Finally....Full Justice For Hanna Mack.....Sort Of.

Earlier this year, katfish....ponders told readers about six year old Hanna Mack, from Texas. I noticed a good number of "hits" recently looking for information on Hanna's case and realized I had not followed up on the case, so here it is.

Hanna was much like any other six year old girl. She was a "girly girl" who loved dolls, putting on jewelry and wearing a tiara while playing princess.

In September 2007, Hanna was thrilled about two big events: starting the first grade and getting the training wheels off of her bicycle. According to her grandmother, she was especially excited about school because she loved books and could see her new friends everyday. Not surprisingly, at six years old, Hanna's only plans for her future were to be a princess when she grew up.

A few months before school started, Hanna had moved to Navarro Mills, TX. with her mother, Dana Mack, and her two older sisters (12 and 14). Her mom met a boyfriend named Kevin Wayne Anders,32, and allowed him to move in with them.

Hopefully, nothing that you hear from here on out about Hanna will sound like the life of any other six year old child.

When Dana Mack went to bed the night of Sept. 9, 2007, she saw her youngest daughter, Hanna, sleeping on the living room couch at about one in the morning. Less than seven hours later, Dana Mack would find Hanna's half-naked dead body hanging from the rafters of her family's garage. That Monday morning, Sept. 10, 2007, when Hanna should have been getting ready for school, police were scouring her home trying to find clues to her murder. Medical examiners determined that Hanna had been beaten, raped and then hung.

While going through a computer taken from the Mack home, criminal investigators found the presence of child pornography. On Sept. 13 Kevin Wayne Anders was arrested for possession of child pornography. On September 14, 2007, Hanna was buried in a purple and white frilly dress and her tiara.

For several weeks Anders was the primary suspect in Hanna's murder; however, on Sept. 26 DNA evidence came back which pointed to Shaun Earl Arender,19, who lived down the street from the Mack/Anders household and Arender was charged with Hanna's murder.

On February 13, 2009, Shaun Earl Arender gave his confession in open court as part of a plea bargain to avoid the death penalty. He was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole by District Judge James Lagomarsino. Under questioning by District Attorney R. Lowell Thompson, Arender placed the blame on the former live-in boyfriend of Hanna's mother, Kevin Wayne Anders, claiming he was just going along with the sexual assault of the first-grader when she died.

On the stand, Arender unraveled a sickening tale of people on the edge of society, and the consequences for the vulnerable children in their midst. Here is a bit of his testimony as reported in the Corsicana Daily Sun :

(Warning! Parts of this testimony are graphic in nature and may disturb some readers; therefore, the testimony is shown in italic print.)

Arender said that he had been smoking marijuana that night and wandered away from the trailer where he was staying with a family member and his pregnant girlfriend, when he ran into Anders in front of the house where Anders was living with Dana Mack and her three daughters.

Anders called him over and asked to share Arender’s drugs, and they smoked and talked for an hour and a half or two hours on the porch before Anders offered him a drink. Anders went into the house and returned with a soda, and with a sleepy Hanna Mack, whom he claimed had just woken up. It was around 3 a.m. on Sept. 10, 2007.

Arender claimed it was Anders who first reached into the child’s underwear, and then began choking her to muffle her screams. Arender said that Anders then carried her into the garage and urged Arender to rape the girl on a couch. Arender said the two then molested the girl.

“I don’t know why I tried,” Arender said.

Throughout most of the assault, the girl was unconscious because she had been choked twice by Anders, Arender testified. Finally, Anders began talking about hanging, and they used a cord to hang the girl from the rafters.“I didn’t come up with it, I just went along with it and started helping out,” Arender said.

After court, DA Thompson told the media, “Navarro County law enforcement will investigate all possible leads in this case.” Arender said in court that he would return to Navarro County to testify against Anders.

Even though no physical evidence was ever found linking Kevin Wayne Anders to the Hanna Mack slaying and he has never been charged with her murder, it looks like there will still be full justice of a sort for Hanna. A Navarro County jury found Anders guilty of 10 counts of possession of child pornography. District Judge James Lagomarsino followed that up with ten 10-year sentences, to be served consecutively.

Possession of child pornography is a third-degree felony, with punishments ranging from two to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine for each count. Anders will receive credit for the time he has already served in the Navarro County jail since his arrest in September 2007 (at the time of Hanna's death) leaving him 98 years and four months.

During the sentencing portion of the trial, Kevin Anders took the stand to say that he didn’t do the crime for which he was convicted, and blamed Dana Mack for downloading the child pornography on the computer. Lagomarsino noted Anders' reluctance to take responsibility for his actions when he handed down the long sentence.

Hopefully, readers with children will take from this post the lesson that Dana Mack learned the hard way....the choices that you make for yourself may affect your children for the rest of their life....that is....if it doesn't cost them their life.

RIP " Little Princess"


Corsicana Daily Sun
　
Dallas Daily News Sphere: Related Content