Execution: Blaine Milam
From
David Carson@davidc@wa-wd.com to
alt.obituaries on Fri Sep 26 09:57:02 2025
From Newsgroup: alt.obituaries
Blaine Keith Milam, 35, was executed by lethal injection on 25
September 2025 in Huntsville, Texas for the murder of a 13-month-old
baby.
On Tuesday, 2 December 2008 at 10:37 a.m., Milam, then 18, dialed
9-1-1 and said, "My name is Blaine Milam, and my daughter, I just
found her dead." Sergeant Kevin Roy of the Rusk County Sheriff's
Department arrived twenty minutes later at Milam's trailer home
outside Tatum, about 15 miles southeast of Longview in east Texas. Two ambulances were already there. EMTs were standing in the doorway of
the master bedroom, where Milam and Jesseca Carson, also 18, were
kneeling on the floor. Sgt. Roy saw "an infant laying on the floor,
not moving, bruised. The baby was laying on its back, and the face of
the baby was just one large bruise."
Roy and lead investigator Sergeant Amber Rogers, who arrived later,
spoke with Milam and Carson individually. Milam told Roy that he and
Carson had left the baby girl, Amora, alone in the trailer and walked
up the road to meet a man named Clark who was going to clear some land
for them. They returned about an hour later and found "the baby in
that condition."
A bit later, Texas Ranger Kenny Ray arrived. He conducted an hour-long interview with Milam in the front seat of his patrol car. Milam told
Ray that Carson was his fiancee and that Amora was her daughter. He
said they lived together and were raising the baby together. He told
Ranger Ray the same story he had told Sgt. Roy but added that when he
and Carson came home, they found Amora, not in her crib, but in a hole
in the floor of the bathroom that he was remodeling. He said she had a
blood ring around her mouth and "it looked like she had been biting
the insulation." He initially said Amora was still breathing when he
called 9-1-1. He later said that Carson called 9-1-1 while they were
looking for Amora and that when they found her, she was dead. Milam
denied any involvement in Amora's death and said authorities were
"more than welcome" to search his car and home.
At some point during the interview, Ray told Milam he knew he was
lying and that most people would suspect that he, as the only male in
the house, beat Amora to death. Milam again denied any involvement in
her death and offered to take a polygraph test. Ray then ended the
interview.
Ranger Ray also interviewed Carson. She did not testify at Milam's
trial, so her testimony was not admitted as evidence, but it was
summarized in newspaper reports. Carson reportedly told Milam that her
baby suffered from demonic possession, and he performed an exorcism to
get the demons out.
Shane and Dwight Clark of Clark Timber in Longview denied meeting with
Milam on 2 December.
Surveillance video showed Milam and Carson in a pawn shop in
Henderson, pawning a chainsaw and air hammer, on the morning of the
killing. They were reportedly trying to raise money to pay a priest to
perform an exorcism.
Evidence also showed that Milam called his sister, Teresa Shea, before
9:30 a.m., crying and saying that he had "found Amora dead." Shea
urged him to call 9-1-1, which he did not do until 10:37.
On 11 December, investigators conducted a second search of the
couple's trailer. This investigation found blood spatter and stains on
items found near the south bedroom, including some diapers and wipes
and a tube of sex lubricant. DNA testing later showed that the blood
was Amora's.
On 13 December, Teresa Shea's aunt called Sgt. Rogers and told her
that she ought to go to the trailer "immediately." She said that Shea
visited Milam in jail that day and after that visit, Shea told her she
needed to find a way to get back out to the trailer "to get some
evidence out from underneath of it." Rogers immediately obtained a
search warrant, crawled under the trailer, and discovered a pipe
wrench inside a clear plastic bag. The wrench had been shoved through
a hole in the floor of the master bathroom. Forensic analysis on the
wrench found components of the diaper Amora had been wearing, sex
lubricant, and the blood-stained diapers and wipes found in the south
bedroom.
Blaine's trial was moved to Montgomery County because of potentially prejudicial pretrial publicity.
The medical examiner testified that Amora's death was a homicide and
that she died from multiple blunt-force injuries and possible
strangulation. Her injuries included facial abrasions and bruises;
twenty-four human bite marks; bruises, scrapes, and abrasions from
head to toe; bleeding underneath the scalp; extensive fracturing to
the back of the skull; internal bleeding in the skull, eyes, and neck;
eighteen rib fractures; a tear to the liver; and extensive injury to
the genitals. There were no old injuries suggesting a pattern of
abuse.
Dr. Robert Williams, a forensic odontologist, compared the bite marks
found on Amora's body with bite dentition models taken from Milam,
Carson, and Milam's brother, Danny. Williams testified that Milam was
a match for 8 of the bite marks found on Amora. He excluded Carson
from all but one of the marks and Danny from all but one.
Shirley Broyles, the nurse at the Rusk County Jail, testified that
Milam called her one day in January. She found him crying in his cell.
He handed her a written request to talk to Sgt. Rogers and told
Broyles, "I'm going to confess. I did it. But Ms. Shirley, the Blaine
you know did not do this. My dad told me to be a man, and I've been
reading my Bible. Please tell Jesseca I love her."
The state also offered evidence showing that at the time of Amora's
killing, he was on probation. He had entered the home of an
11-year-old neighbor and left a stack of pages torn from pornographic magazines, marked with salacious notes, in her dresser drawer. His
probation order barred him from any contact with children outside his
own family.
A toxicologist testified that Milam had 0.17 milligrams of
methamphetamine in his system on the day of the killing and that this
was 10 times the therapeutic dose.
Dr. Mark Cunningham, a clinical psychologist, testified that he
interviewed Milam three times for a total of nearly ten hours, and he
also interviewed his mother and sisters. He concluded that Milam
suffered from mental deficiency, meth dependence, and meth psychosis.
He testified that Milam's father's death was very upsetting to him.
Other witnesses described him as suicidal after his father's death.
The defense focused on implicating Carson as the murderer. Carson's
mother, Heather Carson, testified that Carson and Milam started dating
around January 2008 and got engaged a few months later. Carson
subsequently turned 18 and received an insurance settlement from her
father's death, which happened in 2001. At that time, Heather
testified, Carson immediately became withdrawn, stopped caring about
her appearance, and began making serious and unfounded allegations
against her.
Lisa Taylor testified that her daughter and Carson were best friends
while growing up in Alabama. Carson, Milam, and Amora visited them
twice in Alabama in the fall of 2008. Taylor said that Carson made
"bizarre" accusations about her mother. She also said that Carson did
not take care of Amora and did not give her a bath for a whole week.
She described her as "weird," "hollow," and "empty" and said that
looking into her eyes was "like looking into a dark space." Taylor
testified that Carson was in charge and that when she told Milam to do something, he did it.
A psychiatrist, Dr. Frank Murphy, testified that he did not interview
Carson, but based on interviews and other materials he read, she
suffered from psychotic depression.
The state presented two witnesses who characterized Milam as dominant
in the couple's relationship. One was his former boss, who testified
that Milam had "control issues" and he had once warned Milam that if
he kept controlling Carson the way he did, she would leave him.
A jury found Blaine guilty of capital murder on 17 May 2010 and
sentenced him to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed
the conviction and sentence in May 2012.
Jesseca Bain Carson was found guilty of capital murder in April 2011
and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Prosecutors did not seek a death sentence for her.
Rusk County District Attorney Michael Jimerson explained his decision
not to seek the death penalty for Carson. Under Texas law, a jury must
find that a convicted capital murderer is a future danger to society
in order to impose a death sentence. Jimerson said that the Texas
Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled that a mother who kills her
children is only a future danger to her own children, and since Carson
was childless after Amora's death, she was, by legal standards, not a
future danger to society at the time of her trial.
Milam was originally scheduled for execution in 2019. The TCCA stayed
the execution on two grounds: first, to examine the scientific
reliability of the bite mark evidence presented at his trial, and
second, so that Milam's intellectual disability claim could be
considered. After a hearing, the trial court decided that Milam's
execution should proceed. The TCCA affirmed, and his execution was
rescheduled. The TCCA then issued another stay of execution in 2021,
once again on intellectual disability grounds. The trial court again
found that Milam was not intellectually disabled.
In his last statement, Milam thanked his supporters. He also thanked
the chaplains at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for offering
a faith-based program that led to him finding salvation in Jesus
Christ. "I implore all of you, no matter who you are, to accept Jesus
Christ as your Lord and Savior and we will meet again," Milam said. "I
love you all. Bring me home, Jesus," he said. The lethal injection was
then started. He was pronounced dead at 6:40 p.m.
News headlines and articles about Milam's case consistently stated
that baby Amora was killed during an exorcism. Rusk County District
Attorney Michael E. Jimerson, who prosecuted the case originally, held
a press conference following Milam's execution to refute this theory,
which he called "outlandish." Jimerson pointed to Milam's previous
status as a sex offender and said that he derived "gratification" from torturing Amora. "Most likely, the sensational, headline-grabbing
exorcism story was a last-ditch attempt to avoid criminal
responsibility by the co-defendant, Carson," Jimerson said.
David Carson
(Sources: Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Henderson Daily News,
Houston Chronicle, court documents, KETK-TV.)
--
Texas Execution Information
www.txexecutions.org
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
