Guilty verdict for woman who stabbed her boyfriend in the heart

Allen County Superior Court Judge, David Zent, presided over the murder trial for Christina Habegger.

ALLEN COUNTY, Ind. --- In Indiana, if it’s murder, you get charged with straight up murder, no premeditated murder, no second degree murder, just murder.

The decision to kill someone can be long plotted or as instantaneous as a fleeting moment of rage, passion, rejection or hurt. There's no difference when it comes to Hoosier law.

It can be that moment when you plunge a serrated kitchen knife five and a half inches deep into the heart of a 280-lb. man and then find out hours later, he’s dead.

Pauline Habegger, the defendant's mother, Jasmine Springer, her niece, and Pauline Habegger, her sister. Right is Christina Habegger sitting at the table with her attorney, Tyree Barkley, with Chief Counsel Tesa Helge in the foreground. (More photos to follow)

Christina Habegger took the stand Thursday in her own murder trial, to go through the details of the brief, romantic and toxic relationship she had with Robert Higginbotham III who became her victim Oct. 13, 2022 around 6 p.m.

"I don't know" - when defendant was asked what happened to the knife she used to stab the victim. Watch Christina Habegger in court respond to questions from Chief Counsel Tesa Helge. April 10, 2025

At the time, she wore a size zero, her family said Friday outside court. She was 4 feet nine inches tall, according to her court testimony.

But her stories on the stand of physical assault that included, yes, sexual assault, didn’t convince the jury that she was real victim in this case, that she drove over to his house at 5:55 p.m., just five minutes after Higginbotham returned home, and stabbed him as he tried to strangle her in her car.

After three and a half hours of deliberation, the jury found her guilty of murder.

It’s that two minute glitch from an elementary school’s surveillance camera across the street that lets the imagination live. You see her arrive in her black SUV. When the tape picks up again, Higginbotham is staggering toward his home at the corner of Oliver and Greene streets.

Christina Habegger at the time of her arrest

Family members rushed to get him medical aid once they figured out what happened and who did it when he uttered the words, “that b——ch’ stabbed me.” 

Habegger left the scene, but acted erratically and when an officer was trying to pull her over about two hours later, she “high tailed it,” according to Tom Chaille, Chief Deputy Prosecutor for Allen County, in closing arguments.

Habegger said in court that she was driving over there to give him the key so he could come pick up his gun and his stuff at her Kentucky Avenue home, the gun he’d pressed to her head during an August incident when she stabbed him in the face.

She had knives all over the Kentucky Avenue home she’d just rented because she was ordering new items for her new place from Amazon, Walmart and Target and she opened her boxes with the knives.

She claimed in court that she didn’t know what happened to the knife she used on Robert in her car and the knife detectives found in her home could have been the one she stabbed him with on Sept. 2,, a wound that sent him to the hospital.

She said the two of them went to Chicago early on in their relationship

and pressured her to open bank accounts for him. She refused. When they got back home, he beat her, she said.

If it sounds bad, and it does, the knife was the weapon of choice for someone who needed protection from the jealous Higginbotham who couldn’t stand it when she served her kids food before she served him and he beat her for it, she said. One day he entered the home and ended up dragging her down the stairs by her hair, she said.

One juror sent up a question to Judge David Zent asking why she didn’t call police, why she didn’t leave him? It’s a question people often ask women in domestic violence situations. Why the heck don’t you just leave?

“I was scared,” Habegger said. Several times, she teared up, tears homicide detective Ben Miller called “fake tears.”

Habegger was tough on the stand and had answers when Helge questioned her, addressing her as Tesa. 

Text messages on the day he was stabbed were incriminating and didn't show either one of them in a good light, even though she recalled on the stand that she loved him. Suggestive photos she posted on Snapchat right around the time she said Higginbotham was at her home and they had a physical row left jurors wondering, no doubt. Chief Counsel for the state Tesa Helge called them lies.

In closing arguments, her attorney, Tyree Barkley, stressed the toxic relationship they had, breaking up and getting back together multiple times. 

Barkley, who defended her with attorney Jamie Egolf, brought up a text she sent Higginbotham about the red marks on her neck.

Related story here - Day two of Habegger trial

“F—-those marks on your neck,” he replied in a text. But the state said she had no evidence of bruising or red marks.

“Bruising comes later,” Habegger said at one point.

Barkley stuck to the narrative that Habegger felt she was in imminent danger after she pulled up in her car that evening and Higginbotham came up and tried to strangle her. That is her story and, if so, self defense was the claim.

“Fear is sufficient,” Barkley said and Habegger "had the right to defend herself.”

Habegger will be sentenced May 23. Her family is heartbroken.