By DEANNA BOYD
dboyd@star-telegram.com

Posted on Sat, Sep. 27, 2008

FORT WORTH - Child Protective Services investigators had been searching for the Fort Worth woman and the 6-week-old child that she confessed to killing this week, officials said Friday.

CPS investigators made every effort to locate Sweet Cherry Ann Halliburton, said Marissa Gonzales, a CPS spokeswoman. Halliburton, 29, is being held in Jackson County, Mo.

"We received a report in August of this year that she had had a baby and that there was some concern about her ability to care for the baby," Gonzales said.

She said CPS investigators talked to Halliburton’s landlord and neighbors and checked shelters in the area. Gonzales said the case had remained open until CPS learned of the child’s death.

"I have dozens of pages of documents of the different things that we did to try to locate her," Gonzales said. "It didn’t pan out. Now we know she was out of state."

A Fort Worth police detective interviewed Halliburton in Missouri on Thursday and Friday about the death of another child, Eiam Enchrist Halliburton, in 2007.

Lt. Paul Henderson, a police spokesman, said police suspected foul play in that case but closed their investigation after the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office ruled that the 4-month-old boy died from sudden infant death syndrome.

"Once you get a determination like that from the medical examiner, it pretty much closes that case out," Henderson said. "It ties our hands."

On Friday, Dr. Nizam Peerwani, the medical examiner, said Halliburton’s confession is prompting his office to conduct a peer review of Eiam’s case. He said his staff will meet with Fort Worth investigators to determine whether the ruling on the manner of death should be changed.

"We can change it from natural to undetermined. We can change it to a homicide depending on what circumstances are presented to us," Peerwani said.

He said however, that "the smothering death in a small infant that does not put up a fight is very, very hard and elusive."
Authorities in Aberdeen, S.D., are re-examining the Jan. 8, 2006, death of a third child, 7-month-old Krystal Halliburton. Detective Sgt. Eric Duven said Krystal’s death had officially been ruled to be undetermined, although SIDS had been suspected.

Halliburton’s arrest

Halliburton was arrested Tuesday night after telling emergency room employees in Lee’s Summit, Mo., that she had killed her baby and that the boy’s body was outside in her car.

According to a statement of probable cause, hospital officials found the boy, named Loyal Halliburton, lifeless and facedown on the front driver’s-side floorboard.

Halliburton told police that she had pulled over, put the boy in her lap and placed a cloth over his face until he stopped breathing.

"Halliburton said she got back on the highway and drove a short distance until she found Summit Ridge Hospital," the document states. "She said the reason she went to the hospital is because she did not know where the police department was located."

Investigators believe that the woman and child had briefly stayed in a run-down motel not far from Lee’s Summit and might have also been living in Halliburton’s car, said Sgt Mike Childs, Lee’s Summit police spokesman.

He said Halliburton had some apparently self-inflicted superficial cuts on her arm when she arrived at the hospital and is under suicide watch while being held in a jail in Jackson County, Mo.

Fort Worth death

Sgt. M.E. Ornelas, supervisor of the crimes against children unit, said Halliburton has made statements to the detective that contradicted what she had told Fort Worth police in 2007.

"She did make some contradictory statements and because of that, we are reopening the case," she said.

Eiam died at Cook Children’s Medical Center about 30 minutes after police went to Halliburton’s home in the 1200 block of Luella Street on a report that the child was not breathing. Halliburton told police in 2007 that after showering she found the boy facedown on the bed. However, she told Cook Children’s staff that she had been sleeping on the bed with the baby and found him not breathing when she woke.

Peerwani said an autopsy, conducted by Dr. Gary Sisler, found no evidence of soft tissue or bone injury, nor any other medical explanation for the boy’s death.

He said toxicology tests were negative.

Peerwani said that the case file did note that the mother had a "psychiatric history" and was not cooperative in the case, but that that was not enough to deem the child’s death unnatural.

"The burden is on us to prove that foul play has taken place," Peerwani said. "If I was to call a case a homicide, I must have objective evidence or, in other words, how would I take the case to court."

Gonzales said Halliburton has another child who is believed to live with the child’s father in Oklahoma.

http://www.star-telegram.com/crime_courts/story/937063.html

Emphasis added by H4K Editor