July 21, 2021 • 47 mins
Hannah Overton loved kids. Everyone who knew her thought she was a wonderful mother. But then she found herself in court, with the media calling her a baby-killer and people on the witness stand saying she was a psychopath.
Read Pamela Colloff’s article here: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/hannah-and-andrew/
Support Hannah Overton’s nonprofit here: https://www.syndeoministries.com/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Is it a sin? Is it a crime? Loving you
dear like guy do. If it's a crime, then I'm guilty,
guilty of loving you. Hello and welcome to Criminal Broad's
(00:22):
a podcast about wild women on the wrong side of
the law. I'm your host, Tory Telfer, and I have
some semi breaking news. Have you listened to last week's episode,
the one about Pam Houp, Everyone's least favorite alleged serial killer. Well, guys,
last week, I think it was the day before the
episode actually came out, Pam Houp was charged with first
(00:45):
degree murder in the twenty eleven stabbing of her quote
unquote bestie Betsy. So this is huge, guys. Pamhup is
already in prison for life for killing a man she
didn't even know, an absolutely nonsensical murder. Not that any
murder is really sensical, but anyway, now she's gonna possibly
(01:07):
get another conviction on her records. So Pam, worst of
luck to you. I've also had multiple reader's message me
telling me that Pam is an ultimate Karen, And yeah, guys,
she is. I sort of think of her as the
Karen of serial killers. So anyway, if you don't know
what I'm talking about Go back and listen to last
(01:27):
week's episode and Rage with Us, Rage with Us at
pam hup. Okay, you know what, Normally I record these
episodes several days before they come out because they have
to go to my editor, et cetera, et cetera. I
am recording this the night before it comes out, So
I'm just telling you that. So if any podcasters are
listening to this you get a cold shiver running down
(01:49):
your spine. Yes, I'm living on the edge right now.
It's not pretty. But I've been traveling and I don't
really travel with my recording equipment, so I was like,
I'm gonna just have to record this episode the night
I get back. So anyway, if I sound deranged with exhaustion,
that's why. But not trying to make you feel sorry
for me. Everything's fine, Okay. Today's episode is a very
(02:13):
sad one. I'm just putting that right here. It is
a very sad one. It involves a child that something
really bad happens too. So if you're in a fragile
state of mind, my listeners, turn this off. Go listen
to another podcast, a lighter podcast. Go listen to this
podcast called The Lazy Genius, which is this get your
(02:33):
Life Organized podcast that I've been obsessed with lately. Skip
this episode. Also, there's gonna be some talk about weird
eating habits. Just we're gonna get into some details about eating.
So if that's not something you feel like you can
hear again, check out The Lazy Genius. Not sponsored by
the Lazy Genius. Just love her. She doesn't know who
(02:53):
I am. The other thing I wanted to tell you
is that I really leaned heavily for this article on
this amazing episode in Texas Monthly by Pamela Call Off
any cool Texas crime article you've read. She probably wrote
It's called Hannah and Andrew, and I will link to
it in the show notes. All Right, I think that's
all I needed to tell you. Let's get into the story.
(03:14):
We're going back to the year two thousand and six
in Corpus Christi, Texas. Let's go. Hannah Overton loved kids.
(03:43):
She wanted lots of them, six of them. Maybe it
was because she'd grown up with only one brother, seven
years younger than her, or maybe it was because she'd
grown up in a broken home. Her family, the Sands family,
was a white family living in Corpus Christ, Texas, and
her father, Benny, was an evangelical preacher who led a
(04:04):
double life. One day in nineteen eighty four, when Hannah
was only seven, Benny Sans raped a sixteen year old
girl named Vicki, beat her to death, and dumped her
naked body on a lonely beach. He was sentenced to
twenty three years and Hannah and her family left town.
(04:26):
So her father was a murderer and her grandfather. Believe
it or not, her biological maternal grandfather was none other
than Marshall Applewhite, co founder of the infamous Heaven's Gate cult.
According to someone in an Internet comment section who claims
she is Hannah's aunt, Marshall Applewhite abandoned his family when
(04:47):
Hannah's mother was five years old, So Hannah never knew
her grandfather, and surely a girl isn't responsible for the
sins of the generations before her. Right. Still, these two
details Hannah's life, the connection to a cult leader and
the father who was a murderer. These two details would
be used in many a comment section and blog post
(05:09):
to argue that Hannah was evil to her core and
deserved to die. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
After her father was imprisoned and his church dissolved, you
might think Hannah would never darken the door of a
religious institution again, But Hannah stayed in the church. She
clung to God like a life raft. When no one
(05:32):
else was there for her family, the church was. Her
family moved to a little city in East Texas called Lyndale,
where a missionary organization gave them a free apartment, and
Hannah baby sat the missionary's children as they came through
the US on furlough. Her love of children only grew
from there. On Christmas and Easter, she would drive nine
(05:53):
hours south, crossing the border into Mexico, and she would
spend the day at an orphanage in the border city
of Renosa. The kids there were often sick, but Hannah
didn't care. She'd hold them and play with them, and
sometimes she'd get their head lice, but she loved them.
She loved them so much that a few years later,
Hannah took her new husband to that same orphanage on
(06:16):
their honeymoon. This new husband was a young man named
Larry Overton. Larry and Hannah had known each other since
they were children, and Larry loved kids too, but he
wasn't entirely sure about Hannah's let's have six of them idea.
But Hannah was sure. She'd always been sure. They had Isaac,
then Isabelle, then Ali, then Sebastian. They were living back
(06:39):
in Corpus Christi, by then members of a non denominational church,
and Hannah was homeschooling her kids. Everyone who knew her
remembered her incredible patience with them. She seemed to have
infinite reserves of it for her children. There was nothing
that she couldn't handle calmly, it seemed, and so when
Hannah and Larry started talking about adopting a fifth child,
(07:02):
most of the people around them supported the idea. Sure,
the Overtons really didn't make that much money, and Hannah
specifically wanted to adopt an older child or a child
with disabilities, some child that most other couples would overlook,
but Hannah could handle it. Everyone was sure of that.
The Overtons put in an application to adopt a little
(07:24):
boy named Andrew, and in the spring of two thousand
and six they got word that their application was approved,
and then they got a second piece of good news.
Hannah was pregnant again. Her dream was coming true. She
was going to have her six kids after all. She
just didn't know that less than six months later that
dream would become a nightmare. Let's take a quick break
(08:30):
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for fifteen percent off site wide. Little Andrew Bird was
(10:50):
born into a completely different world than Hannah's other children.
His mom was sixteen, and she used almost every drug
under the sun, from crack cocaine to LSD to meth.
His grandma used meth too. Andrew's childhood was marked by
neglect and abuse and danger. Not long after his first birthday,
(11:12):
his mom dragged him into the hospital with a broken arm,
By the time he was two and a half, he
was in foster care. At three, his biological parents' rites
were stripped from them. Now Andrew was going to stay
in foster care forever unless someone adopted him. As luck
would have it, Andrew's foster mother attended the same church
(11:33):
as the Overtons, so every Sunday, Andrew would come to
church with his foster mom and he would sit in
Sunday school class with some of the little Overton children.
The little kids always shared their prayer requests, and every
week Andrew's request was the same. He wanted to be adopted.
Andrew was an adorable kid. He had bright blonde hair
(11:55):
and chubby cheeks and a toothy grin. He loved Spider Man.
But he was troubled. Of course, he was troubled. He'd
know nothing but abuse and abandonment for his entire short life,
so he would throw terrible fits in Sunday school. He
would eat food out of the trash can. When Hannah
and Larry learned that there was a little boy almost four,
(12:17):
in their daughter's Sunday school class who desperately wanted to
be adopted, this seemed like a sign from God, but
some of their fellow churchgoers told them not to do it.
Andrew was too troubled, they said. The Overtons already had
four children, with a fifth on the way. It wasn't
going to be fair to their other kids to take
on this extra burden. They wouldn't be able to handle Andrew.
(12:41):
But Hannah and Larry were sure that they could handle Andrew.
Wasn't this what Hannah had been working towards her entire life.
She had extensive experience with children. She was a competent
mother of four already, and as far as special needs
went well, she'd actually worked as a private nurse for
disabled children before she had kids of her own. The
way she helped her little clients sometimes seemed nothing short
(13:04):
of magic, according to their parents. Plus there was her
legendary patience. Plus Child Protective Services assured them that Andrew
was perfectly healthy. A little delayed in his speech, maybe,
but otherwise he was just fine. So the Overtons moved
ahead with the adoption. On Mother's Day of two thousand
and six, Andrew arrived at their home for a six
(13:27):
month trial period. In certain ways Andrew thrived there, it
wasn't long before he was calling Hannah and Larry, Mommy
and Daddy. He would hold hands with his new siblings,
he would join them in grow hugs. He was learning
to conquer simple things that had seemed impossible to him before,
like putting on his shoes. He was talking more, He
(13:49):
was following Larry around like a little shadow. But there
were issues. There were struggles, terrors, tantrums. The Overtons knew
they were adopting a child with serious trauma in his past,
and they knew that trauma affected behavior, and so these
issues didn't surprise them. They were in it for the
(14:10):
long haul, but they weren't quite prepared for Andrew's issues
with food. Andrew was obsessed with food. All he wanted
to do was eat. He would ask for seconds, thirds, fourths,
He would get down on the floor to look for crumbs,
and if he couldn't find crumbs, he'd eat whatever he
could find, pieces of gum off the sidewalk, pieces of
(14:33):
the carpet, flakes of paint, chunks of his mattress, old
cigarette butts. Once, Larry decided to give Andrew as much
food as he wanted, thinking that Andrew might realize that
it didn't actually feel good to just eat and eat,
and eat. So Larry cooked up a huge plate of
sausage and an entire carton of eggs. Andrew ate it all,
(14:54):
threw up, and then asked for more. Hannah would later testify,
we had to put the cat food in the garage
because he would eat it. He would eat toothpaste. We
couldn't keep soap in the bathroom because he'd take bites
out of it. He broke a glow stick and tried
to drink it. It's not that this blindsided the Overtons exactly.
(15:15):
Foster children often have strange relationships with food. It's not
unusual for them to hoard food, to overeat, or to
develop an eating disorder. Food can be a way of
exerting control in a world where foster children feel like
they have no control. Imagine how much you'd obsess over
food if you'd grown up starving. It was like there
was something in Andrew telling him to eat and eat
(15:37):
as much as possible because there might not be any
food in the fridge tomorrow. Hannah was sure that what
Andrew needed was love and security and patience and connection,
and that with time his obsession with food would fade.
But so far it wasn't fading. In fact, it was
getting worse. In September, about three months into the adoption
(15:58):
trial period, the entire Overton family was in a car accident.
They had all gone to Hannah's obgian appointment to find
out that she was pregnant with a little girl, and
on their way back, Larry ran a stop sign and
hit another car. Everyone whipped forward. Hannah's face slammed into
the dashboard. She sat right back up and twisted around
(16:19):
to check on her five children in the back seat,
and she didn't know it, but her face was covered
in blood. This terrified Andrew, but no one noticed how
frightened he was at the time, because well, everyone was frightened.
Hannah was taken to the hospital and given a neck brace,
while Andrew ate dinner and asked for more and more
(16:41):
and more, asking is my mom okay? Is my mom okay?
Is my mom okay? Hannah had to stay in bed
for the next couple of weeks, and so other people
came by to watch the kids, and this freaked Andrew
out even more. What was happening? Why was his mom sick?
He would get mosquito bites and then he would pick
at the bites so badly that he eventually got a
(17:03):
staff infection. He would hit his head against the floor.
He cried for hours and hours. Hannah and Larry put
a baby monitor in his room to see if he
was sneaking out for food in the night, and he was.
They could see him on the screen picking paint off
the walls and eating the flakes. Hannah told all this
to the adoption supervisor who stopped by to visit on
(17:26):
September twenty fifth, and the supervisor said, maybe he has pika.
Pika is an eating disorder where people eat things that
aren't food and don't have any nutritional value, like dirt
or hair, or paint chips or salt. Hannah heard this
and made a mental note to take Andrew to a
specialist if things got worse. A few days later, on
(17:48):
a Sunday afternoon, Hannah told Andrew that he needed to
wait a few minutes until lunch was ready. Andrew freaked out.
He pooped on the floor and smeared it all over
his bedroom, all over his spider Man sheets. Hannah was
six months pregnant and still in a neck brace, and
she couldn't manage Andrew and clean up the mess herself,
(18:08):
so Larry cleaned the room. When he got home. He
dragged the mattress to the backyard and hosed it down.
He put the filthy Spider Man sheets in the trash,
but Andrew kept pulling them out, and so finally Larry
lost his temper and burned the sheets in the fire pit.
He wasn't proud of that moment, but he didn't think
it was a huge deal because they had another set
(18:29):
of Spider Man sheets just like the originals. So after
the cleanup, Andrew's sleeping arrangements got a little weird. He
had to spend that night in a sleeping bag on
his bed frame since his mattress was still drying in
the backyard. The remains of the Spider Man sheets were
still visible in the fire pit. Larry thought all of
(18:49):
this was just clean up, but it would become terribly
significant in a day or two. The next day was
October tewod Hannah let Andrew and two year old Sebastian
watched cartoons in bed with her. At one point she
dozed off. Remember she was pregnant and still recovering from
the car accident. When she woke up, Andrew wasn't there,
(19:12):
she found him in the kitchen on a stool in
the pantry. He was eating something. Hannah didn't really register
what it was, but she remembered later that Andrew was
near the baking ingredients. It was not unusual to find
him sneaking food, and so she didn't think much of
it at the time, but she put him in time
out for three minutes and said they'd have lunch soon.
(19:33):
He freaked out and started smearing his feces everywhere, and
when Hannah got it cleaned up, he did it again,
so finally she relented and gave him some food, some
leftover soup flavored with Zataine's Creole seasoning, which was a
spicy seasoning that Andrew really liked. Larry came home then
and helped clean up. After that, the family went to
(19:55):
Hannah's chiropractor appointment and then stopped by McDonald's to get
some food, but Hannah explained to Andrew that he couldn't
eat at the McDonald's because he'd already had lunch. They
were always trying to explain food to him this way,
You've had some, so you need to wait for more,
or you can't have any now, but you'll have some soon.
Of course, Andrew hated this, hated that he couldn't have McDonald's,
(20:17):
and so when they got home, Hannah fed him more
of the leftover soup. When he finished it and asked
for another serving, she tried to pacify him by sprinkling
some of that Zatarine's creole seasoning into a sippy cup
of water. He really liked the flavor, and so she
thought this might tide him over. He drank the water
and then launched into a tantrum because he wanted more soup.
(20:39):
But after twenty minutes he dropped to the floor. He said, Mommy,
I'm cold, and he threw up. At first, Hannah and
(20:59):
Larry thought that Anne Andrew had some sort of stomach bug.
He had the chills, he was lethargic, he was vomiting.
They'd seen these symptoms before and their other kids when
they had the flu. Hannah also had some old medical
training herself. She'd actually studied to be an EMT years ago,
and she still had her books around, so she felt
confident that she could handle this. Andrew began to shake,
(21:22):
so she put him on a heating pad. He had
trouble breathing, so she gave him her other sons asthma nebulizer,
but she had no idea what was really going on
inside Andrew's body. He was getting less and less responsive,
and finally Hannah was forced to admit that this wasn't
the flu. This wasn't like all the other times, This
wasn't something she could treat at home. But she and
(21:45):
Larry didn't call nine one one. They thought it would
be faster to put Andrew in the car and take
him to a nearby urgent care clinic, so that's what
they did. In the car, Andrew stopped breathing, Hannah started
giving him CPR and until they arrived at the clinic
and the paramedics took over. The clinic transferred Andrew to
(22:05):
a hospital, and that hospital transferred him to another hospital.
He was declining fast. Doctors discovered that Andrew had twice
the normal level of sodium in his blood and some
bleeding in his brain. Clearly, this wasn't a normal situation.
This was a kid who was near death. Someone notified
(22:26):
the police, and so Detective Michael Hess pulled Hannah aside
to interview her while Andrew was being treated in a
hospital room. Hannah talked to the detective without a lawyer.
The idea of getting a lawyer probably didn't cross her mind.
She was very distracted because she just wanted to get
back to Andrew, and so when she answered the detective's questions,
(22:47):
she left out huge chunks of information, like the fact
that she'd found Andrew in the pantry earlier eating some
unknown substance. When Detective Hess asked her to explain the
high sodium levels in Andrew's blood, Hannah didn't have any
explanation at all. Still, despite the strain she was under
and despite her obvious distraction, she remained calm. Detective Hess
(23:11):
found this suspicious. In his police report, he wrote, it
should be noted that during the entire conversation, Hannah Overton
showed almost no emotion. And then everything crumbled for the Overtons.
The police searched their home and found ominous signs that
(23:31):
seemed to point to child abuse. Andrew was forced to
sleep in a sleeping bag on a hard bed frame.
He didn't even have a mattress, and his bedsheets had
been burned, clearly some sort of bizarre punishment. There was
a baby monitor in his room, surveiling him. What house
of horrors was this child? Protective Services declared that Hannah
(23:53):
and Larry were no longer allowed to visit Andrew in
the hospital, and little Andrew passed away on the night
of October third, with no family beside him. His adoption
trial period hadn't ended yet, his prayer that someone would
finally adopt him was never fully answered. Larry and Hannah
(24:16):
had no time to mourn the little boy that they
had wanted to adopt. They were arrested during a traffic stop.
Police swarmed around them, guns drawn, forced them onto the ground,
and put them in handcuffs. It was like they were
arresting John Wayne Gacy. Larry was charged with injury to
a child for failing to get Andrew timely medical attention.
(24:38):
Hannah was charged with capital murder. Hannah's trial began in
August of two thousand and seven. By then, many people
(25:02):
had made up their minds about her. The media had
done its job well. She was a monstrous mother, a
diabolical baby killer, the worst kind of criminal imaginable, a
degenerate child killing slut. One blogger called her naturally. People
said she deserved to die. It doesn't take a rocket
(25:24):
scientist to figure out why people were so upset A
child was dead, A child was dead suddenly and horribly,
and someone needed to pay the cause of death. Well,
the medical examiner declared that Andrew had died of acute
sodium toxicity or salt poisoning. And what does the word
(25:46):
poisoning imply a poisoner It had to be Hannah. A
people thought little kids didn't just feed themselves salt, and
Hannah had already admitted to feeding Andrew multiple servings of
soup and water with Zataaine's Creole seasoning in them, which
was a salty spice blend. The facts seemed clear. Hannah
(26:08):
had forced her adopted son to sleep on a wooden frame.
She spied on him with a baby monitor. She couldn't
deal with his tantrums in his issues. She didn't love
him as much as she loved her biological kids, and
so she force fed him Zata Raine's Creol seasoning until
the sodium content in his blood was so high that
his body began shutting down. Before the case started, there
(26:30):
were all sorts of rumors floating around that damaged Hannah's
image even further. The medical examiner had mentioned that Andrew
sustained blunt force head trauma and said that the trauma
contributed to his death. Now, the so called head trauma,
which was the bleeding under his scalp, could have been
a symptom of the salt poisoning. Actually, and the medical
(26:51):
examiner admitted this, and the idea that Andrew had a
head injury was actually ruled inadmissible at Hannah's trial, But
the rumor persisted that Hannah had bashed Andrew over the head.
This was only reconfirmed by a CPS worker who swore
in an affidavit that Hannah admitted that she'd forced Andrew
to drink two cups of chili with water and then
(27:14):
quote picked him up and beat the shit out of him.
This affidavit was also never used at trial because the
police denied that Hannah had ever said those things. But
again the image stuck with people. Not only had Hannah
Overton poisoned Andrew with salt, but she'd bashed him over
the head and admitted it. Degenerate child killing slut. Indeed,
(27:39):
in a case like this, where emotions are at their
highest and where the question at stake is so intimate,
who can say what goes on between a mother and
child at home. In a case like this, the tiniest
detail can seem benign or suspicious, Like the mattress. It
was outside because Larry had hose it down, it was
(28:01):
going back on Andrew's bed as soon as it was dried.
Or was it a sign that Andrew wasn't given a
real bed like the biological Overton children were. Another detail
that got really warped was that one of Hannah's kids
said that she gave them, quote, spicy stuff when they lied. Now,
this was a punishment recommended by one of Hannah's pastors.
(28:24):
It was you put a single red pepper flake on
your kid's tongue when they tell a lie. Was this
a well meaning, if old fashioned punishment like washing your
kid's mouths out with soap? Or was this a sign
that Hannah was a terrible abuser. In January of two
thousand and seven, before her trial started, Hannah gave birth
(28:45):
to a baby girl. Emma Cps took the newborn away.
A few days later, Hannah went to family court to
try and get her daughter back, After all, she was
nursing her, and the judge agreed that Hannah could her newborn,
but could never be alone with her In those days,
Hannah struggled just to get out of bed. She could
(29:08):
hardly bring herself to eat. A few months ago, her
long dreamed of family of six children was finally materializing.
And now one of those children was dead, and the
four other ones were in the custody of their grandmother,
and she couldn't even be alone with her newborn baby,
(29:29):
and so her trial began. The argument from the prosecution
was that Hannah was six months pregnant and had this
troubled little boy in her house and decided that she
just couldn't take it anymore, so she had somehow forced
Andrew to drink enough salty water with six teaspoons of
salt or twenty three teaspoons of Zatarine's creole seasoning to
(29:50):
kill him. They argued that Andrew was a normal child
with no behavioral problems until Hannah entered the picture, and
they brought plenty of witnesses to the stand who were
happy to confirm this. They also ignored any evidence that
Andrew may have had something like Paika and might have
consumed all that salt himself. Years later, Hannah's prosecutor would
(30:14):
admit that she had been an alcoholic during the trial,
an alcoholic who took so many prescription diet pills that
it affected her memory. When someone showed her samples of
her handwriting from the case, she didn't recognize them. Perhaps
most importantly, the prosecution ignored the fact that Andrew's adoption
process was still in the six month trial period. If
(30:37):
Hannah couldn't deal with Andrew, if she had hated having
him around so much, if she didn't want him as
a son, why didn't she just stop the adoption process
and move on with her life. Why resort to something
as bizarre and rare as salt poisoning. The prosecution never
answered those questions, but they didn't need to because they
(30:58):
had so many witness willing to testify that Hannah was
a psychopath. Two nurses took the stand and said that
Hannah had been creepily smiling as she performed CPR on Andrew,
even though neither of these nurses had said anything about
the smiling to police. A year earlier, when Andrew was hospitalized,
a paramedic testified that Andrew had cigarette burns on his arms,
(31:22):
which was an appalling revelation, never mind that an expert
for the defense said that the sores were mosquito bites
that had been badly scratched, and a physician who treated
Andrew said that his body was covered in bruises, which
was true, but the bruises had appeared at the hospital
and they may have been a result of the aggressive
attempts by paramedics, nurses, and doctors to save his life. Now,
(31:47):
the question of whether or not Hannah had murdered Andrew
wasn't the only question at this trial. The jury was
supposed to consider whether or not Hannah had failed to
provide medical care to Andrew. Had she waited too long
to take him to the clinic, Why hadn't she called
nine one one in an attempt to answer that, Hannah
(32:08):
took the stand and said that she hadn't realized the
seriousness of the situation until it was too late. She
just thought Andrew had the flu. As I said earlier,
Hannah was being charged with capital murder, which meant either
death or life without parole. The prosecutors weren't going to
pursue the death penalty, and after hearing all the evidence,
(32:30):
the judge declared that he was willing to give Hannah
a lesser charge, manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide, but Hannah
said no. She felt that accepting a lesser charge would
mean admitting guilt, and she knew that she was innocent,
so she said no, and the jury deliberated, and when
they declared her guilty, Hannah looked, as one journalist said,
(32:55):
horror struck. It was a stray verdict. The jury had
technically found her guilty of capital murder by omission, which
is a very rare standard for declaring someone a murderer. See,
the jury had been told that they could either find
her guilty of deliberately poisoning Andrew or guilty of failing
(33:17):
to save his life by not getting him to the
hospital on time. None of them thought that she had
deliberately poisoned Andrew, so they found her guilty of not
getting him to the hospital on time. In other words,
they basically found her guilty of knowing that he would
die unless she took him to the hospital and deliberately
delaying that. But that wasn't really actually what the juror's
(33:42):
thought had happened. The whole thing was very confusing. One
juror called the charge ambiguous and wrote later it seemed
to me based upon the wording of the charge that
we had no choice but to find her guilty of
capital murder. I do not believe that missus Overton knew
that her actions or lack thereof, would kill Andrew. Although
I believe that missus Overton was remiss in seeking timely
(34:05):
medical care for Andrew Bird, I do not believe that
she intended or knew that this would result in his death.
I do not feel that justice has been served. Never
mind that, though because Hannah was sentenced to life without
parole and separated from her living children for good, Larry's
(34:45):
sentence was totally different. He pled no contest to criminally
negligent homicide. He didn't want to fight the charge and
risk being taken away from his children too. He was
given a five thousand dollars fine and five years of probation.
Since he wasn't locked up, it meant that once a
month he could put all the children in his van
and drive the six hundred and thirty two mile round
(35:07):
trip drive to see Hannah in prison. There, the kids
had to talk to their mother behind glass. They weren't
allowed to touch her, and they had to fight for
the phone which would allow them to hear her. Voice.
They'd cry because they couldn't kiss her and they didn't
understand why, and then they had to make the long
(35:27):
drive home. But Hannah wasn't going to give up on
her mothering that easy. She planned her kid's birthday parties
from prison, picking out the games and even making whatever
decorations she could from prison supplies. She stood at the
window of her cell and watched baby Emma take some
of her first steps in the prison parking lot below.
(35:50):
She wrote endless cards and letters to her babies, and
she would always sign them infinity isn't enough an attempt
to express her impossible to express love for them, and
she fought that guilty verdict. She found a wickedly smart
appellate lawyer. Appellate lawyers are the lawyers who get involved
(36:11):
after a case is won or lost, and this lawyer
absolutely scoured the prosecution's case file, hoping to find something
that the judge hadn't seen before. And what do you know,
the lawyer found it. The smoking gun of sorts was
a document that talked about the contents of Andrew's stomach.
Andrew didn't have a lot of salt in his stomach
(36:33):
when he was taken to the Urgent Care clinic, but
he did have a lot of water in his stomach.
Hannah's lawyer took this information to an expert on salt poisoning.
The expert thought these details were very significant. He wrote,
if someone was trying to murder Andrew, they would have
restrained him and prevented him from drinking water. The very
(36:56):
dilute gastric sodium contents suggest that he had unrestricted access
to water. There is not a single piece of evidence
which suggests that Hannah overton salt poisoned Andrew. It is
unlikely that any intervention would have made a significant difference,
as Andrew had already taken the most critical step to
(37:16):
save himself by consuming copious amounts of fluid. With this
new information, Hannah's lawyer filed a writ of habeas corpus,
an attempt to bring Hannah back before the court to
determine if her imprisonment was lawful. In this writ, the
lawyer claimed that the prosecutors hadn't disclosed this critical information
(37:39):
about Andrew's stomach contents to Hannah's old defense team. The
fact that Andrew didn't have a lot of salt in
his stomach, but did have it in his blood stream,
meant that Andrew had to have consumed the salt earlier
in the day, probably when Hannah found him in the pantry.
The prosecutor's argument was that Hannah had forced Andrew to
drink tons of salty water right before he got sick,
(38:02):
but the evidence simply didn't support that this writ of
habeas Corpus also argued that Hannah hadn't been given an
adequate defense since her lawyers hadn't called this salt poisoning
expert to the stand. The judge dismissed this petition the
day was filed. Hannah's lawyer appealed. The appeals court told
(38:23):
the judge he needed to hold a new hearing. After
the hearing, Hannah's appeal was denied again. By now, it
was twenty fourteen and Hannah had been in prison for
seven long years. Finally, that September, the Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals reversed the judge's order and ordered that Hannah
get a new trial, saying that yes, her lawyers hadn't
(38:46):
provided her with an adequate legal defense. Hannah was released
on bond, and a few months later, in the spring
of twenty fifteen, news came that would change her life.
The charge against her were being dismissed. The district attorney
had reviewed the previous trial, re interviewed witnesses, consulted with
(39:09):
medical experts, and concluded that Hannah was innocent. She wouldn't
even have to have a new trial. She was free. Today.
(39:41):
Hannah is back with her babies. Her oldest son is married.
In March of twenty eighteen, she was awarded five hundred
and seventy three thousand, three hundred and thirty three dollars
from the state of Texas for her wrongful conviction. She'll
also receive a lump sum from the state every year.
A few months after that, she gave birth to a
(40:04):
new baby, Gabriella Aliana. Two years ago, Hannah and another
one of her daughters got matching tattoos, delicate cherry blossom branches,
paired with the line that Hannah used to write on
her cards from prison, infinity isn't enough. Looking back on
her brief time with Andrew, the son she never got
(40:25):
to officially adopt, Hannah says she'd do it all again.
She told journalist Pamela call Off, it's not even a consideration.
I wouldn't give up that time we had with him
and that he had with us. These days, Hannah is
really intense about Christmas. Her kids joke that she has
(40:46):
a tradition for every minute of the day. She lost
seven Christmases with her kids. She's not going to take
a minute of future Christmases for granted, and one of
her traditions is to return to prison. She delivers care
packages to incarcerated women all over Texas. She sends them
(41:08):
things like shampoo and deodorant. Some ladies have cried, she says,
I mean real tears over a bottle of shampoo, And
I understand because when you haven't had those things in
so long and you can't have them, to even be
able to smell something that isn't disgusting, and for just
a few minutes when you're in the shower, to feel
like a human being, that's a huge thing. Hannah has
(41:33):
a nonprofit now, Sindeo Ministries, which distributes these packages, helps
incarcerated women establish Bible study groups, and helps people on
the outside become pen pals with incarcerated women. Every week,
Hannah writes about fifty letters to incarcerated women herself. She
dreams of opening a transitional home for released women, a
(41:57):
place where they can heal as they readjust to life
on the outside. Sweet little Andrew, the boy who just
wanted to be adopted, never got a happy ending. He
was there in the pantry, fighting for survival, maybe thinking
that he'd never have anything to eat ever again, and
(42:18):
he ate the wrong thing and it killed him. Salt,
the simplest ingredient we have who could have known no.
His story has a terrible ending. But Hannah's story has
a happy ending, or as happy as a story like
hers can be. Many other women don't get Hannah's ending.
(42:42):
Like Hannah, most incarcerated women are mothers. Sixty percent of
women in prison and almost eighty percent of women in
jail are mothers. Having a mother locked up is devastating
for children. Since there aren't as many prisons for women
as there are for men, incarcerated women are often locked
(43:02):
up far away from their kids, just like Hannah, whose
kids had to travel over six hundred miles round trip
to see her once a month. And as far as
the women who get exonerated like Hannah, forty percent of
them were wrongfully convicted of harming children or other people
under their care. Surely there are women right now, women
(43:23):
without the resources and media spotlight that Hannah's casecot, who
sit in prison for a crime they never committed and
long to see their children again. Hannah knows this. She's
not blind to the fact that in the terrible universe
of unlucky women who get accused of crimes they didn't commit,
(43:44):
She's one of the lucky, unlucky ones. That's why she
works on Christmas Day, even though it's her favorite holiday
with her beloved, precious, priceless children. She's on Instagram now
and her bio is a single Bible verse Hebrews thirteen
to three. Remember those in prison as if you were
(44:07):
bound with them, And that's what Hannah does. She remembers them,
and she remembers Andrew the end. If any of you
(44:41):
are as moved, and I mean moved, that is a
word that encompasses about a thousand emotions right now, right
If any of you are as moved by Hannah's story
as I was, I'm going to put the link to
her nonprofit, Sindeo Ministries. I think I'm saying it right
in the show notes, so you can go check it out.
Obviously you can donate. They have some little like greeting
(45:04):
cards that you can buy. You can get involved, you
can become a pen pal, you know, anything like that.
So just check it out if your heart tells you
that you should. All right, thank you for listening, Thank
you for getting through that rough episode with me. Don't worry.
Next week's is also going to be really dark and
deal with serious issues. But Guys is a true crime
and history podcast. If you thought history was pleasant, then
(45:27):
you probably only grew up reading Little Women and Anne
of green Gables, which I get. Those are some of
my favorite books too as a child. But the rosy
picture they paint of small towns where everyone gets along
well Little Women is actually darker than we maybe realized.
But anyway, the rosy picture the Anne of green Gable
paints is obviously not representative of much of human history.
(45:52):
Humans are, how should I put this, not very nice
to each other a lot of the time. So meet
me here next week if you can deal with more.
It's gonna be an entirely different tone than this episode though,
and there are gonna be a lot more rich people
behaving very very badly. But I've said too much already.
I'd like to thank this week's phenomenal patrons, the Phenomenal
(46:13):
foursome of Janine B, Maria L. Toy Ak, and Bonnie S.
Thank you all so much. Everyone else. You know how
to support the podcast leaver Review, become a patron at
patreon dot com, slash criminal broads, use the promo codes
I give you, or just sing a little song sing
(46:35):
along to the theme song. That's all you Gotta do.
I'll see you here next week everyone, and until then,
I hope you're having a lovely summer. Talk soon bye.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong loving Ud like guid.
If it's a crime, then I'm guilty, guilty of loving you.
Is it a sin? Is it a crime? Loving you
dear like guy do. If it's a crime, then I'm guilty,
guilty of loving you. Hello and welcome to Criminal Broad's
(00:22):
a podcast about wild women on the wrong side of
the law. I'm your host, Tory Telfer, and I have
some semi breaking news. Have you listened to last week's episode,
the one about Pam Houp, Everyone's least favorite alleged serial killer. Well, guys,
last week, I think it was the day before the
episode actually came out, Pam Houp was charged with first
(00:45):
degree murder in the twenty eleven stabbing of her quote
unquote bestie Betsy. So this is huge, guys. Pamhup is
already in prison for life for killing a man she
didn't even know, an absolutely nonsensical murder. Not that any
murder is really sensical, but anyway, now she's gonna possibly
(01:07):
get another conviction on her records. So Pam, worst of
luck to you. I've also had multiple reader's message me
telling me that Pam is an ultimate Karen, And yeah, guys,
she is. I sort of think of her as the
Karen of serial killers. So anyway, if you don't know
what I'm talking about Go back and listen to last
(01:27):
week's episode and Rage with Us, Rage with Us at
pam hup. Okay, you know what, Normally I record these
episodes several days before they come out because they have
to go to my editor, et cetera, et cetera. I
am recording this the night before it comes out, So
I'm just telling you that. So if any podcasters are
listening to this you get a cold shiver running down
(01:49):
your spine. Yes, I'm living on the edge right now.
It's not pretty. But I've been traveling and I don't
really travel with my recording equipment, so I was like,
I'm gonna just have to record this episode the night
I get back. So anyway, if I sound deranged with exhaustion,
that's why. But not trying to make you feel sorry
for me. Everything's fine, Okay. Today's episode is a very
(02:13):
sad one. I'm just putting that right here. It is
a very sad one. It involves a child that something
really bad happens too. So if you're in a fragile
state of mind, my listeners, turn this off. Go listen
to another podcast, a lighter podcast. Go listen to this
podcast called The Lazy Genius, which is this get your
(02:33):
Life Organized podcast that I've been obsessed with lately. Skip
this episode. Also, there's gonna be some talk about weird
eating habits. Just we're gonna get into some details about eating.
So if that's not something you feel like you can
hear again, check out The Lazy Genius. Not sponsored by
the Lazy Genius. Just love her. She doesn't know who
(02:53):
I am. The other thing I wanted to tell you
is that I really leaned heavily for this article on
this amazing episode in Texas Monthly by Pamela Call Off
any cool Texas crime article you've read. She probably wrote
It's called Hannah and Andrew, and I will link to
it in the show notes. All Right, I think that's
all I needed to tell you. Let's get into the story.
(03:14):
We're going back to the year two thousand and six
in Corpus Christi, Texas. Let's go. Hannah Overton loved kids.
(03:43):
She wanted lots of them, six of them. Maybe it
was because she'd grown up with only one brother, seven
years younger than her, or maybe it was because she'd
grown up in a broken home. Her family, the Sands family,
was a white family living in Corpus Christ, Texas, and
her father, Benny, was an evangelical preacher who led a
(04:04):
double life. One day in nineteen eighty four, when Hannah
was only seven, Benny Sans raped a sixteen year old
girl named Vicki, beat her to death, and dumped her
naked body on a lonely beach. He was sentenced to
twenty three years and Hannah and her family left town.
(04:26):
So her father was a murderer and her grandfather. Believe
it or not, her biological maternal grandfather was none other
than Marshall Applewhite, co founder of the infamous Heaven's Gate cult.
According to someone in an Internet comment section who claims
she is Hannah's aunt, Marshall Applewhite abandoned his family when
(04:47):
Hannah's mother was five years old, So Hannah never knew
her grandfather, and surely a girl isn't responsible for the
sins of the generations before her. Right. Still, these two
details Hannah's life, the connection to a cult leader and
the father who was a murderer. These two details would
be used in many a comment section and blog post
(05:09):
to argue that Hannah was evil to her core and
deserved to die. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
After her father was imprisoned and his church dissolved, you
might think Hannah would never darken the door of a
religious institution again, But Hannah stayed in the church. She
clung to God like a life raft. When no one
(05:32):
else was there for her family, the church was. Her
family moved to a little city in East Texas called Lyndale,
where a missionary organization gave them a free apartment, and
Hannah baby sat the missionary's children as they came through
the US on furlough. Her love of children only grew
from there. On Christmas and Easter, she would drive nine
(05:53):
hours south, crossing the border into Mexico, and she would
spend the day at an orphanage in the border city
of Renosa. The kids there were often sick, but Hannah
didn't care. She'd hold them and play with them, and
sometimes she'd get their head lice, but she loved them.
She loved them so much that a few years later,
Hannah took her new husband to that same orphanage on
(06:16):
their honeymoon. This new husband was a young man named
Larry Overton. Larry and Hannah had known each other since
they were children, and Larry loved kids too, but he
wasn't entirely sure about Hannah's let's have six of them idea.
But Hannah was sure. She'd always been sure. They had Isaac,
then Isabelle, then Ali, then Sebastian. They were living back
(06:39):
in Corpus Christi, by then members of a non denominational church,
and Hannah was homeschooling her kids. Everyone who knew her
remembered her incredible patience with them. She seemed to have
infinite reserves of it for her children. There was nothing
that she couldn't handle calmly, it seemed, and so when
Hannah and Larry started talking about adopting a fifth child,
(07:02):
most of the people around them supported the idea. Sure,
the Overtons really didn't make that much money, and Hannah
specifically wanted to adopt an older child or a child
with disabilities, some child that most other couples would overlook,
but Hannah could handle it. Everyone was sure of that.
The Overtons put in an application to adopt a little
(07:24):
boy named Andrew, and in the spring of two thousand
and six they got word that their application was approved,
and then they got a second piece of good news.
Hannah was pregnant again. Her dream was coming true. She
was going to have her six kids after all. She
just didn't know that less than six months later that
dream would become a nightmare. Let's take a quick break
(08:30):
to hear from this episode's sponsor, and also, guys, we've
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if you're in a relationship that makes you vaguely think like, huh,
this is reminding me of criminal broads, I don't know why.
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What you should do is go to Dame products dot
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for fifteen percent off site wide. Little Andrew Bird was
(10:50):
born into a completely different world than Hannah's other children.
His mom was sixteen, and she used almost every drug
under the sun, from crack cocaine to LSD to meth.
His grandma used meth too. Andrew's childhood was marked by
neglect and abuse and danger. Not long after his first birthday,
(11:12):
his mom dragged him into the hospital with a broken arm,
By the time he was two and a half, he
was in foster care. At three, his biological parents' rites
were stripped from them. Now Andrew was going to stay
in foster care forever unless someone adopted him. As luck
would have it, Andrew's foster mother attended the same church
(11:33):
as the Overtons, so every Sunday, Andrew would come to
church with his foster mom and he would sit in
Sunday school class with some of the little Overton children.
The little kids always shared their prayer requests, and every
week Andrew's request was the same. He wanted to be adopted.
Andrew was an adorable kid. He had bright blonde hair
(11:55):
and chubby cheeks and a toothy grin. He loved Spider Man.
But he was troubled. Of course, he was troubled. He'd
know nothing but abuse and abandonment for his entire short life,
so he would throw terrible fits in Sunday school. He
would eat food out of the trash can. When Hannah
and Larry learned that there was a little boy almost four,
(12:17):
in their daughter's Sunday school class who desperately wanted to
be adopted, this seemed like a sign from God, but
some of their fellow churchgoers told them not to do it.
Andrew was too troubled, they said. The Overtons already had
four children, with a fifth on the way. It wasn't
going to be fair to their other kids to take
on this extra burden. They wouldn't be able to handle Andrew.
(12:41):
But Hannah and Larry were sure that they could handle Andrew.
Wasn't this what Hannah had been working towards her entire life.
She had extensive experience with children. She was a competent
mother of four already, and as far as special needs
went well, she'd actually worked as a private nurse for
disabled children before she had kids of her own. The
way she helped her little clients sometimes seemed nothing short
(13:04):
of magic, according to their parents. Plus there was her
legendary patience. Plus Child Protective Services assured them that Andrew
was perfectly healthy. A little delayed in his speech, maybe,
but otherwise he was just fine. So the Overtons moved
ahead with the adoption. On Mother's Day of two thousand
and six, Andrew arrived at their home for a six
(13:27):
month trial period. In certain ways Andrew thrived there, it
wasn't long before he was calling Hannah and Larry, Mommy
and Daddy. He would hold hands with his new siblings,
he would join them in grow hugs. He was learning
to conquer simple things that had seemed impossible to him before,
like putting on his shoes. He was talking more, He
(13:49):
was following Larry around like a little shadow. But there
were issues. There were struggles, terrors, tantrums. The Overtons knew
they were adopting a child with serious trauma in his past,
and they knew that trauma affected behavior, and so these
issues didn't surprise them. They were in it for the
(14:10):
long haul, but they weren't quite prepared for Andrew's issues
with food. Andrew was obsessed with food. All he wanted
to do was eat. He would ask for seconds, thirds, fourths,
He would get down on the floor to look for crumbs,
and if he couldn't find crumbs, he'd eat whatever he
could find, pieces of gum off the sidewalk, pieces of
(14:33):
the carpet, flakes of paint, chunks of his mattress, old
cigarette butts. Once, Larry decided to give Andrew as much
food as he wanted, thinking that Andrew might realize that
it didn't actually feel good to just eat and eat,
and eat. So Larry cooked up a huge plate of
sausage and an entire carton of eggs. Andrew ate it all,
(14:54):
threw up, and then asked for more. Hannah would later testify,
we had to put the cat food in the garage
because he would eat it. He would eat toothpaste. We
couldn't keep soap in the bathroom because he'd take bites
out of it. He broke a glow stick and tried
to drink it. It's not that this blindsided the Overtons exactly.
(15:15):
Foster children often have strange relationships with food. It's not
unusual for them to hoard food, to overeat, or to
develop an eating disorder. Food can be a way of
exerting control in a world where foster children feel like
they have no control. Imagine how much you'd obsess over
food if you'd grown up starving. It was like there
was something in Andrew telling him to eat and eat
(15:37):
as much as possible because there might not be any
food in the fridge tomorrow. Hannah was sure that what
Andrew needed was love and security and patience and connection,
and that with time his obsession with food would fade.
But so far it wasn't fading. In fact, it was
getting worse. In September, about three months into the adoption
(15:58):
trial period, the entire Overton family was in a car accident.
They had all gone to Hannah's obgian appointment to find
out that she was pregnant with a little girl, and
on their way back, Larry ran a stop sign and
hit another car. Everyone whipped forward. Hannah's face slammed into
the dashboard. She sat right back up and twisted around
(16:19):
to check on her five children in the back seat,
and she didn't know it, but her face was covered
in blood. This terrified Andrew, but no one noticed how
frightened he was at the time, because well, everyone was frightened.
Hannah was taken to the hospital and given a neck brace,
while Andrew ate dinner and asked for more and more
(16:41):
and more, asking is my mom okay? Is my mom okay?
Is my mom okay? Hannah had to stay in bed
for the next couple of weeks, and so other people
came by to watch the kids, and this freaked Andrew
out even more. What was happening? Why was his mom sick?
He would get mosquito bites and then he would pick
at the bites so badly that he eventually got a
(17:03):
staff infection. He would hit his head against the floor.
He cried for hours and hours. Hannah and Larry put
a baby monitor in his room to see if he
was sneaking out for food in the night, and he was.
They could see him on the screen picking paint off
the walls and eating the flakes. Hannah told all this
to the adoption supervisor who stopped by to visit on
(17:26):
September twenty fifth, and the supervisor said, maybe he has pika.
Pika is an eating disorder where people eat things that
aren't food and don't have any nutritional value, like dirt
or hair, or paint chips or salt. Hannah heard this
and made a mental note to take Andrew to a
specialist if things got worse. A few days later, on
(17:48):
a Sunday afternoon, Hannah told Andrew that he needed to
wait a few minutes until lunch was ready. Andrew freaked out.
He pooped on the floor and smeared it all over
his bedroom, all over his spider Man sheets. Hannah was
six months pregnant and still in a neck brace, and
she couldn't manage Andrew and clean up the mess herself,
(18:08):
so Larry cleaned the room. When he got home. He
dragged the mattress to the backyard and hosed it down.
He put the filthy Spider Man sheets in the trash,
but Andrew kept pulling them out, and so finally Larry
lost his temper and burned the sheets in the fire pit.
He wasn't proud of that moment, but he didn't think
it was a huge deal because they had another set
(18:29):
of Spider Man sheets just like the originals. So after
the cleanup, Andrew's sleeping arrangements got a little weird. He
had to spend that night in a sleeping bag on
his bed frame since his mattress was still drying in
the backyard. The remains of the Spider Man sheets were
still visible in the fire pit. Larry thought all of
(18:49):
this was just clean up, but it would become terribly
significant in a day or two. The next day was
October tewod Hannah let Andrew and two year old Sebastian
watched cartoons in bed with her. At one point she
dozed off. Remember she was pregnant and still recovering from
the car accident. When she woke up, Andrew wasn't there,
(19:12):
she found him in the kitchen on a stool in
the pantry. He was eating something. Hannah didn't really register
what it was, but she remembered later that Andrew was
near the baking ingredients. It was not unusual to find
him sneaking food, and so she didn't think much of
it at the time, but she put him in time
out for three minutes and said they'd have lunch soon.
(19:33):
He freaked out and started smearing his feces everywhere, and
when Hannah got it cleaned up, he did it again,
so finally she relented and gave him some food, some
leftover soup flavored with Zataine's Creole seasoning, which was a
spicy seasoning that Andrew really liked. Larry came home then
and helped clean up. After that, the family went to
(19:55):
Hannah's chiropractor appointment and then stopped by McDonald's to get
some food, but Hannah explained to Andrew that he couldn't
eat at the McDonald's because he'd already had lunch. They
were always trying to explain food to him this way,
You've had some, so you need to wait for more,
or you can't have any now, but you'll have some soon.
Of course, Andrew hated this, hated that he couldn't have McDonald's,
(20:17):
and so when they got home, Hannah fed him more
of the leftover soup. When he finished it and asked
for another serving, she tried to pacify him by sprinkling
some of that Zatarine's creole seasoning into a sippy cup
of water. He really liked the flavor, and so she
thought this might tide him over. He drank the water
and then launched into a tantrum because he wanted more soup.
(20:39):
But after twenty minutes he dropped to the floor. He said, Mommy,
I'm cold, and he threw up. At first, Hannah and
(20:59):
Larry thought that Anne Andrew had some sort of stomach bug.
He had the chills, he was lethargic, he was vomiting.
They'd seen these symptoms before and their other kids when
they had the flu. Hannah also had some old medical
training herself. She'd actually studied to be an EMT years ago,
and she still had her books around, so she felt
confident that she could handle this. Andrew began to shake,
(21:22):
so she put him on a heating pad. He had
trouble breathing, so she gave him her other sons asthma nebulizer,
but she had no idea what was really going on
inside Andrew's body. He was getting less and less responsive,
and finally Hannah was forced to admit that this wasn't
the flu. This wasn't like all the other times, This
wasn't something she could treat at home. But she and
(21:45):
Larry didn't call nine one one. They thought it would
be faster to put Andrew in the car and take
him to a nearby urgent care clinic, so that's what
they did. In the car, Andrew stopped breathing, Hannah started
giving him CPR and until they arrived at the clinic
and the paramedics took over. The clinic transferred Andrew to
(22:05):
a hospital, and that hospital transferred him to another hospital.
He was declining fast. Doctors discovered that Andrew had twice
the normal level of sodium in his blood and some
bleeding in his brain. Clearly, this wasn't a normal situation.
This was a kid who was near death. Someone notified
(22:26):
the police, and so Detective Michael Hess pulled Hannah aside
to interview her while Andrew was being treated in a
hospital room. Hannah talked to the detective without a lawyer.
The idea of getting a lawyer probably didn't cross her mind.
She was very distracted because she just wanted to get
back to Andrew, and so when she answered the detective's questions,
(22:47):
she left out huge chunks of information, like the fact
that she'd found Andrew in the pantry earlier eating some
unknown substance. When Detective Hess asked her to explain the
high sodium levels in Andrew's blood, Hannah didn't have any
explanation at all. Still, despite the strain she was under
and despite her obvious distraction, she remained calm. Detective Hess
(23:11):
found this suspicious. In his police report, he wrote, it
should be noted that during the entire conversation, Hannah Overton
showed almost no emotion. And then everything crumbled for the Overtons.
The police searched their home and found ominous signs that
(23:31):
seemed to point to child abuse. Andrew was forced to
sleep in a sleeping bag on a hard bed frame.
He didn't even have a mattress, and his bedsheets had
been burned, clearly some sort of bizarre punishment. There was
a baby monitor in his room, surveiling him. What house
of horrors was this child? Protective Services declared that Hannah
(23:53):
and Larry were no longer allowed to visit Andrew in
the hospital, and little Andrew passed away on the night
of October third, with no family beside him. His adoption
trial period hadn't ended yet, his prayer that someone would
finally adopt him was never fully answered. Larry and Hannah
(24:16):
had no time to mourn the little boy that they
had wanted to adopt. They were arrested during a traffic stop.
Police swarmed around them, guns drawn, forced them onto the ground,
and put them in handcuffs. It was like they were
arresting John Wayne Gacy. Larry was charged with injury to
a child for failing to get Andrew timely medical attention.
(24:38):
Hannah was charged with capital murder. Hannah's trial began in
August of two thousand and seven. By then, many people
(25:02):
had made up their minds about her. The media had
done its job well. She was a monstrous mother, a
diabolical baby killer, the worst kind of criminal imaginable, a
degenerate child killing slut. One blogger called her naturally. People
said she deserved to die. It doesn't take a rocket
(25:24):
scientist to figure out why people were so upset A
child was dead, A child was dead suddenly and horribly,
and someone needed to pay the cause of death. Well,
the medical examiner declared that Andrew had died of acute
sodium toxicity or salt poisoning. And what does the word
(25:46):
poisoning imply a poisoner It had to be Hannah. A
people thought little kids didn't just feed themselves salt, and
Hannah had already admitted to feeding Andrew multiple servings of
soup and water with Zataaine's Creole seasoning in them, which
was a salty spice blend. The facts seemed clear. Hannah
(26:08):
had forced her adopted son to sleep on a wooden frame.
She spied on him with a baby monitor. She couldn't
deal with his tantrums in his issues. She didn't love
him as much as she loved her biological kids, and
so she force fed him Zata Raine's Creol seasoning until
the sodium content in his blood was so high that
his body began shutting down. Before the case started, there
(26:30):
were all sorts of rumors floating around that damaged Hannah's
image even further. The medical examiner had mentioned that Andrew
sustained blunt force head trauma and said that the trauma
contributed to his death. Now, the so called head trauma,
which was the bleeding under his scalp, could have been
a symptom of the salt poisoning. Actually, and the medical
(26:51):
examiner admitted this, and the idea that Andrew had a
head injury was actually ruled inadmissible at Hannah's trial, But
the rumor persisted that Hannah had bashed Andrew over the head.
This was only reconfirmed by a CPS worker who swore
in an affidavit that Hannah admitted that she'd forced Andrew
to drink two cups of chili with water and then
(27:14):
quote picked him up and beat the shit out of him.
This affidavit was also never used at trial because the
police denied that Hannah had ever said those things. But
again the image stuck with people. Not only had Hannah
Overton poisoned Andrew with salt, but she'd bashed him over
the head and admitted it. Degenerate child killing slut. Indeed,
(27:39):
in a case like this, where emotions are at their
highest and where the question at stake is so intimate,
who can say what goes on between a mother and
child at home. In a case like this, the tiniest
detail can seem benign or suspicious, Like the mattress. It
was outside because Larry had hose it down, it was
(28:01):
going back on Andrew's bed as soon as it was dried.
Or was it a sign that Andrew wasn't given a
real bed like the biological Overton children were. Another detail
that got really warped was that one of Hannah's kids
said that she gave them, quote, spicy stuff when they lied. Now,
this was a punishment recommended by one of Hannah's pastors.
(28:24):
It was you put a single red pepper flake on
your kid's tongue when they tell a lie. Was this
a well meaning, if old fashioned punishment like washing your
kid's mouths out with soap? Or was this a sign
that Hannah was a terrible abuser. In January of two
thousand and seven, before her trial started, Hannah gave birth
(28:45):
to a baby girl. Emma Cps took the newborn away.
A few days later, Hannah went to family court to
try and get her daughter back, After all, she was
nursing her, and the judge agreed that Hannah could her newborn,
but could never be alone with her In those days,
Hannah struggled just to get out of bed. She could
(29:08):
hardly bring herself to eat. A few months ago, her
long dreamed of family of six children was finally materializing.
And now one of those children was dead, and the
four other ones were in the custody of their grandmother,
and she couldn't even be alone with her newborn baby,
(29:29):
and so her trial began. The argument from the prosecution
was that Hannah was six months pregnant and had this
troubled little boy in her house and decided that she
just couldn't take it anymore, so she had somehow forced
Andrew to drink enough salty water with six teaspoons of
salt or twenty three teaspoons of Zatarine's creole seasoning to
(29:50):
kill him. They argued that Andrew was a normal child
with no behavioral problems until Hannah entered the picture, and
they brought plenty of witnesses to the stand who were
happy to confirm this. They also ignored any evidence that
Andrew may have had something like Paika and might have
consumed all that salt himself. Years later, Hannah's prosecutor would
(30:14):
admit that she had been an alcoholic during the trial,
an alcoholic who took so many prescription diet pills that
it affected her memory. When someone showed her samples of
her handwriting from the case, she didn't recognize them. Perhaps
most importantly, the prosecution ignored the fact that Andrew's adoption
process was still in the six month trial period. If
(30:37):
Hannah couldn't deal with Andrew, if she had hated having
him around so much, if she didn't want him as
a son, why didn't she just stop the adoption process
and move on with her life. Why resort to something
as bizarre and rare as salt poisoning. The prosecution never
answered those questions, but they didn't need to because they
(30:58):
had so many witness willing to testify that Hannah was
a psychopath. Two nurses took the stand and said that
Hannah had been creepily smiling as she performed CPR on Andrew,
even though neither of these nurses had said anything about
the smiling to police. A year earlier, when Andrew was hospitalized,
a paramedic testified that Andrew had cigarette burns on his arms,
(31:22):
which was an appalling revelation, never mind that an expert
for the defense said that the sores were mosquito bites
that had been badly scratched, and a physician who treated
Andrew said that his body was covered in bruises, which
was true, but the bruises had appeared at the hospital
and they may have been a result of the aggressive
attempts by paramedics, nurses, and doctors to save his life. Now,
(31:47):
the question of whether or not Hannah had murdered Andrew
wasn't the only question at this trial. The jury was
supposed to consider whether or not Hannah had failed to
provide medical care to Andrew. Had she waited too long
to take him to the clinic, Why hadn't she called
nine one one in an attempt to answer that, Hannah
(32:08):
took the stand and said that she hadn't realized the
seriousness of the situation until it was too late. She
just thought Andrew had the flu. As I said earlier,
Hannah was being charged with capital murder, which meant either
death or life without parole. The prosecutors weren't going to
pursue the death penalty, and after hearing all the evidence,
(32:30):
the judge declared that he was willing to give Hannah
a lesser charge, manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide, but Hannah
said no. She felt that accepting a lesser charge would
mean admitting guilt, and she knew that she was innocent,
so she said no, and the jury deliberated, and when
they declared her guilty, Hannah looked, as one journalist said,
(32:55):
horror struck. It was a stray verdict. The jury had
technically found her guilty of capital murder by omission, which
is a very rare standard for declaring someone a murderer. See,
the jury had been told that they could either find
her guilty of deliberately poisoning Andrew or guilty of failing
(33:17):
to save his life by not getting him to the
hospital on time. None of them thought that she had
deliberately poisoned Andrew, so they found her guilty of not
getting him to the hospital on time. In other words,
they basically found her guilty of knowing that he would
die unless she took him to the hospital and deliberately
delaying that. But that wasn't really actually what the juror's
(33:42):
thought had happened. The whole thing was very confusing. One
juror called the charge ambiguous and wrote later it seemed
to me based upon the wording of the charge that
we had no choice but to find her guilty of
capital murder. I do not believe that missus Overton knew
that her actions or lack thereof, would kill Andrew. Although
I believe that missus Overton was remiss in seeking timely
(34:05):
medical care for Andrew Bird, I do not believe that
she intended or knew that this would result in his death.
I do not feel that justice has been served. Never
mind that, though because Hannah was sentenced to life without
parole and separated from her living children for good, Larry's
(34:45):
sentence was totally different. He pled no contest to criminally
negligent homicide. He didn't want to fight the charge and
risk being taken away from his children too. He was
given a five thousand dollars fine and five years of probation.
Since he wasn't locked up, it meant that once a
month he could put all the children in his van
and drive the six hundred and thirty two mile round
(35:07):
trip drive to see Hannah in prison. There, the kids
had to talk to their mother behind glass. They weren't
allowed to touch her, and they had to fight for
the phone which would allow them to hear her. Voice.
They'd cry because they couldn't kiss her and they didn't
understand why, and then they had to make the long
(35:27):
drive home. But Hannah wasn't going to give up on
her mothering that easy. She planned her kid's birthday parties
from prison, picking out the games and even making whatever
decorations she could from prison supplies. She stood at the
window of her cell and watched baby Emma take some
of her first steps in the prison parking lot below.
(35:50):
She wrote endless cards and letters to her babies, and
she would always sign them infinity isn't enough an attempt
to express her impossible to express love for them, and
she fought that guilty verdict. She found a wickedly smart
appellate lawyer. Appellate lawyers are the lawyers who get involved
(36:11):
after a case is won or lost, and this lawyer
absolutely scoured the prosecution's case file, hoping to find something
that the judge hadn't seen before. And what do you know,
the lawyer found it. The smoking gun of sorts was
a document that talked about the contents of Andrew's stomach.
Andrew didn't have a lot of salt in his stomach
(36:33):
when he was taken to the Urgent Care clinic, but
he did have a lot of water in his stomach.
Hannah's lawyer took this information to an expert on salt poisoning.
The expert thought these details were very significant. He wrote,
if someone was trying to murder Andrew, they would have
restrained him and prevented him from drinking water. The very
(36:56):
dilute gastric sodium contents suggest that he had unrestricted access
to water. There is not a single piece of evidence
which suggests that Hannah overton salt poisoned Andrew. It is
unlikely that any intervention would have made a significant difference,
as Andrew had already taken the most critical step to
(37:16):
save himself by consuming copious amounts of fluid. With this
new information, Hannah's lawyer filed a writ of habeas corpus,
an attempt to bring Hannah back before the court to
determine if her imprisonment was lawful. In this writ, the
lawyer claimed that the prosecutors hadn't disclosed this critical information
(37:39):
about Andrew's stomach contents to Hannah's old defense team. The
fact that Andrew didn't have a lot of salt in
his stomach, but did have it in his blood stream,
meant that Andrew had to have consumed the salt earlier
in the day, probably when Hannah found him in the pantry.
The prosecutor's argument was that Hannah had forced Andrew to
drink tons of salty water right before he got sick,
(38:02):
but the evidence simply didn't support that this writ of
habeas Corpus also argued that Hannah hadn't been given an
adequate defense since her lawyers hadn't called this salt poisoning
expert to the stand. The judge dismissed this petition the
day was filed. Hannah's lawyer appealed. The appeals court told
(38:23):
the judge he needed to hold a new hearing. After
the hearing, Hannah's appeal was denied again. By now, it
was twenty fourteen and Hannah had been in prison for
seven long years. Finally, that September, the Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals reversed the judge's order and ordered that Hannah
get a new trial, saying that yes, her lawyers hadn't
(38:46):
provided her with an adequate legal defense. Hannah was released
on bond, and a few months later, in the spring
of twenty fifteen, news came that would change her life.
The charge against her were being dismissed. The district attorney
had reviewed the previous trial, re interviewed witnesses, consulted with
(39:09):
medical experts, and concluded that Hannah was innocent. She wouldn't
even have to have a new trial. She was free. Today.
(39:41):
Hannah is back with her babies. Her oldest son is married.
In March of twenty eighteen, she was awarded five hundred
and seventy three thousand, three hundred and thirty three dollars
from the state of Texas for her wrongful conviction. She'll
also receive a lump sum from the state every year.
A few months after that, she gave birth to a
(40:04):
new baby, Gabriella Aliana. Two years ago, Hannah and another
one of her daughters got matching tattoos, delicate cherry blossom branches,
paired with the line that Hannah used to write on
her cards from prison, infinity isn't enough. Looking back on
her brief time with Andrew, the son she never got
(40:25):
to officially adopt, Hannah says she'd do it all again.
She told journalist Pamela call Off, it's not even a consideration.
I wouldn't give up that time we had with him
and that he had with us. These days, Hannah is
really intense about Christmas. Her kids joke that she has
(40:46):
a tradition for every minute of the day. She lost
seven Christmases with her kids. She's not going to take
a minute of future Christmases for granted, and one of
her traditions is to return to prison. She delivers care
packages to incarcerated women all over Texas. She sends them
(41:08):
things like shampoo and deodorant. Some ladies have cried, she says,
I mean real tears over a bottle of shampoo, And
I understand because when you haven't had those things in
so long and you can't have them, to even be
able to smell something that isn't disgusting, and for just
a few minutes when you're in the shower, to feel
like a human being, that's a huge thing. Hannah has
(41:33):
a nonprofit now, Sindeo Ministries, which distributes these packages, helps
incarcerated women establish Bible study groups, and helps people on
the outside become pen pals with incarcerated women. Every week,
Hannah writes about fifty letters to incarcerated women herself. She
dreams of opening a transitional home for released women, a
(41:57):
place where they can heal as they readjust to life
on the outside. Sweet little Andrew, the boy who just
wanted to be adopted, never got a happy ending. He
was there in the pantry, fighting for survival, maybe thinking
that he'd never have anything to eat ever again, and
(42:18):
he ate the wrong thing and it killed him. Salt,
the simplest ingredient we have who could have known no.
His story has a terrible ending. But Hannah's story has
a happy ending, or as happy as a story like
hers can be. Many other women don't get Hannah's ending.
(42:42):
Like Hannah, most incarcerated women are mothers. Sixty percent of
women in prison and almost eighty percent of women in
jail are mothers. Having a mother locked up is devastating
for children. Since there aren't as many prisons for women
as there are for men, incarcerated women are often locked
(43:02):
up far away from their kids, just like Hannah, whose
kids had to travel over six hundred miles round trip
to see her once a month. And as far as
the women who get exonerated like Hannah, forty percent of
them were wrongfully convicted of harming children or other people
under their care. Surely there are women right now, women
(43:23):
without the resources and media spotlight that Hannah's casecot, who
sit in prison for a crime they never committed and
long to see their children again. Hannah knows this. She's
not blind to the fact that in the terrible universe
of unlucky women who get accused of crimes they didn't commit,
(43:44):
She's one of the lucky, unlucky ones. That's why she
works on Christmas Day, even though it's her favorite holiday
with her beloved, precious, priceless children. She's on Instagram now
and her bio is a single Bible verse Hebrews thirteen
to three. Remember those in prison as if you were
(44:07):
bound with them, And that's what Hannah does. She remembers them,
and she remembers Andrew the end. If any of you
(44:41):
are as moved, and I mean moved, that is a
word that encompasses about a thousand emotions right now, right
If any of you are as moved by Hannah's story
as I was, I'm going to put the link to
her nonprofit, Sindeo Ministries. I think I'm saying it right
in the show notes, so you can go check it out.
Obviously you can donate. They have some little like greeting
(45:04):
cards that you can buy. You can get involved, you
can become a pen pal, you know, anything like that.
So just check it out if your heart tells you
that you should. All right, thank you for listening, Thank
you for getting through that rough episode with me. Don't worry.
Next week's is also going to be really dark and
deal with serious issues. But Guys is a true crime
and history podcast. If you thought history was pleasant, then
(45:27):
you probably only grew up reading Little Women and Anne
of green Gables, which I get. Those are some of
my favorite books too as a child. But the rosy
picture they paint of small towns where everyone gets along
well Little Women is actually darker than we maybe realized.
But anyway, the rosy picture the Anne of green Gable
paints is obviously not representative of much of human history.
(45:52):
Humans are, how should I put this, not very nice
to each other a lot of the time. So meet
me here next week if you can deal with more.
It's gonna be an entirely different tone than this episode though,
and there are gonna be a lot more rich people
behaving very very badly. But I've said too much already.
I'd like to thank this week's phenomenal patrons, the Phenomenal
(46:13):
foursome of Janine B, Maria L. Toy Ak, and Bonnie S.
Thank you all so much. Everyone else. You know how
to support the podcast leaver Review, become a patron at
patreon dot com, slash criminal broads, use the promo codes
I give you, or just sing a little song sing
(46:35):
along to the theme song. That's all you Gotta do.
I'll see you here next week everyone, and until then,
I hope you're having a lovely summer. Talk soon bye.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong loving Ud like guid.
If it's a crime, then I'm guilty, guilty of loving you.
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