Upstate New York Mom and Grandma Kill 4 Kids and Themselves in Murder-Suicide

On June 23, 2026, police forced their way into the Upstate New York apartment of Amy Steadman, a 64-year-old grandmother of four. Neighbors had complained to police about a foul odor and Steadman, her daughter Sarah Myers and Myers’ four children hadn’t been seen or heard from in a week.

Once inside, police made a grisly discovery: the dead bodies of all six family members. 

After finding numerous prescription and over-the-counter medications inside the apartment, investigators initially suspected Steadman of murdering her daughter and grandchildren—10-year-old twins Gavin and Gracelynn, 11-year-old Hudson and 13-year-old Harper—with poison. But handwritten notes and text messages between Steadman and Myers indicated to police that the two women had carefully planned and coordinated the murders of all four children together, and had then both died by suicide. (A June 2026 media release from the Mechanicville City Police states that “there is no evidence indicating the involvement of additional individuals.”)

In an August 2026 press conference, Mechanicville Police Chief William Rabbitt disclosed that the family had been dead since June 10, and that a handwritten note signed by Steadman said that she and Myers had sought to protect the children from alleged abuse by their father, Brady Harmon, whom Myers had been separated from since 2019. 

Since the investigation remains open, law enforcement has declined to discuss the case with A&E Crime + Investigation. 

Mechanicville, a sleepy town of just over 5,000 in Saratoga County, was rocked by the horrific crime. Wendy Regoeczi, a criminology and criminal justice professor at the University of South Carolina, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that “murder-suicides are generally rare, but to find a murder-suicide where you have multiple violent offenders that are family members is almost unheard of.”

“To see two women acting together is a very unusual combination,” she continues. “When women commit homicide together, it’s usually with a man.”

Susan Hatters-Friedman, a forensic psychiatrist at Case Western University, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that the crime could be a case of revenge filicide, the purposeful killing of one or more children by a parent or parental figure. “So many people have difficult custody battles who’d never dream of harming their child,” Hatters-Friedman says, “but with partner revenge, they want to emotionally harm the partner—or ex-partner—as much as possible.”

Hatters-Friedman also raises the possibility of folie à deux (shared madness), “where two people who are very close can share unusual psychotic beliefs,” she explains.  

Harmon, who lives in Utah, has vehemently denied any allegations of domestic violence and police have been unable to verify charges of abuse. Due to a bitter custody dispute, Harmon hadn’t seen his children since separating from Myers. After years of wrangling with the courts and Child Services, however, he’d finally won a custodial visit; the children had been scheduled to stay with him in Utah from July through September.  

Professor Wade Myers, Chief of the Division of Forensic Psychiatry at Brown University, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that the court-ordered visit may have been the final breaking point for the women. 

“Our second most common category for revenge filicide is custody visitation disputes,” he says. Myers hypothesizes the two women “must’ve found losing that custody battle intolerable–they couldn’t fathom allowing that to happen.”

“The solution was to kill the kids so he couldn’t have them,” Myers continues. “It’s revenge taken to ungodly levels.”

During Rabbitt’s press conference, the police chief reported that Steadman and Myers began acting on their plan no later than June 5, 2026, five days before the killings, when Steadman allegedly visited multiple pharmacies to acquire the medications used to poison the victims. Steadman and her daughter discussed how the meds would be administered, where the killings would occur, how the children would be brought together, and how the women might evade suspicion. Internet searches found on Steadman’s phone included queries like “Where’s the most fatal place to be stabbed?” and “Find the carotid artery in the neck.”

On June 7, Harmon reported having his last video call with his children, and he said they appeared happy. But three days later, on June 10, Myers asked Harmon to postpone a scheduled 6:00 p.m. call, claiming the children were sick. Harmon agreed. It was the last time he would hear from anyone in the family.

Two months after the children’s deaths, a toxicology report revealed that the children were given a cocktail of drugs, including a lethal dose of diphenhydramine, an over-the-counter antihistamine that is the main active ingredient in the allergy medication Benadryl. 

Four of the deceased—police have not disclosed which four—were also found with mitragynine, the primary ingredient in kratom, known as a “gas station drug” because of its availability in convenience stores. At low doses, kratom can be a stimulant, but when administered at higher doses, it can act as a sedative with opioid properties. 

Dr. William Sawyer, a forensic toxicologist, tells A&E Crime + Investigation, “Toxicity of diphenhydramine at lethal levels can lead to acute cardiac arrhythmias or fatal seizures. Death can occur with a range of 5-39 milligrams per liter of blood.” Sawyer explains that mitragynine “suppresses pain” and calls it “a fairly evil and smart combo, as a high dosage of the mitragynine would relax the child and reduce combative behavior, and might have enhanced the ability to poison with the diphenhydramine.”

Still, text messages between Steadman and Myers show that at least two of the children did not die quickly and painlessly. At one point—hours after Steadman and Myers had administered the poison—a message between them read, “It’s not working, we need another option.” 

Police also revealed a message from Gracelynn, which read, “Why would you do that? You both won’t let me puke,” after she was experiencing considerable stomach pain. They additionally disclosed that 10-year-old Gavin suffered “multiple sharp forced injuries” and showed defensive wounds after being stabbed with a knife.  

In September 2026, Harmon filed a notice of claim against multiple authorities in Saratoga County, the Ballston Spa Central School District, the City of Mechanicville and the city’s housing authority and school district. The claim alleges years of ignored abuse against his children and seeking $400 million for injuries, damages and civil rights violations. 

Harmon also accused Myers and Steadman of suffering from Munchausen syndrome by proxy—a form of abuse in which the two women would have fabricated or caused illness in the children. Harmon alleges the children had, on previous occasions, been drugged with substances to make them sick, resulting in a hospital visit. 

“It’s entirely possible that the two women thought this would be a relatively humane way to end the lives of these children,” Regoeczi says. “In reality, it wasn’t that way at all.”