John Jefferson
Justin Hopper (Brazos County Jail) and Arianna Rose Battelle (KBTX screenshot)
A 33-year-old father in Texas may spend the rest of his days behind bars for torturing his twin 6-year-old daughters to such extreme degrees that one of the little girls died as a result of her injuries. A jury in Brazos County on Thursday found Justin Hopper guilty of felony injury to a child — intentionally causing serious bodily injury in the horrific 2020 slaying of Arianna Rose Battelle, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
The same set of jurors on Friday ordered Hopper to serve the maximum sentence of life in a state penitentiary with the possibility of parole for the brutal 2020 slaying of young Arianna Rose Battelle.
Hopper’s wife, Jessica Bundren, in November 2023, was similarly convicted of the same charge and subsequently sentenced to life in prison.
Jessica Bundren (Brazos County Jail)
As previously reported by Law&Crime, police and emergency medical personnel at about 9 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020, responded to a home in the 700 block of Garden Acres after receiving a call about a child — later identified as Arianna — who was not breathing.
Upon arriving at the scene, first responders made contact with Bundren, who initially claimed that Arianna had fallen down the stairs a few hours earlier in the night and was sent to bed. However, Bundren said that when she went to check on the child a short while later, Arianna had stopped breathing.
Police found Arianna lying on the floor with a sheet draped over her body, and she was declared dead. Police also noted that Arianna had suffered numerous visible injuries, including bruises and marks that appeared to have been inflicted with a belt.
In an interview with police, Bundren eventually admitted that she had struck Arianna with a belt six times — equal to her age — as punishment for wetting the bed, a probable cause affidavit stated. Investigators later found a belt in the home matching the pattern on Arianna’s skin. It was later revealed that Hopper would also whip the children with belts as a form of punishment.
The girls would often be punished for seemingly innocuous actions, such as taking too long to eat lunch, authorities said.
Prosecutors also showed jurors evidence indicating that Hopper and Bundren regularly beat the girls with other weapons, including wood paddles that prosecutors showed to jurors during the trial. At the time of Arianna’s death, her sister had two broken fingers, which she explained to police was the result of her father beating her with the paddle.
Prosecutors showing the wood paddle Hopper and Bundren used to beat Hopper’s twin daughters (KBTX screenshot)
Hopper initially claimed that he had no knowledge of the abuse his daughters were suffering, but a forensic search of his phone revealed that he was constantly kept in the loop of Bundren’s abuse.
“He knew about the marks and abuse because he was updated, almost daily, with photos of the girls,” police wrote in the affidavit.
A medical expert previously testified that both Arianna and her sister exhibited signs of suffering extreme and prolonged torture before Arianna ultimately succumbed to her injuries and died.
“Arianna was beaten to death. She was tortured,” one medical expert testified during Bundren’s trial. “Her death was slow and painful.”
A forensic nurse who treated Arianna’s sister previously told authorities that she had treated about 400 cases of child abuse in her career and that the surviving daughter’s case was the worst she had ever seen.
Under Texas state law, Hopper and Bundren must serve 30 years of their sentences before becoming eligible for parole.
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