Bogeyman by Steve Jackson

instead of driving somewhere far away and abducting a child he didn’t know, he’d struck too close to home and was seen with Nydra before she disappeared.
    Even more damning, a large bloodstain was discovered on the carpet beneath one of the seats in Penton’s van. However, DNA blood-typing was still in its infancy and not available at the time to the investigators with the Marion County Sheriff’s Office. So while it was highly suspicious—and not something Penton could easily explain away—it wasn’t enough to arrest him. Not yet.
    Taken from her family, brutalized and murdered by a monster, and then disposed of like trash, Nydra Ross went missing for six months. Then that fall, a hunter stumbling through the foliage near the stream happened upon a human skeleton.
    The Marion County coroner quickly determined that the remains had been exposed to the elements as long as six months and that they belonged to a black girl, around ten years old, who stood four foot six inches. Investigators with the county sheriff’s office surmised that at long last, Nydra had been found. But to be sure, they took bone marrow and blood samples from Nydra’s mother and sent them to a lab in New York to be compared to the remains. It took until January 1989 to get the results, but they were conclusive: The murdered child was Nydra Ross.
    Even then, Penton wasn’t indicted and charged with aggravated murder and kidnapping until May 1990, as the Columbus PD homicide detectives meticulously put their case together. Penton’s trial started April 4, 1991, more than three-and-a-half years after Nydra’s body was found. He faced the death penalty in Ohio’s electric chair if convicted.
    Prosecutors in the case had several pieces of evidence to work with, including that he was the last person seen with her and the bloodstain found in his van. But the most critical, perhaps, was the testimony of several men who were in jail with Penton after he was arrested. Each took the stand and testified about what the suspect told them; their stories were similar enough to corroborate one another and yet different enough to not sound rehearsed. One said Penton told him that he’d talked Nydra into climbing into his van, where he then raped and strangled her. The other testified that Penton told him that when he attempted to have sex with the child, she resisted, so he’d struck her. At that point, Penton realized he couldn’t let her go, so he killed her.
    A little more than two weeks after the trial began, it ended with the jurors convicting Penton for aggravated murder and kidnapping. He then faced a second trial to determine if his crime met the legal justifications for him to be put to death.
    As with most states that have the death penalty, Ohio law required the second trial so that jurors could weigh so-called “aggravating factors” against “mitigating factors.” Presented by the prosecution through witness testimony and evidence, aggravating factors are circumstances about the crime that raise it to a level above other similar crimes, such as premeditation, evidence that the crime was committed to cover-up another crime, like rape, or that the murder was particularly “cruel, heinous, or depraved.” Oftentimes, evidence prohibited at the guilt/innocence trial—such as the defendant’s previous criminal history, or “victim impact” statements from family members—will come into play. Among those who testified against Penton in this phase were his two ex-wives, who said that he’d sexually molested his own daughters.
    After the prosecution has presented the aggravating factors, the defense then presents any mitigating circumstances. These can range from whether the defendant was using drugs or alcohol at the time of the crime, suffered from a brain injury or was mentally deficient, or was subjected to a particularly difficult childhood that impacted his ability to control himself or judge right from wrong. The jurors are then asked