Constance Fisher was a young mother in central Maine whose six children all died at her hands, in two separate events twelve years apart. In March 1954, at the age of 24, she drowned her three children in the family's Waterville apartment and then tried to kill herself. She was charged with murder and sent to the Augusta State Hospital, and a grand jury declined to indict her after the hospital reported that she was insane. In March 1959 she was released. She and her husband moved to Fairfield and had three more children. On June 30, 1966, she drowned those three children as well, and again tried to end her own life.
She was never convicted of a crime. In 1967 a Superior Court jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity, and she was committed to the state hospital for good. In October 1973 she left the hospital grounds, and she was found drowned in the Kennebec River. She was 44.
The case has been retold several times since, usually when another mother's killing of her children reaches the courts. Reporters went back to it in 2001, after Andrea Yates was charged with drowning her five children in Houston, and again in 2026, during the Massachusetts trial of Lindsay Clancy. Her sister, who spoke publicly in 2026, has said the doctors and the state failed her, and that she asked for help both times.
Constance Fisher was born in 1929 in Oakland, Maine. She grew up as a foster child in the home of the grandparents of Louise Marcoux Bowker, and the two girls were raised as sisters and regarded each other that way all their lives, Bowker told the Kennebec Journal in 2026. The family called her Peggy. Bowker, who was 81 when she gave that interview, described her as a beautiful and happy young mother, a loving wife and a devout Catholic, and said she was a private person who confided in very few people: her priest, her husband and her doctor.
At 17 she married Carl Fisher, a veteran who worked for the Maine Central Railroad, and the couple settled in Waterville. In his 2011 book on the case, the former Kennebec Journal reporter Bob Briggs writes that Carl had served four years in the air forces in World War II, had been wounded and had been decorated. By 1966 he was working in the railroad's car shops in Waterville, according to a wire report that year.
The couple had three children. Richard was born on April 2, 1947, Briggs writes. Daniel followed, and Deborah was born in March 1953. Bowker writes in her introduction to the Briggs book that Carl's railroad job gave the family a comfortable income.
According to Bowker, Constance developed postpartum depression after Deborah's birth and consulted a psychiatrist. Briggs gives a more detailed account of the months that followed.
After Deborah was born, he writes, the family doctor, Dr. Richard Chasse, found that Constance had a form of anemia and treated it with diet and weekly injections, and her blood tests soon returned to normal. Her depression came back in November 1953, at about the time she stopped nursing the baby. Over Christmas she began to hear a man's voice urging her to kill herself, and her thoughts turned to killing the whole family. In early January 1954, by Briggs's account, she came close to harming the baby, stopped, and telephoned Carl to come home. He took her to see Dr. Chasse, who prescribed a sedative. Chasse's note of January 21 recorded sleeplessness, a "pent up" feeling and worry about bills, and no major physical problem.
The family had been living in a cabin at Snow Pond with no running water. Chasse urged them to move, Briggs writes, and they took the top floor of a duplex on High Street in Waterville, close to Constance's foster parents, who helped them set up the new home. In early February she told Chasse she was sleeping better. On February 11 she swallowed the rest of her sedative tablets; a doctor called to the apartment gave her an antidote, and the next morning Chasse ordered the remaining medicine thrown away and recommended a psychiatrist in Bangor.
On February 18, Briggs writes, Carl took her to Dr. Paul Jones, who practiced at the Mansfield Clinic. Jones diagnosed "situational depression" and told her to go home and keep on with her work as a wife and mother. When she next saw him, on February 23, she was cheerful and denied any thought of suicide, but that night her foster mother called the doctor about a note Constance had written that pointed toward self-harm. A doctor at the clinic suggested the state hospital in Augusta. Constance refused, because she feared there would be no one to look after the children, and she was not judged ill enough to be committed against her will.
Bowker adds a detail of her own. In her introduction to the book she writes that Constance had been in the hospital in the week before the deaths, and that a friend of Bowker's who supervised the nurses on that floor saw her crying as she prepared to leave and heard her say she was afraid to go home. Her doctor, Bowker writes, told her to go home and take care of her family.
By Briggs's account the voices grew stronger in late February and early March, and Constance came to believe that the voice was God's. She thought of several ways to end her life and then decided to take her family with her. She took a handgun from her foster parents' house; by his account it misfired, and when she took it again two days later she could not bring herself to use it.
Carl Fisher left for work at the railroad early on the morning of Monday, March 8, 1954. Briggs writes that Constance came close to telling him what she meant to do, and did not. Richard, who had started first grade at Sacred Heart school after Christmas, rode the school bus home that afternoon.
That day Constance drowned Richard, 6, Daniel, 4, and Deborah, 11 months, in the bathtub of the apartment. She then tried to kill herself by drinking a bottle of hair shampoo. Carl came home from work and found the children dead and his wife unconscious, a wire report recounted in 1966.
She left a note. A 1966 wire report summarized it as saying she had drowned the children because God had told her to, and that they were in heaven, "safe from evil." A 2001 Bangor Daily News account quoted her as writing that God had told her it was the only way to save them. The Kennebec Journal printed her explanation at the time. Her doctor said she had told him she could not care for the children, the Kennebec Journal reported in 2026.
Constance Fisher was charged with murder. A Morning Sentinel photograph from 1954, republished in 2026, shows her being brought into the Waterville Municipal Court. She was committed to the Augusta State Hospital.
The formal end of the 1954 case is described in different ways. The contemporary wire report of July 1966, as printed in the Columbia Missourian, says she was charged with murder, committed to the state hospital, and that a grand jury declined to indict her after the hospital reported that she was insane. A 2001 Bangor Daily News account agrees that a grand jury declined to indict her and declared her insane. The 2026 Kennebec Journal report says a court found her not competent to stand trial. A second 2001 Bangor Daily News article says she was found not guilty by reason of insanity, which the wire report does not support: no indictment was returned, so there was no trial and no verdict. Whichever description is right, she was never convicted for the 1954 deaths.
The Augusta State Hospital was founded in 1840 as the Maine Insane Hospital, it took the name Augusta State Hospital in 1913 and became the Augusta Mental Health Institute in 1973, according to the Maine State Archives. Constance Fisher spent about five years there after the 1954 deaths.
Briggs's book has chapters on her diagnosis and treatment, and on her own words. Bowker described the hospital as the only treatment option there was, and a harsh place. She said Carl never gave up on his wife.
A hospital spokesman said in July 1966 that Constance Fisher had been released on March 6, 1959, and that there had apparently been no sign that her illness might return. The 2001 Bangor Daily News account says Carl Fisher petitioned hard for her release and that a court approved it.
The release has been questioned ever since. Briggs ties it to the national move, then beginning, to discharge patients from large state mental hospitals, and the publisher's description of his book presents the case as a warning about what happens to acutely ill people when no proper care is available. Bowker says the couple asked doctors about a vasectomy after her release, and that the doctors instead encouraged them to have more children, telling them she had recovered. She blames those doctors in particular.
The Fishers moved to a rural home in Fairfield; the 2001 Bangor Daily News account places it in Fairfield Center. They had three more children: Kathleen Louise, Michael and Nathalie Rose, who in June 1966 were 6, 4 and 9 months old. Their ages were almost the same as those of Richard, Daniel and Deborah in 1954, a comparison the wire report made the next day.
Joe Brannigan, then a Roman Catholic parish priest in the area, had baptized the youngest child, he told the Bangor Daily News in 2001.
After the birth of the youngest child the old symptoms returned, Bowker said in 2026; she believes hormonal changes played a part. She said her sister went to the hospital, asked for help and begged to be allowed to stay because she did not feel safe at home, and was sent home, with doctors saying she was fine. Bowker visited her before the deaths and thought she seemed well. She has said she still blames herself for not noticing.
On the morning of Thursday, June 30, 1966, Constance Fisher drowned her three children at the Fairfield house. The county medical examiner, Dr. Maurice Philbrick, put the time of death at about 7 a.m., the wire report said. She then took an overdose of pills.
Carl Fisher came home from the railroad car shops at about 5 p.m. He found the baby in the bathroom. The house had no telephone, and he ran about a quarter of a mile to a neighbor's home to call for help. With the police he found Kathleen and Michael under the blankets in a bed, and his wife on another bed, unconscious. In both 1954 and 1966, the wire report noted, he had come home from the same job to find his children dead and his wife unconscious.
Police called Father Brannigan to the house. He recalled in 2001 that he found the child he had baptized, and that he gave Constance the last rites, not knowing how serious her condition was. She survived.
Fairfield's police chief, Frederick Gould, said three pill boxes had been found empty and that Mrs. Fisher had taken an overdose. Police found a note but did not release its contents. A Waterville pathologist performed autopsies, which showed that all three children had drowned.
Constance Fisher was taken to Thayer Hospital in Waterville on the night of June 30. She regained consciousness there, and a hospital spokesman said she appeared to be in good condition. She was kept under police guard, and the police said they would seek a warrant charging her with murder. Carl Fisher was reported to be staying with friends, away from the press.
The 2001 Bangor Daily News account says the note was written on a greeting card. In it she said she was sorry, that she had not raised the children properly, and that they would be better off in heaven. A Kennebec Journal report from 1966, republished in part in 2026, quoted her as saying that the children were now all in heaven.
The case drew national attention. A wire story datelined Fairfield ran as far away as Missouri the next day, under a headline that linked the deaths to the tragedy of twelve years before.
Little has been published about the six children as individuals, and much of what exists comes from their aunt and from Briggs. Richard, the eldest, had moved schools in the middle of first grade after the family's move to Waterville and found the new school hard, Briggs writes. He called his mother "Mummy." Daniel and Deborah, at 4 and not yet 1, were at home with their mother. Bowker wrote that she misses her sister and that she will never have the chance to love her nieces and nephews.
Of the second family, Kathleen was 6, Michael 4 and Nathalie Rose 9 months. Father Brannigan recalled in 2001 seeing three small white caskets lined up at the grave where the first three Fisher children had been buried.
Constance Fisher was tried in 1967 before a jury in Kennebec County Superior Court. She was not tried on the 1954 deaths.
Dr. Walter Rohm of the Augusta State Hospital testified that she suffered from oneirophrenia, a dreamlike psychotic state, and that she had felt that she and the children were doomed, the Bangor Daily News recalled in 2001. John Benoit, a former state senator and retired judge who interviewed her, said in 2001 that he did not recall prosecutors arguing strongly against her claim of mental illness.
The jury deliberated for about 20 minutes and found her innocent by reason of mental disease, the 2001 Bangor Daily News account says. In the usual legal phrase, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity. She was committed to the Augusta State Hospital permanently, the Kennebec Journal reported in 2026. The verdict was not a conviction. A 2001 Bangor Daily News article said she might be the only person in Maine ever found not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect in two separate killing cases; strictly, the 1954 case ended without an indictment, so the 1967 verdict was the only one.
By the time of the 1967 trial, Maine's statutes on the insanity defense had been rewritten. A 1963 law, "An Act Relating to Disposition of Persons Pleading Insanity," took effect on September 21, 1963. It provided that an accused person was not criminally responsible if the unlawful act was the product of mental disease or defect. When a jury acquitted on that ground, the verdict had to say so, and the court was to commit the person to the Commissioner of Mental Health and Corrections for care and treatment. A committed person could be discharged, or released to a relative or friend who posted a bond, only on a petition to the Superior Court and only if release would not endanger the peace and safety of the community; the county attorney had to be notified and could oppose it. The reports do not say which provisions were applied in her case, or under which earlier statute her 1959 release was approved.
Constance Fisher remained in the state hospital until 1973. Bowker said that during those years her sister set up a system for delivering mail and packages inside the hospital. Benoit recalled in 2001 that he had felt compassion for her rather than anger, though he remembered that some members of the public were angry.
In 1973 the Augusta State Hospital became the Augusta Mental Health Institute.
In October 1973 Constance Fisher, then 44, walked away from the hospital. Hospital officials were worried that she might be suicidal, the 2001 Bangor Daily News account says. Her body was found in the Kennebec River. The 2001 account says she was found five days after she disappeared; the 2026 Kennebec Journal report says it was more than a week later. A Morning Sentinel clipping from 1973, republished in 2026, carried a report that three health officials were to blame for her drowning.
Carl Fisher stood by her to the end. "He loved her until he died," Bowker said in 2026.
The case returned to the news in 2001, when Andrea Yates was charged with drowning her five children in Houston. Two Bangor Daily News articles that year went back to the Fisher case. In one, Joe Brannigan, by then a Portland Democrat in the Legislature and the director of a mental health agency, said services and public awareness had improved since the 1950s and 1960s. He said he believed the insanity defense was sometimes used when it was not legitimate, but that "this is no close call" in the cases he was discussing.
The other article set the Fisher case beside two more recent Maine cases of mothers found not criminally responsible for killing a child. William Stokes, then head of the criminal division of the state Attorney General's Office, said release petitions in such cases are heard in open court and that Maine's release process is slow and gradual. He called the Fisher case "the worst-case scenario." Benoit said he could not imagine such a case happening again.
In 2011 Briggs, who lives in Hallowell, published The Constance Fisher Tragedy after coming across the case in a library. Bowker wrote the introduction, hoping the book would help doctors and the public recognize postpartum mental illness. In it she wrote that her sister's case closely matched the Yates case, and urged readers to watch for mothers who might be depressed and to offer to look after their children so that they could rest, because such mothers often do not ask for help. Briggs told the Kennebec Journal that she heard voices telling her to harm her children both times, and that the forensic psychiatrist Phillip Resnick told him she probably believed she was doing them a favor.
In 2026 the case was raised again during the trial of Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts nurse accused of killing her three children in 2023, whose lawyers argued that postpartum psychosis made her not criminally responsible. Her trial ended in a mistrial in 2026, after seven weeks. Fox News and other outlets drew the comparison with the Fisher case. Bowker told the Kennebec Journal that both women had asked for help and, she believes, had not received it. "(Doctors) need to pay attention when somebody has the courage to ask for help," she said.
The 1954 outcome. The 1966 wire report and one 2001 Bangor Daily News article say a grand jury declined to indict her after the hospital reported her insane. The 2026 Kennebec Journal report describes a court finding that she was not competent to stand trial. Another 2001 Bangor Daily News article says she was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1954, which the contemporary report does not support.
The date in 1966. The wire report, the Kennebec Journal, Briggs and the publisher's description give June 30, 1966. One 2001 Bangor Daily News article gives June 20.
Her diagnosis. Bowker and Briggs describe postpartum depression; Dr. Rohm testified to oneirophrenia in 1967.
Her death. The sources agree that she left the hospital in October 1973 and was found drowned in the Kennebec River. They differ on how long she was missing: five days, or more than a week. The exact dates, the place where she was found and any official ruling on the death were not reported.
The children's ages. The contemporary wire report gives the 1954 children's ages as 6, 4 and 11 months, and the 2001 newspaper accounts give Daniel's age as 4. Briggs describes Daniel as five and a half on the morning of March 8.
1929: Constance Fisher is born in Oakland, Maine; she grows up as a foster child.
1940s: At 17 she marries Carl Fisher, a veteran and Maine Central Railroad worker; they settle in Waterville.
April 2, 1947: Richard is born.
March 1953: Deborah, the third child, is born.
November 1953: Her depression returns.
January to February 1954: She is treated by several doctors, takes an overdose of sedatives, and refuses admission to the state hospital.
March 8, 1954: She drowns Richard, Daniel and Deborah in Waterville and tries to kill herself. She is charged with murder and committed to the Augusta State Hospital.
1954: A grand jury declines to indict her after the hospital reports her insane.
March 6, 1959: She is released from the Augusta State Hospital.
1960s: The Fishers move to Fairfield and have three more children: Kathleen Louise, Michael and Nathalie Rose.
June 30, 1966: She drowns the three children at the Fairfield home and takes an overdose. She is held under police guard at Thayer Hospital in Waterville.
1967: A Kennebec County Superior Court jury finds her not guilty by reason of insanity after about 20 minutes. She is committed to the state hospital.
1973: The Augusta State Hospital becomes the Augusta Mental Health Institute.
October 1973: She leaves the hospital grounds. Her body is found in the Kennebec River. She is 44.
2001: The Andrea Yates case in Houston prompts Maine newspapers to revisit the case.
2011: Bob Briggs publishes The Constance Fisher Tragedy, with an introduction by Louise Marcoux Bowker.
2026: The case is compared with the Massachusetts trial of Lindsay Clancy; Bowker speaks to the Kennebec Journal.