On October 29, 2017, 19-year-old Cayley Mandadi attended a music festival in San Antonio with Mark Howerton, 22. That night, he brought her to a small hospital in Luling, Texas.
Two Men in Cayley’s Life
Cayley Mandadi was in her sophomore year at Trinity University in San Antonio when her personal life became complicated. Her first serious boyfriend, and the only one she had ever had, was Jett Birchum, a Trinity football player and fraternity member whom she had dated during her freshman year.
The two broke up, and Cayley told her mother that she did not know whether Birchum wanted a serious relationship. She nevertheless remained deeply in love with him.
Some time after the breakup, Cayley met Mark Howerton, a 22-year-old from Houston who had been a standout high school baseball player. Howerton often traveled to Trinity’s campus to visit friends, and it was there that the two met.
They began dating. Both men knew that Cayley was seeing the other, and friends said neither welcomed the competition. Cayley told Birchum that she wanted to get back together with him. She felt torn between the two men, each of whom was seeking her affection.
The relationship with Howerton came under strain a few weeks before the festival. Cayley was planning to attend a party one evening, and Howerton became upset about it.
Her roommate, Morgan Samson, said that Howerton threw Cayley against the brick wall of the balcony outside her room. Cayley went to the party anyway, against his wishes. While she was away, neighbors reported loud banging coming from her room, and campus police officer Roderick Lewis was sent to investigate.
When he arrived, Howerton was leaving the room and told the officer that he was waiting there for Cayley to return from the party. Lewis asked to look inside, and Howerton resisted the request.
Once the officer entered, he found the glass door to the balcony cracked and Cayley’s clothes scattered in the trees below. Friends said Howerton later smashed her laptop in the street. The university then barred him from campus.
The Day of the Festival
On Sunday, October 29, 2017, Howerton picked Cayley up to attend the Mala Luna music festival in San Antonio. Before they reached the grounds, the two stopped at a nearby car wash, where, by Howerton’s account, they took MDMA, a drug known as ecstasy or Molly.
He said they had more of the drug once they arrived at the festival and that they also drank alcohol.
Birchum was at the festival as well. He said Cayley had told him she intended to break up with Howerton there, because many people would be around to witness it, and that she seemed worried about doing so.
At some point, Howerton and Cayley saw Birchum, and an argument began. Howerton said that sometime after 4 p.m. the two left in his Mercedes, still arguing after Cayley told him she still had feelings for Birchum. He said he told her she needed to get over Birchum, that Birchum was not worth her time and that her friends were fake.
Birchum described what he saw as the pair headed for the exit. He said Cayley appeared to be trying to create space and get away from Howerton. As she stepped back, he said, Howerton reached out his right arm, hooked it around her shoulder, pulled her closer, turned and walked away with her.
Howerton said the two then stopped in a parking lot, where they had what he described as makeup sex. He said it was consensual and not rough, calling it “500 percent consensual.” He said Cayley kept talking to him for five or six minutes afterward. Then she said she was not feeling well and passed out.
They returned to the road, and hours passed. When Cayley did not come back to campus that night, her friends began calling her phone. Howerton answered. When a friend asked whether he had seen Cayley or was with her, he said she could not talk right now and hung up.
Alarmed, her friends began searching for her. Howerton said that at some point during the drive Cayley stopped breathing and that he tried to resuscitate her while driving. At about 10:30 p.m., he saw a sign indicating a hospital at the next exit and pulled off the road.
The Hospital and the Investigation
Paramedic Cheryl Lane was driving an ambulance up to the hospital in Luling when a black car appeared behind her, honking and flashing its lights. Before she stepped out, she saw a man hollering and screaming.
When she opened the door, he told her that his girlfriend was not breathing and that he needed help. Looking inside the car, Lane saw Cayley exposed, with her pants and other clothing on the floorboard near her feet.
Cayley had multiple bruises, and Lane began CPR. Other emergency medical workers told investigators that they realized immediately how serious the situation was, noting that Cayley was nearly naked and had no pulse.
The treating physician at the Luling hospital approached the case as a drug overdose, because Howerton had said he believed Cayley had overdosed and her symptoms were consistent with that history.
Over the following hours, medical staff resuscitated her several times, inserted a chest tube and placed IV lines in both of her arms.
Police officers interviewed Howerton in the hospital chapel, the quietest place they could find, and the conversation was recorded on a body camera. He told them that he and Cayley had gone to the festival, drunk alcohol and taken MDMA.
He said Cayley already had bruises on her legs earlier in the day, that she bruised easily and that she fell over when she was drunk. In a separate recorded audio interview, Howerton acknowledged that more than a week earlier he had pushed Cayley and she had hit a window once.
Officer Chris Adams photographed Howerton during the investigation and noticed that the tops of both of his hands were unusually red and appeared to have scabs on them. Investigators believed the redness indicated that Howerton had struck Cayley.
Howerton had cooperated with investigators from the start and allowed police to search his Mercedes, where they found a gun and marijuana. Investigators interviewed him several times, but he was not charged with any crime connected to Cayley’s death at that point.
Cayley herself had been flown by helicopter to a hospital in Kyle, Texas. At about 4 a.m. on Monday, October 30, her mother, Alison Steele, and her stepfather, Lawrence Baitland, were awakened at their home in Houston and told that their daughter had been involved in an incident.
They raced to the hospital, praying that Cayley was all right. Steele said her daughter’s body looked smashed and that Cayley was on a ventilator. Within hours, a doctor told the couple that there was no prognosis and that Cayley would not recover. She was declared brain dead.
At 8 a.m. that morning, Cayley’s close friend Taylor Clement noticed that the Snapchat message she normally received from Cayley had not arrived. Taylor was working in a library and did not yet know what had happened.
Cayley’s parents invited her friends to see her one last time, and Taylor sat with Alison as she held Cayley’s hand and prayed, repeating that this had to be for something.
Cayley had previously requested that her organs be donated to help others. She was taken to surgery for the procedure while her parents said goodbye.
Three months later, the autopsy report was released. The medical examiner, Dr. Suzanna Dana, concluded that Cayley had died of complications of blunt force trauma to the face and head and ruled the manner of death a homicide. Howerton was charged with murder. He pleaded not guilty and was released on bail.
The First Trial
Howerton’s first trial began in December 2019, two years after Cayley’s death, with television cameras in the courtroom. Jurors were asked to consider a single charge, felony murder. Prosecutors Alessandra Cranshaw and David Lunan alleged that Howerton had kidnapped, assaulted and murdered her.
In her opening statement, Cranshaw told jurors that Howerton had forcefully escorted Cayley from the festival to his car and then drove her to a parking lot, where he sexually assaulted and beat her, causing a fatal brain bleed.
The prosecution showed photographs of Cayley’s condition about 18 hours after she arrived at the hospital. Defense attorney John Hunter countered that there were no eyewitnesses to what happened between the two that evening and that Howerton had not caused Cayley’s death.
He said a large amount of drugs had been taken over the course of that weekend. He also noted that Howerton had brought Cayley to a hospital, something murderers do not typically do, and argued that a man worried only about himself would have told police to get a warrant rather than cooperate. In Hunter’s view, Howerton had been far more concerned about Cayley.
Jurors also heard that the doses of MDMA taken that day were massive, well above what is necessary to produce the drug’s effect.
Dr. Dana testified that Cayley had a number of blunt force injuries to her face and head, including a contusion, or bruise, behind her ear, and that in her opinion the evidence showed Cayley had been beaten to death.
On cross-examination, Hunter led her to acknowledge that CPR can cause a range of injuries and that at least one of Cayley’s injuries had resulted from her medical care.
He added that by the time a sexual assault nurse examiner photographed Cayley, she had been resuscitated several times and had received a chest tube and IVs.
In his words, the physicians at the Luling hospital had worked her over in a traumatic way, and he argued that the bruising in the photographs could be attributed to that treatment.
Birchum testified for the prosecution. On cross-examination, Hunter showed that Birchum had told police he saw Howerton physically pick Cayley up and place her in his car, which differed from his testimony in court.
Birchum admitted that he had not seen that happen. Prosecutors said he had exaggerated because he was worried about Cayley’s safety and wanted police to search for her.
Hunter also questioned him about inconsistencies between his testimony and his statements to the grand jury regarding the timeline at the festival, including the time of a phone call he placed to Cayley’s phone.
Hunter then raised an unrelated drug charge for which Birchum had been on probation, including money and marijuana on his phone. Birchum invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination about 30 times during roughly 47 minutes of questioning, with his lawyer at his side.
The defense called Dr. William Anderson, a forensic pathologist and former medical examiner who had reviewed Cayley’s autopsy and records. He testified that some of the bruising was caused in part by the resuscitation efforts and by the organ donation process.
Asked whether the medical examiner’s ruling of homicide was wrong, Anderson said he believed it was definitely wrong. He also pointed to a thin, jagged line in a photograph of Cayley’s skull and identified it as a skull fracture.
Hunter said such a fracture could indicate that her brain bleed was caused by a fall. After the defense rested, prosecutors recalled Dr. Dana, who testified that the line was not a fracture and that it appeared only in a photograph.
She said she had not believed Anderson’s opinion and considered it reckless to state it so definitively on the basis of a single picture.
After about 10 hours of deliberation, the jury sent the judge a note saying that despite careful discussion it could not reach a unanimous decision. The judge declared a mistrial.
Hunter said that any time a client does not go to prison it is a victory, though he had been mentally prepared for that outcome. Prosecutors Lunan and Cranshaw said they felt disheartened and as though they had let Cayley’s family down.
The Retrial and the Verdict
Prosecutors decided to retry the case and began preparing, starting with the defense’s key witness. They said they had not been prepared for Anderson’s testimony and found his claim about the organ donation process absurd.
Meanwhile, Hunter filed a motion to dismiss the case, arguing in part that the prosecution had knowingly used false evidence through Birchum’s testimony. He said such conduct undermines faith and confidence in the judicial system and that, if it can happen, there is no point in holding a trial.
In 2021, a Texas district court denied the motion, ruling that there was no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct relating to Birchum’s testimony. Hunter appealed through the courts all the way to the United States Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case.
Cayley’s mother described the waiting as horrible, because no one knew what would happen. A date for the second trial was eventually set for May 23, 2023, more than five years after Cayley’s death.
During those years, Cayley’s parents began their own investigation. Alison Steele is a scientist and Lawrence is a NASA engineer. They had sat through the first trial and concluded that jurors needed more information about what happened inside Howerton’s car.
They studied the autopsy photographs and focused on one showing a small dot above Cayley’s right ear, while other photographs showed deep bruising above her left ear.
They believed that the fatal blow occurred when Howerton reached from the driver’s seat, hit her in the left ear and drove her head into the window and onto the car’s lock button.
To test the idea, Alison posed in a used car similar to Howerton’s Mercedes while Lawrence photographed her head in different positions. When they compared the images with the autopsy photographs, they found a near perfect match with the door.
Lawrence then built a 3D model of Cayley’s head from the autopsy images, creating a solid form from the digital mesh and projecting an autopsy photograph onto it. The results gave him the confidence to look for the car itself.
Howerton had sold his Mercedes in 2018, so Lawrence tracked down its new owner and bought the car. It now sat in the family’s driveway. Lawrence said that working with it was torturous, but that it also felt as though Cayley was guiding them to the car.
The lock knob did not go flush when pushed down and would not fully retract no matter how hard it was struck.
The parents then arranged a video demonstrating their theory, using two actors of similar size and weight and filming from three angles. They hired a private investigator to produce it, since a reconstruction made by the family itself could be considered biased and discredited.
The parents did not watch the footage themselves, in case they were later called to testify about it. Prosecutors viewed the video as a way to show jurors how the injury could have happened and to answer questions the first jury had raised.
Hunter said the dot above Cayley’s ear could have come from something at the hospital or from something that happened before she got into the car.
Howerton, meanwhile, was active on social media, posting comments such as “come at me legally I’ll beat you.” He also boasted of having beaten the state of Texas in court. His attorneys said the posts were his way of coping with the pressure of being falsely accused of murder.
The second trial began on May 23, 2023, without television cameras. Cranshaw’s opening statement was nearly the same as in the first trial, and Hunter again argued that the way Cayley looked in the hospital and at the autopsy did not mean she had been beaten.
Jurors would consider additional charges beyond the one in the first trial, including aggravated assault and criminally negligent homicide. The parents’ video became a point of contention.
Alison had initially wanted the jurors to see it, but presenting it carried risks, including the possibility that Hunter’s cross-examination about it might undermine the whole case.
The judge said he would allow it, but the parents would then become witnesses and would no longer be permitted to sit in the courtroom. After speaking with prosecutors, they withdrew the exhibit.
Birchum was not on the witness list this time, because prosecutors saw nothing to be gained by calling him.
They instead added an expert on domestic violence, who testified that Howerton was a textbook abuser who isolated and manipulated Cayley and ultimately became enraged and lost control.
The defense relied heavily on a pharmacologist, who testified that the high levels of MDMA in Cayley’s system could have caused her brain bleed. Prosecutors and Cayley’s family countered that no documented case anywhere has shown MDMA causing a subdural hematoma.
Dr. Anderson, whose testimony had been so damaging to the prosecution in the first trial, was not called. Prosecutors had prepared a respected medical examiner to testify that his earlier claims were irresponsible, and the defense rested without him.
A second panel of 12 jurors decided Howerton’s fate. The jury found him not guilty of murder. It did convict him of aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, the maximum, a term that Cayley’s family felt was not nearly enough.
Cayley’s parents said they had no regrets about the time and money they spent on the video that jurors never saw, because it helped them learn what happened.
When Alison finally watched it after the trial, she found it hard to see, since it most likely showed the blow that killed her daughter.
Howerton appealed his conviction, citing the mistrial in the first trial. In July 2025, the Fourth Court of Appeals in San Antonio upheld the conviction. He remains in a state prison and is eligible for parole in 2033.
Remembering Cayley
Cayley Mandadi is remembered by her closest friends as a young woman with an infectious smile, big eyes and a loving heart. She met Taylor Clement in ninth grade, and the two bonded in science class, where both were good students.
When they left for different colleges, they kept a streak of exchanging Snapchat messages every morning, and Cayley, who was more of a morning person, usually sent hers first.
At Trinity, Cayley majored in communications, joined a sorority and became a cheerleader. When she was in the hospital, Taylor met her college friends for the first time.
Taylor said that even then Cayley was bringing together people who would never otherwise have met. Taylor still describes the loss in simple terms: she misses her best friend.
Cayley’s mother has since worked to pass the Texas Clear Alert bill, which allows law enforcement to start searches quickly when people aged 18 to 64 go missing. Alison Steele has said she hopes her daughter’s sacrifice will help other victims of violence. In her words, that is what Cayley would have wanted.
Learning to Play an Instrument Changes the Brain and Improves Skills Beyond Music
Learning to play an instrument is a long and arduous process, filled with scales, calluses, and endless hours of practice. But scientists have uncovered that all this training has some side benefits that have nothing to do with music.
Musical training has been found to alter the brain, improve memory, and even help at work later in life, in ways that most would never expect.
The Brain Physically Changes With Practice
To play an instrument is to challenge the brain in ways few activities do. The musician must be able to read the notes and move their fingers at the same time while also listening closely to the sounds coming out of their instrument.
This is neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to change and adapt based on experiences, being put into motion. Scientists who have compared the brains of trained performers with those who have never trained have found tangible differences in their brains.
The changes seen in the brain are associated with improved hearing, motor skills, and coordination, and these changes have been found to become more apparent with greater amounts of musical training, according to scientific reviews.
Neurobiologist Nina Kraus of Northwestern University’s Auditory Neuroscience Lab has studied the effects of sound on the brain for years and spends her time speaking to others about the information.
“The sounds of our lives change our brain,” she explained to the audience at a research conference while presenting her data.
Kraus and her colleagues have found that they can identify musicians based on how precisely they process sound, and that this precision does not remain confined to the realm of music, but rather influences the way a person might process speech as well, she has found.
The only problem is that listening to music alone does not appear to cause these changes in the brain to the same extent as making music does. While passive listeners might enjoy what they hear, it does not have the same effect on the brain that actively playing an instrument does.
Memory, Attention, and Language Skills Improve
The effects of musical training on the brain do not remain confined to just the auditory senses and motor control, but rather these skills have been found to cross over into other areas as well, including memory.
A large analysis of studies concerning memory found that trained musicians were able to outperform their peers on various short-term memory and working memory tasks, with the largest gaps being seen in the tests that specifically concerned musical sounds, but improvements were still seen on tests in other areas, including verbal memory, according to research summarized by Nature Index.
Children who study music have been found to have better verbal memory, improved pronunciation in foreign languages, and better reading skills than their non-trained peers, according to a review on the cognitive benefits of musical training.
The same review also mentioned that musical training in childhood can be used to predict future academic performance and IQ scores in young adults, although these associations do not by themselves establish that musical training causes those outcomes.
Timing is also important in musical training, as far as the age at which a musician begins their training is concerned. The earlier a person begins training, the greater the benefits they may see, but that is not always the case.
The desire to learn, the reward in practicing, and the environment in which the training occurs can all affect how a child’s brain is altered by musical training, according to the review.
Memory is not the only thing that improves with musical training; attention and focus also see improvements.
Musicians have been found to have better executive function, which is the set of cognitive skills that includes planning, focus, and the ability to ignore distractions, than non-musicians, which is also incredibly useful outside the realm of music.
All of these skills are ones that we use in our everyday lives, whether they’re needed to complete a task at the office or to manage a household.
The Advantage Does Not Fade With Age
As people get older, cognitive decline can begin, and some of the mental abilities that allowed them to excel in youth can slow down. But musical training has been associated with benefits for the aging brain as well.
Older adults who practice instruments have shown differences in processing speed, attention, memory, cognitive flexibility, and spatial awareness, according to a review on the differences in the brains of older musicians.
Researchers in Germany and Switzerland set up a study to examine this, and began the long process of seeing what changes they could find in older adults. The adults in the study were broken up into two different groups.
One group learned to play the piano, and the other participated in music appreciation and listening sessions. The researchers planned to measure the effects on the participants over 18 months.
The researchers predicted that the piano group would see the most improvement in their executive functioning, working memory, processing speed, and fine motor skills, according to the protocol of the study published in BMC Geriatrics.
Hearing also benefits from musical training, and the evidence is stronger than the original wording suggests.
When examining the results of 31 individual studies that looked at how hearing was affected by musical training, researchers found a significant overall advantage for musicians in understanding speech in noisy environments compared with non-musicians.
However, the researchers noted that the results could reflect either effects of music training or pre-existing auditory advantages that encourage people to become musicians, meaning the findings do not by themselves prove that musical training caused the difference.
Employers Are Noticing the Difference
All of these benefits that arise from musical training can be valuable to people all over the world, but it is the business world that has taken notice of these gains.
In a survey conducted for the Royal College of Music, business leaders were asked to rate subjects across seven workplace competency areas, including communication, creativity and innovation, teamwork and collaboration, problem-solving, adaptability and flexibility, leadership, and time management.
Music was rated the highest across all seven areas by these business leaders, and almost all of the business leaders mentioned that they personally enjoyed music, while 90% stated that music helped them concentrate at work.
Other surveys of working professionals support some of these claims, as those who have degrees in music and go on to work in different fields show transferable skills, particularly in their teamwork abilities.
Playing in a group, particularly in chamber ensembles, has been reported to teach musicians to listen closely to each other, to react quickly, and to recover from mistakes, all of which can be beneficial in the workplace.
Musicians surveyed about their careers also have an interesting outlook, in that they tend to be more accepting of failure than the general population. Missing notes in a practice room or during a show is an everyday part of life for someone studying or working as a musician, and this has been reported to teach these people to be more comfortable with failure.
This same philosophy has been found to contribute to the work ethic that many musically trained people develop, as they must commit to years of practicing to get ready for a show, or to perfect their craft if they decide to make a living as a solo performer.
As such, co-workers have reported that their musically trained co-workers demonstrate strong professional values, a strong work ethic, willingness to learn, and the ability to take initiative.
A Skill That Pays Off in Unexpected Places
None of this is to say that a person must be a trained, professional musician to receive the benefits of musical training, as several years of practicing an instrument can still be associated with long-lasting effects on the brain and skills of an individual.
The research on these benefits is still developing, and not all of the evidence is completely conclusive, but the overall research suggests that musical training has advantages that extend well beyond the realm of music, including effects on cognition, aging, hearing, and workplace skills.
Sources
Nature Index — Cognitive Benefits of Musical Training
Dementia & Neuropsychologia (SciELO) — Musical Training, Neuroplasticity and Cognition
Brain Sciences (MDPI) — Musical Training and Brain Volume in Older Adults
BMC Geriatrics — Train the Brain with Music (TBM) Study Protocol
ScienceDaily — How Music, Language Shape the Brain (Nina Kraus / Falling Walls Conference)
Northwestern University — Nina Kraus, Auditory Neuroscience Lab
Buffalo FOM — Are Recruiters in Tune? An Education in Music Makes You a Better Employee