An Idaho mom accused of murdering her twin toddlers before blaming their deaths on vaccines faces the death penalty.
Andrea Shaw, 23, was taken into custody in June after her 18-month-old daughter and son, Dallas and Tyson, were found dead in their bed on May 1, 2025, at a trailer home in Payette – about 60 miles from Boise.
Prosecutors claim that the twins were smothered to death, but Shaw insists that they died after getting Hepatitis A, DTaP and influenza vaccines.
Shaw has pleaded not guilty to murder charges and is awaiting her trial scheduled for January inside a cell at Payette County Jail. She is being held on a $2 million bond.
State prosecutors upped the stakes of her trial in a court filing on Friday that said they will be seeking the death penalty against Shaw, court records show.
Payette County Prosecutor Mike Duke explained the decision in a separate court document filed on Monday that argued Shaw is likely a threat to society and that her actions demonstrated the statutory conditions required for capital punishment.
The filing stated that the mother showed 'exceptional depravity' and 'utter disregard for human life,' according to court documents reviewed by the New York Times.
A jury would have to find at least one of those conditions to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt in order for Shaw to be sentenced to death.
Twins Tyson and Dallas, 18 months, were found dead in their Idaho trailer home in May 2025. Their mother has been accused of smothering them to death
Andrea Shaw, 23, was arrested in June and charged with murdering her twins. Before she was charged, the mother claimed that her children died from vaccine injuries
Prosecutors announced that they will be seeking the death penalty against Shaw at trial in January. The mother is pictured in court in July
Shaw's defense team has said that they plan to continue arguing a vaccine injury defense.
The mother has retained a lawyer who works with Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine nonprofit that was founded and once headed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Shaw also appeared on a podcast hosted by the nonprofit 10 days after allegedly murdering her twins, which is where she gained visibility for claiming the children died from vaccine injuries.
On the podcast, Shaw claimed that her husband's side of the family 'all have bad reactions or are allergic to the flu shot.'
'They were okay. They took a nap when we got home. For the rest of the evening it was business as usual,' she said of her late children.
She then broke down in tears, stating that the twins woke up lethargic the following day.
Shaw claimed both of her children had green diarrhea and a blue tinge to their lips before her mother-in-law arrived and rushed the kids to a nearby hospital.
She said the two were discharged after a few days and that she later found the children dead inside their home.
Shaw and her husband appeared on a podcast hosted by an anti-vaccine nonprofit 10 days after their children died, where Shaw claimed the deaths were a result of vaccines
Shaw told the podcast that she found her children dead in their home a few days after they were discharged from a hospital
'They looked as if they had gone in their sleep,' Shaw said. 'I flipped over Tyson to try and shake him awake, then I immediately grabbed my phone to dial 911. Then I flipped Dallas over and found her the same way.'
Shaw's husband, Nathaniel Shaw, said he was at work while the health crisis unfolded.
Despite the mother's claim that vaccines are to blame, Duke, the county prosecutor, said that a forensic pathologist determined that is not the case.
'This is not a vaccine case,' Duke previously said in court.
Tyson and Dallas died from pulmonary vascular congestion, which is a buildup of fluid and blood in the vessels of the lungs, according to an autopsy report, Duke wrote in a court filing.
The prosecutor has also said that Shaw was charged with murder after she kept changing her story throughout the investigation into her children's deaths, while Nathaniel stuck to a single version of events.
According to KSL, Duke said: 'There are only two people who could have been involved in this crime. One of them was straightforward and cooperated with law enforcement.
'The other changed her story every time it made her look bad, every time there were criminal implications, and she admitted that at the time of death, she was there with the kids.'
Prosecutors have said that Shaw changed her story multiple times over the course of the investigation while her husband, Nathaniel, kept his story straight. The couple is pictured
If Shaw is convicted of murder and sentenced to death, she will become the first person to be executed in Idaho since 2012
Duke added that investigators had ruled out environmental causes like heat or carbon monoxide poisoning.
The prosecutor argued that the children being smothered and suffocating to death was 'the only reasonable explanation for why both would die at the same time.'
If Shaw is convicted of murder and a jury deems that her alleged crime meets the criteria for capital punishment, she would become the first person to be executed in Idaho since 2012.
The state made death by firing squad its primary method of execution in July after calling off the lethal injection of convicted murderer Thomas Creech in 2024 because the execution team could not find a vein to administer pentobarbital.