Waneta Ethel (Nixon) Hoyt (May 13, 1946 – August 13, 1998) was an American serial killer who was convicted of killing all five of her biological children.

Hoyt was born in Richford, New York. She attended Newark Valley High School, when she was in 10th grade, but dropped out, to marry Tim Hoyt on 11 January 1964.

After Hoyt married Tim, the couple would go on to have seven children (five biological; one permanently adopted; and one temporarily adopted). All biological children of Hoyt died before reaching 29 months of age.

The names of all 7 children include:

After the deaths of her five biological children, for more than two decades after all the children died, it was believed they died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). In 1994, Hoyt confessed to the deaths of her five children, was arrested, convicted as a murderer, and died in prison from cancer four years later in 1998.

The last two biological Hoyt children, Molly and Noah, were subjects of pediatric research conducted by Dr. Alfred Steinschneider, who published an article in 1972 in the journal Pediatrics proposing a connection between sleep apnea and SIDS. The article was later discredited, and subsequent research failed to replicate the results.

In 1985, a prosecutor in a neighboring county who had been dealing with a murder case initially thought to involve SIDS, was told by one of his experts, Dr. Linda Norton, a forensic pathologist from Dallas, Texas, that there may be a serial killer in his area of New York. Norton arrived at this suspicion after reviewing Steinschneider's report on the Hoyt case in which the Hoyts were not identified by name. When the prosecutor became the district attorney in 1992, he tracked the case down and sent it to forensic pathologist Michael Baden, for review. Baden concluded that the deaths were the result of murder.

In 1994, because of jurisdictional issues, the case was transferred to the district attorney of the county in which the Hoyts resided.