DOJ employee faces murder charge after allegedly slipping abortion drug into girlfriend’s drink

A Justice Department IT employee faces capital murder charges after an alleged scheme to abort his girlfriend’s pregnancy included a remote “reset” of evidence on his phone.

(Video Credit: Fox 4 Dallas-Fort Worth)

Friday in North Texas, the Parker County Sheriff’s Office executed a felony arrest warrant on 38-year-old Justin Anthony Banta for allegedly tampering with evidence as part of an ongoing investigation. That investigation included a charge out of neighboring Tarrant County for capital murder as the IT worker was accused of slipping an abortifacient into his then-pregnant girlfriend’s drink.

According to a press release from Parker County Sheriff Russ Authier, Banta, who had been in a romantic relationship with the victim for roughly a month, found out about the pregnancy in Sept. 2024 and proceeded to encourage her to kill the unborn child.

While the suspect was said to have offered to pay to order “Plan C” online, the victim had expressed her desire to keep the baby and proceeded to have a doctor’s appointment to check on the status of the pregnancy on Oct. 17.

That same day a sonogram showed a healthy baby with a heartbeat, “the victim reported she met Banta at a coffee shop in Tarrant County, where she expressed her suspicion that Banta had secretly added abortion-inducing pills to her drink without her knowledge or permission.”

The day after the pair had met at the Black Rifle Coffee Company location in Benbrook, Texas, just outside Fort Worth, the victim “began to suffer from extreme fatigue and heavy bleeding,” and on the following day, she lost the baby.

According to the sheriff’s office, Banta had agreed to an interview with investigators and his cell phone was collected as evidence. It was later discovered that the device had been tampered with and PCSO alleged that the suspect had accessed it remotely to perform a “‘reset’, thereby deleting crucial evidence related to the case.”

Attorney Russell Wilson, of no involvement with the case, expressed to Fox 4 his expectation that charging Banta for the murder of the unborn child would require evidence to support the allegations brought by the victim. “I think the law would require corroboration, generally under Texas law, a person who themselves could be suspected of committing a crime, their word alone in describing someone else’s actions is not usually sufficient.”

“Certainly, I would think video. The contents of the cell phone. The coffee shop, presumably because of the proximity and time to this medical event happening, may have video from the patrons coming in,” added the attorney. “Receipts either from the purchase of the pills or the purchase of the coffee at the store, perhaps even the coffee cup. So you could go very far with biological evidence. If you’re able to recover it in a short time after this happened.”

If convicted, the punishment for capital murder in the Lone Star State includes life in prison without parole or the death penalty.

Staff Writer

Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn’t researching current events and their impacts, you’ll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.

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