A tragic life
Cathy Henderson was found guilty of the murder of Brandon Baugh and, in 1995, sentenced to death by lethal injection. At her trial, the prosecution presented no evidence of motive or intent whatsoever. In such circumstances, the only way the state could secure a death penalty was to dehumanize Cathy: to paint her as a monster who would kill a baby without any apparent reason.
Cathy's no monster. She's a woman who suffered an excruciatingly deprived and abusive childhood and lived through a marriage with an alcoholic and physically violent husband. She worked hard all her life (one of her long-term employers described her as "the best secretary I ever had") and has three daughters whom she loves dearly.
Cathy's mother, Wanda, neglected her nine children and frequently whipped them. Cathy does not know who her father was. In Cathy's own words:
My mother was gone most of my life and I cannot say whether or not she was a prostitute or merely just spent the next day with a man she met the night before at a bar.
After Cathy's sister, Donetta, was removed from her mother’s care, Cathy, at the age of six, cared for her younger brothers and sisters. They lived in extreme poverty. In Cathy's words:
In K.C., Missouri, at the projects I remember I used to sit in the grass and pick through the clovers. At times I got so hungry that I searched the ground for this certain type of clover to eat. It was real sour and tasted like pickles sort of. It kept away the hungry pains and when I couldn’t knock on someone’s door and ask for a cookie which I did at times the clover was as good as it would get.
Cathy spent much of her childhood on the move as Wanda ran from abusive partners and from authorities including child services. Wanda's series of partners and boyfriends included a number who sexually abused Cathy and her siblings. A telling section from Cathy’s own writing says:
I think my mother had started seeing a man named Johnny Greathouse. I loved this man because he was always so nice to me. He would always give me change out of his pocket and I was able to stop at the corner store and buy me a bunch of penny candy on the way to school. I didn’t ever go hungry when Johnny was around. Johnny was a professional thief and even though he was a criminal he had the biggest heart for children that I’d ever been exposed to. He also wasn’t a child molester.
For the young Cathy, a man around the house who wasn’t a child molester was a cause for celebration.
Cathy started working double shifts from the age of 12 and, as an adult, worked hard to ensure her daughters got a better deal than she had had. At Westinghouse, where she was an "honest, neat, capable and efficient" employee, she worked as a crane operator, electric motor coil winder and as a secretary.
Not a saint, not a monster
Cathy would be the first to say she was no saint - she was rebellious, partied hard at times and went through a period of using drugs. But a monster? No.
And yet it was very important for the prosecution to depict her as a monster. That's one of the tried and true ways to get a death penalty: portray the defendant as inhuman, "not one of us", monstrous. We're much more comfortable with killing someone who we think is a monster.
The sheriff who arrested Cathy and the prosecutor pursued this course of dehumanization both in court and in the court of public opinion, through the media. For example, the photo on the right was used repeatedly by the media any time the case was mentioned. In fact, they still use this shot today in local newspapers. You've seen the photos of Cathy on this site, and clearly this photo is the worst possible image of her they could use. People who knew Cathy well did not recognize her from this shot when it appeared repeatedly in the newspapers at the time of the trial. It's just one of the ways we're persuaded to pre-judge someone accused of something terrible.
Waiting on death row
Cathy has been on death row for 12 years. In December, she "celebrated" her 50th birthday. Her youngest daughter, who is 17, visits Cathy regularly and is now contemplating how to organize a protest against her mother's execution. What a prospect for a teenager.
If Cathy is killed by the state, her daughters - guilty of nothing - will become the latest victims in this tragedy.
