Justine Marie May is charged with two counts of homicide by child abuse after Charleston County deputies found her daughters, 1-year-old Harlow and 2-year-old Emory Deacon, dead inside her Ladson home outside Charleston.
An affidavit obtained by WCIV states the girls’ causes of death as starvation and dehydration due to neglect. May remains in custody at the Sheriff Al Cannon Detention Center in North Charleston after waiving her right to a bond hearing the day after the welfare call response.
The case now centers on what deputies saw in earlier visits, what family members warned about for weeks, and how a mother who called herself an “amazing mom” online ended up telling officers she could not remember the last time she fed her children. The legal stakes are plain: two homicide-by-child-abuse counts, an active investigation with state assistance, and an internal review of the sheriff’s office response.
Deputies responded Tuesday to a welfare call at May’s home. The affidavit describes May coming out of the house and beginning to cry and speak incoherently. Inside, officers found Harlow and Emory “obviously deceased.”
May, 31, told officers the last two weeks had been a “blur” and admitted neglecting the girls. She said she was the only person present at the house and the children’s sole caregiver in the last few weeks. She also said she believed the children died because they did not eat.
The affidavit records her statement that she did not remember the last time she fed them or gave them something to drink. Charging language in the affidavit does not speak evasively about indifference to basic care.
The affidavit states:
"[May] unequivocally demonstrated an extreme indifference for human life in that she failed to provide both of her own children, according to her, with the basic sustenance to maintain life thus being a main contributor to their death."
Law&Crime reported she waived a bond hearing Wednesday and is due back in court on Nov. 20. South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division’s Special Victims Unit and the Department of Child Fatalities are assisting the investigation.
Charleston County deputies made separate contact with May and the children twice in August and three times in September. Officials noted no obvious signs of concern on those visits. The last visit while the children were still alive came on Sept. 20.
After the deaths, the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office of Professional Standards said it is conducting an internal review into the response. That review sits beside the criminal case, not in place of it. Investigators still have to build the full timeline of care, contact, and decline that the affidavit sketches in stark terms.
Father’s attorney Gedney M. Howe IV did not treat the earlier checks as comfort. Speaking Thursday to Live 5 News, he framed the deaths as preventable and said warnings went unheeded.
Howe told Live 5 News:
"We believe these deaths could and should have been prevented."
He added a sharper charge about who raised alarms and what followed for the father, Zachary Deacon.
Howe said:
"Neighbors, friends, and family all called trying to get help for these girls, and no one listened. Zack was sounding the alarm and was arrested for it."
Authorities have not publicly detailed in the available material the charge, date, or outcome of any arrest of Deacon tied to those welfare efforts. What is on the record is the attorney’s claim, the pattern of family outreach, and the sheriff’s office statement that earlier contacts showed no obvious signs of concern.
Reporting on the Ladson case describes relatives who believed May was suffering from postpartum depression and who feared a nightmare scenario involving harm to the girls. In early September, a female family member emailed May and invoked the Massachusetts case of Lindsay Clancy, whose triple-murder case ended in a mistrial last month as reported in the same coverage thread.
The relative’s email did not claim a medical diagnosis in court papers. It voiced dread in blunt terms and pressed May over silence and blocked access to the children.
Post and Courier reporting on the messages captured the relative writing, “Lindsay Clancy is on trial right now for killing her 3 children!” The same email said, “This has been the fresh hell your family has been living every day that you don’t communicate or let us see the girls.” Another line asked whether “this dark entity that is behind Justine’s eyes” would harm the children and called that fear a worst nightmare.
Those words are family claims and fears, not findings by a judge or jury in May’s case. They do show how people closest to the children described the risk they thought they saw before the Tuesday welfare call.
In the weeks leading up to the deaths, May posted Facebook screenshots of messages with Zachary Deacon, the girls’ father and her ex-boyfriend. In those texts, Deacon wrote, “This is not harassment. I am genuinely terrified for the kids.” He also asked, “Are you going to hurt one of the kids to get back at me?”
May’s own public posts struck a different tone. On Sept. 9 she complained about persistent welfare checks she tied to Deacon calling police and wrote, “Of course, they found absolutely nothing wrong because I am an amazing mom.”
On Sept. 13, responding to family concern about the children and what relatives cast as an unhinged social media presence, she posted: “I am perfectly capable of deciding who is best for my children. And they are having the time of their life wit [sic] people who have always wanted to be around them wit [sic] me begging for it.”
Set beside the affidavit, those posts now read as part of the public record prosecutors and defense counsel will both have to confront. Online self-praise does not answer a starvation and dehydration finding. It does show how May presented herself while relatives and Deacon say they were begging for intervention.
May is charged, not convicted. Homicide by child abuse is the state’s formal accusation that her neglect was a main contributor to the deaths, matching the affidavit’s “extreme indifference” language. The state will need to prove the elements of those counts beyond a reasonable doubt. Defense counsel will test the medical conclusions, the caregiving timeline, and May’s statements about memory, feeding, and sole care.
Investigators will need to pin down a fuller calendar of the children’s final weeks, the exact sequence of the five deputy contacts in August and September, and how the starvation and dehydration findings were reached. No public results have been released in the Step material about a complete medical examiner narrative beyond the causes given as starvation and dehydration due to neglect.
The Office of Professional Standards review puts the agency’s own prior contacts under a microscope. Howe’s claim that “no one listened” is now a public accountability question the sheriff’s office has to answer with records, not slogans. Family emails and Deacon’s texts show repeated attempts to pull outside eyes onto the home. Deputies’ notes of no obvious signs of concern on repeated visits are also part of that same record.
May’s next scheduled court appearance is Nov. 20. Until then she remains held at the Sheriff Al Cannon Detention Center. The children are dead. The charges are filed. The open fight is over proof, process, and whether the system’s earlier chances to intervene were real chances or empty ones.
When toddlers die of starvation after repeated welfare contacts and family alarms, the public is entitled to more than soft language about lessons learned. Courts exist to try the accused; agencies exist to show they can protect the living before a body is “obviously deceased.”
