Mum forced husband and son, 4, to drown themselves to 'prove their worthiness'

A mum told police her husband "didn't have enough faith" in God - before allegedly ordering him and their young son to jump into a lake, where both drowned.

The woman, who is also said to havecrashed a golf cart into the lake with three of her children on board, was a member of an Amish church and reportedly believed she was being spoken to by God, who demanded the family "prove their worthiness" by obeying his commands. "[The woman] was supposedly hearing voices that she believed were God," Tuscarawas County Sheriff Orvis Campbell said during a press conference streamed by NBC affiliate WKYC. "That led her and her husband to go out and jump in the lake first." Authorities identified the victims as 45-year-old Marcus Miller and their four-year-old son, Vincen.

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Police say the woman was driven by a "spiritual delusion" and confessed, telling them she ordered Marcus into the water as a "test" from God. Miller reportedly felt he had failed the test "because he didn't have enough faith," Sheriff Campbell said. Afterward, the woman allegedly forced Vincen into the lake as a punishment.

"She believed that she and her husband had to pass these tests to show their faith, and when they didn't, then Vincen became the price to pay for that," Campbell explained. "She says she and her husband went to this dock and jumped in the water because God was speaking to them, telling them to do things to prove their worthiness to God, to show their faith is complete. And they didn’t do very well in those."

Some of the so-called tests were described by the sheriff as "bizarre," largely consisting of swimming exercises. In one disturbing claim, the woman told investigators that God once instructed her to be "swallowed by a fish." Marcus Miller's final test was swimming to a nearby sandbar, according to police.

His wife told officers they had returned home to their RV after a number of failed tests, then returned at 5:30am to keep trying. "She states that she went to the dock and that she threw the 4-year-old in because that's what she needed to do as an offering to God," Campbell told reporters.

The woman then reportedly picked up her 15-year-old daughter and twin 18-year-old sons, making them perform religious tasks at the lake too.

The children told police that the mum made them "all lay down on the dock with their hands in the water to pray for their little brother and father because they were gone and had gone to heaven," according to Campbell. She allegedly crashed the golf cart with them inside shortly after, he said. "She then heard the voice again telling her to drive into the lake," Campbell told reporters.

A witness who noticed the crash offered to help but this was refused by the mum. "She suggested... not to help her, to just pray," Campbell explained, according to WKYC. "That was the first statement that suggested this was more than an accident at that lake. There was a pretty immediate statement made that she had given her son to the Lord."