by Cayley Mandadi She was a 19-year-old sophomore at Trinity University when she arrived at a hospital in Texas on October 29, 2017. She was almost naked, bruised and not breathing. Her husband Mark Howerton told doctors they took ecstasy at a music festival, and she passed out after consensual sex in his car. She died in hospital.
Mandadi’s mother Alison Steele and stepfather Lawrence Baitland believed something far more sinister had happened and set out to prove it. “48 Hours” correspondent Peter Van Sant reports on the situation in “For the Love of Cayley Mandadi” now airing on Paramount +.
At 4 am on October 30, 2017, Mandadi’s parents woke up to a terrifying phone call. They were told that Cayley was on a life flight to Kyle, Texas and was involved in an incident.
They ran from their home in Houston to the hospital. “I saw my daughter’s broken body,” Steele said. Mandadi was unconscious and covered in bruises. The doctor told them that there was no hope that they would make it.
On October 31, Mandadi was taken off life support. Steele and Baitland said their final goodbyes before Mandadi was wheeled into surgery for organ donation.
The medical examiner ruled that Mandadi died of blunt force trauma to the face and head and ruled her a homicide. Howerton was charged with her murder.
Howerton maintained his innocence and in December 2019 his trial began. Prosecutors allege that Howerton hit Mandadi in his car, causing a fatal brain bleed.
Howerton’s defense attorney, John Hunter, said Howerton did not cause Mandadi’s injuries. He argued that his injuries were caused by resuscitation efforts by hospital staff and medical complications from taking MDMA.
After 10 hours of deliberation, the jury was unable to reach a verdict and the judge declared a mistrial.
Although prosecutors planned to try Howerton again, Steele and Baitland decided the jury needed more information about what happened to their daughter inside Mandadi’s car. Steele, a scientist, and Baitland, a NASA engineer, went to work.
“We’re not prosecutors, we’re not medical doctors, but we know people who have those skills and maybe we could develop a way to cram some answers into this thing. And that’s what we did,” Steele told “48 Hours.” “We started making phone calls, we started making inquiries.”
Steele said they were overwhelmed by offers from experts, including medical doctors, forensic scientists and even a medico-legal death investigator to help them examine evidence in the Mandadi case. They found all the evidence they could.
“What we did was take that evidence and make sense of it in a way that wasn’t done in the first trial,” Steele said.
The couple focused on one autopsy photo showing a small dot-shaped bruise above Mandadi’s right ear, and another photo showing a larger bruise above her left ear. Steele says they arrived at the theory that Mandadi’s fatal injury occurred when Howerton “reached out of the driver’s seat, hit her in the left ear and drove her head into the window and into the car’s locking button.” Now they had to prove it.
So they went to a used car where Baitland photographed Steele standing in a car similar to the Mercedes Howerton drove the night Mandadi was fatally injured.
Baitland said that “48 Hours” he took a “photo [Steele’s] head in different positions and … holding the autopsy images, trying to see if they match the door and it’s almost perfect.”
Inspired by their findings, Baitland used a software program to build a 3D model of Mandadi’s head. He placed a series of photographs of Mandadi and the autopsy photograph that showed that dot above Mandadi’s right ear. He used a measurement from Mandadi’s glasses to determine the size of the 3D head. Baitland then consulted a biomechanical expert in the causes of injury who examined the evidence and Baitland’s research and supported his theory.
“So this gave me the confidence to go to the next step, which was to look [Mark Howerton’s] car,” Baitland said.
Baitland tracked down the Mercedes that Howerton sold in 2018. “I … contacted some friends on social media who were … on an automotive forum and they were able to find the VIN number of [the] car for me,” he said.
At first, the new owner was reluctant to sell the car to Baitland, but after learning Mandadi’s story, he agreed. Baitland said driving the car home was “cheesy” but necessary for their investigation. “We had to have the vehicle to show how it was attacked.”
Baitland and Steele then commissioned a video re-enactment of what they believe happened in the car. Using evidence photos, they focused on every detail, including what Mandadi and Howerton were wearing and what items were in the back seat. They even hired actors like Mandadi and Howerton in terms of size and weight.
The re-enactment video is simple: it shows three angles of what Mandadi’s parents and experts believe caused her fatal head injury.
Prosecutors in the case told “48 Hours” that they had never seen a victim’s family go to such lengths before. Howerton’s defense attorney, John Hunter, believes the parents’ investigation is “unscientific” and will fail to prove his client’s guilt.
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