From the Past: Heather Reynolds

A mother hooked on meth, an affair, a murder-for-hire plot, and an infant's life caught in the middle of it all - until she murdered him.

Mar 26, 2025

Screams pierced the quiet morning in the Sicklerville neighborhood in Camden County, New Jersey, on May 10, 2018. A desperate mother with an unresponsive child in her arms ran from her Marcia Court home, her agony resonating through the usually tranquil street. She pounded on doors until one neighbor answered, shocked to see her with a lifeless child in her arms.

The mother told her neighbor that she had been getting ready for work, with the baby boy asleep in his crib, when she went to check on him. When she found him unresponsive, she ran for help from her neighbors, claiming that her cell phone wasn’t working. When she asked if anyone in the house knew CPR, a friend stepped into begin life-saving efforts on the baby.

Her screams as she ran down the street, her dead infant in her arms, haunted the 911 call made at about 11:40 a.m.

The boy, 18-month-old Axel Jayce Reynolds, was unconscious on the front lawn when police arrived. Heather Reynolds, his mother, told EMTs that Axel smelled like rubbing alcohol and feared it could have been something he drank, despite the fact that he had bruises around his nose and mouth. Paramedics were unable to revive the little boy and pronounced him dead at the scene.

Heather Reynolds and her son, Axel (Facebook)

Heather claimed she had fed her son at about 6 a.m. Impossible, the EMT said, since Axel had quite clearly been dead for longer. Another EMT mused that the death appeared to be suspicious. And while no direct accusation had been made, the impulsive statement Heather blurted out next made the odd situation a tad more bizarre.

“It’s not suspicious. I didn’t do anything wrong,” she told them.

Her other two children were at school at the time of Axel’s death, a neighbor told Patch.

Upon talking to witnesses, police learned that Heather had been using methamphetamine the night before, a binge that reportedly lasted into the early morning. Police found tell-tale powder residue in her purse.

Initially, police said they were looking into a man who had been in the house the night before. Despite her claims that she did nothing wrong, text messages from her phone indicated otherwise. The phone at the time had gotten wet and was unusable, but police were still able to obtain text messages between Heather and a man with whom she was having an extramarital affair with. Turns out, she had stepped out on her husband while he worked out of state.

The night before, Heather sent messages that displayed her frustration with her boyfriend’s lack of interest in their relationship. More witnesses told police that Heather had told them she believed Axel had become an obstacle to that affair.

Police confirmed that the man who had been in the house was, in fact, the boyfriend, but he left that morning before Heather appeared outside with Axel in her arms.

Blood tests further proved that the EMT had been justifiably suspicious. Medical Examiner Gerald Feigin on June 7, 2022, ruled Axel’s death a homicide due to “a wipe containing isopropyl alcohol and detergent was placed over the mouth and nose,” according to Gallagher.

Police didn’t arrest Heather right away, but they said she was a suspect from the moment the EMT got the feeling that something was horribly wrong at the scene, looking over the child’s lifeless body on the front lawn.

Heather’s secrets appeared to be hidden within the walls of a normal-looking family. The affair. The meth addiction. It all seemed to happen behind closed doors. Mark Nerone, who lived across the street from the home, told ABC News that nothing seemed amiss there.

“They seemed to be great with the kids. I know. I’d see them playing out here all the time. It’s just a damn shame,” he said.

Bob Franchetti, another neighbor, echoed that sentiment.

“Cute little guy. The mother was always good with him. Father was always good with him,” he told ABC.

Her husband died six months later

If Heather perceived her husband as the second obstacle to her extracurricular activities, he wouldn’t be for much longer. Joseph C. Reynolds died on Nov. 5, 2018, a short six months after losing his son. Nothing has really been said about how he died or whether it was suspicious, other than that it was sudden.

NJ.com reported that Heather said her husband’s death was crushing and that he was “in a lot of pain.” She reportedly declined to say how he died. Joseph’s original obituary is no longer online, so few details are known about his life otherwise.

A lengthy investigation to find answers

By the time Axel’s second birthday rolled around in Dec. 2018, his father had been dead for a month, and his mother seemed to be moving on in the face of two tragedies separated by mere months — with a new boyfriend.

At a Gloucester Township park on Axel’s second birthday, people from the community gathered for a vigil for the infant who was murdered and yet to receive any justice.

Supporters showed up to the vigil holding candles and wearing ribbons and shirts that read “Justice for Axel Jayce Reynolds.” In what NJ.com describes a “freezing wind,” the crowd cried and stood against the insufferable wind in memory of a baby boy who’s life was cut far too short.

Charmain Duffy, Axel’s aunt, spoke to the crowd of about 70 people:

“It’s hard to understand how someone could harm such a sweet baby. Thank you for showing up, for standing with our family.”

She told the crowd that Axel was “his daddy’s best friend,” adding: “We have been trying to find some kind of peace knowing that Axel is in his daddy’s arms.”

Heather spoke to NJ Advance Media before the vigil, as well, in her first interview since her son’s death. Her lawyer advised her not to say anything pertaining to the case, but she did say she hoped the person responsible would be charged.

She described Axel as an “easy” baby, that he was always bubbly and happy. He had three half-siblings from both parents’ previous relationships, who he loved dearly. Heather went on to say that Axel simply loved music, too.

“That was his thing. He loved dancing on the coffee table, even though he knew he wasn’t allowed,” she said.

Luann Fischer, Axel’s babysitter, said he “ruled the house” while his parents were at work and that he loved to hide.

“I’d walk around yelling his name and you’d hear this, ‘he-he-he’ as he hid,” she said. “I’m hoping that sooner rather than later, he gets his due justice.”

The Chief of Detectives at the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office told NJ.com that they were still investigating at the time of the vigil.

“We are still actively pursuing anyone that had access to the child,” he remarked.

The arrest and the murder-for-hire plot

Those calling for justice for little Axel wouldn’t see any action from police until June 13, 2019, when at about 6:30 that evening, they arrested none other than Heather Reynolds in Gloucester County.

She faced charges of first-degree murder, second-degree endangering the welfare of a child, third-degree possession of methamphetamine, and third-degree hindering apprehension. Heather pleaded not guilty.

Despite being married and having a boyfriend on the side at the time of the murder, it seemed Heather couldn’t resist dragging one more man into the already tangled web she had woven.

Heather’s relationship with Dominic Caruso, the boyfriend who lived with Heather while Joseph was out of town, ended after Axel’s death. Dominic was in the house on the morning of the infant’s death, police discovered, though he had left the home before Heather claimed to have found her son unresponsive in his crib.

However, upon learning that Dominic spoke to police about Axel’s death, Heather seemed to decide he couldn’t stick around. Gallagher, the prosecutor, alleged in court that Heather recruited her new boyfriend, Jefferey Callahan, to murder Dominic and silence him.

Callahan, a 44-year-old carpenter, sent Dominic what Gallagher referred to as a “threatening message,” and approached a third party to offer $25,000 for Dominic’s assassination.

The Courier Post obtained a probable cause statement, which outlined Callahan’s activity during this time.

When this was uncovered, both Callahan and Heather were charged with conspiracy to commit murder.

Callahan’s defense attorney, Timothy Wright, dismissed such a plot, claiming that the key witness to this specific case was a “jailhouse snitch” looking to make a deal with the prosecution.

“We would argue it’s not a strong case at all,” Wright said.

He claimed that Callahan’s “ugly words” were merely the man’s way of venting.

In July 2020, that “jailhouse snitch” sat down with detectives for a second time to discuss the alleged plot. According to the probable cause statement, Dominic Caruso was “going to get ‘dealt with’ after the completion of Reynolds' court case.”

Callahan allegedly added that it would be too obvious if something were to happen to Caruso before the trial. A review of Callahan’s social media revealed posts that called Caruso a “dead man walking.”

“Mark my words, he’ll be dead in a year,” one post said, according to the statement.

“He talked about wanting to put a bullet in (the intended victim’s) head,” Gallagher told Judge Gwendolyn Blue during the trial.

In a recorded conversation, Callahan got caught saying “that Reynolds wanted (the target) dead and that her family had the money to pay for it,” the statement continues.

Gallagher also alleged that unnamed members of Heather’s family actually hired a private investigator to find Caruso’s address.

Callahan brought with him a previous criminal record: four felonies, 13 disorderly persons offenses, and at the time was on probation for a stalking conviction in relation to Heather.

“This defendant's allegiance and his devotion to Ms. Reynold are quite well-established,” Gallagher pointed out.

Judge Blue agreed, ordering Callahan to remain locked up in the Camden County Jail for the duration of the trial.

“I find that there is a need for protection,” she said, calling Callahan a “serious threat” to Caruso.

“He’s talking tough, he’s trying to impress a girl,” Richard Fuschino, Heather’s defense attorney, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “There’s never talk of a real figure or talk of where the money’s coming from.”

Investigators originally charged 45-year-old Callahan with conspiracy to commit murder, but the prosecution dropped the charge when he agreed to plead guilty to witness tampering, according to a report from the Inquirer.

Superior Court Judge Gwendolyn Blue sentenced Callahan to a two-year probationary term and 456 days of time served.

The live-in boyfriend: An alternative suspect?

During the trial, the defense posed another possible scenario that could have played out on the morning of May 10, 2018. Adamant that Heather, who they described as a loving mother despite her addiction, tried CPR on her son before running to her neighbor’s, did not murder her own infant, Fuschino pointed out that another person had been in the home around that time.

Dominic Caruso lived in Heather’s basement while her husband was out of town. Fuschino declared that it easily could have been Caruso who smothered the child to death before leaving the house while Heather slept. The defense attorney further alleged that Caruso gave conflicting accounts of his whereabouts in the hours before and after Axel died.

“She did not commit this murder. The reason that we have trials is for when arrests are made of the wrong person, because that really does happen,” Fuschino told the Inquirer in an interview.

Gallagher countered that by pointing out how police found one of Axel’s shirts in the dryer, and a towel in the washer, apparently evidence that she tried to clean up the scene. There was no doubt to be had, according to the prosecution. Besides, Caruso had no motive to kill Axel, they added.

“All the evidence at this point says it is not possible for anybody else to have killed that child,” Gallagher said to the jury.

At one point during the trial, while Gallagher described how Heather allegedly smothered her own son, Heather seemed to be on the verge of crying, as described by NJ.com.

Gallagher noted that she had been a suspect from the start.

As Gallagher went on to explain the commitment it would take for a mother to hold a cleansing wipe over her own infant’s face until he died, she began openly sobbing into her hands, confined in shackles.

Her attorney by this point, Michael Testa Jr., admitted she struggles with addiction, but maintained that she didn’t murder Axel.

“She adamantly denies that she has anything to do with the death of her child,” Testa said, adding that she had been a social worker with a master’s degree before the trial.

“She’s suffered greatly as a result of this,” Testa noted, adding that she had supportive family and friends in the court room, and that his client wanted to receive help for her addiction.

Conviction

In July 2022, after a nine-day trial, a jury deliberated for six hours before returning to the court room with their verdict: Heather Reynolds was found guilty of murdering 18-month-old Axel Jayce Reynolds, endangering the welfare of a child, and possession of methamphetamine.

In November 2022, she was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder, yet they acquitted her of conspiracy to commit murder and witness tampering. Heather is also serving a concurrent term of eight years for the endangerment charge and four years for the drug charge.

In a statement, the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office said: “Before the sentencing of Reynolds, Judge Blue listened to members of the victim’s family discuss how the defendant’s crime had affected their lives.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Heather began crying when the verdict was read out, the fate determined for the disgraced mother.

Testa noted they planned to appeal the guilty verdict.

Did Heather really not want her child, or did meth control her mind?

I’ve written pretty extensively on the topic of filicide, and something I have come to know is that some of these cases are not black and white.

Little is known or reported on regarding Heather’s life, in childhood or current. So, we don’t have much to go on as far as a psychological profile based on her earlier years. The media, with its tendency for being insensitive to the complexity of addiction and mental health problems, has referred to Heather in a rather tabloid fashion as the “meth mom.”

Filicide (the murder of a child by their parent or guardian) is a mortifying crime which as been studied extensively by forensic psychologist Phillip J. Resnick, who as of most recent was retained by the defense team of Lindsay Clancy, a mother charged with murdering two of her three children before attempting suicide. Resnick’s studies pertaining to filicide date back to 1969.

Resnick broke the common motives for filicide down into five classifications, which can be read about here. For this article, however, we’re going to focus on one of the classifications which Heather’s case fits into: that of the Unwanted Child.

Resnick has noted that this seems to be the one of the most common reasons why women might murder their children. Indeed, dating back to the Victorian era in England, finding the corpses of dead babies in alleys was sadly frequent. Women didn’t have birth control, access to safe abortions, or any rights at all over their bodies. Marriage meant they belonged to their husbands and marital rape wasn’t deemed a crime until decades later. So whether it was with malicious intention or altruistic ones (unable to afford to feed more kids, severe sickness, etc) infanticide is what many women resorted to.

In a modern context, that has changed somewhat. Filicides of this nature seem to publicly display teenage mothers who didn’t know or were in severe denial of their pregnancies, or simply refer to women like Heather as “meth moms” with derogatory headlines. Resnick notes that children being perceived by their mother as a social burden also falls into this category.

It takes a specific cruelty for a mother to look at her infant or child and dehumanize them to the point where they can convince themselves that said child is an “obstacle” to her sexual exploits. This is precisely what Heather Reynolds did.

But one question plagues me: would she have done it had she not been hooked on meth?

According to a 2005 article titled “Implications of Chronic Methamphetamine Use: A Literature Review” (Meredith, Jaffe, Ang-Lee, Saxon), long-term use of the drug can cause “adverse psychiatric effects.” This may “result from particular abusers’ heightened sensitivity to MA, from repeated administration or an escalation in dose, or from changing the route of administration to injection.”

Escalating doses is almost inevitable as one builds tolerance to a drug. These effects can display as audio or visual hallucinations, formication (imagining and scratching at non-existent insects under their skin), manic or hypomanic episodes, increased violence behavior or violent deaths, “often in the setting of stimulant-induced psychosis,” the article notes.

Neuroimaging, neuropsychological testing, and psychiatric evaluations have shown that the heavy, chronic use of meth can trigger psychosis, mood disturbance, anxiety, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), motor dysfunction, and cognitive deficits.

Psychotic symptoms can manifest as environmental hypersensitivity, paranoid ideation, auditory and visual hallucinations, and persecutory delusions. The article states that “MA psychosis” is thought to develop “due to the excess of synaptic dopamine.” It also mimics the symptoms of schizophrenia.

This is where this case may overlap with another filicide motive classification: Acutely Psychotic Filicide. These mothers often kill while under the influence of psychosis, hallucinations, delirium, or epilepsy. Postpartum depression/psychosis also falls under this. So does schizophrenia.

As a quick side note, I am not stating that everyone and anyone with schizophrenia or postpartum depression becomes violent or kills their children. This is simply not true. If you’re a seasoned reader of this account, you know I do my best to not stigmatize mental disorders and illnesses.

Addiction and many mental problems tend to stem from the same roots: trauma. A 2005 study by Resnick and others stated:

“In sum, three-quarters of the mothers (72%) were noted to have experienced considerable stressors during their developmental years. - sexual or physical abuse, abandoned in some way by their mother (death, divorce, removal from custody), incest victims. One-quarter (23%) of the mothers reported that as adults, they were victims of domestic violence.”

Any number of things could have happened to Heather in her early years. I can’t pinpoint any one source of trauma without more information about her life. Yet, the fact that those “unnamed family members” were allegedly willing to be part of the murder-for-hire plot against Caruso, speaks of a level of chaos in that family. It’s possible that Heather tried to frame Caruso for Axel’s murder as a means of covering up her own actions, letting her new boyfriend and her family go after an innocent man.

So, it’s possible that Heather descends from a dysfunctional family. This can become a complicated cycle.

Another article, “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in an urban civilian population” outlines this cycle of addiction leading to new trauma, and circling back to escapism. Some people who suffer with PTSD may fall into addiction as an escapism from their trauma. Or, alternatively, the addiction can lead users to falling into a high risk lifestyle that could include crime and prostitution, which could contribute to causing trauma, which then makes the addiction also function as escapism.

And what an escape meth can bring: an upper drug that gives a euphoric high with effects that can last between eight to 24 hours, according to WebMD. When injected or smoked, the high can come in a mere few seconds. Like any other hard drug, it’s when that high begins to come down that the user seeks another fix to maintain the euphoria.

So, if Heather didn’t experience trauma in her childhood, it’s possible the addiction stemmed from elsewhere, and that it was the addiction that contributed to her mental issues that led up to Axel’s murder. Her mental state at the time of the murder also wasn’t publicly discussed, so I don’t know if there were any psychological evaluations done or any diagnosis that may have resulted. This is all pure speculation on my part.

But, based on what I’ve been reading and looking at, her meth addiction more than likely played a big part in this heart wrenching murder. Did Heather feel a hefty shame when she stood up and spoke at the vigil for Axel’s second birthday? Did she cry during the trial because she was ashamed of her own actions under the influence of this awful drug, or because she got caught? Was it remorse?

Here’s what I think: Something caused Heather to go down the dark path of using meth. Childhood trauma is a likely factor, but it could have been depression, postpartum depression/psychosis, or other ongoing mental problems. Break ups, conflict, or anything else life-altering could have tempted her into drug use, especially if she already knew people who were involved with that lifestyle. It’s possible she drifted in and out of that lifestyle, caught in yet another cycle of trying to clean up her life and relapsing, as so many people with addiction do.

Maybe she had Axel, thinking she could handle motherhood once again, her marriage, her live-in boyfriend, and her ongoing addiction. Maybe it was the meth that made her believe she could do it all - after all, it makes users feel more alert, energetic, and to sleep and eat less. Perhaps she used it as a mother’s little helper and it got wildly out of hand.

So when Dominic Caruso began losing interest in Heather and their relationship, she began to believe that Axel was to blame. Not her addiction, not her selfishness, not the possibility that Caruso was tired of being a live-in toy for a married woman with a baby. His interest and lust for Heather waned, and she simply couldn’t have that. She couldn’t let go of being a married mother but she still wanted her affair.

This is where the dehumanizing of baby Axel would have began. When Caruso began distancing himself from Heather, she became resentful towards her baby, despite the fact that Axel did nothing wrong. He didn’t ask to be born. Heather chose to have him, and she chose to take his life, as if it never mattered at all. Maybe he became too much for her to take care of when all she wanted was her next selfish fix of meth. Maybe his crying got under her skin and she coldly, perhaps impulsively, put the wipe over his mouth until he quietened down. But only when she woke up that morning and had sobered up some did she check Axel’s crib to realize what she had really done. She had little time to think up a story that seemed even half believable, one which no one believed at all.

And, six months later, when her husband died, it could have caused her to spiral further into her addiction, further into the paranoia and manic behavior leading her and Callahan to plotting Caruso’s assassination. Completely irrational behavior. Surely, Heather had to have known it was only a matter of time before she would be charged with Axel’s murder? The fact she and Callahan even concocted a brazen murder-for-hire plot speaks volumes about how completely caught up she was, how she truly wasn’t thinking straight.

Maybe it was only in the clarity that comes after overcoming the horrible withdrawals from meth did she realize what she truly did. By the time Axel’s birthday vigil came along, I imagine many who attended likely knew who was behind the infant’s death, too.

I don’t believe Caruso had anything to do with Axel’s death, despite Heather’s defense throwing his name in the bucket as a suspect. If he wanted to keep the relationship with Heather alive, maybe he would have had a motive. But he was distancing himself from her, trying to get out. He isn’t the one who blatantly said that Axel was an “obstacle” to the relationship - those were Heather’s own words. Caruso’s inability to pinpoint his whereabouts could be explained away by the possibility that he may have also have been consuming meth or alcohol the night before. And he freely spoke to police about it, too.

Did he know that Heather murdered Axel? It’s possible. By the time paramedics got to Axel, he had been dead for quite some time. Axel had been murdered over night. Maybe Caruso and Heather fought that night about their deteriorating affair, about his loss of interest, and that’s what made Heather snap in the midst of her meth high. Maybe she slipped in Axel’s room under the ruse of tending to him while he was crying, letting Caruso drift back to sleep, while she put the wipe over Axel’s mouth. Or maybe she did it while the infant slept, not waking either of them.

By the time Caruso awoke the next morning and left the house, he wouldn’t have known the difference. He could have believed that Axel was still sleeping.

Heather kept up appearances after the fact when she wasn’t immediately arrested. She would have had to, for her husband, family, and friends. The secret was her own. Whether her husband suspected she had murdered their son, we will never know.

As the prosecutor, Gallagher, stated, what remains is the heartbreak that Axel was the true victim of this entire ordeal.

“This was an absolutely brutal murder and a helpless victim,” he said in court.

And whether Heather Reynolds did it while under the irrational, meth-induced mania in which she snapped and didn’t know until the next morning, or it was a cold, calculated murder of an innocent child she no longer wanted in favor of an ongoing affair, is hard to say. But what doesn’t change is that this woman took the life of her own son for reasons unfathomable to most. Instead of divorcing her husband, letting him take their son, and starting over on her own, in the life she wanted, she ended baby Axel’s life before it could really begin.