Suspect’s ex said stolen infant was his
As Chris Green was leaving a Houston store where he was shopping for formula for the baby his live-in ex-girlfriend had brought home a few days before, he was approached by FBI agents. They showed the man a missing person flyer for Austin mother Heidi Broussard and her 3-week-old baby, Margo.
“That’s my baby,” Green told the agents when he saw the photograph of Margo on Dec. 19, according to court documents. But it wasn’t his child.
The agents went to the house Green shared with Magen Fieramusca. They found Broussard’s baby inside the house near Jersey Village and the 33-year-old mother’s corpse in a car in the backyard.
Fieramusca, also 33, has been charged with two counts of kidnapping and tampering with Broussard’s corpse in the case, which has drawn international attention. Detectives now believe Fieramusca was driven to abduct Broussard and her infant in Austin last month because of a desire to have a baby after a pregnancy that either failed to come to term or was entirely made up, according to an arrest affidavit unsealed Monday.
Broussard was killed by ligature strangulation, according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Science. The death was ruled a homicide.
The affidavit, which notes that
Broussard’s corpse was stuffed into a duffel bag in the trunk, reveals Fieramusca’s actions in the days on and after the abduction, including internet searches for Broussard, Amber Alerts and bodies found in Austin.
Fieramusca has not been charged with killing Broussard. The Austin bureau of the Texas Department of Public Safety did not immediately respond to a question about whether Green has been eliminated as a suspect. He has not been charged with any crime in connection with the case.
Broussard and her baby were reported missing by the Austin Police Department on Dec. 13. The last time the mother and child were seen together was on Dec. 12 at Cowan Elementary School, where Broussard dropped off her older son.
An extensive search followed, led by federal, state and Austin police.
Fieramusca and Broussard met at the Texas Bible Institute in Columbus about a decade ago, Shane Carey, Broussard’s boyfriend told police. The two, who talked on the phone regularly, appeared to become pregnant around the same time, with both due dates around December, Carey told investigators.
Fieramusca was in the hospital room when baby Margo was born on Nov. 26 at St. David’s South Austin Hospital, the affidavit says.
It adds that Fieramusca interrupted Carey’s father’s first meeting with Margo so she could hold the baby. He told investigators he found that odd.
People who were at the hospital for Margo’s birth told investigators they heard the two women saying Fieramusca was 37 weeks pregnant at the time.
Carey said Broussard told him Fieramusca gave birth to her own child on Dec. 8 or 9, according to the affidavit.
Green told FBI agents that Fieramusca told him she became pregnant with his child in the spring of 2019. He said that her stomach appeared to grow, court records say, and he felt it. But he told investigators he never saw the woman’s bare stomach during the pregnancy.
Fieramusca and Green had broken up in March, Green said, but the two kept living together in his home.
Police say Carey, Broussard’s boyfriend, was cooperative throughout the investigation and has regained custody of Margo.
Green told law-enforcement officials that when Fieramusca returned from a trip on Dec. 13, she said, “Don’t be mad,” according to the affidavit. She told him “that she went into labor and delivered their baby.”
When questioned by investigators on Dec. 19, Fieramusca could not remember the name of the birthing center where she said she delivered, and she gave conflicting accounts of when the baby arrived.
Surveillance footage of the complex where Broussard lived in the 700 block of West William Cannon Drive shows a car that police believe belonged to Fieramusca being driven near the mother’s home on Dec. 12, according to the affidavit.
A witness told detectives she saw the same car stopped in the middle of the lot that day and that she saw a woman believed to be Broussard holding a baby get into the vehicle, the affidavit says. The witness also told police she saw a woman who looked like Fieramusca driving the car.
Agents began investigating Fieramusca’s social media, email and other online accounts, all of which used an alternative name — Maygen Humphrey on Dec. 18, the day before Broussard’s body was found. An online baby registry under the names Maygen Humphrey and Chris Green listed the couple’s expected due date as Dec. 12.
According to the affidavit, Fieramusca did google searches in her gmail account under the Humphrey name for “reasons for Amber Alert” and “Amber Alert issued in Austin” on Dec. 12, the day Broussard went missing, for “bodies found in Austin Texas” Dec. 14; and for the name Heidi Broussard at least 162 times between Nov. 11 and Dec. 18.
Location data from Fieramusca’s cell phone placed the device in the Austin area on the day Broussard went missing.
Officials with the FBI and the Texas Department of Public Safety surveilled Fieramusca’s home in Houston on Dec. 19, the affidavit says, and a helicopter operator noticed a car parked in the backyard.
After DPS was granted access to the property for a welfare check of the child, they discovered Broussard’s body in the car.
A state trooper “smelled the immediate and unmistakable odor of decomposing flesh emitting from the trunk area of the 2015 Nissan,” the affidavit reads.
Broussard’s body was later identified by the medical examiner’s office. After DNA testing confirmed the baby was Margo, she was returned to her father, Carey.
Broussard, who gave birth to her son in 2013, worked for Cracker Barrel in Buda, Texas, while she studied to become a veterinarian technician, according to her Facebook page. Fieramusca has worked as a wedding planner in Houston for 13 years, her LinkedIn page says.
A funeral service for Broussard was held on Dec. 27 in Lake Charles, La.
Fieramusca was acquitted of a theft charge last month in Harris County, according to court records. She was accused of stealing $5,000 from a former employer.
Fieramusca is scheduled to appear in Travis County Court in February, according to the affidavit.