Why Heidi Broussard's 'Best Friend' Killed Her And Kidnapped Her Baby

In 2019, Magen Fieramusca claimed she was expecting a baby while her supposed best friend Heidi Broussard was also pregnant. The two women, both 33, had been pals since meeting as 11-year-olds at church camp, and Fieramusca had already helped Broussard when she gave birth to a son in 2013. 

During the women’s dual pregnancies, they discussed how they might give birth on the same day. Fieramusca was in the hospital room when Broussard's daughter, Margo Carey, was born on Nov. 26, 2019.

On December 12, 2019, Broussard's partner, Shane Carey, told police that she and their two-week-old baby had disappeared from their Austin home. After a weeklong search, investigators discovered Broussard's body in a car parked outside Fieramusca's Houston house. A baby found alive inside the home was the newborn daughter of Broussard and Carey.

Authorities determined that Fieramusca fabricated her pregnancy before killing her friend and taking Broussard's baby in an attempt to raise the infant as her own. 

FBI behavioral analysts believed Fieramusca was motivated by "maternal desire," meaning a desperate compulsion to have a baby. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Sanjay Adhia told the Houston Chronicle in January 2020 that some women have fabricated pregnancies due to feeling "insecure in a relationship and their hope is that if they have a child, their relationship will be secure." 

Fieramusca's ex-boyfriend, Christopher Green, told authorities that Fieramusca had said she was pregnant with his child around the time he ended their relationship in March 2019. 

Though they separated, Fieramusca continued living in Green's home in Houston during her "pregnancy." He told police he saw her stomach grow, though he never saw her bare pregnant belly.

Tahir Rahman, an associate professor of psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis, tells A&E Crime and Investigation that Fieramusca could have developed a distorted fixation on becoming a mother. "In American society, motherhood is often idealized, and women are culturally rewarded for fulfilling this role," Rahman says.

The fact that Broussard and Fieramusca had a longstanding friendship makes the killing and baby snatching case “highly unusual,” Dr. Ann Burgess, who played a key role in developing the FBI's criminal profiling methods and is the author of A Killer by Design: Murderers, Mindhunters, and My Quest to Decipher the Criminal Mind, tells A&E Crime + Investigation.

"If you have pure maternal desire, there is a more expeditious and less cruel way to do this," Dr. Gary Brucato, a forensic and clinical psychologist who specializes in psychotic illness and violence, explains to A&E Crime + Investigation. "If you wanted a baby to pass off as your own, it wouldn't have to be your best friend that you took it from.”

Fieramusca joined Broussard at her prenatal doctor's appointments, seeming to focus on Broussard's baby even before Margo was born, The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime co-author Brucato notes.

"To be able to lie and pretend to support her friend when thinking, ‘When you have this baby, I'm going to take it from you and eliminate you,’ that suggests a kind of callousness and a disregard for human emotion that is pretty manipulative," he says.

Rahman speculates that Fieramusca may have viewed her pregnant friend as an obstacle "who possessed what Fieramusca lacked."

At the hospital after Margo’s birth, Fieramusca was possessive toward the infant, asking to hold the baby when Margo's grandfather met her for the first time. For Brucato, this indicates Fieramusca may have been feeling "pathological envy" toward Broussard.

"If there's a pathological envy, it explains why it had to be this person whose baby you took," he says.

After Broussard and Margo disappeared, investigators found surveillance video showing a car that looked like Fieramusca's close to Broussard's apartment complex. A witness told police she saw a woman and baby get into the vehicle.

The day after Broussard went missing, Fieramusca told her ex she'd given birth and introduced Margo as their daughter. On December 19, 2019, FBI agents stopped Green outside a store, showed him a picture of Margo and he identified the baby at his house. 

Authorities quickly took custody of an unharmed Margo at the home Fieramusca shared with Green, then questioned Fieramusca. 

She told a Texas Ranger she'd given birth at a birthing center in the Houston area, but could not remember its name. Investigators then located Broussard's body in a duffel bag inside the trunk of a vehicle parked at the house and Fieramusca was arrested.

After Margo underwent DNA testing, she was reunited with her father.

Fieramusca initially faced two counts of kidnapping and one count of tampering with a corpse. In January 2020, she was charged with capital murder for Broussard’s killing. Police said Fieramusca used a dog leash to strangle her friend.

On February 2, 2023, she received a 55-year sentence after pleading guilty to first-degree murder.

Maternal desire abductions have happened after women lost pregnancies or were unable to conceive. Authorities never confirmed if Fieramusca began her deception after miscarrying or if she had never been pregnant.

Fieramusca is incarcerated at the William P. Hobby Unit prison for females in Marlin, Texas. She has access to religious studies and educational and volunteer opportunities, but her life there likely isn't comfortable. 

In the summer of 2023, some inmates at the Hobby Unit told KUT 90.5 that the prison was brutally hot. Hannah Haney, Deputy Director of Communications for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, tells A&E Crime and Investigation that the lockup has partial air conditioning, meaning only certain rooms and areas are cooled. In the spring of 2025, the entire town of Marlin lost water for days, which limited water availability in the prison.

Fieramusca will first be eligible for parole on June 19, 2047, when she will be 61. She could remain behind bars until December 18, 2074, when she would be 88 years old.

Brucato thinks Fieramusca’s acceptance of a plea deal in return for serving no more than 55 years was pragmatic.

But, he adds: "The part that haunts me is that, if you were being pragmatic, you wouldn't kill your best friend and use a dog leash to strangle them to death. The cruelty element of it says something else, like ‘your life made me feel that something was being rubbed in my face that I couldn't have.’"