Jeana (DP)
Former Member
Accused child-killer pleads guilty
By JENNIFER EMILY / The Dallas Morning News
McKINNEY - A man accused of killing three young Dallas-area girls in the mid-1980s pleaded guilty to all three murders Thursday afternoon.
David Elliott Penton was accused in the abduction-slayings of 4-year-old Roxann Reyes, Christie Diane Proctor, 9 and Christi Lynn Meeks, 5. He was extradited to Texas from an Ohio prison in 2003 to face the charges.
As part of Thursday's plea, Mr. Penton will finish out his sentence in Ohio, where he was serving a life prison term for killing a 9-year-old Columbus girl in 1988. He is eligible for parole there in 2027. At that point, Mr. Penton would be sent to Texas to begin another life term. The plea avoids the death penalty.
For years, authorities suspected Mr. Penton in the three unsolved slayings but were unable to tie him to Texas after he was honorably discharged from the Army in Killeen in late 1985. Mr. Penton pleaded guilty to the manslaughter death of his 1-month-old son in 1985. During an appeal of his sentence, he fled. It has been unclear where he was from 1985 until he was taken into custody in Ohio in 1988.
In 2003, Plano police forwarded the cases to Collin County prosecutors, who persuaded a grand jury to indict Mr. Penton on three capital murder charges. They would not say what new evidence connected the inmate with the local killings.
The bodies of the three Dallas-area girls were found in Plano, Murphy and Lake Texoma months, even years after they vanished.
Christi Meeks disappeared during a game of hide-and-seek outside her mother's Mesquite apartment complex in January 1985 and was found dead less than three months later in Lake Texoma.
Christie Proctor's body was found in a south Plano field in April 1988, more than two years after the fourth-grader was last seen walking from her North Dallas apartment to a friend's house. And Roxann Reyes was snatched from an alley while playing outside her Garland apartment in November 1987.
www.dallasnews.com
By JENNIFER EMILY / The Dallas Morning News
McKINNEY - A man accused of killing three young Dallas-area girls in the mid-1980s pleaded guilty to all three murders Thursday afternoon.
David Elliott Penton was accused in the abduction-slayings of 4-year-old Roxann Reyes, Christie Diane Proctor, 9 and Christi Lynn Meeks, 5. He was extradited to Texas from an Ohio prison in 2003 to face the charges.
As part of Thursday's plea, Mr. Penton will finish out his sentence in Ohio, where he was serving a life prison term for killing a 9-year-old Columbus girl in 1988. He is eligible for parole there in 2027. At that point, Mr. Penton would be sent to Texas to begin another life term. The plea avoids the death penalty.
For years, authorities suspected Mr. Penton in the three unsolved slayings but were unable to tie him to Texas after he was honorably discharged from the Army in Killeen in late 1985. Mr. Penton pleaded guilty to the manslaughter death of his 1-month-old son in 1985. During an appeal of his sentence, he fled. It has been unclear where he was from 1985 until he was taken into custody in Ohio in 1988.
In 2003, Plano police forwarded the cases to Collin County prosecutors, who persuaded a grand jury to indict Mr. Penton on three capital murder charges. They would not say what new evidence connected the inmate with the local killings.
The bodies of the three Dallas-area girls were found in Plano, Murphy and Lake Texoma months, even years after they vanished.
Christi Meeks disappeared during a game of hide-and-seek outside her mother's Mesquite apartment complex in January 1985 and was found dead less than three months later in Lake Texoma.
Christie Proctor's body was found in a south Plano field in April 1988, more than two years after the fourth-grader was last seen walking from her North Dallas apartment to a friend's house. And Roxann Reyes was snatched from an alley while playing outside her Garland apartment in November 1987.
www.dallasnews.com
