John Jefferson
Inset left to right: David Baynard, Bobbie Jo Baynard, and Edward Vincent Baynard (Cherokee County Detention Center). Background: The crib Heather Baynard was confined to (Spartanburg County Solicitor).
Three members of the same South Carolina family will spend the next several decades behind bars for the abuse, neglect, and murder of their severely disabled sister and daughter.
Heather Baynard, 14, died at Spartanburg Medical Center on April 11, 2022.
The next day, law enforcement executed a search warrant at the Baynard residence on Camp Ferry Road in Gaffney, a small town known as the “Peach Capital of South Carolina” and the Cherokee County seat. Another search would follow.
Neither time did deputies like what they found inside.
The Baynard home was in a sad state. The smell of urine and feces was prevalent throughout, law enforcement observed.
The victim was forced to live amid it all — and more.
In warrants, Heather was referred to as “medically fragile.” Family members say she suffered from cerebral palsy.
Deputies wrote that she was kept in “deplorable conditions, specifically filled with garbage, infested with roaches, and covered in animal urine and feces, including the crib in which [she] lived.”
During a four-day-long trial that began and ended this week, 7th Circuit Solicitor Barry J. Barnette told jurors that the animal excrement broke down Heather’s skin and other tissues, according to a courtroom report by Spartanburg-based CBS affiliate WSPA.
The prosecutor, in graphic terms, also said Heather’s body showed “extreme signs of disintegration.”
One witness at the hospital where the girl died described her legs as having the appearance of raw meat, the prosecutor said.
“In the home, the dogs contributed to the deplorable conditions,” Cherokee County Sheriff Steve Mueller wrote in one court document. “A lot of feces in the home, both from the cats and the dogs; urine, which created a huge ammonia-type smell.”
In May 2022, Heather’s father and mother, David Baynard, 55, and Bobbie Jo Baynard, 44, were charged with her murder. Later, the girl’s brother, Edward Vincent Baynard, 22, was also charged with her murder — as well as crimes related to the conditions of the house.
The son, a registered respite nurse and certified personal care assistant assigned to look after his sister, was also charged with child abuse, neglect of a child or helpless person by a legal custodian, as well as three counts of ill-treatment or torture of animals.
More than 40 animals were rescued from the residence following an investigation into the girl’s death by the South Carolina Enforcement Division. One of the animals found inside was already dead. Two puppies had to be euthanized due to the state they were found in.
Every other animal inside was allegedly found “severely malnourished, dehydrated and infested with fleas and worms,” and an additional two dogs are said to have been beyond the point of saving, SLED alleged, citing a veterinarian, necessitating the use of euthanasia. The three dogs’ deaths were attributed to Edward Baynard’s alleged neglect.
“This is the worst case of neglect that we have ever seen in this county,” Mueller told WSPA in April 2022.
“It was very clear and obvious to me once I began my examination of this handicapped child that there had been severe neglect from the caregivers,” Cherokee County Coroner Dennis Fowler said at the time of Heather’s death, according to the TV station.
Due to her condition, Heather required daily medical care. Fowler told jurors it was clear her needs had been ignored for well over a year.
On Thursday, jurors found the girl’s mother, father, and brother guilty on counts of murder, unlawful conduct towards a child and infliction of great bodily injury upon a child.
The parents were sentenced to life in prison for murder, 20 years in prison for great bodily injury upon a child, and 10 years in prison for unlawful neglect of a child. The brother was sentenced to 30 years in prison for murder, 20 years in prison for great bodily injury upon a child, and 10 years in prison for unlawful neglect of a child.
In each instance, the sentences were assessed to run consecutively, or one after another.
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