The neglect case against Erin Murray collapsed Monday after Lake County Deputy Prosecutor Jacquelyn Altpeter wrote they didn’t have the evidence to prove it, court filings show.
Murray, 37, formerly of Merrillville, was the last defendant in the case – charged with Level 1 neglect of a dependent resulting in death and Level 5 felony neglect of a dependent resulting in bodily injury. Her trial for next Monday was canceled.
Her fiancé Robert Hughes was acquitted in May.
A chain of events snowballed into charges against her and Hughes.
Authorities allege Murray and Hughes left their 4-month-old premature son Burnette in her 11-year-old son’s care in August 2020.
If the kid watched the baby overnight, Murray let him play X-Box, according to charging documents. That night, when Burnette cried, the older boy took him from the baby swing. He tried to feed him a bottle before he put the baby on his chest on the sofa.
At some point, the boy fell asleep and rolled onto the baby — smothering him.
Hughes, enraged, beat the boy, 11, weeks later in the garage and recorded the audio on his cell phone, prosecutors argued. He called an Indiana Department of Child Services caseworker on Sept. 10, 2020, to play multiple audio clips, featuring the boy’s “confession.”
At Hughes’ trial, however, the case’s detective said he was not able to obtain it and didn’t personally hear the recording.
Merrillville Police responded at 8:35 p.m. on Aug. 9, 2020, to Hughes’ home on the 6100 block of Pennsylvania Street. The baby was lying on the floor, court records show.
He was already cold to the touch. Paramedics told Hughes and Murray there was nothing they could do. The child was born at 28 weeks and got home about a month earlier from the NICU.
Murray told Indiana Department of Child Services investigator India Davies that when she woke up to check the baby in a swing, the older boy, 11, was “panicking,” documents show.
The boy was “frightened” of Hughes, who he said was Murray’s fiancé, court documents show. Since the baby’s death, Hughes “blamed” and was “always watching” him. It was very hard for the boy to be at home, he told investigators. He said the couple made him sleep in a closet in the past.
He told investigators Hughes and Murray left him to watch the baby before. During times he couldn’t get the baby to stop crying, the couple would scream at him and tell him to make a bottle. They never came upstairs to check on the baby, he alleged.
The older boy told Makarenko on Sept. 10, 2020, that Hughes and Murray questioned him in the garage about two weeks earlier. The boy said that he had smothered the baby’s mouth with his hand “one time” for a “few seconds” to try to get him to stop crying. The baby was still alive and breathing, he said, according to court documents. At Hughes’ trial, the boy testified that happened the night before the baby died.
His sister told investigators the boy volunteered some nights to play video games, but it quickly became his responsibility. Caring for the baby shouldn’t have been on them, she said.
Hughes called DCS on Sept. 10, 2020, with several tape recordings. The last one was “over an hour” where a case worker heard “smacking,” “punching,” “crying,” and “screaming.”
The boy later said Hughes dragged him by the hair to the garage for two hours where he beat him in the face and abdomen. “Rob” then threw him across the garage. The boy testified Tuesday afternoon that he hit a ladder and the stairs, according to lawyers.
Court documents state a doctor later diagnosed the boy with a concussion and noticed a two-week-old bruise on his right thigh. When a DCS caseworker served the custody papers to remove the older boy from the home, Murray and the boy got into a screaming match. Murray said Hughes didn’t mean to hurt the boy and she tried to step in.
In the garage, Hughes demanded the boy admit he did it — at one point going to get a kitchen knife, telling the boy he could kill him if he wanted, court documents state.
Murray only intervened at the end.
“Leave him alone, he’s just a kid,” she said.
mcolias@post-trib.com
