The type of ritualistic satanic child murders that created hysteria in the 1980s and 1990s were based on myth. But there ARE cases almost every year that involve parents murdering their children because they claim the devil told them to do it, or because they believe they were speaking to God or some other supernatural force.

Flushing the Devil From Your Child
In Portales, New Mexico, a 25-year-old mother was set to go on trial in the killing of her 6-year-old son, Lorenzo Cabral. Teresa Gilman says God told her to flush the devil from her son. A preliminary autopsy said the boy suffered head trauma, but drowning could not be ruled out as a cause of death. (USA Today, 4-25-2008, 10A)

Demons Make Father Throw Boy Off Bridge
In Baltimore, Maryland, DNA tests confirm the body of a child found along the Patapsco River is that of 3-year-old Turner Nelson. The boy’s father, Stephen Nelson, told police in February that he threw his son from the Francis Scott Key Bridge because demons told him to do it. He is charged with murder and child abuse. The boy’s body was pulled from the river about a mile from the bridge. (USA Today, 7-30-2008, p. 9A)

Mother Claims Ghost Killed Her Girls
Naiyana Patel, a 33-year-old North Carolina woman accused of hacking her two young daughters to death with a hatchet, claims a ghost was responsible for the killings, according to court papers. The mother herself is recovering from what police say are self-inflicted injuries at Mission Hospital in Asheville. Authorities say she repeatedly hit herself in the head with the same hatchet that was used to kill her daughters Jiya, 8, and Piya, 4. The mother has been charged with 1st degree murder. (Ostendorff, 2011)

References:
1. Jon Ostendorff, “N.C. hatchet killing blamed on ‘ghost,'” USA Today, Aug. 30, 2011, 3A