Woman who said twins died after being vaccinated charged with murder

An Idaho woman who said her 18-month old twins died after being vaccinated has been charged with their murder, police said.

Andrea Shaw, 23, was arrested June 30 after being indicted on two counts of first-degree murder, the Payette Police Department said in a statement. The department previously said officers found twins dead in a shared bed on May 1, 2025, while responding to a 911 call, but did not identify the victims or family members involved.

Days after the twins died, Shaw said her children got sick after recieving three vaccines in an interview with anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense, which was founded by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy resigned in 2024 before joining the Trump administration, the organization said.

Shaw said in the interview that she was quickly treated as a suspect by police. "They said that it wasn't medical and that they figured asphyxiation. And that I had supposedly had a postpartum overwhelming blackout and done it to my children," she said.

Shaw's claims were repeated in a federal lawsuit filed in January against the American Academy of Pediatrics. According to the lawsuit, law enforcement opened the homicide investigation instead of investigating a "post-immunization reaction" as a potential cause of death for the twins.

"This criminal investigation is a foreseeable consequence of AAP's fraudulent safety claims: when the medical system has been told that vaccines cannot cause serious injury or death, grieving parents become suspects rather thanvictims," the lawsuit said.

A grand jury indicted Shaw for allegedly suffocating her children after hearing from three officers with the Payette Police Department and an intensive care unit pediatrician, according to an indictment obtained by KTVB.

Shaw's attorney, Joseph Filicetti, told the Associated Press she "denies anything and everything" and that prosecutors "cannot prove" the charges. USA TODAY has reached out to Filicetti and the Payette County Prosecuting Attorney for more information.

Shaw's next court appearance is scheduled for July 14.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Woman who said twins died after being vaccinated charged with murder

Reporting by N'dea Yancey-Bragg, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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This story was originally published July 7, 2026 at 9:01 AM.