What happened to Leslie Hu’s husband, who killed their son to stop him from getting the COVID-19 vaccine?

Content warning: This article mentions suicide and contains graphic descriptions of child murder. Please take care while reading.

On Sept. 12, 2024, President Joe Biden celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act, and Leslie Hu was among those invited to the ceremony. About three years earlier, Hu’s son, Pierce O’Loughlin, was murdered by Hu’s ex-husband, Stephen O’Loughlin, amid a bitter custody battle centered on O’Loughlin’s obsession with vaccine-related conspiracy theories.

According to The Atavist Magazine, Hu had filed for sole custody of Pierce in 2020 so she could make decisions about her son’s healthcare, including vaccinations. Stephen had long been interested in conspiracy theories and fringe beliefs, such as, among many other examples, the disproven theory that vaccines cause autism, and other misinformation related to COVID-19 vaccination and children. During and after their marriage, Stephen spent long hours online as his mental health spiraled, driving a wedge in Hu and Stephen’s relationship, with their son, Pierce, stuck between them. Pierce, who was 9 when he died, had a difficult birth, and Stephen wrongly attributed many of his son’s ongoing health problems to vaccine injuries.

In 2021, Stephen, Pierce, and Hu, who had recently moved in with her new boyfriend, Jim Baaden, lived in San Francisco. Stephen still had joint custody of Pierce, and on those days, he’d drop Pierce off at school while Hu would pick him up, and vice versa when Pierce stayed with his mother. One such day, Hu arrived at Pierce’s school to pick up her son, only to learn he had not been in school. Hu called Stephen, but there was no answer. At first, she assumed Stephen may have kidnapped Pierce and left the area. As tragic as that would have been, the truth was worse.

Pierce was shot in his bed

With her son missing, Leslie Hu and her boyfriend, Jim Baaden, drove to Stephen O’Loughlin’s apartment, but did not go inside. Hu contacted everyone she could think of who might know what had happened to Pierce and her ex-husband, but no one knew anything. Hu learned Stephen had missed work that day, too.

Baaden and Hu then contacted the police, telling them about Stephen’s mental health and obsession with vaccine conspiracies, motivating what she thought at that time may have been a kidnapping. Police went to Stephen’s apartment, but no one answered the door. They didn’t break the door down, but the landlord provided the police with a key. Inside the apartment, they found Pierce dead in his bed, shot with one of two guns that belonged to his father.

Pierce’s father was dead in the kitchen

At the same time, San Francisco police also found Stephen O’Loughlin dead, hanging in the apartment’s kitchen with a gunshot wound to the neck, in an apparent murder-suicide. There was no note, making a precise motive for what Stephen did unclear, but vaccines were central to Hu and O’Loughlin’s custody disagreement. These days, Hu advocates for changes in the law so that parents and guardians involved in custody disputes have to declare firearms in their possession and keep them inaccessible during court proceedings. It’s an effort Hu calls Pierce’s Pledge.

“Pierce’s beautiful beating heart, which was loved by so many, never had a chance,” Hu writes on the Pierce’s Pledge site, describing her murdered son. “My heart and soul were taken away from me that day, as well as from all those who loved Pierce — which are so many children and kids from around the world.”

If you know someone suffering from sexual violence, contact RAINN or the National Sexual Abuse Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.

For Vaccine Information Statements (VISs) from the Centers for Disease Control (U.S.), which delineate the risks and benefits of the COVID and other vaccines, click here. To learn more about how to fight the spread of vaccine misinformation and/or disinformation, click here.