By james art 
A South Carolina family who lived in a hideous house of horrors abused their disabled daughter so badly that she died in “the absolute worst case of child neglect” — even though her brother lived there as her paid caretaker.
Heather Baynard, a 14-year-old girl with cerebral palsy, died on April 11, 2022, hours after her father carried her cold, gray, listless body to a local hospital like a sack of potatoes, according to WYFF 4 in Greenville.
An autopsy performed a few days later showed the girl — whose legs had rotted so badly that one witness said they looked like raw meat — had been neglected for “many, many months,” according to the Cherokee County Coroner. Dennis Fowler.
It was, in fact, “the absolute worst case of child neglect” he had ever seen, Fowler added.
Last Thursday, a jury convicted Baynard’s father, David; her mother, Bobbie Jo; and her 21-year-old brother, Edward, for murder and other crimes related to the teenager’s gruesome death.
“The suffering that she went through — not in a minute, not in an hour, not in a day, but in weeks — ladies and gentlemen, if that’s not malice, I don’t know what is,” attorney Barry J. Barnett said during the four-day trial last week.
“And for this little girl to be in this situation where she can’t escape — she’s completely dependent on them,” Barnett said, gesturing to the family.
David Baynard, 55, and Bobby Joe Baynard, 45, of Gaffney, were jailed for life for murder – as well as 20 years for causing grievous bodily harm to a child, with a further 10 for negligence.
Meanwhile, Edward Baynard — who, as an Axcess Homecare employee, made more than $25,000 in 18 months as Heather Baynard’s personal care assistant — was convicted of the same crimes and received equally severe sentences: 30 years for murder, 20 for aggravated assault bodily injury and 10 years for unlawful negligence.
The parents will serve their terms consecutively and the brother will serve them concurrently.
The horrific story began when David Baynard took his daughter to Spartanburg Regional Medical Center, the NBC affiliate reports.
She was unresponsive and cold – but neither parent showed any emotion or sense of urgency.
David Baynard sat in the waiting room playing on his phone as doctors worked on his dying daughter, who was pronounced dead overnight.
When cops went to the family’s Camp Ferry Road home the next day, they found a shocking scene.
Garbage and trash were piled several feet high inside, the affiliate said, and urine and animal feces from 40 malnourished, flea-infested pets decorated the floors, according to Local 12.
Officers had to wear hazmat suits and respirators just to enter the house, which was teeming with fleas, flies, worms and cockroaches that had made their homes in the piles of trash.
“A lot of droppings in the home, from both cats and dogs; urine, which created an overwhelming smell of ammonia,” Cherokee County Sheriff Steve Mueller said.
Animal excrement infected the girl’s skin and other tissues, Barnett told the court during the trial.
This led to her inexplicable condition, with a witness who was at the hospital saying her legs looked like “raw meat”.
“This is the worst case of neglect we’ve ever seen in this county,” Mueller said at the time.
Doctors and medical examiners testified they had never seen anyone in such terrible shape — with one witness even saying it would have been better if the teenager had been killed quickly rather than enduring such terrible, prolonged suffering, the station said.
Prosecutors were just as shocked.
“Nobody in this world — especially a child with special needs — should have to go through something like this,” Barnett said afterward.
“It was terrible. Heather was left to rot to death.