Babysitter Facing Death for Slaying 3-Month-Old
The offer of child care posted on a message board at the entrance to his suburban Austin neighborhood caught Eryn Baugh's attention.
Babysitter Cathy Lynn Henderson, who lived two blocks away from the Baughs, appeared to be a perfect fit for their infant son Brandon and his 2-year-old sister Megan.
"She's the most sweet endearing person in the world and put forward this good Christian front," Baugh said of Henderson. "She could sell sell snow to an Eskimo."
Henderson, now 50, is set to die in less than three weeks for the death of Brandon Baugh, a slaying that in early 1994 made her one of the most hated women in Texas. Henderson, whose case has been championed by Sister Helen Prejean of "Dead Man Walking" fame, insists the baby died in an accidental fall and that her decision to bury him and flee was made in panic, not cold blood.
Henderson and 3-month-old Brandon disappeared weeks after she began caring for him. Search teams fanned out over three Central Texas counties, but it wasn't until her attorney was forced by a court to turn over a crude map she had made did authorities find the boy 18 days later.
Brandon was dead, buried near an oat field between two elm trees along a gravel path known as Short Cut Road about 60 miles north of his home town of Pflugerville. The 12-pound child, his skull crushed, was wrapped in his yellow-trimmed white blanket and stuffed into a taped-shut box that previously held Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers.
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