Mary Katherine Higdon – Murder or Self-Defense?
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Hey guys, and welcome back to my channel. So today I have another really controversial case for you guys. One that I think you guys might disagree on. Maybe I think most of you are going to go one way on this one for sure. Today we're going to be talking about Mary Katherine Higdon and Steven Freeman. So first let's talk about Steven. He was born on January 1st, 1995 and he grew up in the small town of Griffin, Georgia.

He grew up with both of his parents around, Jennifer and Troy, and his brother Blake. And he definitely had a happy childhood, you know, loving family around him, a large circle of friends. According to people that knew him, everybody liked Stephen. And one thing that a lot of people said about him is that he was constantly smiling.

and also would not hesitate to say, I love you a lot, which I thought was really cool. And from a young age, Steven loved the outdoors. He always wanted to be outside, you know, fishing, hunting, camping, and Steven was a very chill dude. His family actually said that he would outlive all of them probably because he didn't have a lot of stress that he carried. You know, they say stress can kill you, but he was very laid back and seemed to never stress out about anything.

Growing up, Steven had a close relationship with both of his parents, but especially with his mom, Jennifer. And I thought this was really sweet. At one point, Jennifer went back to school later in her life and Steven wrote her this adorable note when she did. It says, to the most wonderful woman in the world, and know that if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish all of your hopes and dreams and more. I love you to the moon and back, Steven. And according to his mom, this was their special sign off with each other. They would say, I love you to the moon and

back. So they had a very, very close bonded relationship. Then we have the other person in this story, Mary Catherine Higdon. She was born in 1994. Her family said growing up, she was a very happy-go-lucky, playful, fun kid who was constantly performing for them, putting on little plays. She was always entertaining everybody in the

room. She's also very creative. She loved animals. One time she walked a frog around her neighborhood that she found with a shoelace. And as you may have guessed, Mary Catherine and Steven were dating. In fact, they were high school sweethearts. So they have been together for a while. As soon as they met, they had so much in common that they quickly became inseparable.

One passion that they both share is that they love the outdoors. They love to go camping, fishing, hunting together. Mary is a pretty rugged type of girl. She's, you know, into guns. She likes to hunt. She likes to get dirty. And he really loved that about her.

He felt like they weren't just in a relationship that they had a strong friendship as well. As soon as they graduated high school, they moved into their own place in Griffin, Georgia. And Steven worked as a metal worker at drain, right gutters and roofing. And Mary Catherine worked as a part-time teacher's assistant in St. George's Episcopal school in Milner, Georgia. And she also worked at a local sporting goods store selling guns. I'm sure some of you already know where this story will be heading.

So one of Stephen's best friends, Thomas Skinner, actually worked with her at the store for a while. And he said that before selling guns, all employees there were expected, you know, to know how to handle them, to make sure they didn't accidentally shoot them off in the store, make sure that they could demonstrate them correctly to the customers. They learned to load and to shoot and, you know, basic gun safety rules as well. So Mary and Catherine definitely knew how

you know, to handle a gun, how to load a gun and how to shoot a gun. Stephen was also a gun enthusiast and owned at least 10 guns. In fact, her and Stephen kept a Glock 42 in their home and Mary Catherine felt like she was actually even more into guns than Stephen was and that she knew more about them. And she would even brag about this to his friends. So Stephen spent a lot of time with his really close friends at the

time, chase Pruitt, Thomas Skinner and Andrew McKee. They were really, really close friends and they really cared, you know, who each other was dating. So of course, when they met Mary Catherine, they were a bit hesitant, but as soon as they got to know her, they actually really liked her. And they thought that she was perfect for him. They loved how outdoorsy she was and how happy she was making him.

His friends thought it was really cool, you know, that she did so many things that he did as well. And they just felt like they were a pretty good match at first. Mary Catherine also got along with Stephen's family. His mother, Jennifer really loved Mary Catherine and said that she considered her to be

like a daughter. Mary Catherine would have dinner with them every Sunday night at Jennifer's house with Stephen's grandparents and extended family there as well. So she was really part of their family. So by summer of 2018, Mary Catherine was 24, Stephen was 23, and they had been dating on and off for seven years at this point and still lived together in Griffin. But then on August 1st, 2018,

A call came into 911 at 10:42 PM about a shooting victim at a house on Sunnybrook drive. I'll try to put some of the call in, but I think it's so important to the case and to understanding the case to hear these calls. So I'll try to put in a little bit. Yes, ma'am. I actually, my son was and I'm so sorry. I just tell my boyfriend in the night. I'm just going to

So clearly this woman is hysterical. There's been a lot of debate back and forth on this 911 call. Some people say the call sounds like she's genuinely very scared. Some people say the call sounds staged, but one thing's for sure. She said the words, I accidentally just shot my boyfriend.

And that's really important. She had shot Stephen Freeman right in his chest, just below the neck with her Glock 42. So when officers arrived to the scene, Mary Catherine was absolutely hysterical. According to people there, she could not be calmed down. No one there could get her to calm down. Stephen was lying on a mattress and she was actually like kneeling on the mattress next to him, just begging over and over for, you know, him to live through this, for him to survive.

saying, please help me, please help me over and over again. As she was led away from the room, she kept yelling, I can't lose him. I can't lose him. And you know, of course this is debated. It's up to you what you think. But some people say this is very staged. It's very overdramatic. Some people say this is very genuine emotion that she's displaying. So how did this happen? According to Mary, Mary Catherine says the gun just went off as she was hammering

handing it over to Steven. She said that they keep it next to their bed for protection. She just lifted it up to hand it to him and it accidentally went off. And she said she didn't even know that it was loaded when she picked it up. Apparently their guns are typically not loaded in their house. She said she didn't understand how the bullet could have possibly hit him, that she wasn't even really pointing it at him. And when they got to the scene, Steven actually did still have a pulse. He was

rushed to the hospital but unfortunately passed away a couple minutes before midnight when he got there. And right off the bat, officers on the scene said that they thought this was a homicide, not an accident. So of course they took Mary Katherine in for interrogation.

And when they started talking to her, they started asking, you know, how was your relationship? How were things going? How did this all happen? And she starts explaining that she loved Steven. He was the love of her life and she would never, never hurt him on purpose. And she told them that the shooting was an accident, just like what she said at the crime scene. But then she changed her story. She said that instead of just handing him the gun, that she was tossing him the gun when it went off. But the detectives right away were not buying

it. One of them specifically had enough experience with guns to know that it doesn't really work that way. You know, when you throw a gun, it doesn't just go off. You know, someone needs to pull the trigger. There needs to be intention, especially to hit someone right there. And the evidence at the crime scene definitely makes it seem like this was not an accident, that something was going down at that house before the gun went off. First of all, there was food all over. Like

all over, not just on the counters, like thrown. They had had some type of fight where food was thrown all around their kitchen. Not only that, they also smelled alcohol on her breath, which could mean there was an argument as well. So like I said, right away, they really don't believe her story, but they get her to agree to sit down and talk to them without a lawyer and to have it all on tape.

And as interrogation went on, they kept pushing her to tell the truth. They just did not believe the story that she was just tossing him the gun, that it was all an accident. They believed a fight happened, you know, something went wrong. And at one point the detectives really start yelling at her and they said, this is an interrogation technique, but they started screaming at her to stop lying, to tell the truth. And this tactic actually worked.

Mary Catherine admitted that she did it and that she did it out of anger and it was all on tape. So you think at that point case closed, why are we even talking about this case today? Well, because there was a major technical difficulty.

After they had already arrested her on this confession and charged her with murder, they go to review the tape and guess what? It is absolutely fucked. Pretty much all you can hear is feedback noise and they had no backup audio. They didn't have like a little recorder in their pockets, nothing. I can't think of anything.

Even my podcast has backup audio in case the first file gets corrupted or something. All they have now is their word. The two detectives that were in the room versus Mary Catherine's word. After all those hours and getting her to confess, the interrogation was useless. Now, this was definitely the best evidence that they had, but it wasn't the only evidence that they had.

There was evidence that the gun had been loaded that night. Mary Catherine had cooked a London broil for dinner, which is very greasy. This was what officers found thrown on the floor. But they found that cooking grease on the magazine and the side of the gun showing that someone had loaded it after cooking dinner.

It also came out that police had been to their residence five times in the past year. And two of those times were definitely for domestic disputes. And one of them apparently was an issue related to animals, which is super weird. I don't exactly know what that was, but the more details that they started to uncover, the more they leaned towards homicide.

So they started interviewing people closest to Mary Catherine and Steven, including Steven's friends. And all of Steven's friends instantly said that they thought that Mary Catherine did it. According to them, she was possessive and very unstable.

They said that she was very verbally abusive to Steven, that she was constantly yelling at him, that they were constantly yelling at each other. And whenever he would leave the house to try to get away from her, get a break from her, if they were fighting, she would call him, text him over and over again until he would have to block her.

One time he was at work, he was in the car with a coworker and they were driving to a job together. And she called him, according to the coworker, over 30 times while they were in the car. - Some mornings, several different occasions, he would get to work. And before we even got to the first job, he had 30 missed calls from her. Like she was just blowing him off. - All of his friends said that Steven was afraid of Mary Catherine. And get this,

They said that she had pulled a gun on him before and that he had told all of them about it. And not just once, three or four times she had pulled her gun out. All of them said when they heard that Steven had been shot, their minds instantly went to Mary Catherine. So the police are gathering evidence, putting together a timeline and got ready for trial. And they hope to get justice for Steven and for his family who was absolutely devastated that he had passed.

So let's go over kind of the timeline of their relationship from what the police were able to put together leading up to the night that Steven was shot. So on April 21st, 2018, three months before Steven was killed, he texted his friend Andrew and said, "MK is running around screaming at the top of her lungs outside and now she's trying to shoot me and herself." Then a few weeks later, Steven tells a friend that Mary Catherine had pointed a gun at him

And he specifically said that when he looked in her eyes, she had a specific look that she looked like she might actually shoot him. That wasn't just, you know, for show just cause they were fighting that he really thought she wanted to kill him in that moment.

And after this happened, he went to a friend's house and, you know, got a break from her, but he didn't end up reporting it to the police because he really loved Mary Catherine and didn't want her to get in trouble. So things were toxic with them for a while. They fought a lot. And in July of 2018, it seemed that Stephen may have been ready to actually leave her. According to his friend Thomas, Stephen had definitely made the decision by July

that he was going to move out and he was actually planning to move to a different town and just not tell her because that's how afraid of her he was. He was going to do this while she was at work, you know, just basically sneak away. And he'd actually planned to leave on August 3rd, 2018, which is two days after he was shot and killed on July 30th, just two days before he was shot. Stephen and Mary Catherine actually exchanged some loving text messages and they said, good morning, beautiful.

And then she said, "Have a great day." And he said, "You too, love you." But that's how their relationship was, you know, hot and cold. That's how most toxic relationships are, going back and forth between the two extremes. So the next day they got into a fight and it was so bad that Steven said he just wasn't coming home. And he actually told his friend that he was running from Satan. So that tells you how afraid of her that he was.

So the next night she made him a nice dinner, a London broil, one of his favorites. She hoped that he would come home. They would have dinner together, talk it out and, you know, continue on like they always did. But Steven didn't come home and he would not answer her calls that night. And later when she was questioned about this, she said that, you know, she just was

that she had made this meal and he wasn't coming back. And she just wanted to know, you know, if she should start eating without him or not. And that's why she was calling him off the hook. She even went as far as to call Stephen's mom, Jennifer. And his mom said that he was over at his friend Thomas's house.

So of course she jumps in her car and heads off to find him. So Steven and Thomas had already left his house and were driving around in his truck. And this is some real crazy bitch shit, but Mary Catherine spotted the truck somehow and started following them. Thomas said she was right up on his bumper and that she eventually pulled up to the side of the car and started screaming out the window saying, are you coming home now? His friend said, Steven looked like he had given up and he said, yes,

I'm coming home. Will you calm down?" And then two hours later, Stephen was shot. So it's pretty obvious what happened. Stephen probably went home to end things with Mary Catherine. She didn't like the fact that they weren't going to just have this nice dinner that she made for him, you know, and move on. So she threw the food on the floor, got her gun. Who knows what else exactly happened, but at some point she clearly shot him.

him. The fact that he was telling his friends multiple times that she had pointed a gun at him and he was scared for his life definitely makes you think twice about her. When you think about it, it just all makes sense. I mean, she really is very familiar with how to use guns for her to say she just

accidentally discharged it when she's learned all this stuff about gun safety in her life is just extremely hard to believe. But of course, when it came time for the trial, she had completely changed her story again. She was going to be pleading not guilty and she claimed that she had to shoot Stephen in self-defense. Mary Catherine was 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 the possibility of parole, but she did not take this and the case went to trial. And the trial wasn't too long. It only took about a week for them to present both sides. And Mary Catherine was represented by public defenders and they argued that this was self-defense. They said that Mary Catherine was afraid of Stephen because his history of abuse

And since the prosecution did not have the confession tape anymore, they had to rely mostly on physical evidence, which isn't too much in this case, but the fact that there was grease on the gun was huge. It showed that it had been loaded. So that was a big part of their argument. They also brought in Stephen's friends as witnesses, of course, because they were so familiar with how the relationship was according to Stephen. And of course, when you go to trial,

everything comes out, all of their text messages, search histories, their conversations with each other over long periods of time. And we'll go over some of that in a second, but they also in a very risky move had Mary Catherine take the stand. And this was the,

Pretty intense. She told a completely different story of their relationship. She alleges that she had suffered every type of abuse from Steven for years. She said he had a very controlling and manipulative side that not many people knew about. And she said he made her act a certain way. She couldn't help, but get extremely emotional and heated in times because of the way he pushed her.

According to her, he was also very controlling and had to know where she was at all times, what she spent money on, what she was eating, what she was doing. And of course, this is all her work. Keep in mind, as I'm saying this, I'm not speaking these things as if they're facts. It's hard with these cases where the victim is not here to speak

for themselves, you know, defend themselves in any way. But this is what she argued in court. She also said that one time while she was sitting on her bed, Stephen kicked her incredibly hard and actually pushed her forward off the bed and her head hit their doorframe really, really hard. And she said she never called the police because she would end up blaming herself that she had pushed him that far to abuse her. And the defense also recovered a

bunch of text messages from the two of them and they're not pretty. In fact, there were 63 pages of very, very vulgar and threatening, scary messages from Steven to Mary Catherine that were sent the year before. And apparently these messages are so brutal that the news hasn't revealed a lot of them. A lot of them haven't been shared with the public because they're so bad.

And in one message, he even sent a picture of himself holding up a dead fish and said, this is you bitch. And another one, he said, I'm going to fucking wreck you for wrecking me. And he was actually referring to her cheating on him. At one point she did cheat on him and he just went crazy over it. He was,

so, so angry. Stephen's mom says that she had no idea that he was talking to a woman this way, that she's not proud of the way he was talking, but she said that this was out of anger. I think we've all been in the position before where someone has really hurt us and we've said something mean to them that we don't mean truly. Not that it makes it okay what he said in any way, it's very abusive, but at the same time, I don't know if it can be used

as proof that she needed to shoot him in self-defense. One of the messages that he had sent her even said, "The more shit you talk, the more you get punished when I get home." When the court asked, you know, what did he mean by punish? She said that he would slap her, grab her, punch her. She said that he would scream at her, say, "Why can't you just listen to me and do the things that I tell you? Why can't you be better?"

you know, smack me around. Sometimes he would grab me and shake me.

and say, you know, why can't you just do better and be better and just do what I tell you to do? So anytime I'd stand up for myself or, you know, kind of retaliate, he said, don't don't hit me because if you hit me, I'm going to get you to numb harder. So Mary Catherine explained as much as she could of the relationship. She explained a lot about, you know, how it was really controlling and toxic. And when it was good, it was really good. But when it was bad, it was just bad.

Then they revealed that Steven had a red room. According to Mary Catherine in 50 shades of gray, this was a room that was used for, I guess we could just say aggressive sex, but Mary Catherine said that they would use this room and that he would take her in there and punish her in the red room. And this is when she made a huge accusation and everyone in the court was kind of shocked and not expecting this. But she said that Steven had raped her.

twice. Now, of course, Steven is not here to defend himself. So we have to go off of her word and there's really no way to know if she's telling the truth or not. She said on one of these occasions, they had just gotten back from a trip to Walt Disney world. They have a great time at Disney. They come back.

and they have sex. And Mary Catherine claims that he was being really aggressive and she wanted him to stop and asked him several times to stop. And then she says that he said, you know, I bought you all this stuff at Disneyland or Disney world. So you have to do what I tell you, you have to give me what I deserve. And then according to her, he raped her. And she claimed that the night that Steven died went completely different than police thought.

She said she broke up with him actually after making the London Royal for him. That's kind of weird. And then he got really angry, freaked out, started throwing things, screaming, even though two hours before this, he was fleeing from her and she was chasing him with her car.

But she said that he kept getting angrier and angrier. And eventually she picked up the gun and pointed at him to scare him. And she said her last words to him were get the fuck out of my house. And then he lunged at her and all she can remember is the gun going off. She said he was standing there bleeding. He's still conscious. And he said, call 911 and then fell down. However, while she was on the stand, she didn't specifically talk about pulling the trigger.

She just talks about the lunge and then it all happened as a blur. Mary Catherine said that she originally had lied to the police, that she was just embarrassed to be a victim. And Mary Catherine's sister also took the stand and backed her up, said that she was being abused by Stephen. She said there were bruises on her weeks before all of this happened. She said at first, Mary Catherine said that he had just grabbed her too hard, but that she knew something more was going on. But now let's talk forensic evidence.

The forensic evidence showed that Mary Catherine had shot him while he was sitting on the corner of their mattress. He had never even moved. He was sitting when he was shot and he fell back. Of course, like I said, they called up Stephen's friends and they all testified that she was the abusive one in the relationship, not him, which is hard because he did write those messages and they are

horrible. But according to them, she was physically abusive to him and verbally abusive to him as well. Apparently she would hit him in the face, in the chest, punch him in the shoulder. And they said they never saw Stephen hit her. That one time she slapped him and he grabbed her and said not to hit him again.

And that was all that they ever saw as far as physical action against her, which of course things can happen behind the scenes without friends seeing it. They also pointed out the obvious, you know, she worked with guns before she had had gun safety lessons and,

she should know how to operate a gun. It's very hard to believe that she would accidentally shoot one off. She was constantly bragging to people about how good she was with guns. And then she accidentally misfires one. It doesn't really add up. Of course, the defense said that, you know, Steven's friends never actually saw her

her abusing him with their own eyes. They don't have proof of it. They also don't have proof of her confession, obviously. So according to their side, she never confessed. They also alleged that Steven had a drug and alcohol use problem, which attributed to his violent behavior.

And the prosecution brought up another very important text message. It was recovered from Steven's phone and it said, I know you pointed a gun at me a bunch of times, but the last time you did it, it scared the shit out of me. But Mary Catherine said this was about shooting herself. Mary Catherine often would threaten to commit suicide and

And that's one of the reasons that Stephen's mother believes that Stephen stayed in the relationship so long is that Mary Catherine would threaten to harm herself if he left. The prosecution also noted that Mary Catherine had slightly altered or changed her story completely at least 10%.

10 times. She had told everybody something different. She had told the 911 operator that she was grabbing the gun and putting it next to the bed. She told the first responders that she was handing it to Steven. And then she goes in and tells the detectives that she had tossed it over to him and it accidentally goes off. Her story constantly changed. But of course, the fact remains that all of her interrogation footage is completely ruined and not usable. And not only that, you guys,

the murder weapon was also tampered with at the scene. First responders actually had moved the gun because they were worried that Mary Catherine might pick it up and shoot herself, which is understandable, but they should have just moved Mary Catherine away from the gun. You never touch a crime scene, especially the weapon.

And the worst part is they didn't even take pictures of the gun in its original position before they moved it. They just moved it. And it's very frustrating because it's not like they came to this scene thinking it was like a suicide or something. She said on the phone, I shot him. They should have known to handle the weapon, to process the weapon correctly. It makes no sense. This is like the number one rule. I just...

I don't understand. So of course, because Mary Catherine took the stand, she was also cross-examined. Of course, she was grilled about never reporting the abuse, never talking to anyone about it, never texting anyone about it. It was very rare that she talked to anyone about it. And she always spoke to people, not text. And then they brought up the fact that just hours before the shooting happened, she was actually babysitting. And while she was babysitting, she was looking up

really violent adult content on the computer. But she claims that this was all done because she was getting ideas, that that's what Stephen was into, and she wanted to please him. And they actually argued that there's no way that someone who had had the sexual trauma that Mary Catherine was claiming to have would be looking up these horribly violent videos. So in closing arguments, they reminded the jury that Mary Catherine had changed her story so many times. They also brought up the fact that

It's unlikely that if she was being abused that she would track down her abuser in their car.

and forced them to come home. It just didn't really add up. And they said that, you know, their relationship finally hit a boiling point, literally when she made that London broil and he wasn't into having dinner with her and probably told her he was planning to leave. And in the defense's closing arguments, they actually talked about how Mary Catherine had seen a face come up on Stephen's face that reminded her of when he would abuse her.

They actually brought it a Jack in the box and used it to make the point that when you know what's coming as you're winding it up, you're going to have a reaction. You're going to prepare to defend yourself because you know, the dude's going to jump out of the Jack in the box. I feel like it's a pretty weak comparison. I see what they were going for, but anyway, I'm so curious what you think at this point in the video, the

the verdict is going to be before I tell you. So pause it and comment below. So this jury has seven women and five men. And in the first few minutes of their deliberation, they took a vote. It was 10 to two guilty. The two jurors that were voting, not guilty were men. And they were struggling because they felt like no matter what they did, they would destroy a family. It's a lot of pressure to be a juror. I mean, I've never experienced it, but I would not want to be on the jury, especially for a case like this. This is really, really hard because

no one truly knows what went on in their relationship except for them. And all of the jurors said that they knew for sure that she had lied, that she had shot him, but it was that gray area of self-defense that kept them from saying guilty. The jury talked back and forth

about abusive relationships, whether she would be used to lying or not. They deliberated for hours after this initial vote, but then the following day, they came to their final verdict. Mary Catherine Higdon was found not guilty on all charges. We, the jury, find as follows. Count one, malice, murder. We find the defendant not guilty. Count two, felony murder. We find the defendant not guilty. LAUGHTER

Stephen's family was absolutely crushed and the whole prosecution was crushed as well and felt like they had let his family down. All the jury members said that they thought she did it, but there was not enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. And that's why I want to know what you guys think. Do you think there's enough evidence beyond a reasonable doubt? Of course, there's personal suspicion, you know, like saying, I think she did it because of X, Y, and Z.

but do you think there is enough evidence to charge her with the murder? So just like that, Mary Catherine was free. All the charges are dropped. And on June 26, 2019, she was released from jail. To this day, Stephen's mom says that she thinks that he just did not get the justice that he deserves. And she's extremely angry for how everything played out. The jurors who have been interviewed since

say, you know, it was an extremely tough call. And some of them, a lot of them think that she did it, like I said, but that they felt like it was the right decision and that there just was not enough evidence. Not having that confession tape just destroyed this case, destroyed any possibility of justice for Stephen if Mary Catherine Hinchton really did murder him.

But of course, some people think that she was telling the truth, that they had a toxic relationship and it got too far at one point. Many people think that this was the right call, that she does not belong in jail. And that's where the case ends. Mary Catherine moved to another state, started a new life.

She says to this day, she feels extremely guilty for what happened, that she never wanted to hurt Steven. And she hates how all of this ended up. Steven's mom is still heartbroken over the loss of her son. And she still tries to raise awareness about domestic violence to this day. But Jennifer has not spoken to Mary Catherine since, as you can imagine, it's pretty tense. She says she doesn't plan to either. She says there's nothing she can say to make it better. And I completely understand that. I'm sure she feels so much anger just

about how the crime scene was processed, about the fact that the audio was ruined. I mean, the frustration you would have over those types of mistakes, I don't know how you'd really ever get over them.

That is going to be it for me today, guys. Thank you for joining me for another episode. And make sure you follow the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It really does help me out. If you want to watch the video version of this show, you can find it on my YouTube channel, which will be linked, or you can just search Kendall Ray. I will be back with another episode soon, but until then, stay safe out there.