Magen Fieramusca is a woman from Texas who wanted a baby so badly that she would murder her friend and steal her baby. According to court documents Magen Fieramusca would murder Heidi Broussard, 33, shortly after she gave birth and would steal the newborn. Magen Fieramusca would attempt to tell friends and family the baby was hers but her story would soon fall apart. Magen Fieramusca would be arrested and charged with murder and kidnapping and would ultimately plead guilty and was sentenced to 55 years in prison
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Tammy Broussard gazed at a photo of her daughter, Heidi Broussard, as she spoke to her convicted kidnapper and murderer in Travis County state district court Thursday.
“Heidi’s hugs were strong and full of love,” Tammy Broussard said. “They lingered in the atmosphere. I still feel them now. … This is something I never imaged in in my whole life that her children would face.”
Her brief but emotional speech took place immediately after Magen Fieramusca, 37, pleaded guilty to the murder of Heidi Broussard, Fieramusca’s friend of a decade. Fieramusca had kidnapped Broussard and Broussard’s then-2-week-old daughter in 2019, investigators said. Fieramusca then strangled Broussard and tried to pass off the baby as her own after faking a pregnancy for months.
State district Judge Selena Alvarenga sentenced Fieramusca to 55 years in prison as a result of a plea deal between the Travis County district attorney and Fieramusca’s defense attorney.
“It is difficult, if not impossible, to find justice or any sort of resolution to this horrendous crime,” Alvarenga told Fieramusca from the stand. “Ms. Fieramusca, the fact is that by your actions, you have deprived an innocent child, an innocent baby of the opportunity of growing up with her mother. You have destroyed an entire family. No matter what the sentence — no matter how long, no matter how harsh — nothing can change that. Nothing can make this family whole again.”
Heidi Broussard vanished Dec. 12, 2019, with her infant daughter, Margo Carey, touching off a frantic search that drew national attention. One week after Heidi Broussard was last seen, detectives found her body inside a duffel bag in the trunk of a car parked outside Fieramusca’s home northwest of Houston. Authorities were able to safely rescue Margo, who was inside the house with Fieramusca.
Fieramusca was originally charged with capital murder. District Attorney José Garza said he felt the plea bargain was appropriate and “saved the family potentially decades of the painful post-litigation process and helped secure justice.”
Fieramusca’s defense attorney Brian Erskine agreed.
“I imagine many have questions that will never be adequately answered,” Erskine said in a statement last week. “Nevertheless, I hope that this plea brings some closure to this family’s great loss.”
Fieramusca, who family and friends say had met Heidi Broussard through a church-affiliated program and been friends with her for years, acted suspiciously soon after Broussard gave birth at a hospital in Austin, according to investigators. The newborn’s grandfather noted that Fieramusca interrupted his first meeting with his granddaughter, asking to hold the baby first.
When a Texas Ranger asked Green where Magen Fieramusca gave birth, he said: “She’s been really distant with me about that stuff. I don’t know why.”
An investigator with the Texas Rangers had approached Fieramusca outside Green’s Houston-area home on Dec. 19, 2019, while Green was out shopping for baby formula. Fieramusca, who was holding a baby monitor, told the investigator she had given birth on Dec. 12, at a birthing center in The Woodlands and went home later that day.
Pressed for the specific birthing center, Fieramusca said she could not remember it.
Texas Rangers detained Magen Fieramusca in her backyard for roughly seven hours while they waited for warrants. Victims services personnel and an Austin police officer stayed inside with the baby. Once detectives obtained warrants, they arrested Fieramusca, and she has been at the Travis County Correctional Complex in Del Valle since they took her into custody.
On the stand Thursday, Tammy Broussard said she often thinks of her daughter while she’s cooking, wondering what her daughter would be saying or thinking.
“Thinking of her gives me peace amidst the pain,” she said. “We miss her dearly.”