Bountiful • Finding her son Billy not breathing and unresponsive in his crib was just the beginning of Kim Hawkins' nightmares.
Who could have imagined the Utah mother would be charged with murdering her 13-month-old child after a state medical examiner could not even determine the cause of death?
Who could have imagined that a pregnant Hawkins would end up sitting in jail for more than a year awaiting a trial that never came?
And who could have imagined that she would give birth during her time behind bars and give up the newborn for adoption?
Certainly not Hawkins nor her lawyers, who insist the case should never have been prosecuted.
So why was Hawkins charged with first-degree felony murder nearly a year and a half after Billy died? And why did the poor and often-homeless woman end up pleading guilty to a lesser count of negligent homicide even though she proclaims her innocence to this day?
"I'm just going to be frank and I'm going to say it," defense attorney Nick Falcone said at a court hearing last year as his client sat nearby. "If Miss Hawkins was a little bride living in Cottonwood Heights in a pretty house, and they went into this situation with a baby in a crib that has stopped responding ... unlike Miss Hawkins, she wouldn't be sitting in that chair right now."
Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill dismisses such arguments and stands by the prosecution, pointing out that two district judges — one who bound over the case for trial and another who rejected a motion to quash that action — found adequate evidence to support the murder charge.
Her lawyers, public defenders Falcone and Sherry Valdez, are confident that Hawkins, who had no criminal record, would have prevailed. But, after spending 15 months in jail awaiting trial, prosecutors offered her a deal.
So Hawkins pleaded guilty in August to negligent homicide, a class A misdemeanor, and 3rd District Judge Royal Hansen ordered her released after crediting her with time already served.
"I took the plea deal because I was fed up with being incarcerated," she said. "I really wanted to get out of jail."
After all, Hawkins already had lost so much: More than a year of her life behind bars and two sons — one while she was jailed and, of course, Billy, to a still-mysterious death.
'It hurts even more' • Now 26, Hawkins lives in Bountiful and is trying to rebuild her life, but it is difficult.
"Heartache is not fun," she said, "and when you can't hold your babies, it hurts even more."
She struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. She is a certified nursing assistant, but could find work only at a fast-food restaurant. That job ended almost as soon as it began after a mugging left Hawkins' hand in a brace, making it impossible to do the work.
Born and reared in Salt Lake City, Hawkins had been living in the Dallas-Fort Worth area but returned to Utah in 2012 after she and her husband split up. She was pregnant with Billy and eventually ended up living in a Salt Lake City homeless shelter or on the streets. After Billy's birth, friends and relatives often tended the baby in their homes.
When Billy was just a few months old, Hawkins met Lamont Anderson at the shelter. The couple got engaged, and he became a father to the boy, she said. Hawkins even got a West Valley City apartment through a housing program.
On the day her son died, Hawkins said that Anderson, who had spent the night at the apartment, told her before he left that morning that Billy was awake. She got up and started making waffles, the tot's favorite food.
She could hear the boy from the kitchen, playing and making noises in his crib in the bedroom's walk-in closet. But when Hawkins went to get Billy, she said, he was facedown and unresponsive.
She panicked and called Anderson. At his direction, she phoned 911. When her fiancé arrived minutes later, she had a dispatcher on speaker phone and was performing CPR.
Anderson took over until the medics arrived. They inserted a tube in the boy's throat to help him breathe. Hawkins said it took three tries for emergency crews to fit the child with a mask for intubation.
Resuscitation attempts continued at a West Valley City hospital, but proved unsuccessful. Billy Raymond Nicholas Hawkins Jr. was pronounced dead Jan. 23, 2014, at 11:37 a.m.
After an autopsy, state Assistant Medical Examiner Joseph White certified the cause of Billy's death as undetermined. White later testified that he was able to rule out as possible causes positional asphyxia (which occurs when someone's position prevents adequate breathing) and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. SIDS can occur in infants in the first year of life; Billy was 13 months old.
The boy did have the influenza virus, but there was no evidence of pneumonia. Flu without pneumonia does not cause death, the doctor stated.
White found lacerations on the baby's upper lip and gave two possible explanations: dehydration that led to dry cracked skin or significant pressure applied to the outside of the mouth.
Losing two sons • On the day Billy died and during the ensuing months, West Valley City police detectives interviewed Hawkins and Anderson separately four times each. Both denied causing the boy's death.
Detective John Pittman described Hawkins' demeanor during her last interview, in June 2014, as "kind of a roller coaster," alternating between crying and being "giggly."
Hawkins told him both Billy and Anderson wanted her attention, and she felt she was being tugged back and forth between the two, Pittman later testified. He decided to try role reversal. Hawkins would play the cop; he would be her.
"I said, 'Let's switch shoes; you be in my shoes and I'll be in your shoes,' " Pittman said. "I asked her what she thought happened. She said she thought Billy was suffocated."
He then reminded Hawkins that she was in his shoes and asked how did she believe her son had been suffocated, Pittman said. The response was "by hand or by a blanket."
Law enforcement saw this explanation as significant — that Hawkins volunteered that, if she were a detective, she would believe that this is how her son died.
Under cross-examination, however, Pittman testified Hawkins said that another detective "had told her about suffocation." He also acknowledged that after the role playing ended, Hawkins maintained she didn't know what had happened.
At one point during the probe, Hawkins' foster mother agreed to a police request to wear a body wire and a camera on a shirt button while the two women had lunch and discussed what happened to the boy.
The foster mother was not called to the stand, but Detective Alton Jue testified that Hawkins made no admissions during the meal or in any interviews he had heard or seen in the case.
After 16 months of investigation, Hawkins was arrested May 19, 2015, in Salt Lake City, where she had moved after losing her apartment. She was shocked, Hawkins said, because "they had nothing."
Gill noted smothering cases are some of the hardest to prove because of the lack of clear medical evidence. He said the time it took to charge Hawkins was due to the complexity of the investigation. The autopsy and toxicology findings took six months, he said, and investigators needed to get expert opinions.
Bail was initially set at $1 million and later lowered to $250,000; neither amount was affordable for Hawkins so she sat in jail. She was pregnant with Anderson's child at the time of the arrest and gave birth to a boy in a hospital in October 2015.
She went back to jail and the Utah Division of Child and Family Services took custody of the newborn. The infant first was placed with family members and then with friends Jayson and Pamela Orvis, who live in Bountiful.
Jayson Orvis had met Hawkins while working with the homeless through K2 The Church, a nondenominational Christian congregation.
Unable to get out of jail and with DCFS working to find a permanent placement for the baby, Hawkins eventually relinquished her rights, and the Orvises adopted him.
'No one knows' • As the murder case proceeded, the two sides sparred over evidence.
At a 2015 preliminary hearing, prosecutor Robert Parrish said the lacerations on Billy's inner upper lip and marks under his chin were consistent with someone placing a hand or hands over the child's mouth or nose long enough to asphyxiate him. Under questioning, White said, given the lack of evidence of accidental asphyxia, the most common remaining plausible cause of death would be homicidal asphyxia.
Defense lawyers countered that the markings on Billy's face likely occurred when emergency responders were trying to intubate the boy.
Said Falcone: "No one knows why this child is dead."
Police also pointed to alleged inconsistencies in the accounts Hawkins gave of her son's death.
Detectives testified that Hawkins provided new details after her initial interview on what happened the day her son died. Those included her hearing Billy throw a sippy cup against the wall; the mother initially smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee on her apartment deck after she got up that morning; and Hawkins "playing" on Facebook on her phone and watching TV before she made breakfast.
The defense dismissed these and other alleged consistencies as pointless.
"Sippy cups are not relevant," Falcone said while cross-examining Detective David Greco. "One question is relevant. Did you have anything to do with the death of your child? What was the answer to that question from Kim Hawkins every time you asked it?"
"No," Greco answered.
When Anderson took the stand, he testified that right before Billy's death, the boy had been around ill kids from the homeless shelter.
Anderson said he got sick within a few days after Billy died and wondered if he had picked something up while performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He described his illness as some type of cold or flu that was "completely crippling, to a point where I would sit there and didn't want to move."
At the end of the hearing, Parrish pointed out that the core of Billy's body was still warm when emergency crews arrived and argued the child must have stopped breathing after Anderson left the apartment.
The "reasonable inference," the prosecutor said, was that "during that 15-minute period or so where the defendant [Hawkins] is alone with Billy, something happened to cause him to die."
Third District Judge Mark Kouris found sufficient evidence for the case to go to trial.
The aftermath • A turning point came when state Chief Medical Examiner Erik Christensen issued an amended autopsy report in July 2016 that said the cause of death remained undetermined but could have been from natural causes — perhaps cardiac arrhythmia; previously undiagnosed seizures; or other ailments that fall under Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood, which affects children older than 1.
After Christensen met with defense lawyers and prosecutors to discuss his findings, the district attorney's office offered the plea bargain.
Throughout her ordeal, Hawkins had support from friends, relatives, her "street family" and K2 congregants.
Jayson Orvis is adamant about Hawkins' innocence.
Authorities "kept pushing the case down the road," he said, hoping someone would turn on her. No one did. "No jury on this planet was going to sign off on that [murder charge]."
Hawkins also counts her foster mother among her backers, saying she wore the wire in the belief their conversation would clear her.
The newborn she gave up turned 1 in October. He joined six siblings, ages 3 to 21, in the Orvis family. Hawkins and Anderson visit him and remain part of his life.
"He's a really special, loving little boy," Pamela Orvis said.
So was justice done?
Gill said yes, given the "complications" in the case. He pointed to the totality of the evidence, including Hawkins' "evolving" stories and her suggestion that suffocation caused Billy's death.
She pleaded guilty, Gill emphasized, and admitted she had acted with criminal negligence.
Hawkins views the plea as "an opportunity to be found innocent." For her, the negligent-homicide charge shows that authorities believe Billy's death was accidental, not deliberate.
Hawkins tries to stay positive as she inches forward. She earned her high school diploma while in jail and hopes to get her record expunged one day.
The pain of losing Billy will never vanish, but she takes comfort in her faith.
"I know God is taking care of my little boy," Hawkins said. "He will always be the love of my life."
pmanson@sltrib.com
Twitter: @PamelaMansonSLC
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