268. The Murder of Cayley Mandadi

May 12, 2025

In this episode, Payton and Garrett dive into the case of Cayley Mandadi. After a music festival, Cayley is rushed to the hospital under strange circumstances—what happened that night will leave you questioning everything.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland.

And I'm Garrett Moreland.

He's the husband.

And I'm the husband.

Happy Monday!

Happy Monday.

Happy Monday!

Hope everyone is doing great. Here we are with another episode of Murder with My Husband. If you, by chance, are listening to this for the first time, my name is Garrett. That is the lovely Payton Moreland, and she tells me a new case each week. I have no idea what she's going to say—what she's going to talk to me about.

And I love true crime.

And I historically hate true crime. Historically.

Here we are. We do a podcast once a week, and if you want bonus content, extra episodes, and ad-free listening, you can also check out our Apple subscriptions or Patreon/Spotify subscription. And trust us—we know. We're about to just ruin your life because you'll never find a podcast better than this, and you're going to run out of episodes. And we know. But here we are every single week, coming back. Thank you guys for supporting us. We love you.

That leads us to Garrett's portion of the show, where he talks about hot tamales.

This week, for my 10 seconds—I think I have a hot tamale obsession. Not good.

You know how much Red 40 is in that? Not good. I ate a lot of hot tamales. If I die one day, it's going to be because of my hot tamales. But that's okay. I love hot tamales, and I just wanted everyone to know that I love them so much, and I hope that everyone else also likes hot tamales.

I also just got a buzz cut. I buzzed my hair, so it's pretty short. If you're watching on YouTube, there's a weird light coming in from the left because we don't have curtains currently on the window. So, sorry YouTubers that it's not super visually appealing. We apologize—that's our fault.

We are recording later than usual. I think that's all—that's what I got for 10 seconds. You know, just pickleball, hot tamales. I went golfing for the first time this season. I think it's going to be a pretty good year of golf. I think I should be a scratch golfer by the end of the season. I'm pretty excited about it.

Payton doesn't know what that means, so she doesn't know if I'm being serious or not. But no, for anyone out there, I'm not a scratch golfer. But hopefully, at some point, I am.

I've said it before and I'll say it again—I don't really know how golf works. Cuz whenever I go with Garrett, he uses like ten balls.

Get out of here.

He just doesn't like his shot and then puts a new one down.

That is such—she's making that up cuz she watches too much TikTok. Do not listen to her.

TikTok? Yeah, I didn’t get that off TikTok.

That's what all the TikTok people do.

Nope, that's not true.

I just thought that was funny.

It was funny.

All right. Shall we get into this week’s episode?

Yes, let’s do it.

Our sources for this episode are: kensfive.com, yahoo.com, kat.com, cbsnews.com, courthousenews.com, mysanantonio.com, and sandhillsexpress.com.

So, when I think about the typical college experience, a lot of things come to mind—like the challenging coursework, making new friends, finding new hobbies, maybe a little bit of partying. But I think one of the biggest parts of the college experience, at least for me, is honestly the dating.

I mean, I found my Garrett during my college years—finding your Miss or your Mr. or Mrs. Forever… or your Mr. or Mrs. Right. Either way.

Exploring new relationships sort of comes with the territory in college. It’s part of finding ourselves—learning who we are, what we want, and what we don’t want for the rest of our lives.

But dating a new person always comes with risks. Are we going to catch feelings for someone we’re not ready for? Are we going to get our hearts broken? Are they going to get jealous or bitter if it doesn’t work out?

What we rarely stop to consider is how this person might react if things don’t go the way they were hoping for in the relationship.

So today, we are headed to San Antonio, Texas, to meet 19-year-old Cayley Mandadi.

In 2017, Cayley is a sophomore at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. It’s a liberal arts school with about 2,500 students, and Cayley is studying to be a communications major there.

She’s 19—just barely entering her college career—and in many ways, Cayley does fit the mold of an all-American girl.

Growing up, she was popular in school. She was a cheerleader, but also someone who had a huge heart and was always very warm. She was trusting, open, and honest with people. Friends said she always had a huge smile on her face—both on and off the football field when she was cheering.

Cayley brought that radiance with her to Trinity College. There, she made a lot of friends quickly. She joined the Trinity cheerleading squad, which helped her feel right at home, and she became a member of one of the sororities on campus.

But Cayley was also a person with a lot of depth. She was really smart—probably because she was raised by some really intelligent people.

Her father was an international executive for MGM Resorts, and her mother was a scientist. Her stepfather worked for NASA.

And as an only child, Cayley’s parents made sure they set her up for success.

But as we know, college is an exploratory chapter in a young person's life. It’s a time that will not only shape the future of your career, but the future of what kind of person you're going to become.

And sometimes, that means sowing wild oats and trying out new things—and new people. Which was exactly what Cayley was embracing going into her sophomore year at Trinity.

By that point, Cayley had been dating a guy named Jedd Burch. She had been kind of dating him on and off for the last nine months.

Jedd was a Trinity star football player, and he was in Greek life himself. So together, he and Cayley—the cheerleader—were sort of like an idyllic college couple.

They met around January of 2017 and dated throughout the spring semester of her freshman year. But by the time summer rolled around, Jedd and Cayley were on the outs. And by September, when the two returned to campus, Cayley had sort of soured on the relationship.

Going into sophomore year, she was looking for something more serious—someone she could make things exclusive with. But Jedd just wasn’t into that idea.

So Cayley was kind of over it by the time she returned to campus for her sophomore year. She was ready to leave Jedd in the past and see if there was someone who really wanted to commit to her in a more meaningful way.

That’s when she met 22-year-old Mark Howerton.

Mark wasn’t actually a student at Trinity, but he was there all the time visiting his friends. He lived three hours away in Houston at the time, but Cayley might have liked that. Mark was a former high school baseball star—another fellow athlete, which seemed to be her type.

Things got hot and heavy pretty quickly between Mark and Cayley, even though he knew she was fresh out of a relationship. That didn’t seem to stop him.

Just four weeks after they started dating, he invited Cayley to be his plus-one to a concert. It was at a music festival in San Antonio on October 29, 2017.

That morning, Mark picked Cayley up from campus. The two seemed ready for a day of partying and blowing off some steam. But before they got to the stadium where the festival was being held, there was something they wanted to try. They pulled over at a car wash around the corner and took some MDMA.

They got to the concert, saw a few bands, met up with some friends, and had a few drinks. They spent the afternoon dancing and laughing.

Wait, sorry—what is MDMA?

Molly.

Molly? I didn’t know that was Molly. Did you?

Well now you’ve got me questioning things. Not like I’ve ever done it, but I’m pretty sure MDMA is Molly.

I haven’t done it either, so that’s why I’m asking.

I don’t know—anyone out there who’s done MDMA, I assume it is Molly.

Let us know if we’re wrong.

It’s Molly. Thank you. It’s Molly. I’m not gonna doubt myself. I was so sure on that I didn’t even look it up.

Yeah, I don’t know.

They spent the afternoon dancing and laughing, but around 3:45, things got a little awkward at the music festival.

That’s when Cayley ran into her ex-boyfriend from freshman year—the football player, Jedd.

I can only imagine how weird that must’ve been—being with your new boyfriend and running into your old one.

The two supposedly knew about each other, but when you add Molly and alcohol into the mix, emotions probably get a little more heightened.

They didn’t do much more than just say hi, from what I can tell, but it definitely ruined the day for Cayley.

Only an hour or so later, Cayley and Mark actually left the music festival early.

They got into Mark’s Mercedes and drove off.

But come the next morning—October 30, 2017—Cayley’s friends were getting worried.

Her friend Taylor, who had been close with Cayley since freshman year of high school, woke up and noticed she hadn’t received her usual morning Snapchat from her.

The first thing they did every day when they woke up was send each other a Snapchat.

Taylor didn’t go to Trinity—she was at another college nearby—but Cayley’s friends at Trinity were also starting to worry.

Cayley had failed to show up to a sorority meeting the night before, after the concert.

She had been planning to go straight from the festival to the meeting.

They had been trying to call and text her ever since she missed it.

Now, Cayley hasn't answered her phone or any of her messages since she left the music festival. But people looking for her next tried to contact Mark, her boyfriend—and he has answered.

One of her sorority sisters named Morgan Samson tried to FaceTime Cayley late on the night of the 29th. Cayley didn't answer her phone. Mark did, and he told her, "Hey, Cayley can't talk right now," and then just hung up.

That really disturbed Cayley's sorority sisters—so much so that when they still hadn’t seen Cayley the next day, they went to the police to try and file a report and get a wellness check on her. For some reason, the police told the women that wasn't an option yet.

Meanwhile, they're begging the police like, "Please, can you put out an Amber Alert for our friend? Maybe she's been kidnapped." And police are like, "I'm sorry, but your friend is too old for the Amber Alert program. That only applies to people up to age 17."

They're like, "Oh my gosh, well no one's answering. Mark did that weird thing..." I mean, you know where this story is going. He knows where Cayley is. It's not a mystery.

Because around 10:00 p.m. on the night of October 29th—about five hours after he and Cayley left the festival—he was arriving at a hospital in Luling, Texas, which is a little over an hour outside of San Antonio.

Paramedic Cheryl Lane was right in front of Mark's black Mercedes as it pulled up to the emergency entrance. He was honking his horn, flashing his lights as he arrived. Then he got out of the car, screaming that his girlfriend wasn't breathing.

When Cheryl takes a peek inside the passenger door of the vehicle, she sees Cayley there, unconscious in the seat. This paramedic notices that Cayley has some bruising. Her clothes aren't on her—they are lying on the floor of the car.

Oh my gosh, dude.

But Cheryl is more concerned with getting the girlfriend—Cayley—out and administering CPR. As other medics rush out and help get Cayley inside, Mark starts frantically explaining that he and Cayley had taken Molly at the music festival and, when they left, she passed out.

So, for the time being, all of the doctors and nurses are actually treating Cayley’s condition as a drug overdose. They insert a tube into her chest to help her breathe, they put IVs in both of her arms, and they send in a sexual assault nurse to photograph Cayley just in case.

Meanwhile, as Cayley’s in the hospital fighting for her life, her parents are pretty unaware, because—for whatever reason—they aren’t contacted until 4:00 a.m. on October 30th, 2017.

They get to the hospital and they see their daughter for the first time, and they can't help but notice how extensive the bruising is all over her body.

Oh my gosh.

It's actually so bad that her parents are like, "This is not a drug overdose." Like, did she jump off a bridge? Did she have a terrible fall? What could have done this much damage? Was it the amount of times they had tried to administer CPR on her?

And the police are curious about this too, because at the same time, they are actually in another room interrogating Mark Howerton, the boyfriend.

They want to know every second of what happened leading up to his arrival at the hospital. Because if you show up with someone who's apparently overdosing but has bruising all over, they will call the police.

They get a lot of the conversation they have with Mark on body cam footage, so they bring Mark to the quietest place they can find in the hospital.

Okay, this is happening right now.

The hospital staff calls the police, the police come, and they're just trying to make sure everything's good. I love how much is on body cam footage now because you can just—especially at hospitals—get so much information.

Yes, I love it.

So, they kind of bring Mark to a quieter place in the hospital. That happens to be the chapel, and Mark starts off the conversation seemingly pretty honest with them. He says, "Yeah, we took MDMA. We had some drinks before going into the festival." He mentions that they ran into Cayley's ex, Jedd, at around 3:45 p.m. He tells them that after this encounter, him and Cayley actually got into a bit of an argument.

Mark says he told Cayley that Jedd wasn't worth her time, she just needed to get over him and enjoy the festival, and that the fight got so heated they decided to leave the concert altogether early. But once they got into his car, he claims things began to calm down. He tells police they pulled over at a gas station parking lot, and that's when they started to have makeup sex in the car.

But Mark admits to the police that this sex was not loving and tender. He does say it was a bit rough, that there was some choking, but it was 100% consensual. He says, "We were having sex. I choked her, but it wasn't like choking children." He tells the police, "This also isn't far off from how things usually are between us in the bedroom." He said, "This is actually normal."

I'm sure the police are just like, "Bro, her entire body is filled with bruises. What are you talking about?"

Then he says, after they finished having sex, they got back on the road and started heading for his home in Houston—a 3-hour drive. On route, Cayley started to say she wasn't feeling well. She fell asleep in the passenger seat, and shortly into that drive, Mark says he realized Cayley wasn't breathing. That's when he rushed her to the nearest hospital—that’s the one they’re at.

"How'd her clothes get off?" Oh, because they were having sex before this.

On its surface, this story could be plausible. I mean, it could even be honest, considering Mark admitted to them, "Yeah, we did fight. Yeah, we were on drugs. We drank, but the bruising on Cayley can't be ignored."

So they asked him, "Okay, we understand what you're saying, but the bruising on her body—what happened?" And he said, "I noticed some bruising on her legs earlier, but that bruising that's on her now wasn't there when I dropped her off."

Which is a bit shady for two reasons. Number one: The paramedic noticed the bruising the second that Cayley got there. And number two: Mark actually has bruising on his hands at the time of this interrogation. The tops of them are a little red and scabby, which is enough for police to go, "Okay, you're going to stay here. We're going to go search your car, because that's where you're claiming most of this happened."

It's kind of interesting too, because at this point, I'm sure he's hoping she doesn't wake up, right? 'Cause if she does wake up or she gets better, I mean, she's going to be able to tell them exactly what happened. Which is also interesting, because wouldn't he want to make sure she's dead if that was the case?

Well, anyway, keep going, keep going.

They decide they're going to go search his car. Mark is very cooperative, and I want to reiterate that all of this is happening at the hospital the next day. He doesn't tell them to get a warrant—he just tells them to look around in the car, where they discover some marijuana and a gun. But Mark doesn't seem too alarmed by this. This is Texas, after all. Instead, he is just like, "Okay, I understand you guys are searching my car, but can I get an update on Cayley, my girlfriend?"

But the truth is, things are not going well over with Cayley in the hospital room. By the morning of October 31st, 2017, the next day, doctors bring Cayley’s parents in and tell them that there is no hope for recovery. After trying to resuscitate Cayley seven times over the course of the last day and a half, they let the family know that Cayley was now brain dead. This is when her parents were left with an unimaginable decision.

They called her closest friends, invited them to the hospital to say goodbye, and they signed the papers to fulfill one of Cayley’s wishes—to donate her organs to those in need. Then, that afternoon, Cayley’s family gave her one last kiss as they decided to take her off life support.

Oh my gosh, that would be so hard... awful. That would be awful, awful.

So after Cayley's passing, the police continued to speak with Mark Howerton on a few separate occasions because now she has died, and his story remains consistent each time. He says that they went to the festival, saw her ex, got in a fight, left, had makeup sex in the car, and then Cayley said she wasn't feeling well. They were driving, and then he noticed she wasn't breathing. That's when he rushed her to the nearest hospital. For now, there's nothing the police can charge him for. This isn't exactly looking like a homicide until the autopsy comes back, of course, and that changes everything.

The autopsy doesn’t say that Cayley died from high levels of alcohol or MDMA or mixing them. It says that Cayley's cause of death was, and get this, blunt force trauma to her head. Holy crap. This is consistent with what they found on the rest of her body—bruises everywhere.

And this is actually something that I didn’t know but learned the other day, and it's something you can look for in children or elderly people to see if there’s a possibility they are being abused in the care of someone else. Okay, if someone is getting hit in the head, oftentimes a symptom of that will be bruising in their ears. Interesting. It doesn’t mean that they’ll bruise on their actual head, but if you look at their ears and there's bruising in or around them, that’s a sign of head trauma. This has actually been used multiple times to prove that people are being abused, which is gross. I’m not even going to go there, but this is something they look for in children.

But this is what’s happening with Cayley at this point—there is bruising in her ears. And this is slightly graphic, but I do think it’s important to understand the severity of these injuries because it’s definitely not an overdose. This is a huge part of the case. You can fast forward if you don’t need all the details, but the autopsy stated that Cayley's head injury was so substantial that it had actually caused her brain to strip away from her skull.

Oh my.

It then created a brain bleed, which makes you think—he’s pulling up to the hospital saying, "Oh, she just fell asleep," and her brain is not attached to her skull.

Once investigators get this information from the autopsy, they’re like, "What? What? This is not an overdose. This is a homicide." And the bruising is not consistent with rough sex like Mark Howerton said they’d had. This looked more like a case of extreme physical assault. Once they learn more about who Mark Howerton is, they’re like, "Okay, this is our number one suspect."

Things start coming together pretty fast. Let’s get into the real Mark Howerton. Let me start by saying that Mark is a pretty big guy. He’s tall, he's muscly, to the point where some of Cayley’s friends even said that they thought he was on steroids. So the thought of him attacking Cayley and doing that amount of damage, even in a confined space like a car, doesn’t actually sound that impossible—especially after you hear what her friends had to say about Cayley and Mark's relationship.

It turns out Cayley wasn't in this one for the long haul.

She did seem to still have feelings for Jedd, and she was kind of already one foot out of the relationship with Mark by the time of the music festival. She had actually spoken to a few friends about breaking up with Mark, but she also passively mentioned that she was kind of afraid to do it—like she was afraid to have this conversation with him. The reason for why became a bit clearer a few days before they went to that music festival.

So, this was October 15th, 2017. Cayley's roommate, Morgan Samson, told police after her death that on that night, Mark came to campus to hang out with Cayley. Remember, he doesn’t go to the college. It seems like Mark got super drunk that day and then showed up that night and began throwing up off of Cayley's dorm room balcony. At this point, Morgan invited Cayley to a frat party and told her she should just leave Mark behind to sober up and cool off—like he’s already too far gone to party now.

Mark isn’t cool with this because Jedd is part of the fraternity that’s hosting this frat party. Yeah, okay, he senses that Cayley is not necessarily over that breakup, but Cayley and Morgan decide to go to the party anyway, and they’re basically like, "Mark, you don’t even go here. You need to stay home and sober up. You’re kind of not invited."

So, Mark stays in Cayley’s room, and while she’s out, her neighbors hear a bunch of loud banging coming from her bedroom. They actually call campus police, saying, "Hey, there’s something going on over there." So, police show up, knock on the door, and find Mark. They ask him, "Hey, we need to take a look inside the apartment." He says, "No," but the police are like, "Okay, we’re campus police, we’re coming inside anyway."

What they find is that the balcony door to this apartment has been broken, and all of Cayley’s clothes from inside her bedroom have been thrown off the balcony.

Holy crap.

And onto the trees outside, as well as her laptop, which has been thrown off the balcony. Keep in mind, Mark doesn’t go to Trinity, so campus police are like, "Okay, you can’t ever step foot here again. You are not allowed on campus now."

As far as I can tell, nothing happened to Cayley that night. It seems like police told him to get off campus immediately before Cayley even came back to her dorm room, but I know that at this point, she tells her ex-boyfriend, Jedd, that, "You know, I’m dating this new guy, Mark, and I am scared of him. I want to break up with him, but his behavior is just showing me that it might be dangerous to do so." Another friend of hers said that she had actually begun to see bruises on Cayley after that day.

Wow. So, when she confronted Cayley about it, like, "Hey, why all of a sudden do you have bruises on you?" Cayley admitted that they were from Mark. So, after he does this on the balcony, he then starts to get physically violent with her.

We’ve talked about it a few times. I actually truly don’t know what you’re supposed to do when you’re being beaten but you’re scared to leave because they’re going to kill you. I truly don’t know what you’re supposed to do. And honestly, because—sorry to interrupt—because the legal route for that isn’t working. It’s just… it’s just sticky. Yes, right, it’s so sticky. Like, it doesn’t solve the issue.

He's not going to go to prison for what he's done, yeah, if it's not super severe, yet like what happened. So it's just... it's too sticky, and I don't know what... I don't... female, male, whatever, I don't know what you're supposed to do when you're being abused like that.

And I will say, like, I got the hint that there was a little bit of victim blaming going on, being like, "Well, if Cayley's still in contact with Jedd, how is that fair to Mark? What the blah blah blah." Let me just clarify something: when you are in trouble with someone, you tend to go to people you trust who you think can help you out. A former boyfriend could easily do that. He cares about you, he's another guy, like he knows what it's like to be in a relationship with you. It really is not that crazy that that's who she turns to for help. So I just don't want to go down that road at all because she's in a dangerous situation.

Then another friend told police that Cayley had confided in them about a time when, um, Mark had grabbed her head and smashed it into a car window. What is happening now? By this point in October, Cayley had apparently tried to end things with Mark more than once, but whenever she told him, like, "Hey, I think we should break up," like, she tried to have the talk with him, he would threaten to die by suicide. There was even a text message from Mark to Cayley, so this is like hard proof that read, "If I leave, it's death," basically saying, "If we break up, I will kill myself."

By the way, I mean, that's a form of abuse and manipulation. Like, that's not... that can't happen. That's not okay. And even if someone is so low to the point where that's how they're feeling, it's never the other person's fault.

Just... just saying no. I mean, if you can get help and get other people involved, but by the time the festival rolled around on October 29th, Cayley was literally on her last leg. She told Jedd that she was planning to break up with Mark while she was there that day because there would be a lot of people around, so if anything goes sideways at the festival, there would be witnesses. Jedd also said, though, that Cayley was really nervous about this breakup. Like, the only reason she was going to this festival was to break up with him in public, and rightfully so, because Jedd said after he ran into Cayley at the festival, he saw Mark and Cayley fighting. Um, obviously, he's figuring that they're breaking up, and it appeared like Cayley was trying to get away, but Mark kind of hooked his arm around her shoulder, um, and then they just... like, he just began walking her to the exit.

So now, with this eyewitness testimony against Mark Howerton and the incredibly damning autopsy report, police feel like they have more than enough to press charges.

Yeah, I'm so mad because I've said this on the podcast before, and I totally get if you disagree with me, and I'm fine with that. Like, I don't care. It doesn't offend me. I still love you, you still love me, we're a happy family... way to force that, but it's just like, I... I just don't think... I mean, he's going to get prison time, obviously. I don't... that ain't good enough for me. That's not good enough for me. Like, that's just not... it's not okay.

Yeah, sure, he goes to prison, but cool, like, he physically killed somebody. Like, 'cause you still... he's rageful and egotistical and can't be told no. Like, you still have your life. Nah, not about it. I'm just... I'm not about it. You should have the right in this world to break up with anyone whenever and for whatever reason you want, and it doesn't mean it's not going to emotionally hurt someone, but you also have that freedom as a person. It's crazy. Police are like, "Hey, we have enough to press charges."

And just a few weeks after the autopsy is revealed, on February 28th, 2018, they go and arrest the 22-year-old Mark. He's charged with first-degree murder and first-degree sexual assault. Now, it takes almost two years for Mark to go to trial, so in December of 2019, the prosecution is ready for a conviction. They argue at trial that on the night of October 29th, after attempting to break up with Mark, Cayley was forcefully taken back to his car, where she was sexually assaulted by him and then beaten so badly that she suffered that fatal brain bleed. They show the jury just how bad it was with photographs taken of Cayley in the hospital.

Now, when it's the defense's turn, they are like, "Not so fast." They argue no one saw what transpired between Cayley and Mark in the car that day, and here's the thing: Jedd is called in as a witness for the prosecution because he originally told police he saw him lead her out of the music festival, but when he testifies, he doesn't say that on the stand this time. He's like, "No, I just saw the two of them walk away. I didn't really see her being, like, forced away with him," which honestly is just like a technicality.

Like, yeah, big difference though. Not saying it makes him innocent or not innocent, but the defense, I mean, they can use that. I mean, anything that creates doubt will be used, right?

Why Jedd changed his tune during the trial is kind of a mystery. Maybe he just wasn't... he was exaggerating the day that he talked to police, and then when he was under oath, he was like, "I should probably just tell the truth." But that still doesn't explain all the bruising and the autopsy results that happened from the time she was last seen at the festival to the hospital.

Though the defense had a pretty convincing argument for that too. They said that the bruising was caused by the hospital, by Cayley's medical team, who tried to resuscitate her seven times in an effort to save her life. For this, they point to a broken rib on the autopsy, and the defense leans into the MDNA aspect of the story, that while the autopsy didn't state it as a cause of death, it was in her system at the time, and some experts called on by the defense argued it could have definitely played a role.

So after 10 hours of deliberations, the jury returned to the courtroom, and they claimed that they couldn't agree.

Oh my, get the... get out of here.

So they don't have a verdict. Mark Howerton ‘s case ends in a mistrial, and he's a free man. Mark would be getting a new trial date, which wouldn't come until 2023, because they're going to try him again. Though that's when Cayley's mother, scientist Allison Seal, and Cayley's NASA engineer stepfather, Lawrence Baitland, realized this case wasn't as cut and dry as they thought.

They thought that going to trial would just be open and closed, and they decided the police needed more evidence this time around. They said, "We're gonna fight it. We want justice for our daughter, and we are getting to work."

Cayley's stepfather Lawrence starts by pouring over these autopsy photos, and what he notices is a small injury above Cayley's right ear. Then he notices a few more injuries—subtle things—but soon it starts to paint a picture. He and Allison think that the fatal blow was when Mark hit Cayley in her left ear, which sent her head into the window that hit the lock button on the car. That was what was above her ear.

Now, what's frustrating about this is that Mark Howerton actually admitted in a recorded interview with police that he had done something similar before. He told them that at one point, they had gotten into a fight in his car and he had pushed Cayley's head into a window. Now, whether or not this detail was included in the first trial, I have no idea, but I know Cayley's parents weren't about to let this slip through the cracks. He had already done this motion and movement with her. So they took things a step further.

They learned that Mark had actually sold his car back in 2018, and they did a search for the VIN number. They tracked it down to the new owners. Once they found them, Allison and Lawrence literally went up to them and said, "Can we please buy this car from you? We believe our daughter was murdered in this car."

And how do you say no to that?

So they bought the car, drove it home, and hired experts to help them prove their theory. In fact, they even hired a PI to make a reenactment video in case they needed it for court. They brought in two actors, similar in stature and weight to Cayley and Mark, and had them play out a couple of scenarios of how the injuries from Cayley's autopsy pictures could have occurred in the car.

Come June 2023, it was time for Mark Howerton's case to get a second trial, and this time, Cayley's family said, "We've done a lot more work this time. We are feeling optimistic." For starters, Mark hadn’t been doing himself any favors since he got off the first time and had been waiting for this date. He had been posting ridiculous things on the internet, saying stuff like, "Come at me legally, I will beat you." And in social media videos, he said, "Wow, 75% of people think I'm guilty; that just means 75% of people in the world can suck my—”

Okay, but it's possible.

Mark was really feeling the pressure because now he wasn't just facing charges of first-degree murder and sexual assault; they had tacked on more charges, like aggravated assault and criminally negligent homicide. When the day came for the trial, there was new evidence presented, particularly in regard to Mark and Cayley's cell phone data. It proved that Mark's story didn't make sense—the one about them having makeup sex and him driving her to the hospital when she passed out.

Experts see from the cell phone data this time around that it's more likely Mark drove around with Cayley in his car for a long time between stopping and taking her to the hospital. Yeah, because he wanted her to die. Yes, he was hesitating, trying to come up with a plan—do I take her in, or do I just let her die here, getting his story straight, whatever. But there are a few hiccups when it comes to the prosecution side.

That reconstruction video Cayley's parents made—judges said, "You can use it in trial, but it comes with a condition." The parents now have to be witnesses in the trial, which means they aren't able to sit in and watch it. Ultimately, this wasn't something they wanted to risk, so Allison and Lawrence agreed to just take back the video. They said, "We'd rather just be present for the trial than have to sit out and testify."

In the meantime, the defense continues to argue basically the same thing—that all of this was caused by consensual sex. Now the question was, who are the jurors going to believe? When they left to deliberate this time, they did come back with a verdict for 27-year-old Mark, and when the judge reads the results, it makes a lot of people's hearts sink because Mark Howerton is found not guilty of first-degree murder.

Get the—get out of here! There's no way.

Do you want to know what he's found guilty of?

Drugs or sexual assault?

Guilty of aggravated assault causing serious bodily harm.

Okay, so what? Literally a bar fight. He gets three years in prison. She died. She died, and he got convicted of punching someone recently. This—oh my gosh—whoever was on the jury for this garbage. Absolute—you guys—bad. I will say it’s insane.

I mean, okay, it had to be a pretty bad bar fight 'cause you have to cause bodily harm, but anyways, Mark is given 20 years in prison, and he has to pay $10,000 to Cayley's family.

Oh wow, $10,000. Cool.

But Cayley's parents can't help but think about how easily all of this could have been prevented. It's actually one of the hardest pills for them to swallow—the fact that nothing could be done when Cayley's friends first reported her missing.

Remember when police told them they couldn’t issue an Amber Alert because Cayley was over 17?

Well, Cayley's mom, Allison, stewed on that for a while, and that's when she decided she was going to fight for an Amber Alert to be sent out for anyone. Because who knows, really, how long this whole process had taken, and the friends couldn't reach her that night. Remember, she was supposed to be at that sorority thing?

So in 2019, Allison created the Katie's Calling organization and, with that, made the Clear Alert. It works just like Amber Alert, only it's made for people between the ages of 18 and 64.

Okay, so basically an Amber Alert for older people. In September of 2019, Allison got the program approved by the Texas legislature. But Allison isn't done trying to keep Cayley's legacy alive. Her nonprofit, Cayley's Calling, has been traveling around Texas, trying to educate law enforcement on how to properly utilize this alert. The hope is that everyone in the community can come together to prevent a crime like Cayley's from ever happening again. If you would like to learn more about Cayley's Calling or donate to the cause, you can visit Cayleyscalling.org.

And that is the murder of Cayley Mandadi.

Dude, I don’t know. People piss me off. I don’t know how else to say it other than that. That’s crazy. I just—okay, and I know this is why. This is good. Maybe leave some of this stuff to the end 'cause a lot of people have probably turned the podcast off by now. But this is exactly why I just think there’s not a scary enough punishment. If people aren’t scared, people are not scared to go to prison, apparently, because they’re doing this stuff. If you were truly terrified of the consequences from your actions, you wouldn’t do something. Majority of people—you're still going to have your 1% of people who are just serial killers and don’t care. I don’t know, just my thoughts. But horrible.

And if you live with the family—and that, my thoughts are—this, not everyone, but I would say a lot of people have been turned down by someone that they wanted, right? I mean, there's—you know—and that hurts. And it does feel bad, but not everyone shoves someone's head into the side of a car so hard that their brain splits from their spine. And that’s the difference.

Alright, you guys, thank you for watching this week's episode or listening, and we will see you next time with another one.

I love it.

And I hate it.

Goodbye.

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