He Was Just Teaching Him to Float- The Story of Hoss Benham

He Was Just Teaching Him to Float- The Story of Hoss Benham

A one-year-old little boy was brought into the emergency room. His mother said that he had drowned in the bathtub, but he was covered in bruises and other injuries. So what had really happened to the little boy that day?

The story I have for you today is one that was suggested by a few of you, so again, thank you. This was an awful case of child abuse that happened in Alabama, and the little boy would end up dying on his first birthday. Yes, on his first birthday. This is the story of Hoss Benham.

Hoss Wayne Benham was born on March 11th, 2013, in Cullman, Alabama. He was born to Crystal Ballinger and Brody Wayne Benham. Hoss, who had big adorable chubby cheeks, blonde hair, and blue eyes, was described as always happy and smiling. In 2011, Hoss’s parents, Crystal and Brody, would become a couple shortly after they met at the Burger King where Crystal was a manager. Shortly after they became a couple, Crystal and Brody would move into a trailer park in Cullman, Alabama, off of Route 31 at Monk’s Trailer Park.

Now, things moved quickly in their relationship, and to their surprise, in August of 2012, they found out that they were expecting a baby boy. Unfortunately, they had already been suffering with money problems, and adding a baby to the mix was not going to help. Given this, Crystal’s family was not thrilled about her pregnancy. Regardless, in March of 2013, Crystal and Brody would welcome their new baby boy into the world, Hoss Wayne Benham.

In September of 2013, the couple’s already bad financial situation would get even worse when Crystal lost her job, and soon after that, she and Brody would also break up, which meant that Crystal now needed a new place to live with Hoss. Being desperate for a place to live, Crystal would post on Facebook asking if anyone could help her out.

So, at the beginning of 2014, the then 23-year-old Crystal, along with Hoss, would move in with Jeffrey Hugh Brown. Jeffrey was a 47-year-old man who lived in the same trailer park as Crystal and Brody had. When they first moved in with him, I don’t believe that they were in a relationship, but a few weeks later they did begin a romantic relationship, and it seemed like Crystal was determined to prove herself worthy enough to be with Jeff. She complained on social media that she loved him but she did not know if he loved her back, and Crystal did not want to lose her new boyfriend. Why, you ask? No idea. Not really a catch.

So on March 10th, 2014, the day before Hoss’s first birthday, Crystal, along with family and friends, would celebrate his birthday at Chuck E. Cheese. She took pictures and posted them on Facebook. Everyone looked happy, but that was soon about to end.

Just the next day, on March 11th, around 11:00 p.m., Crystal and Jeffrey would rush baby Hoss to the emergency room at Cullman Regional Medical Center. He was unconscious, and Crystal insisted that he had drowned in the bathtub of their trailer home. But by the time they had arrived at the hospital, there was nothing that doctors could do for little Hoss, and unfortunately, he was pronounced dead on March 11th, 2014.

Now, there were injuries to little Hoss’s body that did not match the stories that Crystal and Jeffrey had told medical staff. Hoss had excessive bruising all over his body, and he had a fractured skull. Doctors knew something was definitely not right, and they contacted the Cullman County Sheriff’s Department, who would then go down to the hospital to get statements from Crystal and Jeffrey, and more officers would be sent to the couple’s trailer at the same time to collect evidence.

So the statements that Crystal and Jeffrey would give police did not match up. Crystal would first tell them that she had been giving Hoss a bath when suddenly he had slipped under the water. He had accidentally gotten water in his mouth. Crystal said she then pulled him out of the bathtub, and he was able to cough up the water. She said he was fine until a little while later when Jeff would find him not breathing. She would also admit to police officers that on multiple occasions she had seen Jeffrey put hot sauce in Hoss’s mouth as punishment.

Now, Jeff’s story was that he had arrived home from work on March 11th to find Crystal in the kitchen cooking and Hoss in the bathtub alone, unsupervised. Jeff said that Hoss was fine when he first saw him, but when he later went back to check on him, Hoss had slumped under the water. So neither one of them thinks it’s necessary to keep an eye on a one-year-old in a bathtub. Good, good. Jeff said at this point he pulled him out of the water and pushed on his stomach, and he was able to get him to cough up some of the water. He said that Hoss was breathing fine, but a little while later he said that the little boy coughed up more water, and at that point, he stopped breathing.

But neither Crystal nor Jeffrey could come up with a good explanation as to why Hoss had so many bruises as well as a fractured skull. The couple were not placed under arrest quite yet, but two days later, on March 13th, 2014, Jeffrey Hugh Brown was placed under arrest, and he was charged with aggravated child abuse. He was then held on a $30,000 bail, and the following day, Crystal would be arrested and charged with the same thing. They also both tested positive for methamphetamines—surprise, surprise—and were both ordered to undergo mental health evaluations.

An autopsy was authorized to be done on Hoss’s body, and on March 13th, the Huntsville Department of Forensic Sciences would release a preliminary autopsy report, but not yet Hoss’s official cause of death. So even though the cause of Hoss’s death was not yet made public, the coroner did determine that he had been forcibly held underwater. The autopsy revealed that Hoss had sustained 38 different injuries to his head and neck that had been caused by blunt force trauma. He also had burns on the bottom of his feet, cuts in his mouth, four injuries to his eyes, bruising to his scrotum, and rectal tearing that was consistent with sexual abuse. Following the autopsy results, the state would charge both Crystal and Jeffrey with capital murder.

When the investigators again spoke with Crystal, she would tell them a new story about what had happened to Hoss on the night of March 11th. She said that she had actually walked into the bathroom to see Jeffrey holding Hoss underwater for 20 to 25 seconds at a time. He told her that he was trying to teach him how to float and that the little boy could hold his breath. But apparently, he couldn’t, because shortly after, Crystal said that Jeffrey had to perform CPR on Hoss. But after he did this, Hoss was fine again, so they put Hoss to bed, and then it was only hours later that they realized he was not breathing. There’s always a portion of time in between the incident and when he actually died in their stories because they don’t want there to be a direct correlation between what happened and him dying. So they figure if there’s time in between, then maybe something else could have mysteriously happened to him. I’m pretty sure that’s the thought behind it.

During this interrogation, Crystal would also tell investigators that she had been giving Hoss, who was under one year old, cough medicine whenever he had been teething, so she was just drugging him up.

Police would also speak with Jeffrey’s teenage daughter who lived in the home, though it would later be said that Jeffrey didn’t actually have custody of her, so I’m assuming she was just visiting at the time rather than living there permanently. So Jeffrey’s daughter would say that she had bathed Hoss the night before he died, and at that time, she didn’t notice any bruises on him. However, there were bruises in various states of healing, so that could not have been the case. The teen also said that for some reason, her father would always insist on being in the bathroom alone with Hoss during his bath time.

A motion was filed by Jeffrey’s attorney and then subsequently approved in April of 2014 to reduce his bail from $30,000 to only $15,000. However, the district attorney filed a motion asking for a reconsideration of the reduction of Jeff’s bail. He said that Jeff was a flight risk. Jeffrey had several prior convictions, and he had lost his home in Cullman. He also had a history of failing to report to previous court hearings. He actually had a pretty substantial criminal history in the state of Florida, including larceny, trafficking stolen property, and being a fugitive escaping from justice. So yeah, I’d say he’s more than just a flight risk. I’d say he’s definitely going to fly, yeah, if he can make bail. The judge would then grant the district attorney’s motion to set Jeffrey’s bail back to $30,000, saying that there was a previous misrepresentation of facts.

On October 20th, 2015, Crystal Ballinger was indicted on her charges, old and new ones. She was charged with sexual torture, capital murder of a child under the age of 14, aggravated child abuse, and capital murder during sexual abuse. Crystal had originally only been charged with aggravated child abuse. Her boyfriend, Jeffrey Hugh Brown, was indicted on the same charges, and both of them would be held without bail at the Cullman County Detention Center.

And on December 13th of 2019, Jeffrey Hugh Brown would plead guilty to felony murder. The other charges against him were dropped. Just days later, Crystal pled guilty to felony murder. Her charges of aggravated child abuse, capital murder during sexual abuse, and sexual torture were all dismissed. Both Crystal and Jeffrey each received 40 years in state prison.

Prior to their sentencing, the prosecution would say a baby suffered horrific sexual abuse inflicted by his mother and her boyfriend and died in horror and pain on his first birthday. It’s really unbelievable and just hard to hear what happened to this child. His last 36 hours were spent in pain.

Hoss’s great-grandmother wrote an online tribute to him saying: “He was my first great-grandson and I miss him every single day and he is always on my mind. I look to heaven every night and tell him good night because I know he is in heaven and watches over all of us. I love you and miss you and I miss the beautiful smile that was always on your face.”

Hoss Wayne Benham’s funeral was held on March 17th, 2014, at Moss Funeral Home Chapel. He was then buried at the East Point Cumberland Presbyterian Cemetery. Moss Funeral Home Chapel was kind enough to help Hoss’s family with any of the unforeseen expenses related to burying the little boy. The only thing that they had been unable to give to them was a gravestone marker, so the family set up a GoFundMe to help get a headstone for Hoss. Then on October 11th, 2015, the family came up with enough money to buy a marker for Hoss’s grave. When the headstone was placed, the family also did a small balloon release. Hoss’s little cousins also put pictures of butterflies on the balloons, saying that butterflies can fly very high and they can tell Hoss how much they love him.

Well, thank you for listening to all of Hoss’s story today. This poor little boy was brutally tortured and killed on his first birthday, and just the day before, his mother had brought him to Chuck E. Cheese to celebrate. To go from a party one day to the next day torturing and killing him… it makes me think that Crystal was just willing to do anything. It makes me think that Crystal was just so desperate for Jeff to love her and not leave her that she was willing to do anything, including murdering her baby. It’s so disgusting when a mother puts a man before her child. But then on top of that, Crystal also actively participated in the torture and murder of her own child. It’s unbelievable how anyone can be that way.