This story just keeps getting worse. North Carolina mother Jeanie Ditty, who was arrested last week for the murder of her 2-year-old daughter, Macy Grace, reportedly created a GoFundMe page to pay for the toddler’s funeral.
According to the Fayetteville Observer, the soldier raised more than $6,000 from the website before it was removed.
Macy was rushed to the hospital on December 2, unresponsive and covered in bruises. The toddler died from the trauma two days later. On March 24, Ditty and her live-in boyfriend, Zachary Earl Keefer, 32, were charged with first-degree murder and negligent child abuse inflicting serious bodily injury.
On January 4, just one month after Macy’s death, Ditty reached out to photographer Sunny Jo, who specializes in editing photos so that lost loved ones appear in them as ghostly figures. Jo offered his “One More Time” package, a service he offers to memorialize the deceased, to Ditty free of charge. Though Ditty offered to pay the $500 fee, Jo refused to take her money. “I said no because I couldn’t find it in my heart to charge a grieving mother,” the Pennsylvania-based photographer tells Us Weekly. “I thought to myself, ‘This girl is going through so much.’”
Jo said Ditty crafted an elaborate story. “She said that Macy’s stomach was ill, so she gave her a banana, which made her throw up,” says Jo. “She choked and then lost oxygen to her brain, and had to be put on life support.” Later, when Jo found out about the charges against Ditty, “I could not believe it,” he says. “My stomach dropped to the floor. I felt so wrong for being attached to something so vile.”
Ditty is being held at the Cumberland County Detention Center without bond, police said.