‘Demons and Saviors’ Hulu documentary looks at ‘poltergeist girl’ Christina Boyer who claims she was possessed as a teen and later found guilty of murdering her three-year-old daughter despite NOT being home at time

• A new documentary explores the case of a supernatural teen sensation, her rough start in life and eventual jailing for the murder of her daughter 
• After 30 years in prison, Christina Boyer is hopeful that a new group devoted to proving her innocence will clear her name once and for all 
• The case for her innocence primarily hinges on one piece of evidence: Boyer was not home when her daughter died 

Nearly 40 years ago, Christina Boyer became the focus of the US media after she and her family claimed she could move objects with her mind – she was later convicted for the murder of her three-year-old child.

More than 30 years after the alleged crime, a group of Boyer supporters are arguing she is innocent and calling on authorities to revisit the case.

Back in the 90s, facing the death penalty, Boyer entered an Alford plea, meaning she pleaded guilty while maintaining her innocence.

She was given a life sentence plus 20 years in prison with the possibility of parole. 

But the question remains: Was Boyer found guilty of a crime she did not commit? According to evidence, she was not at her home at the time of her daughter’s death or in the hours leading up to it.

The new Hulu documentary ‘Demons and Saviors’ explores the convicted killer’s childhood full of seemingly inexplicable events and the efforts of the group now hoping her case will be revisited. The first of three episodes is now available.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9W08BNVQ6xk%3Frel%3D0%26start%3D130

Christina Boyer as a 14 year old, when paranormal events began occurring around her parents’ Ohio house. This now infamous picture shows a telephone seemingly flying across her lap

Authorities, who successfully prosecuted the case already, say Boyer is a skilled manipulator who should live out her days behind bars, as a jury once decided.

Boyer, who is interviewed in the new documentary, explained that when she was 14 year old in 1984, seemingly inexplicable events began happening around her Columbus, Ohio home, where she lived with her parents.

Alarm clocks would go haywire, the TV would continue playing even after it had been unplugged, lights flickered and objects flew across rooms.

Boyer – then known as Tina Resch – was the adoptive daughter of religious parents who believed the paranormal incidents were caused by some sort of demonic spirit that had possessed their child.

They called in a priest to perform an exorcism.

During the exorcism, Boyer said, ‘things in the kitchen were going haywire and basically … they just felt like whatever they were doing, it was not enough.’

Her father, John Resch, at oneD point, called the local paper, The Columbus Dispatch, who sent over a photographer to see in person what was going on at the Resch household.

The photojournalist, Fred Shannon, took what is now considered an infamous shot of Christina sitting in the family’s living room with a telephone at the end of a cord apparently flying over her lap.

Media coverage brought the family newfound notoriety that attracted gawkers, skeptics, and paranormal investigators into the Resch’s otherwise quiet life.

‘Everybody wanted to see what was going on. It was like ‘Showtime at the Apollo,” said Boyer.

A picture of Boyer with a spoon she allegedly bent with her mind. As a teenager she  became the subject of scrutiny and fascination when local media picked up on her supposed supernatural abilities

Amber Gail Bennett, born on September 29, 1988, died at age three while her mother was at work. When she died, in 1992, he medical examiner said there was clear evidence of child abuse on the young girl’s body – some of it recent, but some older

Christina Boyer and her daughter Amber on a couch in November of 1991. Boyer maintains, after more than 30 years in prison, that she did not kill her daughter

As her relative fame skyrocketed, Boyer alleged she was being abused at her home. 

At one point, Boyer met a famous parapsychologist named Bill Roll, who brought her to North Carolina to study her. But when she returned to her parents’ Ohio home, they had abandoned her and even tried to put her back up for adoption. 

After a ‘caught on camera’ moment threw the legitimacy of her supernatural abilities into question, Boyer fled her home and married a man she later called abusive.

Several years later, now a single mother, Boyer began a new life in the Bible Belt town of Carrollton, Georgia, with her daughter Amber. 

‘Having Amber literally saved my life,’ said Boyer. 

In Carrollton, Boyer worked with psychologists Bill Roll and Jeannie Lagle, who had previously studied her paranormal abilities. She and Lagle got started on a book about Boyer’s experiences.

While in Carrollton, Boyer began dating David Herrin, a man from town who Boyer described as ‘straight-laced and mild-mannered,’ at least as compared to the previous men with whom she’d had relationships. He had a daughter of a similar age to Amber.

Then, on April 14, 1992, when Amber was three-years-old, Boyer arrived home from Lagle’s house to find her daughter unresponsive. Boyer was just 22 year old at the time.

Boyer had left her in Herrin’s care for a few hours, a claim and alibi that was confirmed by both Lagle and Herrin.

The medical examiner who inspected Amber’s dead body determined that the child had clearly suffered child abuse that occurred over the course of several days, and that she had likely died of a fatal blow to the head during the period of time that Boyer was not home.

Having spent more than half her life in jail for the murder of her daughter, Boyer maintains her innocence and said she is finding hope in the work of ‘Team Tina,’ who are working to free her

Boyer’s teenage years were made tumultuous by media attention she received because of her alleged supernatural abilities, which were documented by the local press

Mike Bradley, a retired Carrollton police department detective said in the new documentary: ‘When you looked at her with all the bruising, it was kind of obvious the child’s been severely, physically abused.’

Boyer and Herrin were both arrested for Amber’s murder. Each pinned the toddler’s injuries on the other.

The medical examiner said the girl had previous injuries, some from the days before her death and others that were older.

Peter Skandalakis, a former district attorney and the lead prosecutor on the case says in the documentary that, had the case gone to trial, prosecutors had witnesses who would testify that they had seen Boyer be physically abusive toward her daughter. 

Herrin claimed that on April 10 – four days before her death – Amber tripped on a sidewalk curb and hit her forehead, leaving a large bump.

The following day, Herrin again claimed the child had fallen down the front porch steps and landed face-first in the gravel.

Boyer recounted Herrin told her ‘he had gone to sleep in the lazy boy chair in the living room. He obviously didn’t think about locking the screen door. And she got out and fell down the stairs.’

Lagle said she had seen a ‘goose egg knot’ on the little girl’s forehead.

‘I was concerned, of course. And I know that the only thing you can do is to just observe them and I saw Amber coloring.

‘I thought that was a very good sign she wasn’t showing any effects. I consider that Amber was on my watch and I have gone over and over and over what happened,’ she said.

Amber Bennett’s grave. The three-year-old died while her mother was at work and she was home with her then boyfriend, David Herrin

Boyer (pictured with Amber) moved to Carrollton, Georgia, for a fresh start after escaping a violent second marriage to a man who beat her, and who she was afraid would eventually injure her daughter

On April 14, Boyer said she asked her daughter if she wanted to go to Lagle’s with her. An offer that Amber responded to by grabbing a book and climbing into Herrin’s lap, she said.

As the case progressed, it attracted media attention in the relatively small, very religious city in Georgia.

Lagle, recounting some of the press attention, said: ‘On the front page of the newspaper, it says not only child murderer, but psychic child murderer.’

‘After those newspaper headlines came out, I don’t believe there was anybody left in town that didn’t believe she did it, because she was the witch, she was the paranormal.’

When faced with the possibility of a trial that could end in a conviction and the death penalty, Boyer agreed to a plea bargain that was negotiated by her attorney and the prosecutors.

At Herrin’s trial, he was acquitted of murder, but convicted of child cruelty. He was sentenced to 20-years, of which he served 12. He was released on parole in 2011.

Skandalakis also said it was clear to him Boyer was held to a higher standard of criminal liability ‘because she’s the mother.’

‘Here you have Christina Boyer who is obviously held to a higher standard because she’s the mother, serving life in prison. David Herrin gets convicted of cruelty and does 20 years in prison, and how’s that fair?’ asks the former prosecutor in the documentary.

‘My answer to that is, I don’t know. After the jury acquitted him [of murder] I remember the jury filing through the courtroom and I asked, ‘How did y’all find him not guilty of felony murder but you found him guilty of cruelty to children?’ And she looked me straight in the eyes and said, ‘It wasn’t his child.” 

After more than 30 years locked up, Boyer says in ‘Demons and Saviors’ that she is finding hope again in the group of amateur detectives who call themselves ‘Team Tina’ and believe she deserves a shot at redemption after possibly being wrongfully imprisoned.

The leaders of the group are three former Georgetown students who took a class in the spring of 2019 that introduced them to Boyer, and have not dropped the case since.

Several years ago, a couple of Georgetown students found out about Boyer’s case in a class and immediately took up the mantle of proving her innocence

The former students (one of whom is pictured above) are focused on the fact Boyer was not at her home when her daughter died, rather than the apparent pattern of abuse Amber was subjected to while she was alive

The team has spent countless hours reviewing files that provide new evidence and could eventually prove her innocence.

The group focuses on the fatal blow that was dealt to Amber, and not the alleged pattern of child abuse.

Their primary belief is that Boyer cannot be guilty of a crime that occurred when she wasn’t there.

‘I’m more hopeful now actually, because there’s so many more people all around that are involved. I sat here for years with very few people really knowing what had happened and caring. So I have more hope now that if there’s anything that can be done, somebody will find it,’ Boyer says in the documentary.

The group’s efforts, however, are staunchly opposed by the people who made sure she went away in the first place.

Retired Carrollton police detective Mike Thomas says that ‘Team Tina’ are listening to Boyer’s side and it’s ‘the only side they know.’

Bradley, the other retired detective, says: ‘If we could put this whole case file back together and set them down, I guarantee you I could change their mind.’

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