Suffer the Children
I was going to post a review of the Criterion Collection’s Special Edition of Fritz Lang’s M, but while dicking around on the web I was reminded of the shocking true story of a child killer that hits close to home.
Back in September, 30 year-old Hannah Overton was convicted of the capital murder of her four year-old foster son, Andrew Burd, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
This is an extremely condensed version of the Hannah Overton case: Andrew Burd died on October 3, 2006 after being forced to drink two cups full of water mixed with salt, pepper, chili powder and cajun seasoning. After Andrew threw up from drinking the mixture of water and spices, he stopped breathing. Hannah Overton did not call for an ambulance. Instead, she called her husband, Larry, who came home from work. The Overtons waited over an hour before taking their foster child to get any sort of help. By then, of course, it was too late.
The details of the case are complex; Andrew Burd was what would be considered a “special needs” child. He supposedly had ADHD, an eating disorder and some severe behavioral problems. For example, in the days before his death, Andrew slept on a bed made of plywood because he defecated in his bed and smeared it around on the sheets. Furthermore, there were some heavily disputed allegations of physical abuse made during the trial. Defense experts say that the bruises came from CPR and hypodermic needles while the child was being treated by doctors; prosecution witnesses said otherwise. There was also some head trauma involved, with the defense claiming it had occurred in an earlier traffic accident.
I’m by no means one of these people who immediately shuts off their brain and reacts on a purely emotional basis when it comes to children. Given more facts, I could probably agree that Hannah Overton’s sentence is a bit severe, but I’m not going to lose any sleep knowing that she’s going to spend the rest of her life in prison.
However, there are a bunch of people who disagree with me. I find it odd that the first group of people to fall back on the “won’t somebody think of the children?” argument are the very same people who want us to forget that a four year-old child died.
Yes, I’m talking about Christians.
I shouldn’t have to make this disclaimer, but I will: I’m not one of these atheists who think that parents who bring their children up religiously are guilty of child abuse. While I think some extreme forms of religious belief cross the line, I don’t in any way think that being a Christian automatically makes a person a bad parent.
Now that’s out of the way, I gotta say that some of the stuff I read about the Hannah Overton case sickens me to the point that I want to grab someone by their lapels and scream “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND?”
Rod Carver, the pastor at Hannah’s church is on record at (where else?) Worldnet Daily as saying:
For all the Christians out there, understand this, Hannah’s simple faith was used against her as the prosecution incessantly sought to make her out to be a religious sociopath.
Mind you, he’s talking about the prosecutors in that hotbed of Christian persecution, Corpus Christi, Texas. This is a city that has seriously discussed building a giant statue of Jesus in Corpus Christi Bay. This is a city whose name is Latin for “Body of Christ”, for fuck’s sake.
The Worldnet Daily article puts some serious spin on the facts of the case:
Andrew had an eating disorder of some kind that left him hungry all the time – even immediately after a meal. If he didn’t get more food, he would become quite agitated. She was told by someone familiar with such symptoms to add something distasteful to the child’s food once he had clearly had enough. First she tried lemon juice, but Andrew liked it. Next she tried Zatarain’s Cajun Seasoning. But he liked that, too. She believes she may have administered in food and drink one-quarter of a teaspoon to Andrew prior to his attack.
One-quarter of a teaspoon? Here’s what Dr. Alexandre Rotta had to say during the trial:
Then Dr. Rotta spelled out the sodium levels for the jury that were found in Andrew’s body.
The normal range is 135 to 145. Andrew’s was 245 at Spohn South and 255 at Driscoll. He also said one would have to eat 23 teaspoons of Zatarain’s Creole Spice Mix , or six teaspoons of salt to get a level that high.
A lot of people have a hard time believing that a mother would force a four year-old child to drink a concoction of food seasonings… not me. In fact, there’s a precedent. When a Christian mother needs parenting advice, what better person to turn to than Lisa Whelchel, better known as “Blair” on the 80s sitcom, Facts of Life? Call me optimistic, but I’d like to think that I live in a world where no one gives a fuck about what a washed-up child actress has to say about parenting, but Whelchel has other “credentials” that apparently qualify her to dispense advice on how to raise abuse children. For starters, Lisa Whelchel has spit not one, but three, children out of her vagina. If that’s not enough, Lisa is a born-again Christian. To top things off, her book, Creative Correction bears the Focus on the Family seal of approval.
Whelchel’s book is proof positive that there is nothing, no matter how offensive or ridiculously insane, that people won’t swallow if it’s published under the rubric of Christianity. Creative Correction is nothing more than a how-to on child abuse. I’ll admit that I haven’t read the book, nor do I plan on ever reading it. Take a look at the customer reviews at Amazon and look at all the 5 star reviews that complain about Whelchel’s advice being “taken out of context” (where have we heard that before?). Now take a look at some quotes and page scans from the book.
You know, if someone published this shit under the title of “Creative Correction: An Atheist’s Guide to Parenting” there would be riots in the streets. But stamp the adjective “godly” on just about any affront to decency and it’s almost beyond reproach. In fairness I should say that there are plenty of confessed Christians on the Amazon customer review pages and message boards who see the book for sadistic obscenity that it is. It would, however, be nice if Focus on the Family would admit they made a huge mistake in publishing this garbage. We know that’s never going to happen, though.
I’ll never know exactly what happened in the Overton home on October 3, 2006, but one fact stands clear: Andrew Burd is dead because of Hannah Overton’s parenting methods. It doesn’t matter why she gave the kid Cajun seasoning nor does it matter how much. What matters is that Andrew Burd died at her hands. What matters to members of her church, however, is that… well, that Hannah and Larry Overton were members of their church.
The Calvary Chapel of the Coastlands has set up a “Free Hannah” website that makes the mind boggle. Particularly nauseating is the “Fact vs. Fiction” page, which refers to Andrew’s death as “the incident”. They actually claim that Andrew wanted the Cajun seasoning. Great Fucking Christ, if I ever experience cognitive dissonance on this level I hope someone shoots me.
The “Free Hannah” movement is spreading, too. Under the category of “Persecuted Christians” (can you believe this shit?), the Reformed Covenanter blog has this to say:
Our brother Rev. John Otis (Westminster RPCUS) has requested prayer for the homeschooling mother Hannah Overton - unjustly convicted of causing her child’s death - whose has a hearing this Monday concerning whether there should be a retrial or the case should be dismissed.
The name Andrew Burd is nowhere to be found in that article. No prayer requests for Andrew’s biological family. No prayer requests for the inevitable future victims of abuse under the guise of “godly parenting”. They want Christians to pray that a child killer goes free.
Fortunately for Hannah Overton’s surviving offspring, there is no god to answer those prayers.
I’m running out of naming options for these increasingly sick people. I started out a month ago with Church Burners. Then I had to add Ebola Boys. Church Burning Ebola Boys. Now what - Church Burning Baby Butchering Ebola Boys? That’s too long. Too unwieldy. Any suggestions would be appreciated. (Source: 
January 26th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
As one review says: “In this bizaare and abuse-filled book, former actress Lisa Whelchel calls children these cruel names: ankle-biter, pests, “a handful”, raucous, haphazard, messy, pesky, hyenas, arrogant, and “filled with schemes to do wrong.” Yet on p.193 the author says name-calling isn’t allowed in her house!”
That’s “absolute morality” for you.
You will absolutely do what the fuck I say. I will do whatever the hell I like.
Hey, if it’s good enough for God…
January 26th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Those page scans are something else. In addition to all the create-a-zombie-for-Jesus stuff, I get the impression that she implements some of those punishments just to amuse herself.
There’s also some controversy about the customer comments, a la the Design of Life dust up. Supposedly critical reviews from qualified child psychologists were removed. My support for a free press goes so far as to being opposed to Amazon removing the book, but there really needs to be some sort of disclaimer like, “WARNING: If you think any of the advice in this book is useful, please get yourself sterilized. NOW.”
January 27th, 2008 at 4:11 am
While I’m not really going to address the religious idiocy, the simple fact is that there was no excuse whatsoever for what they did to the poor kid. If they cannot handle a special-needs foster child, they should tell the state or whatever agency was overseeing it and have him placed in another home. It happens all the time. You don’t just say “hey, this kid is obnoxious, let’s kill him!”
Sorry, I don’t have any sympathy for her in this case.
March 23rd, 2008 at 8:26 pm
I am very bothered by this case because of the legal facts.
If the cops think you are guilty of manslaughter, they might charge you with murder to try & get you to plead down to manslaughter.
And if you are guilty of manslaughter & go to trial for murder, the fact you had no intent to kill might seem irrelevant to a jury when facing the tragedy of a dead child.
The husband wasn’t even home when the event occurred. It appears he believed & still believes her version that she only gave him a drink with a little shake of seasoning. There was no real evidence of any abuse before this day, yet he was also charged with capital murder. I believe the sole reason was to get him to testify against her.
Just recently he finally accepted a deal & entered a plea of Nolo contendere to Criminally Negligent Homicide. Larry received a sentence of five years adjudicated probation.
How can ANYONE think they EVER had evidence of murder when they offered him such a plea!!!
I think that nutcase, Rod Carver did a great job of distracting the public from the real injustice of this case with his paranoid rantings!
March 28th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
BTW, a juror just recently released a sworn affidavit stating there was confusion concerning the criteria needed to convict.
She is likely to be granted a new trial. If so, I hope they charge her with manslaughter or felony injury to a child, because there was clearly no intent to kill. (Many details indicate this)
I do think she is guilty of a crime in Andrew’s death. I hope her ’supporters’ . especially her husband will eventually see the light & stop deluding themselves about her.
August 16th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
I have detailed, documented information on this case. Hannah Overton is innocent.
A GREAT DEAL of the information in the above posts is inaccurate. Wrong. False. No bueno.
For example, Hannah did not force Andrew to drink “two cups full of water mixed with salt, pepper, chili powder and cajun seasoning.”
That myth started with an affidavit filed by a CPS worker that said Hannah had confessed to doing that and to beating Andrew. Problem is, that information was proven false in a family court hearing. The investigator said he had no idea where that info came from. The individual who filed the affidavit no longer works for CPS. What did the local media do? They just stopped reporting some of the more sensational details and kept the parts about giving spices in water as punishment. It sells more papers that way.
Andrew died because his sodium levels were off the charts. Because of a hurried & incomplete autopsy, we may never know exactly why his sodium was so high. We do know there were several indications of diabetes, which can cause the body to retain salt. We know that the canned soup he was eating that was flavored with Zatarain’s is high in sodium. But 23 teaspoons? No. BTW, Zatarain’s keeps its ingredients a secret, so no one but them knows how much sodium it contains. Seems an unlikely murder weapon.
The highest likelihood is that Andrew’s body was not processing sodium correctly due to an undiagnosed disorder and that combined with high sodium foods or something he ate on his own tipped him over the threshold.
Hypernatremia takes about an hour and a half to fully manifest the symptoms. In an hour and a half from when Andrew first threw up and said he was cold, the Overtons had him at the nearest Urgent Care Clinic.
It took medical staff at that clinic and 2 hospitals, plus lab tests, to figure out what was wrong with Andrew. Why would Hannah or any lay person be expected to know immediately what was wrong? Andrew had been throwing temper tantrums not long before he got sick — if your 4 year old had tantrums then threw up, would you call 911? That’s what they convicted her of — not calling 911, not seeking medical attention “soon enough.”
In hindsight, it’s easy to say she should have done this or that. In the moment, with the information she had, it was not at all clear.
This is not a left vs right, Christian vs Other issue. This is about a justice system that needs reform because it rewards prosecutors for convictions, not justice. And it provides no oversight for prosecutors and many other authorities. For example, the medical examiner in this case, who pronounced the manner of death as “homicide” did so on insufficient evidence. He testified — and there was news coverage in June, 2007 — that he is overworked and performing far more autopsies than is allowed by the regulating board. Not to mention that the investigator was standing there while the autopsy was performed, with his police report in hand.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg . . . the appeal brief lists 30 issues . . .
By the way, Hannah and Larry do not subscribe to the “Creative Correction” principles.
If you want complete info and supporting documentation, contact JusticeReform@gmail.com.
September 9th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
FALSE. Have you never seen the “Nutrition Facts” panel on a food label? Or for that matter, the ingredients list? Food manufacturers are REQUIRED BY LAW to state the ingredients and nutritional content of a food. This information is available for EVERY ITEM Zatarain’s manufacture, both on the packages and at the website. Your attempt to defend this abuser would be pathetic if it weren’t so horrifying.
September 23rd, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Ah, Cactus Wren — you are right. I stand corrected. I’m looking at a package of Zatarain’s and it says it’s 11% sodium.
QUESTION: If you wanted to intentionally poison someone, would you use something that has 11% sodium?
See the article from Sunday’s San Antonio Express News on the case of Hannah Overton — note especially the part in which legal scholar Prof Bennett Gershman says “A conviction for capital murder can’t rest on such a flimsy, almost incredibly thin reed, as this one rests on. It rests on sand.”
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/Murder_by_omission_or_conviction_by_design.html
For truly horrifying stories, read about other wrongful convictions. Texas leads the country in people that have been freed on DNA evidence. There is a man scheduled to be executed in Georgia today — Troy Davis — whose guilt is HIGHLY questionable. The Pope and Jimmy Carter, along with Amnesty International are pleading for a stay of his execution. Seven of nine who testified against him have recanted.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:37 am
Cactus Wren, I have just learned from a knowledgeable, inside source that the doctors had to call the maker of Zatarain’s to find out its ingredients. Had Hannah not been entirely forthcoming about what had transpired before she brought Andrew to the hospital, they would not have even known to ask those questions and begin to figure out that sodium was the problem. Also, Zatarains has since changed their formula — it now contains less salt.
By the way, Troy Davis got a stay of execution, hours before he was to be killed. I don’t know whether he’s guilty. But I do know there are serious doubts as to his guilty. We must abolish the death penalty.
October 24th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Her story doesn’t add up. If she gave him one teaspoon of seasoning, he would still be alive. He had 23 teaspoons of hot seasoning in him when he died. Why didn’t she drive him to the hospital when he was sick? It took them 3 hours to take him to the hospital and he was pretty much dead at that point. Parents have a duty to provide medical care to their children. It looked to me from seeing pictures of the home that they treated this foster child like an animal. He was sleeping on a wood board with no bedding with a surveilance camera aimed at him. Did they collect a check for the “care” she was giving Andrew? She homeschooled all of those kids and she needed someone to pick on. She didn’t treat Andrew like she treated her biological kids. If she had trouble taking care of him, she could have given him back to his former foster mother, who seemed like a nice old lady. We may never know the extent of the abuse Andrew faced at the hands of Hannah. All we know is she either killed him or she just waited around 3 hours and let him die. She belongs in jail and foster children should be monitored to prevent this kind of fatal abuse at the hands of foster parents.
October 25th, 2008 at 12:18 am
I will predict he conviction will be tossed, and eventually, she’ll be cleared of all charges. This is another one of those cases where the DA and police went way over the top with a charge of capital murder. At best you could claim negligence, and that’s a reach. These cases almost always seem to end up with the truth being totally different than the prosecutors made it out to be.
October 25th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
I believe without any questions Hannah Overton is as guilty as sin . Unfortunalty, CPS uses bad judgment and would trust a foster child with a pyscho woman, just like andrea yates. Hannah Overton needs to pay for what she has done to an innocnet helpless child that got lost in the system. if she cared she wouldve got mental help for the child , instead she ingored and just contiued to abuse him , hopefuly they will give her no mercy behind bars! Hope she rots in hell!!! they should never allow her to be around another child as long as she lives !!!!
October 28th, 2008 at 7:40 am
I believe Hannah Overton is guilty of child abuse. She had 4 children and was expecting another. They did not have much money. They took in Andrew with the intention of adopting him. They had trouble with him from the beginning. They were receiving money every month for having a foster child. They are quilty of greed. They gave as much thought to Andrew as if he were a stray cat or dog ! They used extreme measures to discipline him and make him conform to their family’s habits. He ate too much so they probably withheld food and instead gave him large amounts of water soaked with Zatarins. Maybe if he were hungary enough he would willingly have consumed it.If they couldn’t handle andrew, the proper and moral thing to do was to admit it and return him to childrens services.
November 2nd, 2008 at 1:45 am
There is so much mis-information to deal with here.
Watch the video “A Mothers worse Nightmare” http://www.abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=6107992 or read the article “Exclusive: Mom Accused of Murder Speaks Out” http://www.abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/Story?id=6098673&page=2
They were in the process of adopting Andrew. Therefore what little money they would have gotten would have stopped. If greed was the reason for taking Andrew, then they would not have proceeded with adoption proceedures.
There is no evidence Andrew was force-fed anything. When you force feed someone, there are abrassions on the mouth &/or lips. This was not the case with Andrew. And Hannah was 5 months pregnant with a back injury. She would not have been able to wrestle him & force him to drink anything.
Andrew clearly had an eating disorder. He ate strange foods & non-foods. This in not uncommon in foster kids. Many foster & adoptive parents had posted comments on the ABC 20/20 site told there own stories. More than one said they had to hide the salt shakers because of how bad it got.
The adoption case worker cofirmed the fact that Hannah expressed concern about Andrew’s eating disorder. Because the adoption was not finalized, mental screening for PICA woudl have to had gone through the adoption agency. The case worker said she was going to get to that.
The mattress was soiled, washed & left in the back yard to dry. He spent ONE NIGHT sleeping on a sleeping bag. If sleeping ONE NIGHT in a sleeping bag is abuse, then so is camping!
And it was NOT 3 hours wait. That was one of the inaccuracies spread my the local paper, more interested in sensationalism that facts.
Andrew threw up & said he was cold. It looked like the flu or a stomach bug. No reason to call 911. When Andrew was acting like he was loosing consciousness, they picked him up & drove him to the clinic.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
I believe that Hannah Overton is guilty. If you look at ALL the facts of the case together, you get a strong picture of neglect and abuse. The poor little child. Of course, she is going to say that he had a strange food disorder, but why did she give him water with seasoning powder? That sounds absolutely awful. Why did she make him sleep on a plywood board? Why did he have bruises on his body? Why did she wait to take him to the hospital? If they had so much trouble with him, why didn’t they give him back to foster care? They had so many kids already, why did they seek one more, especially a special needs child? Look at the whole case together and you can tell, something wasn’t right and it wasn’t the kid.
I understand she doesn’t want to be locked up for life, but murder is murder. How many killers in prison say they are innocent?
November 7th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Lisa Welchel actually did not spit three children out of her v*g*na…she had c/sections.
November 8th, 2008 at 11:55 am
What would Jesus do. Texas Family Services has to change its dogmatic attitude and offer real help, rather than farming out to the private home sector of this Socialist Movement.
November 17th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Mike, I understand your questions and suspicions. There are, unfortunately, many “murderers” who are not guilty. I recently attended a press conference with 20 men who have been exonerated from death row. A former prosecutor was there to speak out against the death penalty, precisely because he has come to realize that the justice system will never, ever get it 100% right all the time.
The justice system got it really wrong in the case of Hannah Overton.
As to Hannah and Andrew, Andrew’s blood became extremely thin due to the high levels of sodium. When he was first admitted, he had only bruises on his knees, typical of an active 4 year old boy.
As time went by with his blood ultra thin, every medical intervention left a mark, virtually every touch.
The Overtons did not make him sleep on bare plywood. Andrew had soiled his mattress by pooping and smearing it around. (This is not an uncommon behavior for emotionally disturbed children.) The foam mattress was still wet outside in the yard. Larry Overton tried to put Andrew to bed in his older brother’s bed, then in with a younger brother, but Andrew insisted on being in his bed. So he put him on there with a sleeping bag. That didn’t last long, as Andrew kept throwing the sleeping bag off. Finally they put him on the floor in their room in the sleeping bag. If that’s child abuse, then all the people who take their kids camping or have sleepovers with kids on the floor are guilty.
As to why they waited to seek medical help: Andrew had been very active until he suddenly threw up. He started to help Hannah clean up the vomit, then said he was cold. He walked to the bedroom where she bundled him up in blankets. Most parents in that situation would not think their child was in mortal danger. Hannah asked Larry to come home, and when he did he checked on Andrew who was in the bed saying “cold.” They thought he was coming down with a stomach flu. As he became more ill, they tried different home remedies — a warm shower with Larry and a nebulizer because his breathing sounded congested. Once they realized he was in serious trouble, they were in the car and on the way to the emergency clinic within 5 minutes.
You are correct in that the Overtons could have sent Andrew back and disrupted the adoption at anytime. They believed they were giving him a “forever family” and he was most often very happy there. They certainly didn’t do it for the money — they would have received no money after the adoption was final.
In a perfect “Walgreens” world, all the people who adopt kids from the foster system would be wealthy, childless couples. But that’s not the world we live in. The Overtons are not atypical adoptive parents. They love children, and thought they were doing a good thing.