Jurors see photos of boy’s fatal injuries

Prosecutors showed photos of a bruised and battered four-year-old Chance Mark Jones at day two of Robert Babcock’s capital murder trial in Memphis Friday, June 1.

The pictures were presented during testimony from Texas Ranger Jamie Downs, who had gone to see the boy in the Northwest Texas Hospital emergency room in Amarillo after he was contacted by Donley County Sheriff Butch Blackburn that Tuesday morning on January 4, 2011. When he arrived at the hospital, Downs witnessed the condition the boy was in.

“It looked, from my time in the highway patrol, like someone had been in a car wreck,” Downs testified. “His injuries to his head and abdomen looked severe.”

An investigation would reveal that the boy’s injuries had come at the hands of his father, Babcock, who had only had custody of the child for a few weeks after Child Protective Services had removed him from his mother’s care.

Downs said he took 15 pictures in the moments before Jones was taken to surgery, and photos presented to the jury show a nude Jones with bruises to his chin; swollen and bruised eyes; a contusion on the forehead; bruising on the chest, abdomen, and genitals; and a distended abdomen with a partially hexagonal bruise. Jones also took notice of cuts and bruises to the boy’s hands and bruises on his legs.

Later that day, Downs would go to the Babcock residence southeast of Clarendon where he would collect shirts, SpongeBob SquarePants pajama pantss, and bed clothes from Jones’ bedroom all with small blood stains, and he took notice of a circular hole in the laminated drywall near Jones’ closet door – damage that would eventually take center stage during the trial this week.

Jones’ died the next morning, January 5, and Downs, along with fellow Texas Ranger, Jay Foster, interviewed Babcock that afternoon at the Donley County Sheriff’s Office. Babcock told the Rangers that he had seen the boy get some urine on the bathroom carpet while using the toilet the morning before. He said he had become angry about that, confronted the boy, and shoved him, causing the back of his head to strike the wall.

“He didn’t cry; he’s a tough kid,” Babcock said in the interview.

Jones sat on the floor for a bit, Babcock told the Rangers, and then got up and said he wanted to go back to bed. The father pulled a blanket over the boy, and then stepped outside to take a phone call. When he came back into the room 30 minutes later, the child appeared to be dead but was actually breathing a little.

A civil engineering professor from West Texas A&M University, Dr. Kenneth Leitch, conducted an impact analysis on a wall sample from the boy’s room and told jurors Friday that his research showed Jones would have suffered a “moderate but survivable injury” from the force with which his head had hit the wall if that was his only injury.

But that was not Jones’ only injury. Investigators say Babcock began abusing his son on Christmas Eve and continued beating him right up to January 4, when Babcock, after first thinking Chance was dead, called 911.

The only person to see Jones during that abusive time – other than Babcock and his mother, Gayle Edes – was Tammy Overstreet, who babysat the boy on December 29 and 30. Overstreet told jurors that she noticed cuts on Jones’ hands and a knot on his head and bruising under his eyes, but she said Babcock told her the boy had run into a table. When she asked Jones later what had happened, he repeated Babcock’s story. But Overstreet also said Jones complained of his back hurting would sometimes grab his side.

Overstreet testified that Jones was a wonderful, sweet boy and that he played well with her nine-year-old son. She said Jones was playing in the floor with his legs partially under a bed when his grandmother, Edes, came to pick him up.

“He scooted all the way under the bed like he didn’t want to go,” she said, “but he came out when I said it was time for him to go.”

Overstreet said she didn’t report Jones’ injuries because she had not seen any abuse happen and because Jones’ story matched his father’s, but she said she felt angry when she heard Jones had died and called the sheriff’s office.

Jurors spent most of Friday afternoon listening to an audio recording of Babcock being interviewed by Rangers Foster and Downs, during which Foster testified that Babcock seemed to have full answers for all but certain questions, which indicated to Foster that the suspect was being deceitful. And the defendant’s demeanor stood out also.

“He was not very emotional for having just lost a son,” Foster said.

In the interview, Babcock sobs openly after learning about Jones’ death, but then regains his composure. By then end of the more than two-hour interview, Babcock told investigators he was anxious to get out of jail on bond so he could get back to work – if he still had a job, he said – and even joked that he would not be fleeing to Canada because it was too cold there.

Babcock told the Rangers that he had been thrown into being a father and said that he had trouble with his son pointing with his middle finger – which the father told the boy would get him in trouble later in life and for which he would spank the boy’s hand. He said his son would lie to him, claiming to not be hungry when Babcock thought he must be. For that, Babcock said he spanked his son.

But on December 24, Babcock began losing control over these incidents, and he told Texas Rangers that he would slap Jones, lift him by his jaw to put the boy on a counter, and would sometimes punch the boy. Babcock said he kept calling family members and CPS for help with the boy but said no one helped him. When pressed by the Rangers, he admitted that he did not tell his brother or sister-in-law or CPS that he was losing control. He said his mother did take the boy for a day and “got on to me,” but he said she did not mention calling CPS because “her generation didn’t do that.”

Babcock said he did not take the boy for medical care because he was afraid Jones would be taken away from him. Rangers said they could understand Babcock, as a new father in a difficult situation, losing control once, but after that Foster said “human decency” required Babcock to get some help for the child.

During the interview, Babcock said he took full responsibility for Jones’ injuries and knew he should be punished.

“I don’t want to go to prison for the rest of his life but I deserve more than a slap on the wrist,” he said.

If convicted by the Hall County jury, Babcock is facing life in prison without the possibility of parole. The trial will resume Tuesday morning in Memphis.

By Roger Estlack, The Clarendon Enterprise, Copyright © 2012.