FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A former babysitter pleaded guilty to manslaughter Wednesday for the 2019 death of a man she was accused of disabling as an infant 40 years ago. Terry McKirchy, 62, accepted a plea deal for the death of Benjamin Dowling, who died at 35 after a life of severe disabilities caused by a brain hemorrhage he suffered in 1984 when he was 5 months old while at McKirchy’s suburban Fort Lauderdale home.
Investigators believed she caused the injury by shaking him. In a letter of apology read to Dowling’s parents by her attorney, assistant public defender David Fry, McKirchy said she was feeling overwhelmed and exhausted by taking care of numerous children and struck him, causing his injuries. McKirchy, who now lives in Sugar Land, Texas, was indicted with first-degree murder by a Broward County grand jury three years ago after an autopsy concluded Dowling died from his decades-old injuries.
He never crawled, walked, talked or fed himself, his family has said. She voluntarily entered the Broward County Jail on May 29 after having been free on $100,000 bail since shortly after her indictment. This isn’t the first time McKirchy has taken a deal in connection with Dowling’s injuries, receiving an exceptionally light sentence after pleading no contest to attempted murder in 1985.
Then six months pregnant with her third child and facing 12 to 17 years in prison, she was sentenced to weekends in jail until giving birth. She was then freed and put on proba.