After serving prison time on a child endangerment conviction, Amanda Hamm married Leo Ware. During her 2014 hospital stay for the birth of their third child, a doctor recognized Amanda as the mother in the Clinton Lake drowning case. State child welfare workers immediately removed the two older children from the Ware home and took custody of the newborn.
In a ruling the next year, a Cook County judge said he was able to uphold the state’s decision even without considering the deaths of the three children and their mother’s role in the incident. But, he said, the drownings further supported his finding.
In his ruling, the judge nonetheless dwells on evidence presented by the state in the criminal cases and, it can be fairly said, plays loose with some facts. Most notably, in the very first paragraph, he states that Hamm had been a patient in a psychiatric hospital on more than one occasion since her release from prison. That is not true. The hospitalization he refers to occurred shortly after her children died and before she was arrested, convicted and imprisoned.
You can read Judge Demetrios Kottaras’s entire ruling at http://secureservercdn.net/72.167.25.126/199.016.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Amanda-custody-ruling-.pdf
After a four-year custody battle, Judge Kottaras appointed the children’s aunt (Leo Ware’s sister) as their legal guardian. Amanda Hamm Ware is allowed supervised visits. Her now ex-husband, Leo Ware, is allowed unsupervised visits.
I know some lawyer out there is going to fight like hell to get these kids back with their mom just so he can sue the state and make a ton of money when she gets them killed as well.
I hear the children are doing well and see their parents rather frequently.