Media365
An Idaho woman who publicly claimed that routine childhood vaccines caused the deaths of her 18-month-old twins has now been charged with murdering them. Andrea Shaw, 23, was indicted by a Payette County grand jury on June 29 on two counts of first-degree murder. Prosecutors alleged that she deliberately suffocated her twins, Dallas and Tyson, in May 2025. She was arrested in Boise on June 30 after a year-long investigation. Shaw appeared in court last week and is being held on a $2 million bond. If convicted or if she pleads guilty to first-degree murder, she could face life in prison or the death penalty. Her next court appearance is scheduled for July 14.According to court records, she recently gave birth to another child. As part of her bond conditions, she is not allowed to have contact with anyone under the age of 18, including her newborn, while the case is pending.
Shaw blamed vaccines
Soon after the deaths, Shaw became a well-known figure in the anti-vaccine movement. She said her twins died days after receiving flu and other routine childhood vaccinations. Speaking on an online programme produced by Children’s Health Defence, an anti-vaccine group founded by US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, she said she found the children dead in their room after they had developed diarrhoea and lethargy following their vaccinations. She also claimed she had warned her children’s paediatrician about a family history of vaccine reactions but was persuaded to go ahead with the vaccinations. According to Shaw, hospital staff later told her the children’s symptoms were a normal vaccine reaction before sending them home.
Police say children suffocated
According to the grand jury indictment, Shaw “willfully, unlawfully, deliberately, with premeditation and with malice aforethought” suffocated her two children. During her interview with Children’s Health Defence, Shaw said police questioned her just days after the deaths and told her they believed the children had died from asphyxiation. “So, the way they worded it to me; they said that it wasn’t medical and that they determined asphyxiation,” Shaw said. “It made me feel crazy. I was telling them my truth, and they were getting into my head that I had done it, and I know I hadn’t,” she claimed.
Lawsuit against paediatricians
Shaw is also one of the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit filed by Children’s Health Defence and others against the American Academy of Pediatrics. The lawsuit accuses the organisation of racketeering and alleges it made false claims about vaccine safety. Court filings in the civil lawsuit argue that the criminal investigation happened because doctors rejected the possibility that vaccines caused the children’s deaths. The filing says, “This criminal investigation is a foreseeable consequence of AAP’s fraudulent safety claims: when the medical system has been told that vaccines cannot cause serious injury or death, grieving parents become suspects rather than victims.”
