On this date, August 3, 2015, Cathy Henderson, a woman who murdered an infant on January 21, 1994, died in prison. I will post information about this wicked witch from several internet sources. Do not forget the victim, Baby Brandon Baugh and remember Ding Dong the wicked witch is dead!
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Cathy Henderson (December 27, 1956 to August 3, 2016) |
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Baby Brandon Baugh (October 16, 1993 to January 21, 1994) |
Cathy Lynn Henderson
General Information:
- Date of Birth - 12/27/56
- Date of Offense - 1/21/94
- Age at Time of Offense - 37
- Prior Occupation - Babysitter
- Education - 12
- Prior Prison Record - None
- Location of Crime - Temple, Texas
- Co-defendants - None
- Race and Gender of Victim - White male
Crime Committed:Convicted in the abduction and murder of 3-month-old Brandon Baugh. Henderson had been babysitting the young boy and his 2 1/2-year-old-sister Megan, for three months prior to the murder without incident.
Henderson later told police that Brandon died after she dropped him accidentally on his head. She said she panicked, buried the boy, and fled to her native Missouri, where she was later arrested.
Using a map drawn by Henderson, authorities found Brandon's body in a cardboard box in a shallow grave outside of Temple on Feb. 8, 1994. An autopsy determined Brandon died of a fractured skull.
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Cathy Henderson’s file |
Source: Texas Department of Criminal Justice
Cathy Lynn HendersonOn the morning of January 21, 1994, the parents of Brandon Baugh delivered their three-month-old baby to Cathy Lynn Henderson, the infant’s daily caregiver, at Henderson’s home near Austin, Texas. Tragically, Brandon died of massive head trauma later that day when, according to Henderson, he fell from her arms and struck his head upon the concrete floor of the home. Henderson had nursing experience, but when her efforts to provide cardiopulmonary resuscitation did not succeed, Henderson panicked, buried the infant’s body near Waco, and fled to Missouri. On February 1, 1994, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Henderson in Kansas City on federal and Texas kidnapping warrants. F.B.I. Special Agent Michael Napier promptly initiated custodial interrogation, beginning with the familiar Miranda warning. Henderson first denied knowledge of the child's whereabouts and stated that she had left him with his grandmother, but the Agent persisted and later, through leading questions, Napier elicited from Henderson a confession that she killed the baby. He asked her, “When you say the whole thing, are you talking about that Brandon is dead, that you know where the body’s located, that it was an accident, that you’re sorry? She responded by nodding her head. Later, Napier said, “Brandon’s dead. It was an accident.” To this statement, Henderson replied, “Yes.” Napier asked, “Did you bury him?” She responded, “Of course I did. He’s just a baby.” Henderson Agent Napier then asked Henderson to sign a written statement, to tell him the specific location of the infant’s gravesite, and to draw a map depicting that location. The Agent’s persistence doubtless brought home to Henderson both the seriousness of her circumstances and the significance of the Miranda admonition he had delivered only moments before. Henderson therefore refused to sign any statement, refused to disclose the location of the gravesite, refused to draw the map requested by Agent Napier, and asked instead for the assistance of an attorney. Napier then terminated his interrogation. Henderson then met with Assistant Federal Public Defender Ronald Hall, the attorney initially provided in response to her request for the guiding hand of counsel. She spoke with him privately and in confidence, telling Hall where she had buried the body of Brandon Baugh, and drawing for Hall a sketch-map of that location as a means of reducing her words to paper. After Henderson agreed to extradition to Texas, attorney Hall sent the map and other confidential information to a Texas attorney, Nona Byington, who agreed to represent Henderson until the State court appointed a criminal law specialist to assume Henderson’s defense. After State officials learned that Henderson had exercised her Miranda rights and refused to draw a map for Agent Napier, but that attorney Byington now had the map drawn for attorney Hall, they turned the heat upon Ms. Byington. A grand jury subpoenaed Byington, and the local Sheriff demanded that she hand over the map. When Ms. Byington refused, the Sheriff had her arrested on a charge of “tampering with evidence,” and his officers searched her office and automobile, albeit to no immediate avail. The Sheriff also defamed Ms. Byington to an eager press, labeling her an “accomplice to an ongoing crime.” This whipped-up public frenzy well summarized in THE TEXAS LAWYER’S edition of February 14, 1994: Anyone listening to the radio call-in shows in Austin recently had no doubt who was the most hated lawyer in central Texas. Austin’s Nona Byington, three years out of law school and representing a woman accused of abducting a missing 3-month-old boy, endured five days of vilification for refusing to give authorities the maps her client had drawn showing the location of the infant’s body. On February 7, 1994, the grand jury issued another subpoena demanding that Ms. Byington relinquish her client’s map. But the hated and vilified Ms. Byington continued to stand her ground; she refused to comply, asserting the confidentiality of the privileged communications and her client’s rights under the fifth, sixth, and fourteenth amendments. The State immediately sought a court order compelling attorney Byington to surrender the map, on pain of jail if she refused. An evidentiary hearing on the State’s motion was held the same day. Consistent with the Sheriff’s inflammatory defamations, the State chiefly argued that by withholding the map, attorney Byington was facilitating the “ongoing crime” of kidnapping, and that the crime-fraud exception to the attorney client privilege therefore trumped Henderson’s assertion of the privilege.However, after considering all the evidence presented to him at the hearing, the presiding judge rejected the “ongoing kidnapping” argument, saying, “I’m convinced that the child is deceased, and since I’m convinced the child is deceased, I really don’t see how it can be an ongoing crime.” The next morning (February 8, 1994), however, the judge nevertheless ordered Ms. Byington to surrender the map, saying that the map was not a confidential communication because, at the time she prepared it for attorney Hall, Henderson harbored the subjective intent of assisting the authorities in locating the infant’s body. Ms. Byington reluctantly capitulated to the court’s order and, using the seized map, State authorities located the body of Brandon Baugh on the evening of February 8. On February 9, 1994 the State charged Henderson with the capital murder of Brandon Baugh. Before trial, the same judge revisited his ruling of February 8, this time under a defense motion to suppress the evidence to which the seized map had led the State. The motion was denied on the same ground of nonconfidentiality, and also upon the ground that the crime-fraud exception to the attorney client privilege nullified Ms. Byington’s refusal to betray her client’s confidences. The judge ignored his prior finding that the child was dead, and revived the “ongoing kidnapping” rationale that he refused to invoke at the hearing on February 7-8, 1994. He then added that if the child were dead, the crime-fraud exception for “abuse of corpse” came into play. Trial was held in May 1995, and the jury convicted Henderson on the sole charge of capital murder of an infant, in violation of TEXAS PENAL CODE § 19.03(a)(8).Cathy HendersonShe says it was an accident but the jury believed otherwise, making babysitter Cathy Henderson the only Travis County woman currently on Texas Death Row.On Texas Death Row: Cathy Henderson, Texas Department of Criminal Justice Number 999148, was received at TDCJ on June 1, 1995. After three months of babysitting Brandon and Megan Baugh, Henderson abducted, murdered, and buried 3-month old Brandon, later telling police that the baby's death was an accident.About Cathy Henderson: A petite 37 year old blond with no prior criminal history, Cathy Lynn Henderson had been babysitting the Baugh children for about 3 months before the January 21, 1994 abduction and murder. Originally from Missouri, Henderson had been living in northeast Travis County and was the babysitter for Megan and Brandon Baugh in 1993/94. Upon the disappearance of Henderson and baby Brandon, a nationwide search ensued. Henderson was found in Missouri.About Brandon Baugh: The body of 3-month old Brandon Baugh was found in a box buried in a shallow grave outside Temple, Texas on Feb. 8, 1994. He had died days earlier on January 21. An autopsy revealed he died from head injuries that, according to the medical examiner, were not consistent with a fall from the babysitter's arms as Cathy Henderson had claimed. At the time of his death Brandon also had a 2 1/2 year old sister, Megan.
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Cathy Lynn Henderson cries during an interview on Texas women's death row
in Gatesville, Texas, on April 17, 2007. (Photo LM Otero/AP photo) |
By Crimesider Staff AP August 4, 2015, 3:21 PM
Woman convicted of killing infant dies 2 months after plea
AUSTIN, Texas - A woman who spent nearly two decades on Texas death row for killing an infant has died in prison, less than two months after she pleaded guilty to murder ahead of a new trial.
Cathy Lynn Henderson, 58, died Sunday at University Medical Center Brackenridge in Austin, Travis County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Lisa Block said.
Henderson's attorney, Jon Evans, told the Austin American-Statesman she was hospitalized for breathing difficulties about two weeks after accepting a plea deal June 12 where she avoided a retrial and took a 25-year prison sentence. She was being treated for pneumonia and then a stroke, Evans said.
Travis County prosecutors decided not to pursue a death sentence at a trial that had been set for September, but she could have received a life term if convicted.
Under the June plea agreement, credit for time she already served meant she could have been released in four years.
Henderson was just days away from execution in 2007 when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted her punishment for the 1994 death of Brandon Baugh, a 3-month-old child she was babysitting. The same court subsequently granted her a new trial.
Henderson had insisted she dropped the child while caring for him at her Pflugerville home.
Henderson said she performed CPR but didn't call 911, panicked and fled. She wrapped him in his blanket, stuffed him in a wine cooler box and traveled north, burying him in a field 60 miles away. Then she drove to her native Missouri where she was later arrested.
At her trial, then medical examiner Roberto Bayardo testified it was "impossible" to attribute Brandon's head injury to an accidental fall.
But Bayardo recanted his testimony in 2007, saying advances in the understanding of pediatric head injuries found that relatively short falls onto a hard surface could produce injuries similar to those he discovered during Brandon's 1994 autopsy. Bayardo concluded he could not determine if the boy's injuries were the result of "an intentional act or an accidental fall."
Henderson had been moved from state prison to custody of Travis County authorities in January 2013 and was at the Travis County Correctional Complex in Del Valle when she became ill.
Block said while there's no evidence of foul play in Henderson's death, an autopsy was planned.
AP
Cathy Lynn Henderson, babysitter convicted of murder, dies in hospital
8:53 a.m. Monday, Aug. 3, 2015 | Filed in: Crime
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Former babysitter Cathy Lynn Henderson is escorted into Judge Jon Wisser’s courtroom in February 1994 for her arraignment on murder charges. |
Cathy Lynn Henderson, who dominated national headlines in 1994 for the the killing of 3-month-old Brandon Baugh, died Sunday after a month of hospitalization, her lawyer said Monday. She was 58.
Once just two days away from execution, the former babysitter spent nearly two decades in prison before winning a new trial in 2012. On June 12, just months before her case was to go to trial a second time, Henderson hobbled into the courtroom on crutches with the help of her lawyers and pleaded guilty to murder. She was sentenced then to 25 years in prison, but with credit for time served, she could have been released in four years.
Henderson was taken to the hospital on June 24 after she had trouble with her breathing. She was diagnosed with pneumonia and had a stroke during her stay.
“Cathy Lynn Henderson passed away last night, at peace and without pain,” her lawyer, Jon Evans, told the American-Statesman. “In the last few weeks of her life she was relieved of a 21-year burden. Her version of the events of the tragedy of Brandon Baugh finally was given the proper respect and credence it deserved. She passed with that satisfaction.”
A sharply divided Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Henderson’s capital murder conviction and sentence in December 2012. The court upheld a recommendation by District Judge Jon Wisser that she have a new trial based on new scientific discoveries into the nature of head injuries.
Henderson claimed that Baugh died after slipping from her arms and falling about 4 feet to the concrete floor in her home in the Pflugerville area. She said she panicked, burying the boy’s body in a Bell County field before fleeing to Missouri, where she was found and arrested 11 days later.
Some supporters of the Baugh family said they were relieved to see Henderson plead guilty after years of lies and denials. But Brandon’s parents, grandmother and sister said they had been surprised and disappointed to learn she would not face a jury once more.
“I have no doubts that your plea today is not an act of contrition but another act of selfishness in order to gain your freedom,” Brandon’s father, Eryn Baugh, told Henderson on the witness stand on the day she took her plea.
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Cathy Lynn Henderson takes her seat after pleading guilty to murder before Travis County District court Judge Karen Sage on June 12, 2015. Henderson spent nearly two decades on death row for the 1994 death of 3-month-old Brandon Baugh before her capital murder conviction and sentence in were overturned in December 2012. DEBORAH CANNON / AMERICAN-STATESMAN |
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