ALBANY — Tiffany VanAlstyne acknowledged on Nov. 24 she was thinking clearly and able to comprehend her guilty plea as she admitted to killing her cousin Kenneth White in their Knox trailer home and dumping him in a snow bank nearly a year ago.

Shortly after the 19-year-old VanAlstyne was arraigned last December — she is now 20 — with a plea of “not guilty” in Knox Town Court, a mental-health examination concluded she was “competent to proceed and to assist in your own defense,” Judge Stephen Herrick said during a plea hearing last Tuesday in Albany County Court.

Both sides had psychologists evaluate VanAlstyne, who said at her arraignment that she has bipolar disorder and could not recall all of her medications.

Last week, Judge Herrick, according to a court transcript, recounted that VanAlstyne became frustrated with her 5-year-old cousin Kenneth White as they reviewed math flash cards and he gave wrong answers. But VanAlstyne cannot remember what led to her next memory, when Kenneth was in her lap and unresponsive with her hand around his neck, Herrick said in court. He later called it a black out.

Concerned that his sisters, who were watching a movie in another room, might see Kenneth in such a state, VanAlstyne locked them in a bathroom and took Kenneth’s body outside, Herrick said to VanAlstyne’s affirmation.

While VanAlstyne reported hearing sounds from Kenneth when she dropped him — hitting his head as she fell down the stairs and as she crossed the busy state route — and as she covered his body with snow lying face down in a ditch, an autopsy concluded the boy died of strangulation, according to Herrick. He was a kindergartener at Berne-Knox-Westerlo and had been living with his aunt, Brenda VanAlstyne, who is Tiffany’s mother, in a trailer on Thacher Park Road in Knox.

Herrick said VanAlstyne has a mental health condition for which she has been treated “on and off for several years.” He said she is taking medication in jail for that condition, and for depression and sleeplessness.

Tiffany VanAlstyne’s court-appointed lawyer, Albany County Public Defender James Milstein, contacted by The Enterprise this week, declined to elaborate on her mental evaluations and their weight in the case.

He said her actions “reflected her immaturity and intellectual capacity.”

VanAlstyne was alone with the children on Dec. 18, 2014, at the time of Kenneth’s killing; he was home from school with a cold, and Brenda VanAlstyne had left to run errands. 

After dumping his body, Tiffany VanAlstyne beat the trailer door with a hammer and reported to her mother and police that men in black ski masks had broken in and taken the boy, causing authorities to issue a wide-reaching Amber Alert until a police dog sniffed out his body that night.

According to an annual report issued by the Albany County Sheriff’s Office, VanAlstyne told investigators she had fabricated the story and that she had unintentionally killed Kenneth; she later said she had lied a second time, and that she had strangled him intentionally.

This case is “a very complicated and complex case, and we provided her with the best representation we could,” Milstein told The Enterprise.

“It’s a very sad case,” he said. “Tiffany truly loved Kenneth and his sisters and she took great pride in how she cared for them.”

Milstein defended a murder case in the Hilltowns two years ago, when Tracey Zetzsche was arrested for the murder of her disabled, adult son in their apartment above the P&L Deli in Westerlo. Zetzsche said she did not recall the period of time during which her son, Gabriel Philby-Zetzsche, was killed and the crime concealed. In what is known as an Alford plea, she acknowledged the weight of evidence against her but did not offer a direct admission of guilt. She is now serving a jail sentence of 20 years.

VanAlstyne is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 14, with a possible term of 18 years to life. If she had gone to trial instead, her sentence could have been 25 years or more. She will have to pay a $325 surcharge and victim fee, a $50 DNA data bank fee, waive her right to appeal the case, and follow a no-contact order of protection for Kenneth White’s siblings.