A 29-year-old Fairbanks woman was sentenced to spend 45 years in prison this week for killing her two young daughters in two separate crimes two years apart.
Stephany Bilecki was sentenced Monday by Fairbanks Superior Court Judge Patricia Haines to 130 years total for both murders, with 85 years of that sentence suspended.
Bilecki’s first daughter was initally thought to have died by sudden infant death syndrome in 2015, according to a sentencing memorandum filed by senior assistant district attorney Elizabeth Crail. But after her second daughter died by suffocation two years later in 2017, investigators reopened the case and determined she had killed both children.
Her first child was only four months old when she died and her second daughter was just over a year old, the memorandum said. Bilecki, now 29, changed her last name from LaFountain.
In November 2017, Bilecki called her in-laws and told them her daughter was not breathing, the memorandum said. She called 911 at their direction, according to a bail memorandum filed with an indictment in the case. The baby was brought to the hospital and died four days later, it said.
Investigators found that Bilecki had searched the internet for how to kill someone without proof and for details about drowning and suffocating, the bail memorandum said.
During the investigation, detectives learned that Bilecki’s first child had also died alone at home with her and reopened the investigation into that death, the memorandum said.
Investigators interviewed Bilecki’s mother and live-in boyfriend, the sentencing memorandum said. They also reviewed the autopsy and evidence from the scene and determined the baby’s death was consistent with suffocation, it said. Bilecki met the man who would be the father of her second daughter shortly after her first child died, the memorandum said.
Prosecutors in the document also detailed a number of dogs, cats and fish that Bilecki also apparently killed during the years surrounding the death of her children. Investigators found search history on her phone included what poison could kill a dog, the memorandum said.
Bilecki was indicted in 2018 and pleaded guilty in August to one count of second-degree murder for each child’s death.
Assistant Public Defender Justin Racette wrote in a sentencing memorandum that Bilecki “has mental health issues that contributed to her conduct,” but did not include any information about a specific diagnosis. Her husband was deployed, which added to her stress as a young mother, he said.
Crail contended in her sentencing memorandum that Bilecki had no known mental health issues and was not impaired by drugs or alcohol when she killed her children, saying there were “no good answers for why she chose to treat her own children as disposable.”
Bilecki will be on probation for a maximum of 10 years after release and is not allowed to have contact with children in private settings.
She does not have any other children, police said.