Friend: Texas mom was moody, often disappeared
By Associated Press
May 19, 2011 11:32 AM CDT
A woman is escorted by emergency workers from the Mass. State Police barracks in Concord, Mass., Wednesday, May 18, 2011. Police in Massachusetts on Wednesday were questioning a woman in the investigation of a young boy whose body was found along a dirt road in Maine. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)   (Associated Press)

A family friend says the Texas woman accused of killing her 6-year-old son last weekend in Maine was a caring mother who suffered mood swings that would prompt her to leave town.

Shirley Miller of Arlington, Texas, told The Associated Press that while Julianne "Julie" McCrery sometime would just "up and go" without telling anyone but she would always come back.

Miller says last fall the 42-year-old woman took her son Camden out of kindergarten and went to Seattle and Nebraska before returning to Texas where she was living with Miller's adult son.

"Miller says McCrery "was up one minute and down the next" but she would never have believed she'd hurt Camden, whose body was found alongside a road.

Miller says "I can't get past why."

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