Wesley Mathews Sentenced to Life in Prison in 2017 TX Slaying of Three-Year-Old Sherin Mathews
https://dallasnews.imgix.net/1515006...=40&or=0&w=350
Sherin Mathews
https://dallasnews.imgix.net/1510939...=40&or=0&w=350
Wesley Mathews (Dallas County Sheriff's Department)
Sherin Mathews' father charged with capital murder in 3-year-old's death
By Tasha Tsiaperas and Jennifer Emily
The Dallas Morning News
The father of Sherin Mathews has been charged with capital murder in the 3-year-old's October death, court records show.
Sherin was killed by "homicidal violence" before her adoptive father, Wesley Mathews, hid her body in a Richardson culvert where it went undiscovered for weeks.
A Dallas County grand jury indicted him on the capital murder charge this week. The indictment says Mathews killed Sherin "by a manner and means unknown to the grand jury," court records show.
If convicted, Mathews could face the death penalty, should prosecutors choose to pursue it, or an automatic sentence of life without parole.
"We have not decided if we are actually going to seek death," Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson said during a news conference Friday.
Mathews, 37, was arrested in October on a felony injury to a child charge after the girl's body was found Oct. 22. He originally said he put her outside Oct. 7 because she wouldn't drink her milk. He later changed that story to say that the child choked on her milk.
He is charged with four felonies, including injury to a child and capital murder. He is also charged with abandoning a child and tampering with physical evidence.
Mathews' attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
Investigators have not said specifically how Sherin was killed, and her body had been outside for weeks before she was found and an autopsy could be performed.
Autopsy results were pending for several months before the Dallas County medical examiner's office on Jan. 3 ruled Sherin's death a homicide. It did not offer many details on what might have caused Sherin's death.
But in March, several months before her death, a doctor found multiple healing fractures on the child.
Johnson did not say whether continuous abuse of Sherin contributed to her death and said investigators are still working to determine exactly what happened to the child.
"We do want to make certain that justice is done on the behalf of this little 3-year-old," Johnson said. "We are going to be the voice for her."
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/cour...capital-murder