Bogeyman: He Was Every Parent's Nightmare

by Steve Jackson

  Sweet was stunned. Even with as much violence and horror as he’d experienced so far in his career, he had a hard time believing that Penton could have killed twenty-five little girls over a period of years.

  The number paled in comparison to the world’s most prolific known serial child killers, such as three South Americans thought to hold that heinous distinction: Luis “The Beast” Garavito, reported to have raped and killed more than 400 street children; Pedro “The Monster of the Andes” Alonson Lopez, whose victims were said to number more than 300; and Daniel Barbosa, believed to have raped and killed 150. However, in the United States, with its modern law enforcement capabilities and inter-agency communication and computers—especially compared to countries where the disappearance of street children might go unnoticed—twenty-five victims was a staggering number. If true, or even on the low side, it meant that Penton was one of the worst, known serial child killers in U.S. history.

  What’s more, it meant that Penton committed his crimes at a time when the issue of child abductions and murders was gaining national prominence. In the United States, instigated by infamous child abductions—such as the 1979 kidnapping and murder of six-year-old Etan Patz from New York City and the 1981 abduction and murder of six-year-old Adam Walsh from a Florida shopping mall—efforts to create a national law enforcement response to child abductions led to the creation in 1984 of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Paid for largely by the U.S. Justice Department, the purpose of the center was to become a national clearinghouse and resource for parents, law enforcement agencies, schools, and communities to assist in locating missing children and raise public awareness. The main tool was the FBI’s national crime computer to record, track, and share information, which previously were all efforts hampered by jurisdictional lines.

  Other cases would make their way into the national consciousness about what had previously been a hidden epidemic, including that of Shannon Sherrill, the six-year-old whose October 1986 disappearance from her mother’s yard in Thorntown, Indiana, had become a national story even in those days before the internet. In Texas, relatives of Christi Meeks worked to bring widespread attention to her disappearance by establishing the Christi Meeks Foundation for Missing Children, which helped get the girl’s picture on billboards, milk cartons, and flyers.

  However, some killers were better at flying under the radar than others, and it was difficult to link crimes committed in one state with those in another. Sunnycalb noted that Penton sometimes changed his stories a little bit, or seemed to mix up names, or didn’t always know the name of every victim he claimed to have raped and murdered.

  But Penton was consistent and specific about some cases, and for those reasons, Sunnycalb was absolutely convinced that his former cellmate was responsible for the murders of Meeks, Proctor, and Reyes. He told Sweet that Penton referred to the girls by name and knew minute details, such as the clothes they’d been wearing, the dates and locations of their abductions, and where their bodies were left.

  Penton bragged about being smarter than the cops, Sunnycalb said. He claimed to be very meticulous when hunting for victims, lurking around schools and areas where children played, waiting for the right opportunity to strike fast, and then be away before anyone noticed. He even scouted the areas where he planned to murder the girls and dump their bodies, taking his victims from one jurisdiction into another to confuse law enforcement efforts. He smirked when he boasted about his crimes and said he would have never been caught except he’d make a mistake in Ohio when he killed Nydra Ross because he knew her uncle and had been seen with her.

  It was this tendency to boast, Sweet realized, that was Penton’s fatal flaw. He enjoyed recounting his atrocities, reliving them over and over in graphic detail. No matter what the topic of discussion was in the beginning, Sunnycalb told him, it wouldn’t take Penton long to turn the conversation around to the little girls he’d abducted, raped, and murdered. He liked being the center of attention and seemed to “get off” sexually by regaling other inmates with each horrific detail. Such a proclivity for bragging could come back to haunt him.

  When the Sunnycalb described how Penton relished recalling the murders, Sweet was reminded of Michael Giles and how he liked to relive his crimes over and over while sitting on the roof of his great-grandmother’s house. There was a similarity to their evil—the calculated, remorseless infliction of fear, suffering, and death on defenseless victims—though if Sunnycalb was right about the numbers, Penton was much further along in his career as a murderous psychopath.

  Penton had never satisfied his deviant bloodlust. He told any inmate who’d listen that he hoped to someday get out of prison and resume his atrocities. Sunnycalb recalled how sometimes they’d be watching television and a young girl would appear on the screen. “He’d make comments like, ‘She better be glad I’m in here, or I would have her.’”

  The killer had even decided to change tactics. In the past, he’d sometimes punched his small victims in the stomach to knock the wind out of them and prevent them from screaming or struggling as he carried them to his vehicle. Now if he ever got another chance, he said he’d use an electric stun device to disable them.

  Sweet checked with Ohio authorities and found out Penton would be eligible for parole in 2027 for his conviction in the Nydra Ross case, which would make him about 69 years old. He’d still be capable of preying on little girls. Of course, as sometimes happened in an uncertain justice system, he also could be released early or sent to a less-secure facility, where he could escape. If he got out, it might be tough to catch him again, too. After all, he’d disappeared following his conviction for the death of his infant son and avoided detection for four years, during which time, if Sunnycalb’s information was correct, he’d murdered three little girls in Texas and one in Ohio.

  At least, Sweet thought, and probably many more than that. He believed it was his responsibility to make sure Penton never got out of prison again. Or better yet, Texas was a state that often sought and carried out the death penalty. He could think of no better end for a child killer than to be strapped to a gurney, pumped full of poison, and put down like a mad dog.

  So far in their conversations, Sunnycalb had proved to be reliable, but Sweet still cautioned himself to be skeptical. He asked Sunnycalb about Mesquite Det. Mike Bradshaw’s complaint that sometimes during their telephone conversations he clammed up, or wouldn’t answer a question directly, or he’d start talking completely off the subject. But Sunnycalb had an explanation. The prison telephone he used didn’t allow for any privacy, and he had to be guarded in what he said if other inmates approached. “Snitches get stitches or end up in ditches” was not just a saying when living in a penitentiary setting.

  Once again, Sunnycalb’s reasoning made sense, and Sweet wondered why so many other officers thought that the informant couldn’t be trusted. He discovered that the main source of the aspersions was Det. Keith Grisham with the Plano Police Department, the agency involved in the Proctor case. So he called and reached the detective. Grisham was nearing retirement, but he said he’d be happy to help, including discussing Sunnycalb and the Proctor case.

  When they met, Grisham repeated what he’d been telling other law enforcement officers, including an FBI agent looking into a case in the Midwest. He stated flat out that Sunnycalb was a liar. He said that in 1998, he’d received a letter from Sunnycalb saying he had information about the three Dallas-area murders. So Grisham arranged for Sunnycalb to be transferred into a county jail in Ohio so that they could meet him without other prison inmates knowing. Then he and Det. Billy Meeks, also of the Plano Police Department and no relation to Christi Meeks, had flown to Ohio to interview him.

  “He didn’t tell me shit,” Grisham explained to Sweet. “I got my department’s approval and flew all the way up there and had to come back with nothing. He’s a flake, and I think he was just playing with us.” If Sweet wanted to waste his time listening to Sunnycalb, it was up t
o him.

  In spite of his feeling about Sunnycalb, Grisham was helpful. He told Sweet everything he could about the Proctor murder in case it would help. He even took Sweet to the dirt road in a wooded area near Plano where Christie Proctor’s body was found, and then to the field near Murphy, Texas, both of them in Collin County, where Roxann’s body had been dumped.

  Later, Sweet asked Sunnycalb about Grisham’s complaints about the interview in Ohio. The informant didn’t try to hide his annoyance. He said that when Grisham asked to interview him, he’d agreed on two conditions: He didn’t want to be videotaped, or for anything to be written down. “I said that I’d tell him everything I knew,” Sunnycalb explained. But worried about being identified as a snitch, he didn’t want anyone to have proof that he’d talked.

  Grisham agreed to the conditions, Sunnycalb said, and everything went well with the interview until the detective said he needed a smoke break. He and Meeks then left Sunnycalb alone in the interview room. But they didn’t realize that Sunnycalb was an electrician by trade, and when he saw the coaxial wires used for videotaping coming out of a speaker box in the corner, he knew he’d been betrayed. He got up, walked over to the speaker box and saw the small camera hidden inside. “After I saw the camera, I didn’t tell them shit,” he said to Sweet.

  Sweet was amused that the informant had just used the same description of his interview that Grisham had, only in a different context. Without revealing Sunnycalb’s version of what took place at the Ohio prison, he called Grisham and asked if he could view the videotape from the Ohio interview.

  Watching the tape was the first time Sweet saw what Sunnycalb looked like—a bald, portly man in his mid-forties who reminded the detective of Mr. Spacely on the old The Jetsons cartoon. Just as Sunnycalb had told him, the first part of the interview went off without a hitch. Then when the other detectives left the room, Sunnycalb noticed the speaker box, got up, walked up to the hidden camera and scowled. When the detectives returned, Sunnycalb didn’t tell Grisham and Meeks that he knew he’d been lied to; he just sat sullenly and hardly spoke the rest of the meeting.

  Once again, Sunnycalb’s version of events was accurate, but it had torched his credibility with law enforcement. In the years since his falling out with Grisham, Sunnycalb said, he’d been trying to let law enforcement agencies know about Penton’s claims. But no one had responded to his letters and calls until he contacted Diane Teft in Fort Worth. And then, only Sweet had stuck with him.

  Still, if Sweet was going to make a case against Penton, he needed a lot more than the word of a pedophile like Jeffrey Sunnycalb. He was going to have to find other witnesses and evidence to corroborate what the informant had to say.

  Sweet knew it was going to be a long, hard road. A lot of time had passed; witnesses disappeared, and memories dimmed; evidence that might have existed in the mid-to late-1980s was likely to have been lost or destroyed. Not only that, but whatever he did, he would have to do in his spare time. His caseload of current crimes wasn’t going anywhere, and he couldn’t drop them for murders that had happened so long ago that only their families and maybe a few old-timer cops remembered. Still, if he wouldn’t answer the call to bring these cases to a close for the families and for the victims, who would?

  CHAPTER NINE

  A few days later …

  Walking down the stairs to the murder closet, Sweet pulled the Reyes case file boxes from the shelves. He knew the first time he’d looked in the boxes that the contents were a disorganized mess. He loaded them into his car and drove to the small town where he and his family lived in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood of brick homes, many of them owned by cops and firefighters.

  In his living room, Sweet turned the boxes over and dumped them on the floor. Out of curiosity, his wife, Julie, began looking through some of the photographs and came across one of a clump of dark hair with a little girl’s hair clasp still attached. It was a horrible reminder of what had happened to the child, and she had to walk away.

  It was a photograph that got to Sweet: an image of little Roxann sharing a kiss with her father as they played on the living room floor of their home. He couldn’t help but put himself and his three daughters into that photograph and choked up. The case had become personal.

  Sweet set the photograph of Roxann and her father aside and looked down at the jumbled piles of paper that represented the Roxann Reyes homicide investigation as it had been left by the detective originally assigned to the case. He had tried talking to the now-retired detective, but he wasn’t interested in helping and didn’t have much to say. He’d just given up and dumped it all in the two boxes to be stored in the murder closet.

  Getting down on his hands and knees, Sweet picked up a sheet of paper, read it, and placed it on a clear spot on the carpet. In that manner, he scanned every single note, receipt, and telephone message, every photograph and sketch. Then, he organized them. Items that at least seemed important to him—such as statements from several people, including Penton’s sister, taken by the Columbus Police Department, and a car title for a gray, four-door Datsun sedan—he placed in separate files according to subject matter; they would go into one of the boxes. The items that didn’t make sense to him he filed and consigned to the second box, unless, and until, they became relevant.

  Sometimes it was difficult to tell which box some bit of information belonged in. For instance, when he read the offense report for the Roxann Reyes case, a potential witness by the name of Wanda Huggins who lived in the same apartment complex was mentioned. She’d told police that she’d seen a man matching the description given by Roxann’s friend, Julia Diaz, wandering through the complex. She said that when she made eye contact with the stranger, he turned and ran. If true, Huggins might have been able to identify the attacker from a photo lineup, but there was nothing in the file to indicate if anyone had followed up on her report.

  When he was done organizing, Sweet went back and read it all again, this time more carefully. He wanted to learn every detail he could about the Reyes case so that when Sunnycalb told him new information, he’d know whether the evidence corroborated it.

  Like a hunter sizing up the animal he intended to pursue, Sweet also wanted to know everything he could about Penton. He learned that David Elliot Penton was born Feb. 9, 1958, and raised in Columbus, Ohio, and that his father had walked out on him, his mother, and sister when Penton was a child.

  After dropping out of high school in 1977, he joined the Army, arriving at Fort Hood near Killeen, Texas, in Bell County in the fall. He soon married a young woman from Ohio named Katherine, who happened to be the daughter of the man married to Penton’s mother. Katherine, who had a young daughter from a previous relationship, moved with him to Killeen, where she gave birth to another girl.

  While stationed at Fort Hood, they owned a brown Fury two-door sedan and white Plymouth van. The marriage didn’t last, and the couple divorced in 1979. When they parted, Penton kept the van with its distinctive brown stripes on the side.

  In February 1980, Penton married his second wife, a Korean national named Kyong, and three months later was transferred to Korea. Trained as a track vehicle mechanic, he was also an expert marksman and deemed “highly motivated” by his superiors, who promoted him to sergeant. However, he was charged with storing alcohol in his foot locker, then a few months later with lying about his marital status to obtain unearned benefits, and was demoted to specialist.

  In June 1981, the Army transferred Penton back to Fort Hood for a year before shipping him off to Korea again. When his tour was up in September 1983, Penton returned to Texas with his wife and their baby girl; a year later, the couple had a baby boy they named Michael.

  In November 1984, Penton was arrested for killing his two-month-old son. The county medical examiner determined that he violently shook the child in a “fit of rage” because the infant would not stop crying.

  In May 1985, Penton pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was discharged from the Arm
y. But he appealed for a delay in his sentencing and was allowed out on bond. He then fled Texas, and disappeared, until he was arrested in Ohio three years later for the murder of Nydra Ross.

  It was during those three years between Penton being charged with his son’s death and his arrest for the murder of Nydra that three little girls were abducted and murdered in the Dallas area: Christi Meeks in January 1985; Christie Proctor in February 1986; and Roxann Reyes in November 1987. There was nothing in the evidence box that indicated they knew the man who took them. However, nine-year-old Nydra had met the bogeyman before he killed her.

  Penton worked with her uncle, who she’d gone to visit in Columbus, and he’d been at that home on the evening of March 30, 1988. The next day, when no one was looking, he forced Nydra into his van, where he drove her to a remote location, then raped and strangled her. He then drove across the county line into a rural part of Marion County east of the small town of Waldo. He’d been there before, scouting the lay of the land and picking a spot where a small creek cut through a heavily wooded ravine running parallel to the dirt road he drove down. He stopped, then after making sure no one was around, he pulled the body from his van and threw her into the dense brush. Satisfied for the moment, he drove back to Columbus.

  Nydra’s uncle reported her missing, and a search was launched. Penton even helped, but it didn’t take long for him to become a suspect. He’d made a mistake; 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.