Posted 8:30 am Friday, May 07, 2010
911 Call Played For Jury
By KENNETH DEAN
Staff Writer
CONROE -- While prosecutors continued their case against Rusk County exorcism murder suspect Blaine Milam, a large group gathered outside on the lawn of the Montgomery County Courthouse lifting up prayers and praise to the heavens on the National Day of Prayer.
Staff Writer
CONROE -- While prosecutors continued their case against Rusk County exorcism murder suspect Blaine Milam, a large group gathered outside on the lawn of the Montgomery County Courthouse lifting up prayers and praise to the heavens on the National Day of Prayer.
Inside the courtroom Thursday, Milam sat as the jury listened to the 911 tapes made Dec. 2, 2008, when authorities have said Amora Bain Carson was beaten to death after suffering hours of torture, including being bitten and sexually assaulted.
Milam and the child's mother Jessica Carson stand accused of the murder and have told authorities the child was possessed by demons and they were performing an exorcism.
Dr. Keith Pinckard, a pathologist with the Southwest Institute of Forensic Sciences in Dallas who performed the autopsy on the child, looked incredulous when asked if a demonic possession could be responsible for Amora's badly beaten face and head.
"If someone reported this child's face was warped due to the child being possessed by a demon could that possibly cause the injuries?" lead defense attorney Rick Hagan said.
"I don't know what you are even talking about. That is not even medicine," Pinckard replied.
The question was preceded by Hagan asking if a metallic cross could cause internal injuries suffered by the child during a sexual assault.
During the playing of the 911 tape Thursday afternoon, some jurors hung their heads as others wrung their hands.
In the first call, Milam said his daughter was dead and that he and his wife found her that way.
When the 911 operator transfers the call to EMS to get help, Milam is heard sobbing on the phone.
"We were holding her for a little while," Milam said.
"You were holding her?" the dispatcher asked.
"Yes, after we found her," Milam said.
"Yes, after we found her," Milam said.
"She's not awake and she's not breathing?" the dispatcher asked.
"No," Milam said.
"I tried to give her CPR, but it didn't help," Milam said.
"I tried to give her CPR, but it didn't help," Milam said.
Next, Ms. Carson gets on the phone and begins talking to the dispatcher.
She is heard crying and sobbing while repeating in one instance, "My baby. My baby."
Ms. Carson told the dispatcher she and Milam were attempting CPR but nothing was working.
"She's been beaten -- she's beat all over her body, and her face is bloody and she's been bitten," Ms. Carson said.
"She's been bitten? Is there any animals in the house," the dispatcher asked.
"No. No animal could have done that," Ms. Carson said.
Amora's mother is then heard telling Milam to continue CPR before he goes to wave in EMS crews arriving on the scene.
The jury then listened to testimony from a Texas Attorney General investigator followed by Smith County Sheriff's Office Criminalist Noel Martin.
Martin and the Smith County Crime Scene Unit are used around East Texas to assist in processing crime scenes, and Martin not only attends multiple schools each year but also teaches classes in crime scene investigation.
Martin told jurors he believed the place of the actual first blood-letting in Amora's murder was not the master bedroom but instead was a bedroom on the other end of the home.
It was a room where he and other investigators found men's jeans, a diaper, baby wipes, a baby blanket, a mattress, a baby sleeper and other items with blood stains on them.
Martin further stated the stains found in the master bathroom were not real blood but a product that someone used to make it appear as if Amora had been killed in the master bathroom.
Earlier in the trial in a taped interview with Texas Ranger Lt. Kenny Ray, Milam said he and Ms. Carson had left Amora alone for about an hour and found her body in a hole in the master bathroom floor.
He first said the baby was breathing and he did CPR on the child, then he told Ray later he couldn't pick the child up because she was dead.
Martin testified Thursday about the procedures he used to test items for the presumption of blood and how, when the test showed a positive result, he sent the item to the laboratory for confirmation.
Martin is scheduled to be cross-examined today.
In other testimony, the jury heard from a pawn shop manager in Henderson where Milam and Ms. Carson went the day of the murder to pawn tools. They later told authorities they did this in order to hire a priest to help with the exorcism, but no priest has ever been found who talked to the couple.
In other testimony, the jury heard from a pawn shop manager in Henderson where Milam and Ms. Carson went the day of the murder to pawn tools. They later told authorities they did this in order to hire a priest to help with the exorcism, but no priest has ever been found who talked to the couple.
The jury watched the surveillance tape from the pawn shop where the pair casually did business then left the store.
In documents in the case, the suspects said Amora was acting like Chuckie, a character in a horror movie about a possessed doll.
Lisa Tanner, a Texas Attorney General prosecutor assisting Rusk County District Attorney Micheal Jimerson in the case, asked Pinckard if in fact the case, instead of being a demonic possession, was simply the most horrific child and sexual abuse he had ever seen. He replied it was.
Testimony is scheduled to resume at 8:30 a.m. today.
