The woman grinning her way through a 20/20 interview in the still above is Hannah Overton, who murdered her four-year-old foster child with a massive dose of salt. She was convicted of capital murder in Texas for the crime, and is rotting in prison where she belongs. But thanks to the efforts of her church full of depraved murder apologists and the Internet based campaign of disinformation they run she may escape justice and walk free.
The “Free Hannah” movement, largely made up of people from her church it seems, want you to believe her victim was a mentally unstable child with an eating disorder that led him to overdosing on salt himself.They claim he was unmanageable, that he was injuring himself, and that ultimately he was responsible for his own death.
That victim was a four-year-old child. A four-year-old who these sanctimonious supposed followers of Christ to this day claim was a uncontrollable hellion who ate himself to death. Despite the obvious evidence to the contrary. From the Caller-Times:
Authorities issued arrest warrants for the foster parents of a 4-year-old boy who died last week after investigators say he was fed a mixture of water and Cajun seasonings by his foster mother.
Hannah Overton, 29, was charged with capital murder and her husband, 30-year-old Larry Overton, was charged with injury to a child. Officers arrested the couple late Friday afternoon a short time after District Attorney Carlos Valdez and investigators met to discuss the case. The Overtons’ bonds have been set at $250,000 each.
John Gilmore, the attorney for the couple, said they are innocent.
“It was done accidentally and I don’t see any criminal activity done here at all. They’re both going to plead not guilty,” Gilmore said.
Police said the Overtons waited nearly three hours on Oct. 2 before taking Andrew Burd to a medical clinic after he drank the mixture, vomited and drifted in and out of consciousness. He was not breathing when he arrived about 5:20 p.m. and medical staff immediately contacted police.
The boy was taken to Christus Spohn Hospital South but died the following day.
According to arrest affidavits, one of the Overtons’ biological children told investigators Hannah Overton watched Andrew on a security camera in a bedroom and used food and pepper as a form of punishment. A neighbor, who lives in the 5900 block of Parkview Drive, told investigators Hannah Overton called her about 2:52 p.m. that day and asked her to watch one of her children because Andrew was intentionally vomiting and defecating and “smearing it everywhere.”
“He is not sick, he is doing it to get to me,” Hannah told the neighbor, adding he had defecated eight times, the affidavits said.
Kids act out to “get” parents don’t you know. And we all know how easy it is for a child to vomit and defecate at will when they’re angry. But Overton supporters claim that nothing in the above report sounds like intentional murder to them. I guess giving a child a fatal dose of sodium and waiting until he’s comatose to take him to the hospital is just good parenting to the Corpus Christi Christian Fellowship members that cheerlead for this murderess.
But all their theories are verifiably false, as during the trial the child’s former foster parent testified that Andrew was not a difficult child and certainly didn’t have a eating disorder:
During the trial, Overton, a former licensed vocational nurse, admitted she gave Andrew a cup of water mixed with spices but said it wasn’t to punish or harm him.
Her attorneys also argued Andrew had behavioral problems and an eating disorder and ingested something on his own to cause the toxic sodium levels.
Sharon Hamil, Andrew’s foster mother for the 18 months before he lived with the Overtons, said she remembered a much different boy.
“When I had Andrew I didn’t have any problems,” Hamil said. “To me he was a happy, typical child.”
The Overtons were in the process of adopting Andrew, who had lived with them since June 2006.
The “Free Hannah” group’s entire argument is based on explaining away Hannah Overton’s abuse of the boy by claiming he was so difficult that the extremely bizarre things investigators discovered Hannah was doing to this defenseless child were logical in context. What sorts of bizarre things? from Parents Behaving Badly:
When the autopsy was performed the cause of death was ruled as sodioum poisoning with a secondary factor of blunt force trauma. Hospiatl workrers also noticed bruising in his body and an untreated wound on his arm that was consistent with a burn. The Overtons were arrested for Andrew’s death.
During the investigation one of the Overtons biological children told police that Hannah Overton would use pepper as a form of punishment and that Hannah would watch over Andrew with a security cam. One might assume that since she was using a security cam they she may have been locking Andrew in the room, the same room where it was alleged that Andrew was forced to sleep on a piece of plywood.
Outrageous. The Hannah Overton supporters see these same facts and in their depravity attempt to justify the monstrous behavior of Hannah. They have run a campaign that has caught the attention of the always credulous 20/20 (which you can see in three parts, I, II, III) and other media outlets that are glad to air the Hannah supporters’ smears of this little dead boy, and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars so this monster can afford high-priced lawyers to get her out, and it might work.
Lost in Lima, Ohio sums up this case this way:
Dozens of news media organizations have picked up Hannah’s story- from 20/20 to Christian News Sources. They’ve picked up Hannah’s story, her version of how a child declared “healthy and fit for adoption” one month, could end up dead less than six months later. But it’s Hannah’s story they have picked up- not Andrew’s.
No one wants to talk about Andrew’s story, about the suffering he endured, the incredible pain he would have been in the last day of his life. They don’t mention that the 23 teaspoons of Zatarain’s he would have had to have ingested was almost 100 times the recommended serving size (1/4 teaspoon), which introduced almost 24000mg of salt into his body at 240mg per serving. How, in making Hannah some sort of saint, they’ve made Andrew a child that was wild, and flawed. They’ve went as far as to claim that perhaps Andrew- suffering from his never mentioned before eating disorder- might have found a moment alone in which he on his own consumed so much salt that it caused the fatal toxic levels in his blood. The bruising on his head that was listed as a secondary cause of death? Well, that wasn’t really what it seemed. Perhaps someone rubbing his head, and the onset of his death caused it. Really, it could have been anything.
There is more to Andrew’s story, but sadly, it may be washed away by a flood of support for the woman who was responsible for providing him with care, love, and protection- the woman who didn’t fulfill that responsibility.
Indeed. Andrew Burd’s story must not be forgotten in the mad rush to free a child killer. He deserves justice, and that justice would be Hannah Overton dying in prison, caged like the animal she is. But the lawyers paid for by this insidious smear campaign against a four-year-old are appealing the case and may well get her conviction overturned. Andrew needs your support now more than ever.
Send letters, call and fax your support to:
13th Court of Appeals: Corpus Christi Site Nueces County Courthouse 901 Leopard, 10th Floor, Corpus Christi, Texas 78401 – Telephone: (361) 888-0416 Fax: (361) 888-0794
Don’t let Hannah Overton get away with murder.
Update: Now this is just weird. Hannah’s Father beat a teenage girl to death with a crowbar and her maternal Grandfather was Marshall Applewhite, the man who led the Heaven’s Gate cult. There are Internet rumors that Pastor Rod Carver, one of Hannah’s most ardent supporter, was superficially involved with one of Applewhite’s pre-Heaven’s Gates groups. The group Carver heads now is a fundamentalist sect (an “intensive” religion rejecting outside influences on the key mythology) while Heaven’s Gate was a syncretistic cult (an “expansive” religion accepting outside ideas as complimentary of the central mythology) so the groups have little in common, aside from the unconditional support of murderers.
