Her boyfriend was convicted of killing her 2-year-old boy. Now mom is on trial, too

Adrian Langlais should have been at a party on his second birthday, prosecutors say.

“He should have been having cake. He should have been playing with toys. He should have been playing with friends ...” prosecutor Kelly Meador told jurors Wednesday morning.

“What Adrian Langlais was doing on March 18, of 2015, in his home in Fort Worth, was lying on the floor in his room on his back. Dying.”

And while Jessica Langlais did not inflict the head injury on her son on March 17, the day before his birthday, that ultimately killed him, she knew that her boyfriend, Christian Tyrrell, had and did nothing to help Adrian, Meador said.

Tyrrell was convicted of capital murder in 2017 and sentenced of life without parole.

“He’s had his day, and he’s been punished,” Meador said. “It’s her day now.”

Langlais is on trial on a charge of capital murder. She is accused of causing Adrian’s death and of injury to a child by omission by failing to seek medical attention for the boy.

Mark Daniel, who is defending Langlais along with attorney Samuel Terry, contends that Adrian was conscious, eating a cracker and talking on the morning of March 18. He argues the fatal injury did not occur until later that day after Tyrrell dropped Langais off at work and before he called 911 a couple hours later.

Adrian “was doing something during that little two-hour, 45-minute interval that led to an eruption of rage – indescribable, inexcusable, horrific – but she was not there,” Daniel said.

Alleged on-going abuse

Tyrrell had been arrested in the case a month after Adrian’s death.

He told paramedics that Adrian had fallen from his bed on March 17, 2015, and that he called 911 after the child had a seizure the next day.

After a Star-Telegram article chronicling the case was published, various petitions surfaced online, urging the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office to also charge the boy’s mother in the case.

In May 2017 — months before Tyrrell’s trial — prosecutors presented the case to a grand jury, and Langlais was indicted on a capital murder charge.

In his trial, Tyrrell blamed Adrian’s injuries on Langlais.

Meador, the prosecutor, told jurors that Tyrrell had been abusing Adrian, leaving bruises all over his body, in the months leading up to the boy’s death.

“Christian Tyrrell came in Adrian’s short life five months prior and those five months were filled with abuse,” Meador said. “Abuse that we’re going to show you Jessica knew about.”

Meador said Adrian was having lunch on March 17, 2015, when he was put into timeout in his bedroom by Tyrrell. There, prosecutor say, Tyrrell slammed Adrian’s head into the wall, fracturing his skull in two places.

“Something like that doesn’t happen quietly. Jessica had to have heard it,” Meador told jurors.

And though Adrian began having problems after that — he vomited and was unable to lift his head, walk or eat — Langlais didn’t seek medical help for him but only got on her phone and searched the internet about the boy’s condition, Meador said.

“She should have known by what she saw with her eyes, and she should have known by what the internet told her because no mother would have let her child die like that,” Meador said.

Instead, Meador said, Langlais put an ice pack on her son’s head and went to work the next morning, leaving Adrian alone with Tyrrell.

“It was more important to her to not get in trouble, to not get Christian in trouble,” Meador said. “... She loved Christian Tyrrell more than she loved that baby.”

And while she didn’t inflict the fatal head injury, Meador told jurors that Langlais still played a part in Adrian’s capital murder.

“Did she aid, assist and promote it? You bet she did,” Meador said told jurors. “She let that monster in her house. She kept him there when she knew all the signs pointed to he was hurting her baby.”

“When he delivered the death blow, she did nothing.”

Daniel, one of the defense attorneys, told jurors that Langlais was a good mother who “lost the most precious thing in her life” when Adrian died, spiraling her into grief and depression.

He said Langlais, whose own mother had left her when she was a child, had wanted nothing more than to be a mother and worked hard to provide her son with all she could.

He said when bruises would occasionally show up on the boy, Langlais did question Tyrrell how he got them but was told Adrian had fallen from his crib.

On March 17, 2015, Daniel said, Langlais heard Tyrrell tell her son to “stop, sit down and shut up” as he put the boy in timeout for misbehaving.

When the boy emerged 15 minutes later, she said the boy was somewhat lethargic and had a stiff neck, which later loosened up.

When her son later vomited, Daniel said, Langlais did a Google search to see if a fall coupled with vomiting should be of concern. She also later placed Adrian on a recliner in her bedroom so she could check on him hourly throughout the night.

Daniel contends that Adrian was not unresponsive, as prosecutors say, and had even been eating a cracker, drinking Sprite, and watching TV before Langlais went to work the next day.

“He was eating and watching TV, and he spoke to her,” Daniel told jurors. “She asked, ‘Are you hurting, baby? ‘No, I’m not.’”

Daniel said Langlais had expected to return home to Adrian being normal but later got a call at work from Tyrrell, saying Adrian had had a seizure and was being taken by ambulance to the hospital.

He asked jurors to put an end to this “second nightmare” for the young mother and find her not guilty.

Langlais cried frequently during Daniel’s opening statement and later when Amber Branham, a paramedic, described first seeing Adrian when called to the Langlais home.

Branham testified Adrian had swelling and bruises covering his body and a film over his eyes indicating that he had not blinked in some time. She said the child was only breathing four times a minute — gasps that she described as “pretty much end-of-life breathing.”

Adrian was taken to Cooks Children’s Medical Center, where he was removed from life support the next day.

Langlais was released from jail in November after her bond was lowered from $400,000 to $15,000.

This story was originally published January 30, 2019 at 2:30 PM with the headline "Her boyfriend was convicted of killing her 2-year-old boy. Now mom is on trial, too."