Donna Scrivo: Nurse Mom Who Murdered, Dismembered Mentally Ill Son, Ramsay, Subject Of Tonight’s ‘Snapped’

Moms are supposed to love and protect their children no matter what. And that desire to protect doesn’t end after they become adults. But in the case of Donna Scrivo, a successful nurse in Michigan, she killed and dismembered her adult mentally ill son and left his body in garbage bags on a snowy rural road. Her story will make tonight’s Snapped on the Oxygen Network. On Snapped’s show, titled Donna Scrivo, St. Clair Shores police detectives Jay Cohoe and Margaret Eidt will lay out the case. Former acquaintances of Donna Scrivo will also discuss aspects of the story.

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St. Clair Shores Dismembered Body Found In Bags

In 2014, police were called out to a rural road in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, where a body was reported to have been found in garbage bags by two women driving along the road. They told police that they believed it was road kill at first. But they were horrified to see a head inside one of the bags. Jim Fisher True Crime reported the following circumstances.

“On Sunday, January 26, 2014, Donna reported Ramsay missing. Late in the afternoon of Thursday, January 30, a motorist in China Township 50 miles northeast of Detroit, saw a human head that had rolled out of a garbage bag that had been dumped along the side of a rural road. Inside three more garbage bags found nearby, police officers discovered body parts, items of clothing, and charred documents.”

Police determined that the victim was a white male in his 30s. The victim was later identified as Ramsay Scrivo, age 32. His description matched the details in a missing person report that had been filed by his mother, Donna Scrivo.

Nurse Donna Scrivo killed and dismembered her own son http://t.co/44Lhr1xfGh pic.twitter.com/QQis7Hqygg

— Metro (@MetroUK) May 20, 2015

Authorities say that Ramsay Scrivo’s dismembered body parts, which included severed legs and limbs, were scattered along a lonely snow-filled road. Ramsay had disappeared on the coldest night of the year.

It is believed that he was strangled before he was chopped up and place in the plastic garbage bags. Police had their number one suspect, 59-year-old Donna Scrivo, a well-known nurse at a prominent hospital in Michigan. According to the Jim Fisher True Crime website, police started gathering evidence for their case.

“A neighbor reported seeing Donna Scrivo carrying several garbage bags out of the condo shortly before she reported Ramsay missing. Crime lab technicians found traces of blood in the dwelling as well as in Donna’s SUV. There was also evidence in the house that someone had used bleach in an effort to scrub away bloodstains. A gas station surveillance camera recorded Donna in her 1990s Chevy Blazer near one of the dump sites.”

During the investigation, detectives learned that Ramsay Scrivo was a man with serious emotional problems. He had been diagnosed as having a form of psychosis and paranoia, according to USA Today. His emotional health deteriorated even further after the death of his father, leading him to want to kill himself.

Ramsay Scrivo. #DonnaScrivo pic.twitter.com/0SlRbAMkd8

— Cathy Russon (@cathyrusson) May 14, 2015

Donna Scrivo was her son’s caretaker. But authorities say instead of caring for him, she savagely murdered him. But why did she do it?

Some say that as a nurse, she should have been able to offer him the best care and should have understood what life must have been like for him while dealing with such a debilitating illness. It is also believed that she became so overwhelmed with him that she just wanted him out of her life for good.

Family and friends couldn’t believe that Donna Scrivo could do something so heinous to her own child. Many believed that police had the wrong person at first.

At trial, Donna Scrivo testified in her own defense. She vehemently denied killing her son and told prosecutors that they had no DNA evidence to connect her to the crime. She was still found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

Catch up on all of the background details of the Donna Scrivo case by tuning into Snapped at 6/5 p.m. Central on the Oxygen Network. In a previous episode of Snapped, the Michelle Byrom case was profiled.

[Featured Image by Gerry Broome/AP Images]