Elizabeth Anne Case appears in a booking photo in 2019. (Limestone County Sheriff’s Office)
An Alabama woman will spend the better part of two decades behind bars for the hot car death of her 13-month-old baby boy — forgotten in life and remembered too late.
Elizabeth Anne Case, 40, pleaded guilty to one count of manslaughter in March. On Monday, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison with credit for the four years and 150 days she spent in pretrial detention.
The defendant has been in custody since October 2019 — her long journey through the legal system a series of old and lesser charges, replaced by newer and stronger charges, which were themselves replaced by indictments and, finally, a plea deal on the second-most mentally culpable form of homicide in the Yellowhammer State.
Casen Case, the victim, died on Oct. 5, 2019. His mother left him alone in a car overnight after an evening of dumpster diving. During that time at dumpsters in two counties, the boy was in his mother’s car — strapped into a front-forward car seat that was not buckled down by a seat belt.
Leaving their residence at around 9 a.m. on Oct. 4, 2019, Elizabeth Case chose dumpsters in both Limestone and nearby Madison counties. She stayed out late searching for reusable goods.
Then, she returned home around 5:40 a.m. and went to sleep — leaving the boy alone for the last time, the Limestone County Sheriff’s Office said in the immediate aftermath of the child’s death.
The convicted killer only awoke the next afternoon, at around 1:30 p.m., because of the incessant banging on her front door.
Casen’s grandmother, Theresa Moss, was frantic because she couldn’t find the 1-year-old. She had come over that day to visit the boy she dearly loved at his mother’s house in Toney, a tiny unincorporated community roughly 30 miles northwest of Huntsville.
Upon waking up, the two searched and found Casen inside the vehicle.
Upon making the discovery, the boy’s mother allegedly did not immediately seek help from law enforcement or emergency medical services but, instead, took him inside her house and into the shower.
Again Moss was the proactive one, authorities allege, putting the boy inside her car, calling 911, and rushing to meet Athens Police Department officers at the intersection of two highways.
Outside, the temperature in the area was around 97 degrees on the day Casen died, authorities said.
The story of Elizabeth Case, told in a series of charges in Limestone County, Alabama (Limestone County Sheriff’s Office).
Case was first arrested for her son’s reckless murder. She was later indicted on more serious felony murder. Then, she was indicted on a charge of capital murder on Jan. 3, 2022. She pleaded not guilty to that most serious of charges on Feb. 25, 2020. A jury trial in the case was originally slated for November 2023, but the trial was canceled in the wake of a superseding indictment being filed in late summer 2023.
In March 2021, Casen’s aunt, Laura Barnett, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Elizabeth Case, the Alabama Department of Human Resources, and the director and program director of the Limestone County Department of Human Resources, according to a report by Huntsville-based CBS affiliate WHNT.
Birmingham-based attorney Tommy James said the state received numerous reports the boy had been abused and sat on their hands.
“These workers are paid with our tax dollars to protect children like Casen, and yet they did nothing,” the attorney said at the time. “His death is heartbreaking and should never have happened. Instead of fighting in court, we ask DHR to join us and those who loved Casen to search for the truth and to find out how this happened and to prevent a tragedy like this from ever happening to another child.”
Barnett castigated the boy’s mother in comments to Knoxville, Tennessee-based CBS affiliate WVLT.
“That child is the very first thing that comes out of your car when you get out,” she told the TV station. “If you have groceries in your car, if there’s milk that can spoil, it can be replaced. That baby cannot.”
The lawsuit was later dismissed.
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