APALACHICOLA, Fla. (AP) — A Florida judge has accepted a plea deal that would spare a German woman from a potential death sentence in her grandson's drowning death.
Seventy-three year old Marianne Bordt pleaded no contest to second-degree murder Monday and a charge of aggravated child abuse was dismissed.
She is accused of drowning 5-year-old Camden Hiers, of suburban Atlanta, in the bathtub of a beach house in January 2010.
Circuit Judge Angela Dempsey accepted the proposal for a reduction in charges and 21-year prison term.
Camden died while Bordt and her husband were vacationing with their grandson on St. George Island in the Florida Panhandle.
Her lawyers were preparing an insanity defense for an October trial. It included a claim she suffered mental problems in part due to a World War II Soviet bombing raid.
