God Help Us

[Nomad]

Jury takes minutes to convict cannibal killer

PURCELL, Oklahoma (AP) -- A jury found a man guilty of first-degree murder Friday in the killing of a 10-year-old girl, reaching its decision within minutes the day after hearing his macabre videotaped confession.

Kevin Underwood could face the death penalty if found guilty of murdering a 10-year-old girl.







Kevin Underwood, a former grocery stocker who claimed Internet pornography stoked his cannibalistic fantasies, showed no emotion as the verdict was announced.

Family members of the victim, Jamie Rose Bolin, patted each other and shook hands.

The girl's body was found in a plastic tub in Underwood's apartment in April 2006. Jurors had heard his detailed videotaped confession in court Thursday.

Judge Candace Blalock told jurors to return to court Monday morning for the penalty phase. Prosecutors have said they intend to seek the death penalty, while the defense has said it will seek to spare his life.

Deputies led Underwood, 28, away in handcuffs once jurors had left the courtroom.

Rose Fox, Jamie's grandmother, said after the verdict that she was originally against the death penalty in the case, but has now changed her mind.

"He made his choice," Fox said. "He's a monster in human form."

"I was for mercy. And then when I found out what he really did to her ... . He showed her no mercy."

Jurors began deliberating following closing arguments in which Cleveland County District Attorney Greg Mashburn predicted it would take jurors longer to pick a foreman than to determine guilt.

"It's the worst of the worst," Mashburn said. "His plan is to butcher someone like an animal."

In his closing argument, Defense attorney Matthew Haire did not dispute Underwood's guilt. But he called him "a lonely, very troubled, reclusive young man" and accused prosecutors of overwhelming jurors with gruesome evidence.

In the confession, Underwood said he lured the girl, his upstairs neighbor, into his apartment in Purcell, hit her with a cutting board, smothered her with his hands, sexually assaulted the body and nearly cut her head off as part of a fantasy involving cannibalism.

"I wanted to know what it tasted like, and just the thought of eating someone was appealing to me," Underwood said in the confession.

Underwood also said such fantasies began about the time he started taking the antidepressant Lexapro. Defense attorneys plan to call witnesses during the penalty phase on his use of the drug.

Underwood told FBI he hit the girl her over the head with a wooden cutting board while she was watching television and playing with his pet rat.

Agents asked Underwood what the girl said after he hit her.

"That's something that's haunted me forever since it happened," he said. "She started yelling, I'm sorry,' which I'm like, What is she sorry for? She didn't do anything wrong. It's me. I'm the one that should be sorry."'

Underwood said he regretted hitting Jamie as soon as he did it, but that by that point it was too late.

"I was sick to my stomach that I was doing this," he told agents Craig Overby and Martin Maag. "I was literally, physically sick."

He said he smothered the girl with his hands, sexually assaulted her lifeless body, draped the corpse over the bathtub and began sawing her neck with a decorative dagger, nearly cutting her head off.

Two days after the girl's disappearance, authorities grew suspicious of Underwood after stopping him and his father at a police checkpoint near the apartment complex. After a short initial interview, he allowed investigators to search his apartment, where they found the girl's nude body stuffed into a plastic tub inside his bedroom closet.

A forensic pathologist testified that Jamie was asphyxiated and had been sexually assaulted. Dr. Inas Yacoub said she was unable to determine if the girl's injuries, including the deep gashes to the neck, occurred before or after her death.

[Galbally]

A pathetic and twisted human being, he deserves no pity. How sad for that poor young girl to die at the hands of such a person.