A soldier from Fort Bragg, N.C., charged with killing her 2-year-old daughter ordered photos of herself at her late daughter’s grave site.
Jeanie Ditty, 23, is seen with an angelic likeness of her little girl superimposed by her side in this amazing, albeit eerie photo by Sunny Jo:
The photos were commissioned a month after the killing according to People. Ditty and boyfriend Zachary Keefer face murder charges.
Both were arrested for the first-degree murder of Macy Grace and also face charges of negligent child abuse inflicting serious bodily injury.
They were arrested last week. Police say the child was taken to Cape Fear Valley Medical Center in North Carolina on December 2, 2015.
There, medical staff discovered bruises all over her body.
“It was life threatening injuries consistent with child abuse,” Fayetteville Police Department officer Antoine Kincade tells the magazine.
Tragically, Macy died two days later. Kincade says:
“An investigation was initiated and it was determined after the autopsy the child died of injuries sustained as a result of the mother and her boyfriend.”
As for the photo shown above, Pennsylvania photographer Sunny Jo captured Ditty next to an angelic looking Macy at her grave site.
Jo says he reached out to Ditty on December 7, three days after the child’s death, and a month later she asked him to create the pictures.
“She is 23 years old and that is young to lose a child,” he says. “And I just felt for her. This was terrible. This poor girl just lost her daughter.”
“This must be the most heartbreaking thing in the world. So when she asked me to do the photos I said absolutely,” he tells People.
“I just knew that one way or another I wanted to get the pictures done for what I thought at the time was a grieving mother.”
She did offer to pay ($ 500), but “out of the goodness of my heart I said, ‘No, I can’t let you pay for this,” the photographer says.
His reasoning was simple: “I thought to myself, ‘Sunny you can’t charge someone who just went through this.’ She loved them.”
Obviously, he was later shocked to learn that Ditty was charged with murder, and that fact has kept him up nights. His take on it now:
“I couldn’t sleep since this happened. The only thing that helps me out is me thinking I didn’t do it for Jeanie I did it for the spirit of Macy.”
“The only thing I was trying to do was help a grieving mother. I just wanted to make someone happy who was going through a tough time.”