WOODSTOCK, Ill. - A northern Illinois woman who beat her young son for most of his life and padlocked him in his bedroom where he died alone in the dark, his head bearing the outlines of the shower head she struck him with, on Thursday portrayed herself as a loving mother as she begged for mercy from the judge who will sentence her for murder.JoAnn Cunningham pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in December in the killing her son, Andrew “AJ” Freund.
Eight months earlier, police uncovered the boy’s battered body, wrapped in plastic and concealed in a shallow grave near the family’s home in Crystal Lake.Cunningham, her face covered by a surgical mask, did not visibly react in the courtroom after McHenry County Judge Robert Wilbrandt’s.