Michelle Heale Says She Snapped Baby’s Neck Trying To Burp Him, Could Face Life In Prison

Michelle Heale, 46, was good friends with the Hess family and a mother of twins herself, so the mother and father of 14-month-old Mason had no issues leaving their child in Heale’s care — but a tragedy would soon make them wish they had never done so.

Heale said she had fed Mason some applesauce, but he started choking so she brought him up to her shoulder to burp him.

After “four or five” hard pats on the back, she felt the sauce come out on her shoulder. But when she lowered Mason from her shoulder, his head snapped back and his body went limp.

“He [Mason] wasn’t limp and unresponsive when I was bringing him back down. When he was down, as his head snapped back, that’s when he went limp,” she responded to First Assistant Prosecutor Marc LeMieux.

Heale then claimed she ran with Mason’s limp body to a separate room, “again without supporting his neck,” and dialed 911.

“To be quite honest, I don’t think I thought at all, I was panicked. I should have, I wish I did everything the way that I should have done it. I wish I held the neck. I don’t remember doing it.”

Michelle Heale recounted the story in a tearful testimony on April 8 in a New Jersey courtroom. She’s now facing possible life in prison and could be in danger of having her own children taken away, a possibility she’s painfully aware of.

Adam Hess, Mason’s father, had told her she needed to leave the hospital while the little boy was still fighting for his life because doctors believed she had “done something to hurt Mason.” That’s also when he informed her that child protection services had been in contact with him, NJ reports.

“I thought they were going to take my kids from me because I was told that I had hurt Mason,” Heale said. “I thought that once they were made aware that I had my own kids that they were going to take them from me.”

Heale also noted that Adam Hess and his wife largely supported her in the aftermath of Mason’s death, “but that was before Mason’s death was ruled a homicide,” the Asbury Park Press reports.

Dueling expert witnesses testified on whether Mason was shaken to death. The prosecution claims that he had to be because of retinal hemorrhages in his eyes indicative that he suffered abusive head trauma from being shaken, while the defense asserted that retinal hemorrhages don’t prove anything as they can also appear in a number of cases that don’t involve head trauma.

https://youtu.be/-BRVr32LsfU

Do you think Michelle Heale is innocent of murdering Mason Hess, or are authorities right to pursue life in prison? Sound off in the comments section.