The guilty verdict followed a second trial centered on a broken hairbrush, DNA evidence and a child found dead in bed on Christmas Day.

BATH, Maine — A Sagadahoc County jury on March 3 found Tyler Witham-Jordan guilty of depraved indifference murder in the death of 3-year-old Makinzlee Handrahan, ending a second trial over the Christmas 2022 killing of his then-girlfriend’s daughter in Edgecomb.

Jurors returned the verdict after a nine-day trial that revisited a case already tested once in court. Prosecutors said Witham-Jordan beat the child with a plastic hairbrush on Christmas Eve and left her in the lower bunk where she was found the next morning. Defense lawyers argued that the girl’s mother, Faith Lewis, was responsible. The verdict pushed the case from disputed blame to sentencing, with Witham-Jordan now facing a punishment that in Maine can range from 25 years to life in prison.

The case began with a 911 call at about 7:37 a.m. on Dec. 25, 2022, from a home in the Davis Island Townhomes area off Route 1 in Edgecomb. Lewis told dispatchers she thought her daughter was dead. First responders arrived to find Makinzlee unresponsive in bed and pronounced her dead at the scene. On the recorded call, prosecutors said, Witham-Jordan could be heard saying, “I’m f—ed” and “I’m finished.” Her body was taken for an autopsy after emergency crews and sheriff’s deputies documented extensive bruising. The state medical examiner later ruled the death a homicide caused by blunt force trauma, with severe internal injuries to the child’s abdomen and skull.

At trial, prosecutors built their case around physical evidence and what they said was Witham-Jordan’s condition in the hours before the killing. They told jurors he was addicted to opioids, believed drugs he bought on Christmas Eve were fake, and was in withdrawal and increasingly agitated around the children in the home. A broken hairbrush introduced as evidence had a large clump of Makinzlee’s hair in it, and prosecutors said the defendant’s DNA was found under the girl’s fingernails and on the waistband of her bloody diaper. Doctors and investigators testified that the force of the injuries could not be explained by rough play or by another child. One emergency responder, according to testimony described during the case, said the bruising was so widespread that the child looked “like a Dalmatian.”

The defense did not dispute that Makinzlee died violently, but it pressed a different theory about who caused the fatal injuries. Lawyers for Witham-Jordan argued Lewis should be considered a suspect and told jurors the state had not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Prosecutors answered that Lewis was treated as a victim, not a target, and said her DNA was not found on key crime scene items, including the hairbrush. The conflict over that question had already shaped the long path to the verdict. Witham-Jordan’s first trial ended in a mistrial, forcing prosecutors to retry the case in a different county before a new jury heard many of the same facts and witnesses again.

The killing also drew attention because records showed state child welfare workers had been alerted to possible abuse before Christmas. According to court documents unsealed after Witham-Jordan’s 2023 arrest, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services had investigated the family in October 2022 after Makinzlee’s daycare reported a scratch, bruises and swelling under one eye. The explanation at the time, according to those records, was that the marks came from a cat scratch and a fall on stairs. The agency has said confidentiality laws sharply limit what it can say publicly about child protective matters. Still, the earlier contact became part of the wider public debate around the case, especially as testimony described the severity of the injuries discovered two months later.

By the time the second trial ended, the case had become both a homicide prosecution and a test of whether the state could present a cleaner, more focused theory to a new jury. The panel of eight men and four women received the case on March 2 and returned its verdict at about 10 a.m. the next day. Afterward, Lewis said she believed jurors “got the right one,” reflecting the relief prosecutors’ witnesses and the child’s family members had been seeking since the Christmas morning death. The verdict did not answer every public question about prior warning signs, but it resolved the central criminal one: whether jurors believed Witham-Jordan caused the fatal beating.

While Witham-Jordan remained convicted of depraved indifference murder as of March 31, 2026, sentencing has not been publicly detailed in the reporting reviewed here. The next milestone is the court’s sentencing proceeding, where a judge will decide how many years he will serve.

Author note: Last updated March 31, 2026.