On Monday, a jury convicted the Kentucky woman accused of murdering her 5-year-old son by force-feeding him heavy doses of salt; she was found guilty of second-degree murder.

The mother, Lacey Spears, regularly blogged about her son’s struggles with poor health, but according to Assistant District Attorney Patricia Murphy's closing arguments Thursday, Spears had been purposely making her child sick all along to gain attention, The Associated Press reported. Police also suspect that Spears may have killed her son in an effort to prevent him from informing others of his mother’s actions.

The boy, Garnett Paul Spears, died from sodium poisoning, for which there is no medical explanation, the AP reported. Police believe that Spears delivered heavy concentrations of sodium to the child via a stomach tube. Video evidence shows Spears twice taking the child into a hospital bathroom with a connector tube, and the child suffering immediately afterwards. Two feeding bags heavily tainted with salt were also found in Spears’s apartment, which contained the equivalent of 69 McDonald’s bags of salt in each.

Although there was no mention of a mental illness at the trial, CBS New York reported that some experts believe Spears fits the description for Munchausen by proxy syndrome. This is a mental illness which causes a caregiver to fabricate a child’s illness in order to gain attention or psychological gratification. Spears would regularly blog about her experiences, and The Washington Post reported that many of Garnett’s ailments over the years were unexplained.

“The motive is bizarre, the motive is scary, but it exists,” Murphy said in Thursday's closing arguments. “She apparently craved the attention of her family, her friends, her co-workers, and most particularly the medical profession.”