Justin Banta was arrested Friday by the Parker County Sheriff’s Office on charges of tampering with evidence. He was also arrested by the Texas Rangers for murder.
PARKER COUNTY, Texas — A North Texas man has been arrested on charges of capital murder and tampering with evidence after his pregnant girlfriend accused him of secretly giving her an abortion-inducing drug and killing their unborn child, according to a release from the Parker County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO) and multiple affidavits obtained by WFAA.
According to officials, a Parker County woman found out she was pregnant in September of 2024 and shared the news with her boyfriend of approximately one month, 38-year-old Justin Banta, who is married to another woman. Shortly after learning the news, officials said Banta told his pregnant girlfriend that he had ordered for her over the internet an abortion-inducing drug called “Plan C” that includes the drugs Mifepristone and Misoprostol. Upon learning of that purchase, however, officials said the woman informed Banta that she wanted to keep the baby.
Per one of the affidavits, the woman then had a sonogram at a doctor’s office in Weatherford, Texas, on Wednesday, October 16, 2024, and learned that, at approximately six weeks pregnant, her unborn child “had a strong heartbeat, displayed good vital signs and was said to be healthy by her doctor.”
Officials said that the woman and Banta met at the Black Rifle Coffee Company in Benbrook, Texas, later on the same day as her sonogram, after Banta had told the woman that “he had a change of heart and wanted to meet.” At that meeting, Banta provided the woman with a drink purchased prior to her arrival, as well as a batch of homemade cookies — information investigators said they confirmed through watching footage from security cameras placed inside the coffee shop. In one of the affidavits, police said security footage showed Banta pouring an “unknown, white-colored substance” that had been packaged in a “small clear bag” into the cup he provided the woman, stirring it into her drink with a straw.
According to the affidavits, the woman consumed her entire drink, but did not eat the cookies. The next morning, officials said, the woman began to experience pain, fatigue and continuous, heavy bleeding. Police said the woman took that Thursday and the following day off of work, and visited the emergency room on Friday. Per the affidavit, an attending doctor in the emergency room took both the woman’s and her unborn child’s vitals and discovered that the baby’s heartbeat had slowed. Officials said the doctor’s ultrasound also revealed that the woman’s uterus was filled with a large amount of blood — something not seen on the sonogram the woman had just two days earlier.
The following morning, on Saturday, October 19, the woman experienced a miscarriage, the affidavits said. The miscarriage was later confirmed by a review of her medical records, police said in the affidavit.
In a statement to police, the woman said she believed Banta placed abortion pills into the food and drink he provided her at the coffee shop without her knowledge or consent. According to the affidavits, the woman told police she’d been “very clear with Banta, on multiple occasions, that she was not going to terminate the pregnancy, and it was her decision,” but that Banta continued to push the issue, asking what he could do to change her mind — including paying her — and later asking her to send him a picture of her eating the cookies he’d provided her at the coffee shop.
Upon being told of this suspicion, the Benbrook Police Department filed a report on the incident. At around the same time, one of the affidavits said, an investigator seized the cookies Banta had provided the woman, which had still been in her possession and which were submitted to an FBI lab for analysis. That FBI lab report determined Mifepristone and Misopristol — the main ingredients in Plan C — were present in the ingredients of the cookies, the complaint states.
At this point, because the woman resides in Parker County, the investigation was then transferred to the PCSO with support from the Texas Rangers.
According to the affidavits, investigators helped coordinate a meeting between Banta and the woman shortly after the miscarriage. Upon arriving at her residence and leaving a sympathy card at her doorstep, Banta was met by a PCSO investigator and a Texas Ranger, and agreed to speak to law enforcement about the incident at the Parker County Sheriff’s Office.
“During the interview, Banta admitted to strongly desiring and pressuring [the woman] to get an abortion,” the complaint stated. “Banta further confirmed he ordered the Plan C pills using his cellular phone but claimed to have a change of heart and disposed of the medications.”
Banta, who works for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, denied to investigators during the interview that he had put anything in the woman’s drink, however, and gave permission for the Texas Ranger to search his phone, according to the complaint.
According to the PCSO, Banta was observed placing his phone in “airplane mode” at the request of officers, who then placed the device in a secure, locked area. According to the affidavits, Banta returned to the sheriff’s office the next morning, and requested to obtain some information from his device. Under the guidance of one of the investigators who interviewed him, Banta was provided his cell phone and was able to access the information he needed before returning the phone, no longer in “airplane mode”, the affidavits read.
According to the PCSO, when the investigator later retrieved Banta’s phone to download its contents, she discovered that the phone had been reset and could no longer be accessed. Per the PSCO, investigators then consulted “several digital evidence specialist[s],” who said that “the only way the defendant’s phone could be in that condition was the owner would have to log onto their personal Google account from another device, which includes providing the proper access account password and selecting the proper command to conduct a remote purge and/or reset of the device.”
Per the affidavits, Banta later admitted to investigators that he had accessed his Google account after turning his phone over to police so that he could import his eSIM data onto his work phone, but denied any remote deletion of his data.
The affidavits said police then submitted a preservation order to Google and obtained a search warrant for the data. Officials said they consulted multiple data specialists on the matter, but none could locate in the data logs any evidence of a deletion command — and none were even aware that such a command might exist in Google data returns. Further investigation conducted by the Regional Organized Crime Information Center also revealed no execution command, although officials said their findings did reveal some irregularities, including no videos or photos being present on October 20 or 21, and a lack of stored instant messages following September 17 — around the time when the woman revealed her pregnancy to Banta.
Police said in one of the affidavits that data retrieved by authorities did, however, contain messages between Banta and his wife, in he “informs his wife that [the woman] is pregnant and that he hopes [she] will agree to get an abortion,” and that he had ordered pills for the woman to take for that use. Per one of the affidavits, additional messages between Banta and his wife included discussions of the legality of abortion in and outside of the state of Texas, as well as a message from Banta’s wife that he “better hurry” in convincing the woman to terminate the pregnancy.
One of the affidavits noted that investigators also attempted to located a laboratory to test the woman’s blood or urine, as well as the remains of the miscarried fetus, for traces of of mifepristone or misoprostol, but came up short in their attempts to find one able, or willing, to do so.
Banta now faces charges of capital murder with the Texas Rangers and charges of tampering with evidence from the Parker County Sheriff’s Office on charges of tampering with evidence. He was arrested and booked into Parker County Jail on Friday, June 6, and was released the same day on bond.
Banta, who the PCSO’s press release described as someone who “works at the IT Department of the U.S. Department of Justice”, declined WFAA’s request for an interview when approached for comment on Monday.
Instead, he chose to provide only a short statement. Said Banta: “I am innocent of the charges against me.”
Banta’s attorney, Michael P. Heiskell, echoed that same sentiment in his own statement provided to WFAA on Monday.
“The charges against Justin will result in a vigorous defense,” Heiskell said. “He maintains his innocence as he did so when he fully cooperated and met with the investigating officers. This cooperation included him voluntarily consenting to his phone being seized by said investigators. I remind the public that these are only allegations and that Justin looks forward to clearing his good name in court. In that vein, we ask that his privacy and the due process our law provides him and the rest of us be honored and protected.”
Reached for comment on Tuesday, Heiskell doubled down on his earlier statement, calling the accusations against his client “purely fictional.”
“This is a relationship gone bad,” Heiskell said of Banta and the victim. “And I think the evidence will bear that out. In fact, I believe the evidence will play out and will bear out the fact that she, in fact, tried to obtain pills to terminate the pregnancy earlier on. It was only after she allegedly discovered that he was seeing other women that her mind changed. And here we are.”
The attorney also pointed out that Banta had yet to be indicted on any charges, and he questioned whether a grand jury would find the capital murder charge in particular to be appropriate given the facts of the case.
“They’re reaching,” Heiskell said of the investigators and the affidavits they filed against his client. “They’re trying to spin any actions on his part, or any statements on his part, in a way that makes him look and appear guilty. This is kind of par for the course of these investigators who take it upon themselves to believe each and everything that the alleged victim tells them without doing the actual scrutiny that these types of cases should require.”
“As Justin Banta’s attorney, I am also concerned regarding the unethical approaches and techniques employed by the investigators who, despite knowing of my representation, continued to question my client outside my presence and also while in custody to hopefully extract a confession. This was and is a violation of Justin’s 5th and 6th Amendments right to due process and counsel,” Heiskell said in a Wednesday statement.