At a second trial, prosecutors tied a broken brush, fingernail DNA and a Christmas morning 911 call to the killing of 3-year-old Makinzlee Handrahan.
BATH, Maine — When jurors convicted Tyler Witham-Jordan of depraved indifference murder this month, they accepted a prosecution case built less on confession than on physical evidence left behind in a small Edgecomb home after a child was beaten to death.
That evidence gave the state a direct answer to the question that had kept the case alive after a mistrial: who inflicted the blunt-force injuries that killed Makinzlee Handrahan before dawn on Christmas Day 2022. Prosecutors said a broken plastic hairbrush, the defendant’s DNA under the child’s fingernails and on her diaper, and his words during the emergency call all pointed in one direction. Defense lawyers tried to redirect suspicion toward the girl’s mother, but the second jury found the state had closed the gap that remained after the first trial failed to produce a verdict.
Investigators said one object stood out almost immediately: a plastic hairbrush that had snapped and held a thick clump of the child’s hair in its bristles. In court, prosecutors used that brush to anchor their theory that Witham-Jordan struck Makinzlee during the night of Dec. 24, 2022, after growing angry while dealing with opioid withdrawal and frustration over the child being sick in the days before Christmas. They paired that account with forensic testing they said placed his DNA under Makinzlee’s fingernails and on the waistband of her bloody diaper. The state argued those were not stray transfers from daily life in a shared home, but traces left during a fatal assault.
Medical findings gave the physical evidence its force. The autopsy concluded Makinzlee died from blunt force trauma and that her death was a homicide. Testimony and court records described bruising across her face and body and internal bleeding in both the abdomen and the skull. First responders who arrived after the 911 call found her cold, stiff and covered in injuries. The severity mattered because it helped prosecutors argue the violence was sustained and extreme, not accidental. Doctors cited in the reporting said the wounds were too serious to have been caused by another child. That conclusion helped jurors connect the crime-scene evidence to a charge of depraved indifference murder rather than a lesser form of homicide.
The state then layered timing onto the forensic picture. Lewis called 911 at about 7:37 a.m. on Dec. 25 after finding Makinzlee unresponsive in bed. Dispatch audio captured panic from the mother and, according to investigators and trial reporting, captured Witham-Jordan saying, “I’m f—ed” and “I’m finished.” Prosecutors told jurors he had been awake through the night, believed drugs he bought on Christmas Eve were fake, and was in withdrawal by morning. In their telling, that timeline explained both his agitation and why the child was left in the lower bunk after the beating. Rather than presenting one dramatic moment, the state presented a chain of connected details: the overnight tension, the damaged brush, the injuries, the DNA and the words on the call.
Defense lawyers attacked that chain by pointing to another adult in the apartment. They argued Lewis, the child’s mother, was the possible killer and said the state had not excluded her. That strategy had surfaced before and remained central in the retrial. Prosecutors responded that Lewis’s DNA was not found on the brush and that they viewed her as a victim, not a suspect. The jury’s verdict suggested it agreed that the forensic record outweighed the alternate theory. It also ended a procedural detour that had forced the case into a second venue after the first trial ended without a final decision.
Outside the core murder evidence, the case carried another layer of scrutiny because child welfare records showed earlier concern about Makinzlee’s safety. Court documents said DHHS had looked into a report from the girl’s daycare in October 2022 after workers saw a scratch, bruises and swelling beneath one eye. The explanation given at the time was a cat scratch and a fall on stairs. That earlier report did not decide the murder charge, but it gave the case a broader public frame: not only how prosecutors proved guilt, but whether visible warning signs had been missed before the Christmas killing. Those questions remained largely outside the jury’s task, yet they shaped much of the reaction after the verdict.
As the case now moves beyond the jury phase, the conviction stands as a win for a prosecution that sharpened its presentation and persuaded a new panel. Sentencing details were not fully laid out in the reporting reviewed, but Witham-Jordan faces a possible term of 25 years to life under Maine law. The next court appearance is expected to focus not on who killed Makinzlee, but on how the state will punish him.
Author note: Last updated March 31, 2026.