Jury saw over 550 pieces of evidence in Evan Brewer case. Deliberation underway.

The 12 men and women responsible for Stephen Bodine’s fate have the case in their hands.

After sitting through a weeklong presentation from prosecutors at Bodine’s trial, jurors began their deliberations late Tuesday afternoon. They left the Sedgwick County Courthouse around 5 p.m. without delivering a verdict and will return Wednesday.

One of the questions they have to answer: Did prosecutors prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Bodine is responsible for the death of his girlfriend’s 3-year-old, Evan Brewer?

“He’s on the hook,” Sedgwick County Deputy District Attorney Justin Edwards told jurors during closing arguments Tuesday.

Bodine’s defense attorney, meanwhile, said that the state’s evidence pointed Evan’s mother as his abuser.

“Stephen Bodine may be a lot of things. ... But that doesn’t make him a murderer,” Casey Cotton said. He told jurors they must acquit.

The defense rested Tuesday, the sixth day of testimony, without putting on any witnesses or evidence.

Bodine, 41, is charged with first-degree felony murder, child abuse, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated child endangerment in Evan’s May 19, 2017, death. He has pleaded not guilty to those and other counts.

Prosecutors say Bodine and Evan’s mother, Miranda Miller, tortured Evan for at least two months before the boy died at the rental home where he lived at 2037 S. Vine in Wichita. The landlord of the rental house discovered the concrete block that Evan’s body was buried in on Sept. 2.

Exactly how Evan died remains a mystery. His mother testified Monday that Bodine took Evan, screaming, into the bathroom after the boy collapsed and wouldn’t get up. When Bodine came out, he had Evan’s wet and lifeless body in his arms, she told jurors.

An autopsy couldn’t determine Evan’s cause of death because of the condition of his body when he was painstakingly chipped out of the block of concrete. He did have Benadryl in his system, though, and Miller thinks Bodine sickened him in the days leading up to his death by force feeding him large amounts of salt.

“What he did exactly when he took him (Evan) in the bathroom, only he will ever know,” Edwards said in court.

What’s clear, prosecutors have argued throughout the trial, is that Evan was severely abused.

Among what Bodine said to Evan on the video: “I’m (expletive) sick of your (expletive),” “I’m gonna keep coming.”

He spoke that way, prosecutors told jurors, because Evan refused to say “Hello, daddy” in a tone Bodine liked.

At one point in the video Evan can be heard shouting: “Hey! Are you going to open the door?”

“This was Evan’s life. This was the house he lived in. His mom didn’t protect him. He (Bodine) controlled him,” Edwards told jurors. Evan’s “story will always be remembered with a dog collar wrapped around his neck.”

Cotton, the defense attorney, meanwhile pointed to Evan’s mom as the one responsible for Evan’s abuse and death. She was the one who put the dog collar around the boy’s neck and refused offers of help from family members and friends, he said, “because no one was going to take her son from her.”

“This case is a terrible tragedy. ... No one can expect you to be unmoved by what you’ve seen over the past week.” But, he said, “the suggestion that he was principal of these acts is simply not borne out by the evidence.”

More coverage from Stephen Bodine’s trial:

Day 1:

Day 2:

Day4:

Day 5:

This story was originally published October 23, 2018 at 12:43 PM.