Sat. September 27, 2008; Posted: 09:36 PM

(Fort Worth Star-Telegram - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX)

When Joseph Young's 4-month-old son, Eiam Enchrist Halliburton, died in Fort Worth last year, he said authorities assured him that the cause was sudden infant death syndrome, not the actions of his ex-wife, Sweet Cherry Ann Halliburton.

"I called her and told her anything I could do for her, I would," Young, 28, of Oklahoma City, said Saturday. "We talked on the phone. We cried a lot. I convinced her to move to Oklahoma City with me. I wanted to be there for her."

Reunited, the couple, who already had a daughter, decided to try for another baby, Young said.

But Young's growing suspicions that Eiam's death involved foul play tore the couple apart again. He said he tried unsuccessfully to get authorities in Fort Worth to reopen the case and told anyone who would listen that Halliburton may have killed the child.

Now, Young is coping with the news that Halliburton confessed this week in Missouri to smothering her 6-week-old baby -- a son named Loyal who Young suspects is his -- and that authorities are looking again into Eiam's case and the 2006 death of Halliburton's 7-month-old daughter from a previous relationship in South Dakota.

"Something good has to come out of this, because we're talking about a broken system -- a system built against men and not to believe them," Young said.

Halliburton, who faces a murder charge, remains in the Jackson County, Mo., Jail.

"At least she can't hurt any other child anywhere else," Young said. "Nobody else has to wonder what happened to their children anymore."

'A baby girl'

Young and Halliburton met while enrolled in the Job Corps in Guthrie, Okla., in summer 2001. Halliburton was a religious girl who, like Young, liked to sing and jog, he recalled. On Sept. 13, 2001, they married and soon moved to Fort Worth so Halliburton could be closer to her family.

But they broke up in 2002 when Halliburton was eight months pregnant, he said.

"I noticed that there were some things going on with her that wasn't normal," Young said. "She would have mood swings. I would ask her to go to the doctor and figure this out. I loved her and wanted to help her, but it created a lot of turbulence and a lot of arguments to the point where she left."

Young said Halliburton called him from the hospital on the day she gave birth, told him, "You have a baby girl" and hung up. He said that when he called Halliburton's godmother to attempt to find Halliburton, he was told that a social worker had taken his daughter, Pastrel Enchrist, within days of her birth.

Young said that he contacted CPS and that the girl was eventually placed in his care.

"Even to this day, I do not know why my daughter was taken" from Halliburton, Young said. "I've never been told. I can only assume they had caught on to something that was not right."

Young filed for divorce in 2002. Tarrant County court records show that the divorce was granted on June 5, 2003, and that Young was given conservatorship of Pastrel. A week later, court records show, Halliburton submitted an affidavit voluntarily relinquishing her parental rights to the girl, stating she was homeless, unemployed and "without anything to take care of personal hygiene needs or myself."

Surprising news

Young said he did not hear from Halliburton again until 2005, when she called to say she was on medication, that her life had changed and that she had been thinking about him a lot.

Eager for his daughter to know her mother, Young said that Halliburton came to live with him in Oklahoma and that the couple reunited. But after an argument about money, she left again, he said.

"I was unaware she was pregnant with Eiam at the time," Young said.

He said he would learn of Eiam's birth not from Halliburton but from the Social Security Administration, which sent him a letter about benefits for his daughter and Eiam.

"When I got that letter in the mail, he must have been two or three months old," he said.

Young said that though his name was not listed on Eiam's birth certificate as the father, he believes that the boy was his and was later told so by Halliburton. He said he waited, however, to contact Halliburton to attempt to see the boy.

"My plan was to wait like six months when the baby was older and then go and seek visitation, maybe even custody," Young said. "As far as separating an infant from his mother, it had already been done before [with Pastrel]. I'd seen my wife hurt, grieve. It was something I didn't want to do just right off the bat.

"I regret that to this day that I didn't."

A questionable death

In September 2007, Young learned from a relative that Eiam was dead.

"I've never got to hold him or look in his eyes," Young said. "I never got to smell his baby smell."

Young said he contacted police and the medical examiner's office but was assured that the child had died from SIDS. In those talks he said he also learned that his ex-wife had lost a 7-month-old daughter named Krystal, presumably to SIDS, while living in South Dakota the year before.

"What [police] told me is that once a woman has a SIDS baby, she's twice as likely to have another SIDS baby," Young said. "They die, and there's no way to know why they die. They just die in their sleep, and that's all we know."

Young said he reached out to console his ex-wife. Halliburton eventually returned to Oklahoma to live with him, and the two planned to have another baby, he said.

But videotapes of Eiam began to make Young, who is white, suspect that some of Halliburton's family may have rejected the boy because he was biracial. Young said he even became convinced that an air pump he found in Halliburton's belongings was somehow used to suffocate the child and called Fort Worth police and Tarrant County medical examiner's office to share his belief.

"He did call numerous times saying that he thought Sweet Cherry had killed the baby," Sgt. M.E. Ornelas, supervisor of the crimes against children unit, confirmed Saturday. "We told him we had no reason to reopen the case, that it had been ruled natural by the medical examiner's office and our investigation was closed."

Young said his suspicions boiled over in December when he was arrested by Oklahoma City police on suspicion of domestic violence after an argument about Eiam with Halliburton. He denies assaulting Halliburton and said the charges were later dropped after Halliburton could not be located for trial. The status of that case could not be confirmed Saturday.

Young said the ordeal led Oklahoma Department of Human Services workers to remove his daughter from his home and place her in the care of his sister. He said he is taking domestic violence classes to get her back and has shared with the agency his suspicions about Eiam's death. He said he was told he was "obsessed" and advised to drop it.

An Oklahoma DHS spokesman said Friday that state law prevents the agency from discussing cases.

Tragic ending

In mid-August, Young received a call from Texas CPS workers, asking if he had seen Halliburton.

"They had caught on there was a child born to her and they were trying to find him," Young said.

Young said he told the worker that he had not known his ex-wife was pregnant again but suspected that the newborn was his. He said he was later told by Oklahoma DHS workers that he might be able to care for the boy when the child was located and upon being reunited with his daughter.

But Wednesday, one day after Young had been told by DHS workers that they were narrowing in on his ex-wife, three agency workers met him at his home to inform him the child was dead.

"They told me she had smothered the baby with clothes, '' Young said, his voice cracking. "I didn't want to tell them that I was right and they should have listened to me. They all knew it when they were looking into my eyes at that moment. They understood that I was not insane."

Young said he suspects his ex-wife killed the latest child because she knew social workers were after her.

"She knew she was being searched for and someone was going to come and take Loyal and she killed him on that basis," Young said. "She would rather kill him than to have him grow up with me and my family and (Pastrel.)"

He said he has talked to Missouri investigators about submitting DNA tests to prove that he is Loyal's father so that he can bring the boy's body to Oklahoma for burial.

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Emphasis added by H4K Editor