Arlena Lindley’s boyfriend Alonzo Turner beat her for months and murdered her child — so why was she sent to prison for 45 years? A BuzzFeed News investigation.

Photograph by Melanie Buford for The Dallas Morning News Photographs of Titches Lindley sitting above his bed at the home of his father, William Wade, in Dallas.

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Dallas County Sheriff's Department From left: Arlena Lindley and Alonzo Turner.

Photograph by Wil Chandler for BuzzFeed Photographs of Aubriana Coke in the home of her grandmother in Monticello, Arkansas.

Courtesy of Victoria Pedraza Victoria Pedraza and her daughter. Victoria served in the National Guard.

Arkansas Department of Correction

Photograph by Wil Chandler for BuzzFeed

BuzzFeed Judge Kenneth Watson.

Courtesy of Victoria Phanthtaranth Victoria Phanthtaranth and her daughter, Alexis.

Watson told BuzzFeed News that he thought about how Phanthtaranth had suffered from repeated physical and sexual abuse growing up in foster homes. And she had already been behind bars more than two years for Alexis’ death. “How much is one person expected to endure?” he said. What troubles Watson is something he acknowledged both in the sentencing hearing and in an interview. Had Mendez just pled guilty, instead of taking his case to trial, he probably never would have learned of the abuse Mendez meted out on Phanthtaranth. “They both would be in right now,” he said, “and nobody would have even had a second guess about it.”

Oklahoma County District Court Victoria Phanthtaranth, Freddy Mendez, and their family, before Mendez murdered Phanthtaranth's daughter, Alexis.

Texas Department of Correction

Years later, White recalled that she was “shocked” when Judge Howard went far beyond the 10-year sentence she had offered. Still, White said she feels that 45 years is plenty fair. Lindley, she said, watched Turner “torture” her only son, “and then she got in her car with her friend to get hair products.” White said, “She deserved what she got.” White did not initially remember that her office had viewed Lindley as a victim, having charged Turner with assaulting her on the day he killed Titches. She acknowledged that many see child abuse and domestic violence as linked, and she said that in many of the cases she sees, the perpetrator has committed both. But, she said, she runs the child abuse division of the Dallas County Prosecutor’s Office, and a separate division handles domestic violence. “Why women stay, and that — I can’t speak to that; I have no expertise in that,” she said. Her division focuses on “only the children.” White also did not recall that someone else called 911 when Lindley hadn’t, but White said that fact didn’t mitigate her sense of Lindley’s guilt. (Judge Howard declined to be interviewed and did not respond to a written question about the 911 call.) A call from a mother would have carried more weight than one from a neighbor, White said, and the fact that someone else phoned didn’t relieve Lindley of her duty as a mother to take action. “In the end,” White said, “she walked out alive, and he didn’t.” Lindley stays in an all-women’s prison off a stretch of farmland halfway between Austin and Dallas. She has been behind bars eight years. Having lost her first attempt at parole, she will have to wait until 2016 to try again. The parole board cited its “nature of offense” rule, reserved for prisoners whose acts were too egregious for them to be granted clemency. Told that many people believe that in a situation like hers, they would do anything to protect their children from abuse, she said, “I was like that. ‘Oh, it couldn’t be me.’ But you really don’t know.” Titches would be 11 years old now. He’s been dead for twice as long as he was alive, so Lindley’s memories are frozen in his baby years — learning shapes and colors on the internet, playing with his Hokey Pokey Elmo. Titches' name is tattooed on the inside of her wrist.

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