Falling was born in 1963 in Perry, Florida, into extreme poverty and was given up to relatives and then to state care as a child. She had learning difficulties, a documented history of feigned illness and frequent hospital visits, and by fourteen had been married briefly.
Between February 1980 and July 1982 five children in her care died, in Calhoun and Taylor counties: Cassidy Johnson, two; Jeffrey Davis, four; Joseph Spring, two; Jennifer Daniels, eight weeks; and Travis Coleman, ten months. She was babysitting each of them. The first deaths were recorded as encephalitis, myocarditis and sudden infant death, and she continued to be employed as a babysitter in the same small communities after them.
After Travis Coleman's death in July 1982 an autopsy found internal injuries consistent with suffocation and she was questioned. She admitted smothering the children with blankets, and said that voices had told her to do it.
She pleaded guilty and on December 3, 1982 was convicted of three murders and sentenced to life with a minimum of twenty-five years. Parole has been repeatedly refused.
Three convictions and five deaths is the range in this roster. The pattern is the one this archive records in several infanticide cases: the first death made the second explicable, and nobody with authority looked at the sequence until there were five.