PAYETTE, Idaho (Court TV) — A woman accused of killing her twin toddlers is pleading to be released from jail, telling a judge she needs to go home to care for her newborn infant.
Andrea Shaw (Ada County Sheriff’s Office)
Andrea Shaw, 23, was indicted last week by a grand jury on two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of her children, identified in court records as D.S. and T.S., both 18 months old.
The indictment, which came more than a year after the children’s deaths, alleges that Shaw suffocated both of her twins, one boy and one girl, on May 5, 2025.
Shaw, who was arrested in Ada County, waived extradition to Payette County, where she is now being held behind bars on a $2 million bond. This week, her attorney filed a motion on her behalf, asking a judge to reduce the bond so the defendant can return home. The motion came with a request that it be filed under seal and away from public view, but Judge Kiley Stuchlik denied the request, saying it contained no specific medical or private information that could not be shared.
The motion for reduced bond, reviewed by Court TV, describes the defendant as “sweet and quiet. She keeps to herself. She is not a threat to anyone.” The motion asks for the bond to be reduced to a “manageable amount” of $100,000, in part because at the time of her arrest, the defendant “had just given birth via Cesarean section on June 25, 2026, three weeks prematurely. The newborn spent one night in the NICU before being with Andrea,” who was breastfeeding at the time of her arrest. Shaw’s attorney, Joseph Filicetti, said that not only does Shaw’s infant need her breastmilk, but that keeping the defendant in jail presents a risk to her of infection or hemorrhage because she recently gave birth.
Just like her newborn, Shaw’s 18-month-old twins also allegedly spent time in the NICU after their birth before they were brought home. Shaw is maintaining her innocence; in the days after her children died, she appeared on a podcast run by an anti-vaccine activist group, Children’s Health Defense. In that interview, Shaw claimed that her son and daughter were perfectly healthy before she brought them in for a wellness visit at their doctor on April 23, 2025. At that time, the twins were given the Hepatitis A, DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis) vaccines and a flu shot. One week later, Shaw said, she found her children dead in their bed after apparently passing away in their sleep.
But prosecutors say that’s now how it happened: They have accused Shaw of intentionally suffocating the children.
“There’s no way that this has happened the way the prosecution has made it seem,” Filicetti told KIVI. “I’m not a doctor, but the doctors I’ve consulted say it’s a vaccine-related death.”
Filicetti told KIVI that after receiving the vaccines, Shaw noticed her children becoming ill and immediately took them to another doctor. “If a mom was intending to kill her kids, why would she be taking them to the doctor?”
An online fundraiser set up by the family requests money to fund, in part, an independent autopsy of the children.
The bond issue is expected to be discussed at Shaw’s next hearing, scheduled for July 14.
