NC mom who beat 2-year-old daughter to death, demanded ‘afterlife’ photo shoot, sentenced to life in prison

Jeanie Kassandra Ditty was sentenced Thursday to life without parole for first-degree murder in the 2015 death of Macy Grace Ditty, according to the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys. She also received an additional 157 to 201 months for felonious child abuse.

Macy was taken to Cape Fear Valley Regional Medical Center on December 2, 2015, covered in bruises. Medical personnel determined she had suffered at least 40 separate physical blows over a 24-hour period. She died two days later, reports the Daily Mail.

Ditty was arrested in 2016 and initially charged with first-degree murder and felony child abuse. Her first trial ended in a hung jury in 2020 after jurors reportedly voted 10-2 in favor of conviction.

The case returned to trial this month, with 16 witnesses testifying, including medical professionals who treated Macy. Prosecutors said witnesses also described attempts to intervene after seeing Ditty behave aggressively toward her daughter.

Evidence presented in the case also included Ditty's contact with photographer Sunny Jo about one month after Macy's death. Ditty asked him to create “afterlife” photographs featuring her deceased daughter.

Jo had offered a package called “One More Time,” which digitally incorporated deceased loved ones into photographs. He later told investigators that Ditty gave him a different account of her daughter's death.

“She told me her daughter had passed away by choking on a banana, and that choking gave her seizures which made her lose oxygen to the brain and then she passed away,” Jo told WRAL.

Jo subsequently provided that information to police.

Ditty's live-in boyfriend, Zachary Keefer, was initially charged alongside her, but prosecutors later dismissed the charges after investigators determined he was not present when the abuse occurred.

After the latest trial, jurors reached a guilty verdict in less than three hours.