WASHINGTON – On May 1, 2025, a young mother in a small Idaho town said she found her twin toddlers dead in their bed, cold and lying on their bellies.
Three days later, she sat for an interview with Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine non-profit co-founded by United States Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, claiming that vaccines caused their deaths. The story was sensational, billed on the group’s website as “breaking news” of toddlers who were born together and died together, “FOLLOWING VACCINATIONS”.
The organisation quickly embraced the woman, Andrea Renee Shaw, naming her the lead plaintiff in two legal actions against the US’ top society of paediatricians, claiming that the organisation, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), lied about the safety of childhood vaccines.
Then, last week, after a nearly 14-month investigation by the Payette Police Department, a grand jury indicted Shaw, 23, on charges of murder, claiming that she suffocated the children in an act that was either premeditated or taken in the course of aggravated battery.
The police and the county prosecutors did not release details about the evidence or return calls from The New York Times.
“This arrest is the result of a lengthy and thorough investigation conducted by the Payette Police Department, with invaluable assistance from numerous partner agencies,” the police said in a brief statement, adding that the Idaho State Police Forensic Services and the Boise Police Department were among the agencies that assisted.
Neither Shaw nor Children’s Health Defense are backing down from their claim that vaccines killed both children.
Shaw’s lawyer, Joseph Filicetti, said in an interview on July 7 that he would argue that vaccines caused the suffocation. Experts say there is no evidence that vaccines can cause suffocation.
Mary Holland, the chief executive of Children’s Health Defense, said the group planned to stand by Shaw’s claim.
“They’re messing with the wrong people,” Holland said on a broadcast on the group’s website after the indictment was made public. She added: “We stand for the truth, and the truth is, that vaccines can cause death, and there’s zero evidence so far that this woman killed her children, zero.”
The latest cause celebre of Children’s Health Defense underscores the intensity of the organisation’s drive to raise questions and fears about the safety of common childhood vaccines through the stories of grieving parents whose children’s deaths have not been fully explained.
The Shaw case appears to be part of a pattern of cases in which vaccine activists have stood behind parents who may have played a role in a child’s death but claimed instead that vaccines were the culprit, said Dorit Reiss, a professor at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, who specialises in vaccine law and policy.
“Notice that they’re doubling down, they’re not stepping back, and they’re not giving up,” Reiss said. “In their alternative reality, this is more evidence that vaccines are not safe, and the system is trying to cover it up.”
Kennedy has not spoken publicly about the Shaw case, but he advanced similar claims as a vaccine activist leading the group, suggesting during the early roll-out of Covid-19 vaccines that the shots killed American baseball legend Hank Aaron and were behind a “wave of suspicious deaths”. Kennedy also used the non-profit’s social media channels to recruit plaintiffs for a lawsuit against a vaccine maker.
In an interview on July 7, Holland did not answer questions about how the non-profit connected with Shaw three days after the toddlers died.
“It’s not unusual at all that in a case like that we would be alerted,” she said. “We’re probably the only organisation that would take a case like that very seriously and put out information about it right away.”
When she appeared on the group’s broadcast three days after the deaths, Shaw described finding her fraternal twins, Dallas and Tyson, on their shared bed, their faces frozen as if they remained asleep. Her husband, Nathaniel Shaw, cried during the interview, recounting his son and daughter as caring, mellow and smart toddlers.
“Her smile, you could see it and it would make the sun just seem dim,” Nathaniel Shaw said, describing his daughter Dallas. “It could just light up your whole world as nothing else ever could.”
Ethan Mittelstadt, the Payette County coroner, said the autopsy records would not be available until the criminal case was resolved.
During the Children’s Health Defense broadcast, Andrea Shaw said the toddlers were born prematurely at 29 weeks, but had thrived in their small community about 96km north of Boise. She said that she had gotten them most of their recommended shots and that they had no problems with any vaccine until late in April 2025.
On April 23, she said, they had several vaccines and the following day developed diarrhoea and lethargy, prompting her to take them to an emergency room. They were discharged within hours, she said.
Hospital records provided by Children’s Health Defense show that one of the children had a fever of 37.2 deg C. The doctor deemed them to have had a “post-immunisation reaction”, which was treated with Tylenol and ice pops.
They died eight days after they got the vaccines – a shot for hepatitis A, another for flu, and a third for tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis, she said. She recounted in the interview that during the second day of police questioning her about the toddlers’ deaths, officers suggested that she was to blame.
“They said that it wasn’t medical,” Shaw said during the Children’s Health Defense interview. “And that they figured asphyxiation, and that I had supposedly had a postpartum overwhelming blackout, and done it to my children.”
Polly Tommey, a programming director for Children’s Health Defense who interviewed the couple, appeared to lead them in the interview to disavow vaccines, saying: “We have to warn the people of these vaccines.”
She asked: “You’re so pro-vaccine, so how does that make you both feel that this has happened, that you were lied to?”
“I feel that I wish I was anti-vaccine now,” Andrea Shaw said.
Shaw’s lawyer said she was arrested last week, five days after giving birth to another child. She remains in jail, unable to provide the US$2 million (S$2.6 million) bond for her release.
“She’s absolutely denied throughout all the interviews and continues to deny that she did anything,” Filicetti said, adding: “This gal is the kindest, sweetest, gentlest person I’ve ever met. I mean, she never even had a parking ticket in her life.”
He said the main issue in the case would be whether Shaw or the vaccines caused the suffocation.
Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, said the theory lacks plausibility, especially given that both children, who were not identical twins, died at about the same time more than a week after vaccination.
“I’m not aware of any vaccine that would be able to cause suffocation,” he said. “If that were the case, you’d expect to see other cases appearing in the community.”
In January, Shaw became the lead plaintiff in a Children’s Health Defense lawsuit accusing the AAP of “racketeering”, which is defined as gaining money through “illegal enterprise usually involving intimidation”.
The case, which is pending, rests on the notion that Shaw and others were victims of the AAP, which Children’s Health Defense said falsely claimed that vaccines were safe.
Backing a motion to dismiss the case in a court filing, the paediatricians’ group said: “Accusing people you disagree with of being criminal racketeers – and at the expense of children’s lives no less – is beyond the pale and a profound abuse of the legal system.”
Children’s Health Defense also tapped Shaw as the lead plaintiff in an effort to intervene in a lawsuit the paediatricians’ group has brought against Kennedy.
That case is focused on Kennedy’s decision as federal health secretary to dismiss the members of a prominent vaccine advisory group and replace them with people with few qualifications, many of whom have raised concerns about vaccines.
Children’s Health Defense and other groups filed an “emergency motion” to join the case to “speak for the children who have been injured or who have died from the vaccines”, based on the paediatricians’ group’s guidelines.
The judge rejected Children’s Health Defense’s motion to intervene. NYTIMES
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.