Trait was born in 1952 and lived in Buffalo, New York. On July 17, 1978 she killed her four children at their home: her son Demario, two, and her daughters Kylia, eight, Amina, six, and Inez, four. They were stabbed and the bodies mutilated.
She had a documented psychiatric history before the killings and was floridly psychotic at the time, on the evidence later accepted.
She was convicted of murder and sentenced on February 25, 1980 to twenty-five years to life. On June 15, 1988 the conviction was overturned on appeal, the appellate court holding that the trial court had erred in its handling of the insanity defence and that the jury had not been properly permitted to consider it.
At the subsequent proceeding she was found not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect and was committed to a psychiatric facility rather than a prison.
She stands convicted of nothing. This is a single act, not a serial case, and the operative outcome is the acquittal.