Mum charged with beating own daughter to death poses for bizarre ‘ghost’ photos with the toddler

SHE could face the death penalty if found guilty of her daughter’s death. So why did this US soldier order these ‘ghost’ photos of her child?

Ex soldier Jeanie Ditty commissioned a photographer to do superimpose her dead daughter Macy Grace who she in fact murdered. Picture: sunnyjophotography_2770769a.jpg

A SOLDIER mum charged with murdering her two-year-old daughter ordered photos of the child appearing as a ghostly angel next to her own grave.

The weird photos emerged after Jeanie Ditty, 23, of Spring Lake in North Carolina, was accused of neglecting and killing Macy Grace, The Sun reports.

The active soldier at Fort Bragg faces the death penalty if convicted.

Police were called when the youngster was taken to hospital covered in bruises and with life-threatening injuries consistent with child abuse last December.

She died two days later

A month after Macy Grace’s death, Ditty went to a photographer Sunny Jo and asked for images showing her with her daughter.

Mr Jo agreed as he has completed hundreds of similar requests in the past as part of his ‘One More Time’ series.

When he asked Ditty how the girl died she said the youngster had choked on a banana.

He said Ditty showed him photos of Macy Grace she wanted to use.

She then said she wanted a picture of them reading her favourite book, The Giving Tree, together.

Soldier Jeanie Ditty is accused of her daughter’s murder.

Macy Grace died last December.

After taking the photos, he decided not to charge Ditty because of the “tragic circumstances”.

He then found his new client had been arrested.

“People started sharing the story on Facebook,” he told Daily Mail Online. “I asked myself: ‘How could she do this?’

“I then felt disgusted by what I had done. People started calling me a mockery and I started to lose sleep over what happened.

“I look like the bad guy, even though initially did it to help out a grieving mother. It blew up in my face.”

The photographer decided to share the pictures after sending all of them to a detective looking into the case.

Jeanie Ditty reading Macy Grace’s favourite book to her at her gravestone.

Another one of the superimposed photos.

Ditty and her boyfriend Zachary Earl Keefer appeared in court for the first time Monday.

Keefer is not the father.

The pair were arrested last week, two months after the girl’s brutal death

They live in an apartment complex in the 500 block of Village Lake Court in Spring Lake, North Carolina.

Police were called to Cape Fear Valley Medical Center on December 2 of last year in relation to an unresponsive child.

In the 24 hours after she was admitted to the medical centre, police determined they were likely from abuse.

District Attorney Billy West told ABC 11: “It’s a tough case, you know this child did not die of natural causes.

“And it’s heart-wrenching to think that this could happen to a young child this way and we are going to do everything we can to see that justice is done in this case.’”

Fort Bragg officials said Ditty was a member of the 525th Military Intelligence Brigade and that she would remain active even while she is under investigation.