This is So Twisted- The Story of Zara Scruggs

This is So Twisted- The Story of Zara Scruggs

It’s hard to imagine how this child’s death could be any more traumatic. The 29-year-old father conducted multiple Google searches, including “how do you know if a baby is dead,” in the hour after she stopped breathing, before ever calling 911.

The story I have for you today is an atrocious one about a 10-month-old little girl whose biological father committed an absolutely heinous act that would end up costing her her life, and after he did, he showed absolutely no remorse for it. This is the story of Zara Scruggs.

Zara Lynn Scruggs was born in Pennsylvania on December 1st, 2019, to her mother, Erica Scruggs, and her father, Austin Kamal Stevens. She was lovingly nicknamed “Moo,” and she was said to be a smart, silly, playful, loving, and sassy little girl. Zara also loved music, dancing, going on the swings at the park, and anything Elmo.

At the time of this story, Zara—who was only 10 months old—had just begun walking and was also enjoying learning to talk. Zara’s mother and father were no longer together; however, they had a joint custody agreement in regard to their daughter. Now, this agreement was not court-mandated, just a simple agreement between the two.

Zara’s father, Austin, worked as an assistant youth football coach for the Lower Providence Warriors, and he was also the co-owner of a construction company called Black Diamond Construction. On the night of Saturday, October 3rd, 2020, 10-month-old Zara was picked up by her father at her maternal grandparents’ home in Norristown, Pennsylvania. He then brought her back to his new apartment, which was located at 3454 Germantown Pike in Lower Providence.

Austin had actually just moved into this apartment two days prior, so he had yet to set up the heat, hot water, and electricity, making it go down to only about 52 degrees in the apartment that night. Then, around 10:40 p.m. that night, Austin would call 911 to report that Zara was unresponsive.

Shortly after, the first responders arrived at Austin’s apartment, and they found Zara lying on the bed with no clothes on, just a diaper. She wasn’t breathing, her skin was gray, and she was cold to the touch. And Zara’s father, Austin, was standing at the foot of the bed completely calm, almost emotionless.

Now, a paramedic had begun to perform CPR on Zara almost immediately upon arrival, and when Austin had been asked by this first responder to hand him a piece of medical equipment from his bag, Austin just tilted his head and shrugged. When he’d been told that he handed him the wrong thing…

Zara would then be transported to Einstein Medical Center in Montgomery, Pennsylvania. Here she would be pronounced dead less than 2 hours later, at 12:12 a.m. on October 4th, 2020.

And when Austin was informed by a doctor of his daughter’s death, he simply sighed, “Give me those, give me those, give me those to give your baby, your body, your body.”

Now, of course, Austin was arrested and brought in for questioning. And when he spoke with police, he told them that he had actually been giving his daughter Zara a bath, but he stepped out of the bathroom for a brief moment to grab a beer. When he’d been in the kitchen, Austin had suddenly heard a thump, and he claimed that he believed this was Zara’s head hitting the bathtub. The father told investigators that upon hearing this noise, he immediately returned back to the bathroom, and he then took Zara out of the bathtub and wrapped her up in a towel. After that, Austin said he began to try to soothe her, then placed her on the bed to change her diaper. Austin said that suddenly, though, her head fell back and Zara became unresponsive—it was like she passed out, he said.

Now, it would become very clear that this was all lies. After detectives recovered a diaper that Zara had been wearing on the way to the hospital, medics had actually discovered that the diaper was saturated in blood. In addition, it would be determined that Zara’s death had been caused by blunt force trauma to her head, and she had sustained anal trauma.

Soon after his arrest, police would discover that Austin actually had not called 911 for nearly an hour after he knew that something was seriously wrong with his daughter. Detectives had discovered this after they searched Austin’s phone and found that he had placed various Google searches, including “my baby isn’t breathing,” “how do you know if a baby is dead,” and “what if you don’t hear a baby’s heartbeat?”

When detectives questioned Austin about these searches, he claimed that he was just trying to figure out what was going on with Zara himself, and he was trying to resuscitate her. He explained that he had just been on the internet because he was trying to figure out exactly how to perform CPR.

But authorities also found evidence that showed that Austin had been messaging two different women on Instagram while his daughter was lying there unconscious. And in these messages, there was no discussion about Zara whatsoever, or her current need for emergency medical care. And the father’s response when a detective asked him about one of these messages was, “It’s just a girl I talk to,” and then he said he didn’t even have a full-blown conversation with her—like that even matters!

Police would also ask Austin why it had taken him about 70 minutes to call 911, to which he said: “I was panicking, time was rolling, I wasn’t paying attention to the time. I was working the phone, I was working her body, pumping her chest, trying to bring her back. I did what I could.”

A detective would say that during his interrogation, Austin had said that he wished he could have been the hero—which is a very odd thing to say when you’re the one who caused all of this to begin with. But by the end of his interrogation with police, Austin would finally admit that he had waited much too long to call 911.

Austin Stevens was charged with aggravated rape of a child, involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent assault, endangering the welfare of a child, and other criminal counts. He was held on a 1 million dollar bail; that bail, however, was quickly revoked at his preliminary hearing when the charge of first-degree murder was added to Austin’s other charges.

Zara’s devastated grandfather Eric—whom she’d been with just before her father Austin had picked her up that night—said: “This is shocking. Austin always respected me, and he always respected us. You would never think that anything like this would even happen in a million years.”

And after her daughter’s death, Erica Scruggs took to Facebook and she wrote: “He fooled us all. I promise you from the bottom of my heart, please do not attack his family or his friends. He will pay.”

And Steven’s own mother even came out publicly because she wanted to make it known that her son is a monster, and neither she nor Steven’s father support him in any way. Colleagues of Stevens who had worked with him at Black Diamond Construction, where he was a co-owner, said that what happened is not at all in his character, and some other variables had to have been at play. It seemed like no one had seen the evil that was lurking deep down inside Austin, who had always made himself look like a caring, driven, and loving father.

In March of 2022, Austin Stevens was found guilty by a jury in the death of his daughter Zara Scruggs, and he was automatically given a life sentence.

Zara’s relatives launched a GoFundMe page after her death in order to help her grieving mother. The fundraiser ended up gaining over $52,000 in donations.

On the night of October 9th, 2020, at least 500 people packed the streets in front of the home where Zara had once lived with her mother, Erica. They were not there to remember the horrific way in which Zara had died, but instead, the amazing little girl that she had been while she was alive. Those gathered that night released thousands of pink balloons in the infant’s memory.

“Tonight here in Norristown feels like almost every single person in this community coming out to remember the baby girl and honor her family. I’m going to miss her. It is impossible to imagine what the family of 10-month-old Zara Scruggs is going through. I can’t sleep, I still wake up at 5…”

Hundreds of friends, family members, neighbors, and Norristown residents wanted to make sure they weren’t going through it alone. At least 500 people packed the street on Friday in front of the home where Zara—known affectionately as Moo—lived with her mother.

“I just love y’all ’cause y’all love my baby, and I appreciate everybody,” Erica expressed while releasing thousands of balloons in the infant’s memory, trying to erase the thought of the heinous way she left this world.

“We didn’t think nothing bad, nothing did we. If I had a clue… no. The love right now, I mean even with his other side… please no, no, we never thought anything like this.”

But the focus tonight is not on him or the dastardly crimes police say he committed; it is on supporting Zara’s mother and her grandparents. “I don’t want no mother to feel what I felt that night,” as they take this lifelong journey—an impossible attempt trying to recover from this nightmare. This is Zara’s night. This is Zara’s night.

Little Zara’s funeral was then held on Monday, October 12th, 2020, in memory of the little girl. On what would have been Zara’s first birthday, December 1st, 2020, her family held a stop-and-drop toy drive. All donations collected were given to Children’s Hospital and St. Christopher’s Hospital.

Well, thank you for listening to Zara’s story today. What her father did to her was so vicious and so vile. I really wonder why no one saw any signs of evil in this man in the past. There’s nothing said about him having a prior violent criminal history or any drug abuse, but did Austin take drugs that night and/or consume alcohol as well that led to his horrible acts? It just doesn’t make sense to me, but what do you think?