Plaintiff in Children’s Health Defense Lawsuit Charged With Murder

A mother who blamed vaccines for the deaths of her toddler twins and joined the anti-vax group’s lawsuit against the American Academy of Pediatrics has been charged with murdering her children.

An Idaho woman whose claims that vaccines killed her toddler twins were promoted by Robert Kennedy Jr.’s former anti-vaccine group has been arrested and charged with their murders.

Andrea Shaw, 23, formerly of Payette, Idaho, was arrested on Tuesday after a grand jury returned an indictment, charging her with two counts of first-degree murder, which requires premeditation, in connection with the deaths of her 18-month-old twins, Dallas and Tyson. Police found the twins unresponsive in their shared bed on May 1, 2025 after responding to a 911 call.

Shaw blamed the flu, hepatitis A, and DTaP (tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis) vaccines the children had received days earlier, but the indictment alleges that she suffocated the toddlers. The arrest concludes “a lengthy and thorough” multi-agency investigation led by the Payette Police Department, according to a press release posted to the department’s Facebook page. That investigation was launched last year as foul play was suspected.

Children’s Health Defense (CHD), the anti-vaccine advocacy group founded and previously led by Kennedy before he became Health and Human Services Secretary, picked up Shaw’s story and promoted it for months. Days after her children’s deaths, Shaw appeared on a CHD podcast, claiming that her husband’s side of the family all suffered allergic reactions to the flu shot that the pediatrician ignored. In the days after the vaccines, she said, her children deteriorated, prompting a hospital visit. On the eighth day, they died.

Shaw later became the lead plaintiff in a racketeering lawsuit filed by the group against the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)—while under investigation for murder.

The CHD suit, launched in January, alleged that AAP had violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act by making false and fraudulent claims about the safety of the childhood immunization schedule and blocking efforts to study its cumulative safety. It claimed the AAP was engaged in this activity while receiving donations for its charitable work from vaccine manufacturers.

The lawsuit came as AAP was waging a legal battle of its own against Kennedy’s HHS over changes made to the U.S. childhood and adolescent vaccine schedule. In its suit, AAP alleged the schedule changes were made “without following the evidentiary-driven, and legally required processes.” A federal judge in that case temporarily halted the changes and stayed Kennedy’s new appointments to the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee.

In its complaint, CHD noted that Shaw was being investigated for murder in connection with the deaths of her children, but painted the investigation as a consequence of AAP’s “fraudulent safety claims.”

“Rather than investigating the documented post-immunization reaction as a potential cause of death, local authorities opened a homicide investigation targeting Mrs. Shaw,” it read. “Prosecutors have theorized that she caused her children’s deaths through a ‘postpartum blackout’ or that ‘the house was too hot.’ 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.”

CHD has stood by Shaw, painting her as a victim of political prosecution. An article published on Thursday by the group’s media outlet, The Defender, claimed that “Rather than investigating Andrea’s vaccine concerns, the Payette Police Department opened an investigation into her.”

In a post on X, promoting the Defender story, CHD CEO Mary Holland wrote “Parents deserve to be heard when they raise vaccine safety concerns for their own children. This mother wasn’t — and now she’s facing life in prison.”

Other anti-vax voices on X also defended Shaw. “This may be the best reason for not vaccinating your kids: to avoid being charged with first degree murder,” wrote entrepreneur Steve Kirsch, who runs the so-called Vaccine Safety Research Fund and has written for The Defender. Dr. Lynn Fynn of the Independent Medical Alliance framed the charges as a warning.

“Moms, do you know who Andrea Shaw is? You should because it could happen to any of you,” she wrote.