Criminology - Steven Freeman

Episode Date: June 1, 2025

Just before 11:00 p.m. on August 1, 2018, authorities in Griffin, Georgia, were called to a home on the 800 block of Sunnybrook Drive. Twenty-three-year-old Steven Freeman had been shot, and Mary Katherine Higdon, who lived in the house with Steven, admitted that she was the one who shot him. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss Mary Katherine Higdon and the shooting death of Steven Freeman. At first, Mary Katherine claimed the shooting was accidental and the gun had gone off as she was handing it to Steven. Later, her story would evolve into one of self-defense. What would the jury believe?   You can help support the show through Patreon https://www.patreon.com/criminology For news about the podcast, old episodes and more, visit our website.  We'd love to connect with listeners on social media. We are available on the following platforms: Facebook - Facebook Discussion group - Instagram - Threads - X Formerly Twitter - Blue Sky - Youtube - Twitch - Tik Tok  Find all of our social media in one place at: https://linktr.ee/criminologypodcast   Criminology is an Emash Digital production hosted by Mike Ferguson and Mike Morford. 

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. It's fun and welcome to episode 361 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford. How you doing? I'm doing pretty good.

How you doing? I'm doing great, man. I'm loving the start of the warm up. We haven't had, you know, real warm weather yet, but it's starting. People are out, man. They're walking their dogs. my wife is talking about playing a little pickleball. There's some warm weather activities about ready to happen.

And it's that time of year where schools letting out, we were talking before we started recording that school in your area is ending. And next week, my kids are out of school. So it's that busy time of the summer where things start to happen. Yeah, all good stuff. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Dar Wilhite, Megan Clanton, and Skippity B, So that's really fun to say, but we appreciate all the new support.

Yeah, that's a fun name and it's awesome to get support from someone with that cool name and from everybody else. We appreciate it. For anyone else that would like to support the show, head on over to patreon.com slash criminology to get started. And just one note before we get started. At the end of our episodes, I usually talk about our social media and where to find us. And for years, it's been only on X or Facebook. But just a heads up, Mike and I have finally got hit. hip, we've caught up to the times.

And for all you social media fans out there, we're available right now on just about every social media platform there is. And here's a quick run through to being, in addition to being on X and Facebook, we're now on Instagram, threads, TikTok, Blue Sky, and Twitch. So just basically everywhere but Pinterest because they don't like us for some reason. And just search for criminology podcast on any of your favorite platforms.

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And we'll include links to all of our social media and our show notes. All right. So now that we have all of that out of the way, let's get into this week's episode. The case we're discussing this week may be an age-old tale. Love turned to resentment, turned to violence resulting in death. When the case made it to a courtroom, the outcome left some people's shock. We're talking about the 2018 death of a man named Stephen Freeman.

Just before 11 p.m. on August 1, 2018, authorities in Griffin, Georgia were called to a home on the 800 block of Sunnybrook Drive. There had been a shooting and helped. was urgently needed for 23-year-old Stephen Freeman, who had been hit in the neck. Mary Catherine Higden, who lived in the home with Stephen, admitted that she was the one who shot him. She told the dispatcher that the gun had gone off when she grabbed it to take it to bed. According to Mary Catherine, they slept with a gun next to their bed on Stephen's request, keeping it nearby but unloaded as a form of protection. Stephen was still alive and needed help urgently.

Mary Catherine yelled frantically trying to keep Stephen away. according to the Griffin Daily News, the dispatcher could hear Mary Catherine screaming, look at me, please Stephen, look at me. Stephen, Stephen, Stephen, look at me. In the background, the dispatcher could hear Stephen moaning. Mary Catherine was in the living room, trying to perform CPR on Stephen when officers arrived at the home. She screamed, please help me, over and over, until they made their way into the house and entered the living room. According to CBS News, Stephen was lying on a mattress in the center of the room and Mary Catherine cried out, please just tell me he's a lie. Officers confirmed for her that he did still have a detectable pulse, but time was of the

essence and he was rushed to the hospital. Mary Catherine explained to first responders that she had just been trying to hand the gun to Stephen when it accidentally went off. She had no idea there was even a round in the chamber. At the scene, officers were nervous that Mary Catherine, who was completely distraught, would reach for the weapon, a 380 caliber Glock 42, and used it to harm them or herself. So they picked it up off the floor, near Stephen, and removed it from the home. According to the TV show 48 hours, she said, I cannot lose him. I cannot lose him.

Officers could also smell alcohol on her breath. So I think we definitely have to kind of dissect this situation. someone's been shot. Now, Mary Catherine has her story, right, that she's telling to first responders to police that the gun went off and she was trying to hand it to Stephen. And she even said she didn't realize that there was around in the chamber. And that goes back to, you know, what we talked about earlier. And that was that according to her, they slept with this guy. next to their bed, but kept it unload. So there's a lot of questions right off the bat, Morph.

If you have a gun that is normally unloaded, why did it have a round in the chamber? Why was she handing the gun to Stephen? And how did it accidentally go on? I think those are all good questions. And it's a little bit odd to me because I have. have a gun for protection a lot of people do and you usually keep them in one central spot and leave it there you might take it out if you're cleaning it or you go to the gun range or something like that but to be like bringing it back and forth to put it in that drawer when they go to bed sounds

kind of odd and it's not explained why it's out of the drawer you know and depending if there's kids in the house or not you probably want to keep that gun locked up to where they can't access it but with it just being those two, they might just leave it in the drawer loose, but it still doesn't explain how it came to be in her hands and not in the drawer. Well, my other thought is keeping an unloaded gun right next to you. How much protection is that really? I mean, you could throw it at someone. You could try to hit them with it.

But an unloaded gun by itself is not much protection. And it may be a situation where they have a clip right now. so that they can pop in quick enough they feel if they need to, but, you know, you do want to have that gun ready, you know, for somebody breaking into your house or your room in the middle of the night, you want to be able to just bring that out and defend yourself. Sadly, just before midnight, Stephen was pronounced dead at Well Star-Spolting Regional Hospital. Almost immediately, investigators believe they were looking at a homicide, not an accidental shooting. When officers first arrived, at least one of them had taken note of a sign hung up on the door of the home.

According to CBS, the sign read, Beware, one shotgun-totin pistol pack in Southern Bell lives here. Investigers found food all over the floor in the kitchen. It was the London broil that Mary Catherine said she had cooked for dinner that night. There was a large bloodstain on the mattress where Stephen had ended up after being shot. Mary Catherine would later claim that she pulled the trigger because Stephen was coming at her. Investigators believe that the bloodstain on the bed proves this is false. It's all one large pool of blood in the same area, suggesting that he was actually sitting down on the bed when he was shot and that he didn't move much afterward. But why would Mary Catherine

want to kill her high school sweetheart? Stephen and Mary Catherine met while they were attending Spalding High School and had been dating since then. They had been off and on for about seven years. The two had a weekly Sunday dinner with Stephen's parents and grandparents, and their two families even celebrated Christmas together. Stephen's mother later told CBS, I loved her. We certainly considered Mary Catherine like a daughter. The couple were both into outdoorsy things like fishing and hunting. Stephen's friend Chase Pruitt thought Mary Catherine was a good match for him because she could keep up with his hobbies. He told CBS, most girls won't even get in the woods for 30 minutes, noting that if she'll go fish with you for four hours or go deer hunt with you, then that's awesome, man.

The pair had also shared an enthusiasm for firearms. Between the two of them, they easily had 10 firearms inside the home. When officers arrived, they found multiple firearms lying around in different places throughout the house, including one hunting rifle on the floor. in a pile of laundry. Mary Catherine later would tell 48 hours that she and Stephen were like two peas in a pod. She called Stephen her best friend and appreciated how she could lean on him. When Mary Catherine was 17, her mother passed away suddenly in their home. Tragically, she was the one who found her body, and after that, she needed someone to lean on. That person for her was Stephen.

But their relationship had then flowed, and they would be on and off at times. They weren't always off and on like that. The earlier part of their relationship was all on, but as time went by, they began to separate more often. Stephen's best friend, Thomas Skinner, who also worked at the sporting goods store where Mary Catherine worked part-time, told WSBTV2 Atlanta, "'At first, I really liked her I did.'

He went on to explain why their relationship went from solid and secure to off and on, saying that things between them started getting more toxic, and they began fighting and arguing. One of Stephen's former co-workers, Elijah Varela, recalled that even when Stephen was busy working, Mary Catherine would bombard his phone with calls and text. Elijah told WSBTV, he would just have his phone sitting down,

and you could just see it off the hook. Upwards of 20 calls within the time it took us to get the truck loaded. Stephen always drove, and it would just be sitting there ringing off the hook. And it's always interesting to hear friends, co-workers, people like that talk about the individuals in a case and give their point of view about the individuals respectively but also the relationship you heard people talk about how they thought these two were perfect for each other they have the same hobbies they had the same interests but then as you talked about morph you know the relationship was on in the beginning

which is very normal. But it seemed like it was on and off as time went by. And then you start to hear people talk about why that might have been and used the word toxic. He had one coworker saying that Mary Catherine would just, you know, blow his phone up with calls. And you start to get a picture of something going on here. A lot of times people that. are outside the relationship, friends, co-workers, they can see things and later recall things

that might be troubling, maybe a sign that one person is more into the relationship, or at the very least, maybe they're just not as involved in texting and responding to the text, calling people back, and is that a case of somebody that's just likes to hang out on their phone a lot and they're maybe not busy so they do a lot of texting and calling or is it a little bit of an obsession or an issue that maybe isn't healthy. So police knew from a variety of different people that the relationship between Mary Catherine and Stephen wasn't perfect by any stretch, but was it to a point where it may result in violence when she was first interviewed at the police station immediately after the shooting. Mary Catherine told detective,

that she was trying to toss the gun to Stephen when it went off, a slight deviation from trying to hand it directly to him. Finally, Mary Catherine gave a full confession. She admitted that there was no accident that night. She was angry and she acted out, which cost Stephen his life. Detectives arrested her due to her confession and she was taken into custody. She was held without bond. So after this confession, it seemed as if police had everything they would need to make a case.

Unfortunately for investigators, the audio on the tape was corrupted for some reason. In the audio, as soon as Mary Catherine begins to confess, a loud buzz starts, completely drowning out anything she or the detectives were saying. A lot of interrogation videos can be kind of hard to hear because of poor sound quality, especially if we're hearing it during a trial and not as a direct upload. but this isn't what the issue was. It was a crystal clear recording until precisely the moment that an audible recording mattered the most. It's just a sudden loud buzz with no apparent cause.

The audio was unable to be restored, which left authorities with no confession. There was only their word that Mary Catherine had confessed, and it would be up to a jury to decide who was telling the truth. Did they have a strong enough case based on hard evidence without this confession? Remember, they didn't arrest her until after she admitted that she, she had shot him because she was angry. And that may be a clue that they felt they didn't have much. According to Lieutenant Chris Wilson in the 48 hours episode, she said, I did it out of anger.

But there was no way to prove that. And now their suspect had an attorney. And obviously this to me jumps out as very strange. I get it, you know, technology fails. Right. We've all had those issues. but for the recording to be crystal clear right up until the point, which I guess you would have to say, is the most important point of the interrogation, that just seems so odd that at the point

she is basically confessing they don't have that audio. Yeah, the timing was just terrible for that to happen right at that precise moment. if it had happened early on or late, maybe during when the heart of the matter wasn't being talked about, then, you know, it might not be as bad. But, you know, heading into trying to prosecute somebody minus that confession, you know, I'm not an attorney by any stretch, but it seems like that's a night and day difference for an attorney to have to defend in court. Well, absolutely. If you have something, that you can play to the jury with the defendant's own words confessing to the crime.

Okay, that's pretty hard to defend. But when you don't have that, when you have an officer or a few officers saying, this is what the person said, that's a little different. The other thing is more of this, this is 2018. It's not 1970. You know, I get it. Like I said, technology fails, but I think, you know, how recent it is makes it even more strange to me. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered.

I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do but had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and Water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Mary Catherine rejected the offer of a plea deal from the state and decided to take her chances at trial

and pleaded not guilty to felony murder, malice murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. Her trial began in June of 2019. And to the surprise of many people, she took the stand in her own defense. Now in court, Mary Catherine's story changed. No longer was she claiming that there was an accidental shooting. Instead, she admitted that she meant to shoot Stephen,

but was now insistent that it had been self-defense. She told the jury of her relationship with Stephen, when it was good, it was good. But when it was bad, it was bad. Mary Catherine claimed that Stephen controlled pretty much every aspect of her life, her finances, her body, and how she spent her time. He also expected her to do his chores, folding his laundry, putting his shoes away, and even starting his shower for him.

But it was never enough. Her attorney, Jorge Carballhall, told jurors he was slowly, systematically breaking her down. She could never please him. Mary Catherine's sister, Sarah, recalled seeing a barren. bruise on her arm just two weeks before Stephen was killed. Mary Catherine was hesitant to talk about it, but eventually admitted what happened, saying, Stephen just grabbed me a little bit too hard. It's clear there was something happening in the home that Stephen and Mary Catherine shared. There had been five separate calls that had caused officers to respond to the home in the last year.

Most of them were due to animal issues. But one of the calls was for domestic violence. And at one point, Mary Catherine's sister had called for a welfare check. But Stephen's friends claimed that it was Mary Catherine, who was the abusive partner. His friend Thomas Skinner said he saw her hit him multiple times, including one time she hit him on the face, chest, shoulders, everything. Another friend, Andrew McRee, recalled a time that she slapped him hard. And he kind of like grabbed her and was like, don't hit me. In footage from police body cam from one of the instances where police were called,

Stephen's friend, Chase, didn't have many good things to say about Mary Catherine, telling the officer, she's just very loud, very dramatic, very always over the top, looking to go start an issue. More importantly, he told them that this wasn't surprising behavior from Mary Catherine. He said, I know that she's pulled a gun on him before, adding that it had happened three or four times at least. Thomas wasn't surprised either. He told 48 hours.

As soon as they said he was shot, I knew what happened. I knew Mary Catherine did it. So you have two different sides here, which I think is not all that uncommon in these types of cases. You have friends and family of Mary Catherine saying that Stephen was abusive. But you have some of his friends saying that, no, she was the abuser. Yeah, I think it's interesting to get these different perspectives from people that witnessed things going on between them and, you know, how they interpreted who is responsible. And it definitely seems like there's some volatility there. And anytime you're tossing things out, like there's guns being involved, you know, that's pretty frightening.

And it indicates that there was some trouble in this relationship. And maybe it's not surprising that it ended in. a death. Well, one of Stephen's friends said that she pulled a gun on him three or four times. More if I've been married almost 30 years. I can easily say my wife has never pulled a gun on me. I feel like the relationship would go downhill very quickly once one person pulls a gun on the other. Yeah, that seems like something that would be pretty hard to overcome and get back to normal in a relationship. of one of Mary Catherine's defense attorneys Michael Granums said that the claims against Mary Catherine by Stephen's friends weren't true. Stephen was lying to his friends or his friends

were lying with Michael saying nobody ever saw that. All of that came from Stephen. Mary Catherine insisted that she never pointed a gun at Stephen and that the instances his friends were referring to with her pulling a gun were when she was feeling suicidal and wanted to take her own life, not Stevens. But in one text from Stephen to Mary Catherine, he was very clear that she had indeed had a habit of pointing a gun at him and that things were starting to feel out of control. In the show 48 hours, Mary Catherine was confronted with that text, which read, I know you pointed a gun at me a bunch of times.

But the last time you did it, it scared the bleep out of me. Mary Catherine was asked, did you point a gun at him? And she responded by saying, no, no, like I didn't. Because when he was saying that, I had pulled a gun to kill myself. I was thinking about hurting myself. Mary Catherine's father, Tom Higden, said that both he and Stephen had been concerned about multiple suicide threats by her. So now we have discussion of self-harm on Mary Catherine's part.

which she's freely admitting to, and you have the other allegations of her pointing the gun at Stephen, to me it's pretty clear this is someone who shouldn't have had access to a gun and been using them. And maybe hindsight is 2020 had some steps been taken to separate her from these guns, maybe Stephen would be alive right now. Well, the one thing I will say is that the water right now is very muddy. as to, you know, who did what, what the intentions were.

But, you know, to your point more, even if they had taken Mary Catherine's guns away, it seems like Stephen had a bunch of guns too. So were they going to take his? If not, they're still both living in the same house. She probably would have had access to a gun in some former fashion. It seems like the trouble in text in the relationship just. didn't just come from Mary Catherine. The defense presented text messages between her and Steve

and going back years, and many of the messages from Stephen weren't very nice, to say the least. In one of them, he told Mary Catherine, I'm just going to fucking wreck you for wrecking me. Another text included a photo of Stephen holding up a dead fish. Stephen captioned the photo, This is you, bitch. In addition, Stephen would often accuse her of cheating on him,

coloring on one of his text, just a whore. Mary Catherine claimed in court that one of Stephen's text, where he mentions a red room, was a reference to the book or film, Fifty Shades of Grey. There was no actual red room inside their home. It was more the actions that happened inside that room that Stephen was actually talking about.

She said he would just tie me up and hit me. There are other situations that Mary Catherine described to the jury. This was something she had. had never told anyone. Until she got onto the stand, she claimed that Stephen had sexually assaulted her on two occasions. One of the times was just after getting home from a trip to Disney World that Stephen had funded. She describes him feeling entitled and not listening to her please. She told the court, he started hurting me really, really bad. I said, Stephen, please stop. And he said that since he spent so much money on me at Disney. I need to give him what he deserved. Prosecutor Kate Lennhart,

who does not believe a word of Mary Catherine's story, called it disgusting to get up there and call a dead man a rapist, noting how convenient it was that he can't defend himself. More disturbing things came to light in the courtroom having to do with rape. Just hours before she shot Stephen, Mary Catherine was apparently searching for violent pornography videos featuring gang rape and bondage. All these searches made while she was supposed to be at a babysitting job. Prosecutor Kate Lennhardt told the jury, the woman who just told you she was raped looks at gang rape porn, bondage porn, and then she asked Mary Catherine, why would you relive that trauma?

Mary Catherine had an explanation for this too. Her answer was, I looked up things for ideas because obviously he's got. on. I wanted to please him. And I want to talk about this more of, you know, this, this idea that people's lives are, are going to be kind of laid bare after an incident like this. If you have a trial, all right, they're going to try to dig up everything. Old text messages, internet search histories. And obviously, some of the things that we said about Stephen's text.

don't make him look great. I mean, you know, things that you say, pictures you send. Some of that doesn't paint him in a very good light. Now, does it mean that he deserved to be shot? No, I'm not saying that at all. And then you have this search history on the part of Mary Catherine, which seems very strange. I mean, rightfully so, the prosecutor asked her,

why would you look at that stuff if you had been, the victim, as you claim, why would you want to relive that Trump? Yeah, and I'm not judging her for whatever she was into on that front, but it doesn't seem realistic, at least in my mind, that somebody who had gone through something so terrible, such as being raped, would then later be interested in looking that stuff up and want to go through it. And as the prosecutor said, sort of relive that. that part doesn't seem believable.

But you're right that when there's cases like this, everything's pick through and laid out for display, whether it's the victim a lot of times or the suspect. We've talked about cases where things are laid out and the police say, we didn't find a clue at all. We didn't find, you know, there were no affairs, nothing, you know, there's no anything wrong. This was a really perfect person with no motive.

here, but then there's other cases where there's all kinds of things. You know, maybe they have gambling problems, drug problems, they're having affairs. So in these cases, you know, a lot of this stuff really comes to light and it doesn't always look good. And I always think about it from the point of view of the jury. It's a lot to take in. And what do you make of all of it? Some of the texts exchanged between Mary Catherine and Stephen were ambiguous. One text from Stephen read,

The more shit you talk, the more you get punished when I get home. This could certainly be a threat of physical violence, but it could also have been some kind of kinky roleplay. There's no proof that Stephen was physically abusive in any of Mary Catherine's text messages with her friends. No offers from friends to help her escape the relationship. No complaints of arguments or selfies of injuries.

Nothing. When asked about the last. lack of documentation. Stephen had abused her. Mary Catherine said, I never talked about it. Only with friends. I never texted it out. The more texts that were revealed, the more disturbing things came to light. Some of the texts from Mary Catherine backed up what Stephen and friends were saying about his relationship. One from April 21st, 2018, read, M.K. is running around, screaming at the top of her lungs outside. It was immediately followed up by, and now she's trying to shoot me and herself.

Prosecutor Kate Lennard asked the jury, when your abuser is out of the house and you're safe, are you as a victim of domestic violence going to track down your abuser where he is with his friends? Are you going to go and track him down? The most glaring piece of evidence in the case was the gun itself and the magazine inside of it. There were greasy smudges on both the slide of the gun

and on the magazine. It was apparently cooking oil. This proved to investigators that Mary Catherine had intentionally loaded the gun that night. It could have been while she was cooking or it could have been after they had an argument that ended with food all over the floor. Either way, this meant that her whole story about it being accidental and about not knowing there were any bullets in the gun. It could not be possible.

Did she just forget that she herself loaded it shortly before pulling the trigger? However, one of Mary Catherine's defense attorneys, Jorge Carabahall, refuted this theory. He didn't believe that the grease left on the gun was from cooking oil at all. Instead, saying, I didn't see that level of grease or anything on that gun, other than maybe what you would have on your fingers. It was revealed that Mary Catherine and Stephen had been fighting since the day before he was killed. Or maybe Stephen ignoring her would be more accurate. and Mary Catherine had been stewing all day. On July 31st, the day before his death,

Stephen went to a friend's house to spend the night and to get away from Mary Catherine, and he stopped responding to her text and refused to answer any of her many calls. The next day, she called him multiple times. She called him at 910, 912, 917, 923, 929, 938, and so on. There were several more attempts.

On the evening of August 1st, the day he died, Mary Catherine texted Stephen, informing him that she had cooked him a nice meal and wanted to know when he would be home. And more of you and I talk a lot about the number of texts that people send in a day and an hour. And now we're talking about phone calls. It's very obvious that for whatever reason, Stephen did not want to talk to her. but she kept calling and calling. I mean, just the times that you rattled off and you didn't even include all of them, you know, within an hour, trying to call someone every few minutes. It just seems so excessive.

Now, maybe there are people that would say, well, you know, I might do that. Maybe it's just me, right? To me, that seems excessive. To send 150 text messages in a day to someone. to me seems excessive, but to others, maybe it doesn't. Maybe I'm getting old and I don't use technology the way that some people do. Yeah, I think I agree with you there. I'm in the same vote.

And, you know, it depends too, because like right now we're recording. I have my phone on silent. It's sitting away from me. I can't see it. So if somebody is trying to get hold of me for something, I'm not responding. And that's just because I'm busy. But there could be other reasons why he wasn't responding. Maybe he didn't want to talk to her.

But I think this goes, is starting to show the level of, you know, obsession. She's not trying to get a hold of him because the house burned down and it's emergency. You know, she, it seems like she just wants to know about this dinner and was, you know, really intent on getting a hold of them. Well, it's all about context, right? These cases and the things that are revealed that happened on the day or in the weeks leading up, the text messages, the phone calls, the statements by friends. You know, there's context to all of it.

Now, Mary Catherine insists she wasn't angry when she was calling him at all, but that it was just irritating that she didn't know if she needed to make dinner for herself or whether he was going to be there to join her for the meal. She ended up calling Stephen's mother, Jennifer, who told her that he was at his friend's house. his mom testified in court saying, of course I didn't realize that the night was going to escalate as it did. I have guilt to this day because I responded,

I didn't want to lie to her. When Mary Catherine finally found Stephen that night, he was with his friend Thomas. Her behavior here is kind of unbelievable, but it's apparently what Stephen was used to. Thomas still remembers how shocking it was, saying she comes out of nowhere riding her tail. like right on her bumper.

And she pulled up beside my truck, rolled her window down, and she started yelling at him. She was like screaming at the top of her lungs. Stephen told her he would come home and asked her to calm down. This was less than two hours before he was shot. Taking the circumstances of the day and the cooking well on the gun, Griffin County prosecutor Kate Lindhardt believes what happened is very clear, telling the jury she took the magazine out of the gun, with the hands that had been preparing this food and was angry that he didn't want to eat it,

she put bullets in that magazine. She put the magazine in the gun. She pulled the top of that gun back. She chambered around into it and she exerted five and three quarters pounds pressure on that trigger. And she pulled the trigger because she was angry. Griffin Police Department officer Todd Howard testified that the house was in disarray. like someone was packing up to leave. It turns out that it was Stephen.

He was planning to move to Helen, Georgia. About three hours north of Griffin, he was going to leave on August 2nd, the day after he ended up being killed, and he was planning to do it without telling Mary Catherine. But he never got the chance. Stephen had tried to leave Mary Catherine multiple times. But according to Thomas,

every time he did, Mary Catherine texted Stephen something along, along the lines of wanting to hurt herself, and if Stephen didn't move back in, she would kill herself. Thomas recalled that Stephen described Mary Catherine as always angry and had once called her Satan. We've discussed this dynamic in multiple episodes now. Often, a woman stays in relationship where domestic violence is ongoing because she's afraid to leave, and when she's finally had enough and decides to leave, it's the most dangerous time for her when she's most at risk. Well, in this situation, it seems like the rolls were reversed, and Stephen was in danger after he made up his mind to get away.

Mary Catherine claimed that she was actually the one who was breaking up with Stephen because she just couldn't take it anymore. According to her, when Stephen, her say it was over, he got angry and flipped out, throwing things and pushing her. On the stand, she said, he just threw everything that I made in my face, and I just picked up the gun just to scare him, just to get him. just to get him out of the house because I was scared. Mary Catherine insists she wasn't initially lying to please to cover anything up, explaining, I guess I was just scared. In court, Mary Catherine's attorney Michael Grannum's likened the situation to waiting for a jack in the box to pop up. You know it's coming.

It's inevitable. That's just what happens when you wind the crank. But when? And even if you know it's coming, it doesn't keep you from flinching when it finally. does happen. This is why she pulled the trigger that night. It wasn't unusual for him to lunge at her, and she knew what would happen next. She just reacted, like you do when a jack in the box predictably pops up and startles you. Mary Catherine claimed that she hadn't been pointing the gun at Stephen. She was just holding it out in front of her because she was afraid. She said,

I don't even see how, like, it even got him. I wasn't even like really pointing it. directly at him in the first place. She said Stephen lunged at her. According to Mary Catherine, the exact moment the gun went off was a blur. She said, the next thing I remember then is him standing there saying, call 911.

Mary Catherine told the court, none of it had been intentional, and she hadn't meant to kill him. She said, all I know is what's in my heart, and I know what happened that night. I loved Stephen, and I would never, ever do anything to hurt him.

According to prosecutor Kate Lennhard, Stephen was looking away from Mary Catherine when he was shot. She envisions the more likely scenario being Mary Catherine yelling at Stephen to look at her and shooting him when he didn't, not yelling at him to get away from her and shooting him when he lunged at her. While Mary Catherine's last job had been as a preschool teaching assistant at St. George's Episcopal School in Milner by the time of Stephen's death, She was no longer working there. More interestingly, she had also worked part-time at a sporting goods store, selling guns. She should have known how to safely handle one and not point it anywhere close to the direction of someone. The first rule of gun safety is to always treat every gun as if it is loaded.

Thomas Skinner, who was Stephen's friend, as well as Mary Catherine's co-worker at the sporting goods store, told 48 hours. Before you're able to sell a gun, you're trained and taught how to handle it, including things like how to hand somebody a gun, you would also likely be taught never to throw a firearm. Stephen's friend Andrew McRee recalled that Mary Catherine would brag about how she knew more about guns than Stephen or any of his friends did when asked whether he believed this could have been an accident. Thomas replied, no. No, not for a second. I know she knows how to handle a gun very well. And more of I'm going back to the jury and I'm kind of envisioning myself on this jury absorbing all of these different things, right, that come out during the trial. Part of that is you know, Mary Catherine's experience with guns. But I think a big thing for me was, the prosecutor kind of talking about how Stephen was looking away from Mary Catherine when he was shot.

And we don't have all the details and the science behind that. But if it was true, you know, how much does that play into the self-defense angle? And he, you know, he's not lunging at her if he has his back to her or he's looking away. from her. It's kind of hard to picture someone attacking somebody while they're not even looking at them. So, you know, that's pretty strong in itself, that one clue, but is that enough to sway the jury? Now, we know the theory by the prosecution is that Stephen was essentially sitting on the bed looking away when he was shot by Mary Catherine. I don't know if they were able to fully prove that. They have the science to back that up, but that was their theory based

on the wounds to Stephen and the blood on the bed. And it definitely conflicts with Mary Catherine's story of him charging at her and her shooting him for fear he was going to harm her. Yeah, I think that's a good point. But again, right, as a juror, you got to soak all of this the theories on both sides, the evidence on both sides. Can they prove their theories? And unfortunately, as it happens in many cases, when you have two people involved in an incident and one of them dies,

there's only one person left to tell their side of the story. On July 26, 2019, after four hours of deliberation, A jury of five men and seven women found Mary Catherine Higden not guilty on all charges. She immediately hugged her attorneys as she burst into tears of relief, probably mixed with some disbelief too. Mary Catherine had gambled by taking the stand, and it had paid off. Stevens family and friends were stunned and saddened by the verdict. Ben Coker, who was the Spalding County District Attorney at the time, told the Griffin Daily News, I'm astonished that the jury has made this decision.

While I'm disappointed by the outcome, as an officer of the court, I must respect the verdict. Prosecutor Kate Lennhart would later tell 48 hours that upon hearing the not guilty verdict, she says, I'm just sitting there and I'm thinking I failed this family. As she left the court, Mary Catherine said things like, God did this, and this is all God. The jurors that spoke out after the trial explained what, a difficult job they found coming to a verdict had been. One juror named Chris told 48 hours, I knew pretty much no matter what you vote.

One family gets hurt. The jurors also noted how important the ruined audio on the confession tape was. One juror named Victor asked the question to 48 hours. She's still in custody after it was realized the confession audio was damaged. Why are you not going to bring her back in to, at least speak with her again. Chris, the juror, called the evidence they did present at trial tainted from the way the cops handled the investigation. This didn't leave them with much to go off of. He said, I didn't have any proof that Mary Catherine had done much of anything except for lying.

And the jurors didn't seem to think the lies were as suspicious as the prosecution did. Chris admitted to 48 hours, if I was being arrested for potentially murdering somebody, I probably would get scared enough that I would just come up with whatever story I could. The other juror who spoke out Victor also didn't give much weight to Mary Catherine's lies, saying that in toxic relationships, there are mountains and mountains and mountains of lives. It's a bit surprising why the jury didn't come back with a split verdict leading to a mistrial. The immediate vote was 10 guilty, two not guilty. How did two jurors sway 10 others into a not guilty verdict, leaving no judge?

chance for a second prosecution due to the double jeopardy laws. And due to those double jeopardy laws, Mary Catherine can never be tried again for Stephen's murder. Even if she admitted now or in the future that she murdered him, she can never be punished. Stephen's mother, Jennifer, has started to advocate for domestic violence prevention organizations. She now participates in 5K walks for the promised place in Thomaston, Georgia. according to their website, the promised place helps to prevent domestic violence through awareness programs and educational training and provides safe environments for the victims and their family and helps with legal advocacy, emergency shelters, and transitional housing.

Discussing Mary Catherine's role and not guilty verdict, Stephen's mom, Jennifer, said to 48 hours, she will never give me an answer that's going to be good enough for me because this should have never happened. Stephen's uncle, Judge Josh Thacker, told WSBTV, we've lost two people in this, we've lost Stephen, but obviously our relationship will be changed with Mary Catherine, and my heart goes out to the Higden family because they are doing the same thing. Mary Catherine Higden has moved out of Georgia and is trying to start over. It's not clear if the death of Stephen Freeman at her hands will weigh on her or affect her life moving forward.

And for me, it's tough to think that, it's not going to affect her life moving forward. Because no matter how it went down, you did take someone's life. Unless you're a, you know, a sociopath, I don't know how that doesn't weigh on you. But as we wrap this one up more, if I really want to talk about this verdicts because I think, you know, it's controversial in some people's eyes. I mean, you said it. the immediate vote was 10 guilty to not guilty.

So somehow as the deliberation went on, 10 people changed their minds. So there's that question of how exactly that happened. Now, you and I have done a ton of cases. And we have other podcasts where we've done many other cases. We've analyzed a lot of different trials. And I never like to second guess the jury. I never like to say they got it wrong because, you know, I wasn't there. I didn't see all the evidence presented.

I didn't hear all the testimony. But what I will say is from the facts that we were able to gather. I think as a juror, it would be hard for me to vote not guilty. I feel like I can say that. Yeah, I'm right there with you. I think I would have been one of those 10 that was voting for guilty. And I don't know that my mind could have been changed. Again, we don't know every detail that the jury knew and had heard.

But we do know that they at least knew about the confession she had supposedly made and the technical issues with it. So they even have that, that she allegedly had confessed to it. And that still will. isn't enough for them. So, and again, I wouldn't even want to be in this jury's shoes. I've never been on a jury. But in a case like this, this just, this just seems like a monumental case. And as that one juror put it, he said, I know whatever we decide, we're going to really hurt

one family badly. Yeah. Yeah, there's, there's no doubt about it. You know, in a murder trial such as this, I mean, the jury's job, is so tough. And we're just human, right? Everybody has their own thoughts and, and viewpoints.

I can imagine some people not wanting to convict somebody of murder unless they were absolutely sure. Well, in how many trials are you absolutely sure? Because without that confession, I don't know that there are absolutes here. So what you're looking at is less likely an absolute, more like what's more likely than not. And that may not be good enough for a lot of people.

You know, for me, I look at, was Stephen looking away from her when he was shot? Was he really on the bed? As some of the science seems, to indicate, again, to me, that doesn't seem like somebody who is coming after Mary Catherine. And at the end of the day, I can't help but think about that glitch in the audio. Could have been the difference maker here. You know, had the jury had her clearly on audio saying that she had done this and it was

intentional, I don't know how they would have come to a not guilty verdict. So I think that is the case hinged on this. The outcome hinged a lot on this one little glitch. And I don't know if they've ever figured out what caused that. Hopefully they would keep that from ever happening again because it's a difference between, you know, a family maybe in their minds getting justice or not getting justice. And it's the difference between a person maybe going to prison for the rest of their life. or not going to prison. So it's frightening that a little glitch like that could have an impact on all that.

Yeah. Assuming she said that, which was the claim, I think had it been on tape and presented to the jury, this would have been a totally different outcome. Because I think then as a juror, some of those doubts go away. because you're hearing the person in their own words say, I did this. But without that, I could see where some jurors are thinking, I don't feel comfortable sending someone to prison for the rest of their lives,

let's say, based on what we have. Now, what I still don't understand is how 10 people's minds got changed during deliberation. To be a fly on the wall. during that process would be absolutely fascinating. At the end of the day here, I don't think we really truly know what happened that night when Stephen was shot. And I don't think anyone really does besides Mary Catherine. And that's kind of frustrating.

Yeah, it is. It is very frustrating. But that is often the case. when you have two people involved and one person ends up dead. But that is it for our episode on Stephen Freeman. If you love the show, but haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, leave us a rating, leave a review. Also, keep telling your friends, word of mouth about the criminology podcast really helps us out.

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We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.