2 toddlers died after mom left them in hot car to teach ‘a lesson,’ police say

On the day her two children were found dead, Cynthia Marie Randolph recounted for investigators a mother’s nightmare: She had been folding laundry and watching television while her young daughter and son, ages 2 and 16 months, played in an enclosed sun room on the back porch.

Randolph, 24, went to check on her children after about a half-hour — but they were “gone,” she told police. She said that after a half-hour of searching, she finally spotted their bodies, unresponsive, inside her 2010 Honda Crosstour parked in her driveway.