, with fresh snow and ice on the ground, when Pennsylvania State troopers arrived at Amy and Drew Hoenigke’s red-roofed home.
The startling discovery launched an even more harrowing investigation into what exactly happened after Amy Hoenigke gave birth to Mahko on the sheet-lined couch in their living room alongside her husband and a friend. According to police, while Drew went several towns away for work, his wife and the friend struggled to keep the newborn alive after an initially successful home birth.
In this case, prosecutors are insisting that while it is not illegal to veer away from mainstream medicine during childbirth, or even afterward, the Hoenigkes had a duty to set aside their beliefs to save their son’s life. But the case, according to legal experts canvassed by The Daily Beast, is no slam dunk—and raises difficult questions about when, exactly, bad parenting becomes a crime.
To prove their point, prosecutors lay out a series of disturbing allegations against the Hoenigkes and their family friend in theAmong them: that Amy Hoenigke initially lied and suggested to police that she woke up to find her son dead without any prior indication the child was unwell, and was misleading about the length of time during which the newborn was suffering prior to his death.
“It’s going to be hard to show criminal intent. Since there was no licensed doctor or nurse there, it’s going to be hard to prosecute this charge,” he said, noting that the couple’s stated opposition to vaccination could possibly help them argue pre-existing beliefs factored into their decisions. The Hoenigkes have long strived to “live a more natural” lifestyle, according to the family patriarch.
“They made the decision to live a primitive lifestyle and raise their children in the same manner,” the affidavit states. “Meckes, having worked as a surgical technician and going through nursing school, was trained to know the signs and symptoms of difficulty breathing and when to summon a higher level of care, but failed to do so,” the affidavit says.
But the affidavit details several text messages Hoenigke received from his wife on Jan. 16, starting around 6:03 p.m., where she explains that their newborn “needs the stuff out of his chest… he’s not getting enough oxygen. Please keep praying.” “We were in a snow storm with a two-year-old that I wouldn’t be able to take or leave in an ambulance or drive ourselves the 40 minutes to a hospital,” Amy Hoenigke messaged her parents just before 10 a.m. on Jan. 17, according to the affidavit. “I was hopeful, but I knew he was going to pass. And i [sic] wanted it to be more comfortable for everyone. He passed exactly where he was born exactly three days later.
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