A North Carolina soldier who fatally beat her 2-year-old daughter later lied about how the child died — a deception that led a sympathetic photographer to create a haunting set of “afterlife” portraits showing the mother posed beside the ghostly image of the little girl.
Jeanie Kassandra Ditty, 33, was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without the possibility of parole after a Fayetteville jury deliberated for just three hours before convicting her of first-degree murder in the death of her daughter, Macy Grace, who died 10 days before her third birthday.
Macy was taken to a hospital in December 2015, where medical staff quickly observed “extensive bruising and trauma indicative of severe physical abuse,” prosecutors said.
According to prosecutors, a CT scan showed “non-survivable brain injuries” that had occurred within the previous 8 to 24 hours — a timeframe in which Ditty was the only caregiver with access to the child. Authorities said Macy had suffered “at least 40 separate physical blows.”
Macy, whose father was also a soldier, died two days later. Her mother, who served in the military as well, was later charged in the killing.
Before her arrest, Ditty arranged for a series of “afterlife” photos depicting her walking alongside the faint outline of her dead daughter. The photographer had offered his condolences and did not know the horrific circumstances surrounding Macy’s death.
“She told me her daughter had passed away by choking on a banana, and that choking gave her seizures which made her lose oxygen to the brain and then she passed away,” photographer Sunny Jo previously told WRAL.
Jo said he gave Ditty his “One More Time” package for free, waiving the usual $300 to $500 fee, according to ABC News. The service places a translucent image of a deceased loved one into a photograph, creating the appearance of an angelic presence.
“She offered to pay, and honestly, I couldn’t do it. It was a gift for what I thought was a grieving mother at the time,” Jo said.
One of the photos appears to show the former Fort Bragg-stationed soldier walking hand-in-hand in a graveyard with Macy Grace, while another shows the mother reading to her daughter while sitting on a picnic blanket.
A third shows Ditty staring at a makeshift memorial while her daughter places a hand upon her shoulder.
Ditty’s father, Zachary Keefer, took the photos and sent them to Jo, who spent two to three weeks creating the images.
Jo called working with Ditty the “biggest mistake” of his career, but added that he was pleased that he had at least given the slain child “a voice.”
Ditty’s case initially went to trial in 2020 but ended with a hung jury following a 10-2 vote in favor of her guilt, Law & Crime reported.
Jury selection for her second trial began earlier this month, with 16 witnesses testifying during the multiweek process, WRAL reported.
Ditty was found guilty on Thursday after less than three hours of deliberation and sentenced to life behind bars without the possibility of parole for the first-degree murder charge, followed by 157 to 201 months for child abuse.
