An Idaho mother who became a prominent figure in the anti-vaccine movement after claiming her 18-month-old twins died from routine immunizations has been charged with their murder.
Andrea Shaw, 23, was arrested in Boise, Idaho, on June 30 following a yearlong investigation into the May 2025 deaths of her daughter, Dallas, and son, Tyson. A Payette County grand jury indicted Shaw on two counts of first-degree murder, alleging she willfully and premeditatedly suffocated the children. She is currently held in the Payette County jail on a $2 million bond.
The case sets up an unusual legal battle where the defense plans to argue that the children died from medical complications caused by vaccines, as prosecutors claim the mother murdered her own children
The case has brought Shaw into contact with an anti-vax activist group with strong links to Donald Trump’s health and human service secretary, longtime vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The children who died were 18-month-old twins, daughter Dallas and son Tyson. The toddlers were found dead together in a shared bed on May 1, 2025, at the family’s residence in Payette, Idaho.
Days after the toddlers died, Shaw and her husband aligned with the anti-vaccine movement, claiming that the twins died from a reaction to routine immunizations.
Shaw claimed she had voiced concerns to her pediatrician about the flu shot due to a history of vaccine reactions in her husband’s family, but was persuaded by the doctor to move forward. According to Shaw, the twins developed diarrhea and lethargy two days later.
She took them to a hospital, where she said staff dismissed the symptoms as a normal vaccine reaction and sent the family home. Shaw stated she found both children dead, facedown in their cribs, two mornings later.
“I wish I was anti-vaccine now,” Shaw told an interviewer at the time.
The grand jury indictment accuses Shaw of suffocating her children “willfully, unlawfully, deliberately, with premeditation and with malice afterthought,” as reported by The Washington Post.
Public statements from police have remained limited, but Shaw revealed that authorities suspected her immediately. During an interview with Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine nonprofit co-founded and formerly chaired by Kennedy, she recounted her interrogation by police three days after her twins died.
“So, the way they worded it to me, especially on the second day of interrogation, they said that it wasn’t medical and that they determined asphyxiation, and that I had supposedly had a postpartum overwhelming blackout and done it to my children,” Shaw said, according to The Post. “It made me feel crazy. … I was telling them … my truth, and they were getting into my head that I had done it, and I know I hadn’t.”
Following the deaths, Shaw became a plaintiff in a major federal lawsuit filed by Children’s Health Defense against the American Academy of Pediatrics, or AAP. The lawsuit alleges the organization makes fraudulent safety claims regarding childhood immunizations.
In court filings for that civil case, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs argued that the criminal investigation into Shaw was a direct result of medical establishment denial, stating: “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 than victims.”
The filings also noted that prosecutors had floated alternative theories to the grand jury, including that “the house was too hot.”
The AAP has asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit.
Children’s Health Defense, which was co-founded by Kennedy and chaired by him from 2015 to 2023, heavily promoted Shaw’s claims through video interviews and articles, and championed a GiveSendGo crowdfunding campaign that has raised more than $12,000 for the family. In a social media video addressing the murder charges, Mary Holland, the nonprofit’s chief executive, fiercely defended the mother.
“This is insane,” Holland said, according to The Post. “We will stand by this family … because we do know that vaccines cause severe injury and death, and this is a classic case of the vaccines causing death.”
Kennedy has a long history of promoting discredited claims about childhood immunizations. For decades, he has consistently advanced the thoroughly disproven theory that childhood vaccines are linked to autism, famously stating in a 2023 interview, “I do believe that autism does come from vaccines.” Despite a near-unanimous consensus from global medical authorities that vaccines are safe, Kennedy has used his platform to question their safety and necessity.
Since taking office as health secretary, Kennedy has continued to challenge public health guidelines and has targeted the seasonal flu vaccine, linking it to his own chronic voice condition without providing scientific evidence.
Public health experts continue to reiterate that severe complications or death from childhood vaccines are extremely rare.
Shaw’s defense attorney, Joseph P. Filicetti, confirmed that the defense would center on the vaccine timeline. He told reporters he had been coordinating with Children’s Health Defense to find experts to testify on Shaw’s behalf.
“They were looking at it as a vaccine death, and that’s still what I believe it to be,” Filicetti told Boise station KTVB. “I’m not a medical expert, but the medical experts I have, they go through a series of steps when looking at different complications.”
Shaw was a 22-year-old mother living in Payette, Idaho, when her twins died. According to Filicetti, Shaw recently gave birth to a newborn baby shortly before the grand jury handed down the murder indictment.
Under the strict terms of her $2 million bond, public records show Shaw is barred from having any contact with minors under the age of 18, a restriction that prevents her from seeing her newborn.
