science

Karen McCarron

Karen McCarron is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Karen McCarron rather than just read about it. In short: Karen Frank-McCarron (born December 20, 1968) is a German-born American pathologist convicted in Illinois of first degree murder of her autistic daughter Katherine "Katie" McCarron. Background Early life, education and career Karen Frank-McCarron was born Karen Frank to Erna and Walter "Robert" Frank on December 20, 1968, in Germany.

Key takeaways

Karen McCarron belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Karen McCarron to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Karen McCarron from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Karen Frank-McCarron (born December 20, 1968) is a German-born American pathologist convicted in Illinois of first degree murder of her autistic daughter Katherine "Katie" McCarron.

Background

Early life, education and career Karen Frank-McCarron was born Karen Frank to Erna and Walter "Robert" Frank on December 20, 1968, in Germany. She graduated from Maine South High School in Park Ridge, Illinois and from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield, Illinois in 1995 with a Doctor of Medicine degree. Frank-McCarron, a pathologist, worked at Methodist Medical Center and Proctor Hospital, both in Peoria, Illinois.

Marriage and family Karen Frank met her future husband, Paul McCarron, when they were both students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Frank-McCarron and Paul's first child, Katie (born July 22, 2002), was diagnosed with autism in 2004. In September of that year, Paul and Katherine moved to Apex, North Carolina to live with Paul's mother, so that Katie could attend The Mariposa School, a special education school for children with autism and related conditions, in Cary, North Carolina. Paul and Katie returned home to Illinois on holidays. Frank-McCarron, who was a pathologist with the Peoria-Tazewell Pathology Group, stayed in Morton, Illinois with their younger daughter Emily, and visited North Carolina occasionally. After 20 months, Paul decided to return full-time to Illinois with Katie. Paul McCarron took her to their home in Illinois on May 3, 2006. On May 7, 2006, Paul returned to North Carolina to fulfill the last three weeks of his work commitment. Katie remained in Illinois under the care of her mother and maternal grandparents, along with her younger sister. In addition to her mother and grandparents, Katie had two paid, full-time caregivers.

Psychiatric issues Frank-McCarron was a patient of a psychologist while she was a resident doctor at a medical clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. In 2005, Frank-McCarron was a patient of a psychiatrist who treated her for depression. She had been prescribed antidepressants but apparently stopped taking them in early 2006. At trial, it was admitted into evidence that the psychiatrist she had been seeing from about August 2005 to February 2006 did not observe any delusional thinking in Frank-McCarron.

Katherine's murder On the afternoon before Mother's Day, Saturday, May 13, 2006, Frank-McCarron killed Katie by suffocating her with a plastic bag. After killing her daughter, Frank-McCarron went to the grocery store to buy ice cream for herself. Hours later, Frank-McCarron told relatives what she had done. In the early morning of May 14, Frank-McCarron cut herself and took a non-fatal dose of Tylenol. While awaiting trial, Frank-McCarron was free on home confinement on $1 million bond.

Trial and aftermath Frank-McCarron went on trial on January 7, 2008. Prosecutors said that before suffocating Katie, Frank-McCarron suggested institutionalizing her then-3-year-old daughter and putting her up for adoption. After a week-long trial, she was convicted of first degree murder, obstruction of justice, and concealing a homicidal death on January 17, 2008. Frank-McCarron was sentenced to 36 years in prison, 30 months of supervised release after her prison term and was ordered to pay a $25,000 penalty to the state of Illinois. Paul filed for divorce from Frank-McCarron in Tazewell County, Illinois Circuit Court in 2006, citing "extreme and repeated mental cruelty." Frank-McCarron's parents Walter and Edna sued Frank-McCarron for money they loaned her for attorney fees during her January murder trial, and her parents won the lawsuit against her in December 2008. In 2010, Frank-McCarron appealed her conviction to an Illinois appellate court but the appellate court upheld the original conviction. In August 2011, Frank-McCarron filed a petition for a new trial. In November 2011, her petition for a new trial was denied. She is serving her sentence at Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln, Illinois.

Media coverage and activist response News articles and weblogs have emphasized the difficulties in raising a child with autism, and some suggested that Frank-McCarron may have been stressed by lack of support and dealing with Katherine's autism—even though at the time of Katie's murder, she had two paid, "full-time caregivers" in addition to being in a home with Frank-McCarron, Walter and Edna Frank and her younger sister. Katie's paternal grandfather, Michael McCarron, said:

This was not about autism. This was not about a lack of support. A number of autistic people rallied in favor of a conviction of Frank-McCarron, and Katie's death garnered intense scrutiny within the autism rights movement and among disability advocates. Autism Hub held a memorial on May 24 and the disability rights group Not Dead Yet led the charge to reveal the facts of the case. The local media responded to advocates that criticize them for sympathetic reporting towards alleged perpetrators.

See also List of homicides in Illinois Mortality of autistic individuals

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Karen McCarron

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Karen McCarron claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Karen McCarron before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Karen McCarron ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Karen McCarron

In research: Karen McCarron appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Karen McCarron in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Karen McCarron is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1968 births, 2006 murders in the United States, 20th-century American medical doctors, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Karen McCarron outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Karen McCarron in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Karen McCarron means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Karen McCarron out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Karen McCarron in simple terms?

Karen Frank-McCarron (born December 20, 1968) is a German-born American pathologist convicted in Illinois of first degree murder of her autistic daughter Katherine "Katie" McCarron. Background Early life, education and career Karen Frank-McCarron was born Karen Frank to Erna and Walter "Robert" Fra…

Why does Karen McCarron matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Karen McCarron?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Karen McCarron.