Idaho mother pleads not guilty to murder charges in twins’ deaths

PAYETTE — A Payette mother pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder in the deaths of her 18-month-old twin children on Tuesday. While the state alleges they died by suffocation, the defense has maintained their deaths were the result of vaccine injuries.

Andrea Renee Shaw, 23, was previously indicted in June and arraigned in the Payette County Courthouse last month. The legal action took place after the twins died on or about May 1, 2025, prompting a 14-month investigation from the Payette County Sheriff’s Department and a grand jury indictment on June 29 on charges of first-degree murder by suffocation.

If found guilty, Shaw can be punished by up to life in prison or the death penalty.

Following the hearing, defense counsel Joseph Filicetti said Shaw’s twins had the “same sleep cycle, same eating cycle,” received the same vaccine, had the same reaction, were taken to the doctor’s office at the same time and “both expired at the same time.”

“That does not mean that you get to just say mathematically because two kids died, it must have been must be homicide or murder — and that’s our position,” Filicetti said.

According to documents submitted by the defense, the twins received a series of vaccinations, including for influenza, on April 23, about a week before their deaths.

Filicetti further noted his role as a defense attorney isn’t to prove what did or did not happen; rather, his task will be conveying to a jury “the state didn’t meet their burden (of proof) beyond a reasonable doubt.”

During Shaw’s arraignment last month, state prosecutor Ryan Suricek said unlike Shaw’s husband, who asserted he was asleep, Shaw’s story changed “radically” while under questioning. According to Suricek, Shaw initially said she got up and fed the children breakfast at 8 a.m., before backtracking, allegedly saying she was “vivid dreaming” about the breakfast and then saying she went to check on the children at 2 a.m.

The story allegedly changed further, Suricek had said, when Shaw went from saying the children had sat up at the time before reversing from this assertion.

Addressing the media outside the courthouse, Filicetti said a bond motion was not filed Tuesday to allow experts for the defense to review evidence and produce “a document that they’re going to stand by” to secure a bond of $100,000, as had previously been requested.

“The prosecutor and I worked on having a transfer of the physical evidence of the children, so that our experts could examine those microscopically and other ways,” Filicetti said, adding his expectation was for a bond motion to be filed during an Oct. 15 status conference.

Shaw’s bond was previously revoked during a July hearing by Payette County Judge Kiley Stuchlik, who serves Idaho’s Third Judicial District. At the time, Filicetti sought to have Shaw’s bond dropped from $2 million to $100,000 to allow for Shaw to care for a newborn girl. According to court documents, the child was born by caesarean section on June 25, just days before Shaw was indicted by a grand jury, as was previously reported by the Idaho Press.

Stuchlik opted to revoke bond in the case believing Shaw, given the charges she faced, posed a “risk of safety” to a child that was not known to either Stuchlik or state prosecutors when bond had been set.

Addressing the prior motion to reduce Shaw’s bond on Tuesday, Filicetti said it was not done out of concern for the baby, nor was it done to get Shaw out on a “technicality.”

“I don’t believe she’s guilty,” Filicetti said. “I think she’s a good human being. I think she loved her twins.”

Outside of determining a schedule for pretrial hearings and a trial date, little was said by Prosecuting Attorney Mike Duke. Duke, representing the state, maintained at Shaw’s arraignment that the circumstances of two fraternal twins dying at the same time pointed to it not being a “vaccine case,” but rather a case where a mother had allegedly killed her children.

The case originating in small-town Idaho has drawn national attention and is connected to Children’s Heath Defense, an anti-vaccine organization founded and led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before he left the organization after taking on his present role as secretary of Health and Human Services, as was reported by the Associated Press.

In January, Shaw joined Children’s Health Defense and several plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit against the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), asserting the nation’s largest professional organization of pediatricians had made false claims about the safety of the childhood vaccine schedule while receiving funding from vaccine manufacturers.

The suit asserts that misleading claims of certain vaccines’ safety contributed to the deaths and injuries of the plaintiffs’ children, including Shaw’s twins.

The organization issued a release on the suit saying the deaths came after the family’s physicians dismissed warnings about a family history of flu vaccine reactions, and Filicetti said Tuesday both the father and the father’s mother had vaccine injuries prior to the twins’ deaths.

Shaw’s jury trial is now poised to take place from Jan. 11 through Feb. 12. Looking to the months ahead, Filicetti said determining where the jury pool is sourced from could pose “another issue” still to be resolved.

“This is a very small county,” Filicetti said, “and this is a very well-known case.”