Meet the world's 10 worst mothers

Remember when mom made you pose for those family pictures? Told you to get a haircut? Denied you a pony? This Mother's Day, Radar offers a gentle reminder to suck it up and give thanks. Even if mom did occasionally overmedicate, undermine, or adopt the decorous phone manner of Alec Baldwin, it was probably out of love. More importantly, it could have been much worse. Below, some mommies who really didn't know best:

Mrs. Andreas M.
Divorce is difficult for anyone. But for one Austrian woman, identified only as the wife of one "Andreas M.," divorce transformed her from an accomplished attorney into an outright nutcase. Shortly after the split, the then 46-year-old locked her three daughters, ages 7, 11, and 13 in her house, shut the blinds, and allowed only one lightbulb. They'd remain prisoners there for seven years, bereft of sunlight and fresh air.

When investigators came to the house in Linz, they were shocked. The three girls were living in filth, with "excrement a metre high." Locked away, the sisters had even developed their own language, which included ending sentences with the word but. Once freed, one daughter would only stand on one foot.

The mother now faces charges of criminal neglect, and it's still unclear why she did it. Needless to say, psychologists believe the children, now close to adulthood, will never recover. The governor of lower Austria, Josef Pühringer, has "ordered an inquiry."

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Kathy Bush
Bush had the role of "long-suffering mother" down to a science. After all, her seven-year-old daughter, Jennifer, had been hospitalized nearly 200 times for a rare gastrointestinal illness. At the urging of her mother, doctors had removed most of Jennifer's intestines, her gall bladder, put her on a feeding tube, and treated her for both an immune system deficiency and a seizure disorder.

Then, in 1994, Kathy Bush propped her daughter up next to Hillary Clinton and had her testify as a poster-child for health care reform. With all the treatment Jennifer had received over the years, the Bush family had run up nearly 2 million dollars in health care expenses.

But something didn't add up. Despite the Bush family's alleged bankruptcy, there was, apparently, money available for trips to Disney World and a $25,000 motorcycle. Then an anonymous tip came in: Why did Jennifer's health always seem to decline whenever her mother was around? Turns out, Bush had been making Jennifer sick by speeding up her feeding tube, giving her excessive and potentially lethal doses of anti-seizure medication, and even contaminating her blood with feces.

Authorities suspected Münchausen syndrome by proxy (MSBP), a condition in which mothers deliberately keep their children sick, or make them sicker, feeding off the sympathy and attention afforded to parents of the chronically ill. In 1999, Bush was convicted of child abuse and fraud and sentenced to five years in prison. When she was 18, Jennifer asked for the terms of her mother's probation to allow a reunion, proving that blood is thicker than water—even blood deliberately contaminated by your own mother.

Jeanette Maier

As the madam of the Canal Street Brothel, in New Orleans, Jeanette Maier was a businesswoman whose business was women. Unfortunately, this also included her daughter, Monica. By age 15, Monica had started stripping with her mother, and by 23, she was turning tricks and paying mom and grandma's steep 50 percent commission.

Defending the prostitute lifestyle, Jeanette compared time spent at the brothel to college life. "It was like family. It was like a sorority of girls," she told 48 Hours. "We'd hang out, watch movies, eat popcorn at night." And to make matters even more bizarre, Jeanette's own mother also worked at the brothel. Apparently, the tastes of the clientele were only so broad, however, and, at age 62, grandma had been relegated to administrative duties. She regularly booked jobs for her granddaughter, who was said to be one of the most popular ladies of the house.

The brothel was eventually shut down by the FBI. But that didn't stop Maier from spinning her cross-generational tale of whoring into a spate of interviews and a TV movie, The Madam's Family: The Truth about the Canal Street Brothel, starring Dominique Swain as the plucky young Monica. We can only hope the real Monica got a better deal on film rights than she did working for mom.

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Dakeysha Lee

One positive thing can be said about Dakeysha Lee: she somehow spawned an incredibly industrious child. For the 19 days Lee was in prison for aggravated assault, her 2-year-old toddler Breanna lived a horrifying, real-life Home Alone. Brianna was left to her devices, with only a TV to keep her company and whatever food she could manage to pull from the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets. Thankfully, in a toddler version of Man vs. Wild, she was able to find sustenance, subsisting on dry pasta and condiment packets for nearly three weeks. Her father says the girl was found watching cartoons, covered in ketchup residue.

Lee initially denied the charges, but ultimately pleaded no contest, receiving 18 months of probation. Investigators say that over the course of her incarceration she never asked about her daughter, speculated on who might be taking care of her, or expressed any concern for anyone other than herself. After her release and a brief custody battle (perhaps a final testament to her delusion), Dakeysha's husband, Ogden Lee, was granted custody of Brianna.

Unholy Union: Andrea Yates and Dena Schlosser

In June, 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five children in a bathtub. According to her own testimony, the act was one of kindness. Yates thought she was saving her children from damnation by dispatching them straight to heaven. In November 2004, Dena Schlosser also heard the voice of God. She was told to cut off her 10-month-old daughter's arms, and then to follow up with her own arms and head. After completing
the first part of the horrific mandate, Schlosser stopped, calmly dialed 911, and informed the operator of what she'd done. When the police arrived, Schlosser was listening to a hymn. The baby died on the way to the hospital.

Both mothers suffered from postpartum depression and had histories of mental illness. Both were also found not guilty by reason of insanity. Prior to their psychotic acts, both mothers were said to be models of maternity— conscientious churchgoers, kind neighbors. The two killer moms were assigned to live together at the same North Texas state hospital and struck up a fast friendship. Schlosser told a reporter from the Dallas Morning News, "We talk about our past, we talk about our memories, our fun memories, the things that our kids did." She also gushed of her roommate, "I think we'll be friends forever."

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Wanda Holloway

Plenty of mothers have had their exploits turned into TV movies. Usually it's "for love of" something, or for refusing to leave a child behind. Wanda Holloway has earned the rare distinction of spawning two TV movies: The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom, starring Holly Hunter, and Willing to Kill: The Texas Cheerleader Story.

Holloway gained notoriety after she was convicted of putting out a hit on the mother of one of her 13-year-old daughter's cheerleading competitors. Her plot failed, but Halloway became a legend among stage moms everywhere. Why settle for sabotaging pleated skirts or kneecaps when you can go right to the root and throw a young child into mourning? Though the crime should have earned her 15 years in prison, she was released after six months and continues to live in Houston, Texas. After the incident, the principal of her daughter's school told Time magazine, "There is a part of Wanda Holloway in all of us." Which confirms that Texas is as screwed up as we thought.

Melissa Drexler

In 1997, Melissa Drexler arrived at the prom like any other high school senior. But what happened next would make her the "Prom Mom," a title synonymous with maternal callousness. Excusing herself to the ladies' room, Drexler gave birth—in a manner that was efficient and painless and surprisingly unnoticed by the other bathroom visitors—then threw the breathing baby in the trash and went back to the dance floor.

When news spread of the baby's discovery, some of Drexler's fellow classmates responded with due reverence, wearing white ribbons. Others, perhaps proving the hypothesis that one tasteless act begets another, scrawled graffiti on bathroom trash receptacles, including "Baby Disposable Box Here."

Drexler pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter and, with no more than a 15-year sentence, it looked like her dream of achieving admission to fashion college would be put on hold. But in 2001, after a little over three years as a model prisoner, Drexler was released back to her parent's house in New Jersey. Her lawyer has said that she still hopes to work in the exciting world of fashion.

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Nuclear Mothers: Elizabeth Renee Otte and China Arnold
The baby in the microwave is an enduring urban legend. Typically, the infant is put there by a teenage babysitter on acid, providing a ghoulish cautionary tale on the consequences of drug use. But truth is stranger than fiction: In 1999, and again in 2006, two real mothers committed infanticide by microwave.

Nineteen-year-old Elizabeth Renee Otte was the first. According to the Washington Post, Otte, who suffered from epilepsy, "told her family that a seizure caused her to mistake her baby for a bottle of milk that needed warming." The same news story also provides perhaps the most distasteful detail imaginable—Otte's aunt "found the body 'folded' into the microwave." More recently, China Arnold's baby, Paris, was said to have died of "high body temperature," a suspicious cause of death considering there were no external burns on the body. A year later, authorities finally had enough evidence to charge Arnold, 26, with murder by microwave. The bail was set at $1 million dollars.

Joan Crawford
No list could be complete without the original Mommie Dearest, whose snarling, berserker rage could apparently be induced by things like improper coat hanger use. Joan Crawford's adopted daughter Christina told all in her memoir, Mommie Dearest, and the actress was immortalized by Faye Dunaway in the movie version. In the end, Crawford's glamorous career as one of Hollywood's highest paid actresses was outshined by her psychotic off-screen performance as a mother from hell.

Christina claims that Crawford would give her Christmas presents, only to take them away, and that she would verbally and physically abuse her, administering beatings on occasion with those wire coat hangers Crawford so abhorred. According to her daughter, the actress kept adopting for the attention, even going so far as to choose similar looking children, whom she would defiantly call twins because, well, she really wanted twins.

Sure, other mothers may have maimed or tortured or even killed, making Crawford's unrelenting narcissism seem relatively minor in comparison. But she remains the standard-bearer for a particular category of offender: the celebrity mom. Modern contemporaries like Anna Nicole Smith and, to a lesser degree, Britney Spears seem like models of maternity by comparison. But one universal still applies: When it comes to Hollywood spawn, deep emotional scars are part of the territory.

Case in point: On the 20th anniversary of Mommie Dearest's release in 1998, Christina Crawford did what any screwed up, attention-seeking Hollywood kid would do. She appeared in public with drag queen Lypsynka, who mouthed the words to old Joan Crawford interviews while the crowd hissed and booed. Now doesn't everyone feel better?

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Mary Ann Cotton

Jack the Ripper had nothing on Mary Ann Cotton. Britain's first female serial killer was also one of the worst in history. By age 40, Cotton had managed to kill four husbands, two lovers, at least seven of her own children, five stepchildren, and her mother. It started in 1850 when, shortly after their births, four of Cotton's children mysteriously died. The cause was determined to be "gastric fever." Victorian England was not known for its high medical standards, and making it to puberty was a lucky break, so the deaths raised few eyebrows. Then Cotton's first husband, William Mowbray, also contracted a strange intestinal illness and died. The pattern continued through several husbands, children, and step-children.

There must have been something extraordinarily foxy about Mary Ann Cotton that's lost on modern eyes—or perhaps not easily conveyed through Victorian-era photography—because as quickly as one husband died off, another lined up to take his place. Cotton also displayed an unusual savvy for taking out life insurance policies on her husbands just before they passed, cashing in on multiple policies and, according to one report, buying herself new dresses with the spoils.

After her eight-year-old stepson died of gastric fever, suspicions mounted. An inquest led to an autopsy, which revealed arsenic in the child's system. Cotton's jig was up. Subsequent exhumations of departed loved ones confirmed that all those cases of "gastric fever" really amounted to "murder by arsenic poisoning." Mary Ann Cotton was found guilty and hanged in March 1873. Unfortunately, the executioner was not so skilled, and Cotton's asphyxiation endured for 3 minutes. All the while a 19th century paparazzo took pictures of the murderous mother and sold them to the crowd.