The defense team for Lisa Snyder, the 41-year-old Albany Township woman accused of killing two of her children in 2019, didn’t waste any time laying out their case. With prosecutors resting their case late Friday morning after four-and-a-half days of testimony, lead defense attorney Dennis Charles cut right to the chase. He made a motion asking Berks County President Judge M. Theresa Johnson, who is hearing the bench trial, to grant an acquittal. In Charles’ eyes, the prosecution’s case fell woefully short. He said the entire case was based on speculation and theory, lacking real physical or scientific evidence. “This is all guesswork,” he said. Snyder stands accused of hanging her 8-year-old son, Connor, and 4-year-old daughter, Brinley, using a dog lead wrapped around a support beam in the basement of her home in the 2400 block of Route 143 on Sept. 23, 2019. The children died three days later at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest near Allentown. Her defense team is taking a two-pronged approach. First they would force the prosecution to prove that Snyder was responsible for her children’s deaths. She has claimed, since her first frantic 911 call that day, that a depressed and despondent Connor was responsible. If Snyder was shown to have killed her kids, the defense team said, it would argue that she was insane and unable to tell right from wrong when she did so. If the court were to agree with that assessment, Snyder would be sent to a psychiatric hospital instead of prison. In his acquittal request, Charles argued the prosecution had not come close to proving Snyder had committed a crime. He said the prosecution’s arguments stem from supposition, like their premise that Connor had physical limitations that would have prevented him from setting up the scene of the hanging. That was never shown to definitively have been the case, he said. Charles said there was no physical proof to support the prosecution’s theory of what happened, pointing out a lack of hair, fingerprints, DNA or other forensic evidence. The children did not appear to have any defensive wounds, he said, which would typically be found in a homicide case. As for Google search results that the prosecution presented, Charles said there was a simple explanation: Snyder had searched for information about suicide, hangings, carbon monoxide poisoning and drug overdoses because she was suicidal, not because she was planning on killing her children. Charles said a recording of Snyder’s 911 call as well as descriptions of her from emergency responders arriving at the scene were consistent with what one would expect from a mother who found her children hanged. He said she was hysterical and in a full panic. “All you have is conjecture,” he said. Johnson denied Charles’ motion for acquittal, saying the prosecution had provided sufficient evidence for the trial to continue. Charles called Snyder’s mother, Eileen Myers, to the stand. She corroborated many of the things Snyder told police in the hours and days following the hangings. Of particular note was her claim that she had had a conversation with Connor shortly before Sept. 23, 2019, in which he discussed suicide. Myers said she was babysitting when Connor sat down with her on the sofa and told her “he didn’t want to live in this world anymore.” Myers said Connor asked what heaven is like, questioning whether he would know anyone there. Myers also testified that she was involved in group Facebook messages with Snyder and other family members where Snyder said that Connor was being bullied at school. Other family members and school employees challenged that claim during testimony for the prosecution. Charles asked Myers about Connor’s physical abilities, to which she responded that he was a strong boy. He was able to do lots of physical things, such as a front flip on a trampoline, using a pogo stick and driving four-wheelers, she said. During cross-examination, Berks County district attorney’s office supervising attorney Meg McCallum questioned the reliability of Myers’ testimony. She noted that Myers had a brain tumor removed in the late 1990s and asked if it caused her any lingering issues. Myers admitted suffering from confusion and memory issues since the surgery. “Things that just happened slip out of my head,” she said at one point. McCallum asked Myers about how much contact she has had with her daughter since the arrest. Myers said she speaks to Snyder at least weekly, and under further questioning admitted that she had spoken to her daughter several times this week about aspects of the trial, included who testified and information included in police reports. McCallum attempted to get Myers’ testimony stricken from the record but was unsuccessful. The trial will continue Monday.