The Controversial Case of Mary Katherine Higdon: Murder or Self Defense?
Mary Katherine Higdon shot her live-in boyfriend and “love of her life” Steven Freeman, in their Griffin, Georgia, home. She was arrested and charged with his murder, but was later acquitted. Did Mary murder her boyfriend in a fit of rage? Or was it truly an act of self defense?
WHO WAS STEVEN FREEMAN?
Steven was born on January 1st, 1995, and grew up in Griffin, Georgia. He lived with his parents Troy and Jennifer Freeman, and his brother Blake. He had a very happy and healthy childhood, was close with his family, and was always smiling, laughing, and having a good time. He had a lot of friends, and they described him as a very laid-back and chill person, and never had a problem telling people how much he loved and cared about them. He was a kind and helpful person, and absolutely loved being outdoors. Steven had a good relationship with both of his parents, but was especially close with his mother. When his mom went back to school, Steven wrote her this note:
“I am so proud of you and admire all of the effort that I watched you put forth throughout the past 2 years. It takes an enormous amount of devotion (far more than me) to endure the stress and responsibilities that you have taken upon yourself. I look up to you every day because of what you’ve done for me & Blake throughout our lives and how if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish any of your hopes, dreams, and more!!! I love you to the moon & back.”
WHO WAS MARY KATHERINE HIGDON?
Mary was born in 1994 and also had a good and healthy life growing up with a loving family. She was described as being a happy-go-lucky child who was always running around and laughing, and she even enjoyed performing for her family by putting on these cute little plays. She was also very friendly, creative, and absolutely adored nature and animals. Mary was also raised around guns and grew up to really like them.
THEY WANTED TO BE TOGETHER FOREVER
Mary and Steven were High School sweethearts, and as soon as they met they became inseparable. They had so much in common, but the main passion they bonded over was their mutual love for the outdoors. They would often go hiking, camping, fishing, and even hunting together. After they graduated High School, the two moved into their own place together in Griffin Georgia. Steven worked as a metal worker, and Mary worked as a part-time teachers assistant in Saint George’s Episcopal School in Milner, Georgia. She also worked at a sporting goods store where she sold guns. Steven had a best friend named Thomas Skinner who worked with Mary at the store for a long time, and he explained how all the employee’s would need to learn basic gun safety rules before handling the guns alone. They had to learn how to hold them, load them, and shoot them, etc, so Mary definitely knew how to handle a gun properly. This information is important for the later details of the case. Steven also loved guns and had owned at least 10 of them, and they kept a Glock 42 in their home.
Steven also had two other very close friends, Chase Pruitt, and Andrew Mckee. The four of them were a really close group of friends and cared deeply about each other, so naturally they cared about who everyone was dating as well. When the group first met Mary, they felt a little hesitant about her, but then soon began to really like her. They liked how much she and Steven had in common and that she was super into the outdoors, but most of all, they liked how happy she made him. Steven’s family also loved Mary, and his mother Jennifer considered her to be like a daughter-in-law already.
THE 9–1–1 CALL
Skip all the way to the summer of 2018, where Mary was 24 and Steven was 23. At this time they have been dating on and off for seven years, while still living together in that same apartment in Griffin. However, on the night of August 1st, Mary Katherine made a call to 9–1–1. There’s a lot of debate about the authenticity of this 9–1–1 call. Some people think that the call sounds very fake and staged, while others believe that Mary sounds genuinely panicked and frightened. Nonetheless, it doesn’t really matter if it was staged or genuine, what matters are the words that were recorded coming out of her mouth. “I ACCIDENTALLY JUST SHOT MY BOYFRIEND.” When the police arrived at the scene, their body camera recorded the footage of Mary’s behavior inside the home. She was extremely hysterical, crying, hyperventilating, very panicked, and no one could calm her down what-so-ever. She was kneeling over his body, begging for someone to help him, and when she was told to move away from the body, she refused to move and just kept screaming over and over again, “I cannot lose him! I cannot lose him!” Once again, this video was heavily argued about, as some people believed that her behavior was fake and staged, as they felt like she was being extremely overdramatic, while other people believed that she was displaying real, raw, emotions. When police arrived at the scene, Steven was still alive and was rushed to the hospital. He was shot directly into his chest, just below his neck. Sadly, he succumbed to his injuries and passed away just a few minutes before midnight. Immediately, police did not think this was an accident, they believed it was definitely a homicide.
THE INVESTIGATION
When Mary was first questioned, she told the police that she had accidentally shot him. She claimed that she was just handing him the gun and it just went off. She claimed that she had no idea there was a bullet in the chamber, as they normally don’t leave their guns loaded inside the house. However, eventually her story changed, and she claimed to have tossed the gun to Steven, not handed it to him. Right off the bat, the police didn’t believe her story at all. One of them specifically has a lot of experience with guns, and he knew that you can’t just toss or hand over a gun and have it randomly go off. No, you need to actually pull the trigger for it to go off. She also would’ve had to directly point it at him in order for the bullet to hit him where it did. The evidence at the crime scene also pointed towards this being a homicide. They knew that some type of argument happened between them right before the shooting, as there was food thrown everywhere around the house, and they also smelled alcohol on her breath, which could also mean that there was a fight, and she was drinking out of frustration.
After her initial questioning, the police got Mary to agree to sit down and talk to them without her lawyer, and to have the whole thing recorded on tape. As the interrogation went on, they began really ripping into her. They were yelling and screaming at her, telling her that they didn’t believe her story, demanding that she tell them the truth, etc. They used this as a tactic to force the truth out of her, and it worked. Mary Katherine admitted that she shot him out of anger. Now, you’re all probably sitting there and thinking that this is great news, they have her confession on tape, the cat is in the bag, and everything goes smoothly from there, right? Wrong. After Mary was arrested and charged with murder, the police went to review the tape and all they could hear is static feedback noise. Her confession was completely inaudible. This tape was the biggest piece of evidence they had to close this case, and it was ruined, and they had no backup recordings. Now all they had was their word against hers. Thankfully, this tape wasn’t the only source of evidence that they had. They also had proof that the gun was loaded that very same night, even though she claimed that she had no idea it was loaded. There was cooking grease on the magazine, and all over the side of the gun, which makes sense considering she was cooking a london broil that same night, which was super greasy. This is also the food that was found thrown all over the floor. They also found out that the police have been called to their home 5 times within the last year, two of them confirmed to be for domestic disputes.
Police decided to question Stevens’ three closest friends, and every single one of them were adamant about Mary Katherine purposely shooting him. They described their relationship to be very toxic. She was possessive, jealous, very verbally abusive and mentally unstable. She said they were constantly fighting and yelling at each other. Whenever he would leave the house to get away from her, she would constantly blow up his phones with text messages and phone calls, so much to the point where he’d have to block her. A co-worker of his was interviewed and he stated that he was in the car with Steven on their way to a job, and she had called him 30 times before they were even to get to their first job of the day. His friends said that he was scared of Mary Katherine, and that she had pulled her gun out on him three or four times already. They said that he never reported her to the police before because at the time, he really loved her and didn’t want her to get into trouble. However, in July of 2018, Steven was finally ready to leave Mary Katherine. His plan was to move out and leave to a different town and not tell her that he was leaving, because he was so afraid of what her reaction would’ve been.
On July 30th just two days before he was shot, the two exchanged sweet text messages together which read: “Good morning beautiful! Don’t forget,” which Mary Katherine responded, “Thank you. Have a great day,” in which he responded back, “You too. Love you.” This is how their relationship was for a very long time. Just very hot and cold. The very next day, the two of them got into a huge fight, which caused him to leave the home and stay at a friend’s house. He told his friend that he was literally “running from Satan.” The next night, Mary Katherine made a london broil as an apology for the argument hey had, and she was just hoping that he would come home for dinner, eat the nice meal together, talk things out, and then move along like they’ve always done before. However, he never came home this time, which really angered Mary Katherine. When she was questioned about this by police, she just told them that she was simply irritated that she made this nice meal for him and he wasn’t coming home to enjoy it with her. Mary blew up his phone like usual, and even called up his mother to see if he was there. Jennifer told her that he was actually at his friend Thomas’ house, and Mary jumped into her car and drove over there. Thomas and Steven had already left the home and were just driving around in the truck, and Mary Katherine notices the truck and starts following them. She was driving so close to them that she was right up against his bumper, and she drove right next to their truck, rolled down the window and started screaming, “ARE YOU COMING HOME NOW?” Thomas says that Steven was just feeling kind of defeated at this point and tells her yes, he’s gonna be coming home now. Two hours later, Steven was shot. It’s speculated that Steven went home to permanently end things with her, and that’s what sparked the fight that turned deadly.
THE CONTROVERSIAL TRIAL
Mary Katherine was being charged with murder, aggravated assault, and possession of a firearm during a commission of a felony. She was offered a plea deal of life in prison with a possibility of parole if she pleads guilty. However, she didn’t take this deal and took the case to trial, where she pleaded not guilty due to having to shoot Steven in self-defense. Mary Katherine was being represented by public defenders who told the jury that she was actually afraid of Steven due to his history of abuse, and there was concrete evidence of this abuse, which all came out during her trial. The prosecutors didn’t have the confession tape anymore, so all they had to use was the evidence involving the grease of the gun, and bringing in all of Stevens’ friends as witnesses.
One thing that helped tremendously on Mary Katherine’s side, was having her take the stand to tell the jury what had happened to her throughout her relationship. This is all solely based on her words. She stated that Steven had a very controlling, manipulating, and dangerous side to his personality that no one else really knew about. She claimed that she experienced every kind of abuse imaginable with him. Verbal abuse, physical abuse, and she claims that he had raped her on two separate occasions. She claimed that he pushed her to the brink of madness due to the way he treated her. She claimed that he had to know what she was doing, where she was and who she was with at all times, along with what she was spending money on and even about what she was eating, so he was financially abusive as well. She also mentions that on one occasion, Steven had kicked her very hard, which caused her to fall off the bed and bang her head. She said she didn’t call the police because she was afraid that she would just blame herself, feeling like she had pushed him that far to where he needed to abuse her.
There was one other major piece of evidence for her side, which were all the text messages that were recovered between her and Steven, where Steven was sending her extremely vulgar and concerning messages, threatening her. These were texts from the year prior, and there were 63 pages of these texts showing Steven clearly verbally attacking her. The messages were so vulgar that the police haven’t revealed many of them to the public. One text message he sent was when he was out fishing with his friends. He sent her a picture of himself holding a dead fish and said, “this is you bitch.” He sent her another text saying, “I’m gonna fucking wreck you for wrecking me.” This was apparently related to the fact that she cheated on him one time, and he lost it. Steven sent her another text saying, “the more shit you talk, the more you’re gonna get punished when I get home.” When the court asked her what he meant by “punishing her” she claimed that he would come home, scream at her, ask her why can’t she be a better girlfriend and just do the things she tells her to do, why can’t she follow his rules, and he would physically assault her by smacking her, kicking her, punching her, just beating her in general. Mary Katherine sat on the stand in tears, completely just breaking down when telling this story, and claimed that if she ever tried to stand up for herself and protect herself, he would say things like, “don’t hit me because if you hit me then I’m just gonna hit you back two times harder.”
Mary Katherine also explained that Steven had what they called a “red room” This room was used for very aggressive sex where he would kind of abuse her in a sexual manner, doing things to her that she didn’t like, in order to inflict pain onto her. There was one text message which read, “I miss you too much. I’m coming home and you’re about to get it bad. You’re going to the red room.” This is where she tells the court that Steven had raped her on two different occasions. She explains that on one of these occasions, they had just gotten back from their vacation to Disney World, and they began having sex. However, it was becoming too aggressive and she wasn’t enjoying it, so she told him to stop. Not only did he not stop, but he said these words: “I bought you all these things at Disney World, so now you’re going to give me what I want. You’re going to give me what I deserve.” She also told the court that the night he was shot went completely differently then what police had originally thought. She explained that she was the one who broke up with him, and he was the one who freaked out and started attacking her, and that’s when she grabbed the gun to defend herself and accidentally shot him. She stated that her last words to him were, “get the fuck out of my house,” and then he lunged himself at her and that’s when she shot him. However, forensic evidence proved that he was sitting on the corner of his mattress when she shot him. He never got up, and he never even moved. He was shot while sitting, and then he fell backwards.
Of course the police, his family, and his friends don’t believe this at all, because she was the one who was going crazy and following the truck demanding him to come home. She was also the one who cooked up this amazing meal where she claimed originally was to apologize for the fight and hoped they’d just continue forward like usual. Also, his friends and family knew him to be this amazing, laidback, friendly, caring and good person. He wasn’t this aggressive monster that she was portraying him to be. His mother Jennifer said that even though she had no idea that he was talking to her the way he was, and she isn’t proud of him for speaking that way to a woman, she believes everything was said out of anger. So we have his friends giving all of these statements about how their relationship was and explaining all of these horrible things that she did to him, her behavioral issues, how she pulled a gun on him several times before… Then we also have what she’s saying, and even though Steven was not there to defend himself, we can’t deny the photo evidence given from the text messages he was sending to her. So even though they could prove that he was also a toxic person in this relationship, they can’t technically prove that he did every single thing that she was claiming he did. The trial continued to get complicated as Steven’s friends kept saying that she was the physically abusive one, and that she would hit and punch him all the time, and that they never saw him ever raise a hand to her before. However, the defense argued that his friends never actually saw any of this physical abuse occurring, and anything could’ve been happening behind closed doors that his friends never knew about. The defense also alleged that Steven had a drug and alcohol addiction which contributed to his violent outbursts.
The prosecution brought up a very important text message that Steven sent to Mary Katherine saying, “I know you’ve pointed a gun at me multiple times already, but last time scared the shit out of me.” Mary Katherine said that this was about her shooting herself, not shooting him. She never threatened to shoot him, she always threatened to shoot herself. This is why his friends and family think he stayed in the relationship as long as he did, because he was afraid that she would commit suicide if he left her. Prosecutors also argued that she had altered her story at least 10 times since the moment she was questioned.
In the end, Mary Katherine Higdon was found not guilty and was acquitted of all of her charges. The court and everyone who was a part of Steven’s life were in absolute shock when they heard the jury’s decision. They admitted that they all actually believed that she purposely shot and killed him, but there was not enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt as to WHY she shot Steven. They couldn’t prove that it was actually murder, or that it was self defense. They couldn’t prove whether all of the accusations against Steven were true or not, or if all of the accusations against Mary Katherine were true or not. Therefore, Mary Katherine walked free.
