Bogeyman: He Was Every Parent's Nightmare

by Steve Jackson

  He also went back and reviewed the original case file on Shannon’s abduction, personally checking out some of the leads that had been called in over the years. One person even insisted that Shannon had been run over by a drunk or unlicensed driver, who then panicked and buried her alongside of the road. It was a long shot, but Heck brought in cadaver dogs, specially trained to find bodies, but they didn’t hit on a scent.

  The most interesting information in the files was two reports from witnesses who claimed to have seen a suspicious white van in town that they knew didn’t belong to any of their neighbors. Heck knew from Sweet that Penton had once owned such a vehicle, and indeed had been driving a white van when he murdered Nydra Ross. One of the witnesses had passed away, but Heck located the other and showed him photographs of white vans, including Penton’s. The man shook his head, he couldn’t be sure if one of them was the van he’d seen on that sunny day almost exactly twenty years earlier, but maybe.

  Sunnycalb had also told Heck that when Penton was arrested for Nydra’s murder, a pair of little girl panties had been found in the van. Those panties, Penton told him, had belonged to Shannon Sherrill. Heck called the Columbus Police Department and talked to Det. David Morris, who had worked on the Ross case. Again, Sunnycalb’s information was good. The Columbus PD had a record of panties found in the van and even a photograph of them. Unfortunately, the underwear had been lost or destroyed, so there was no chance of testing for DNA.

  Morris sent the photograph to Heck, which he put together in a “lineup” of photographs of panties and showed them to Dorothy Sherrill. She ruled out most of them. However, she said, the pair found in Penton’s car was similar to the type Shannon would have worn, though she couldn’t be sure what her little girl wore that day.

  Heck also sent blood samples from Shannon’s parents to the DNA lab in Texas that had tested the stained rags found in the attic of Penton’s former home in Columbus. But there was no match.

  In October, Heck traveled to Texas to meet up with Sweet, Bradshaw, Phillips, and Bryan. They spent most of a week going over the files for the Texas murders, looking for anything to connect Penton to Indiana. But other than the interviews with several inmates who said he’d talked about being in that state—some of it detailed enough that he believed it to be credible—there wasn’t much new.

  Then in November, Heck returned to the Warren Correctional Facility, where he sat down with Sunnycalb for one last interview. Although the inmate hesitated, he eventually cooperated when the detective said he wanted to tape the conversation.

  On January 21, 2007, Heck flew to Oklahoma to interview Penton’s former brother-in-law. The Mesquite detectives had told him about what the man said about driving around with Penton fantasizing about raping and killing young girls. The man was cooperative and acknowledged what he told Phillips was true, but said that his involvement in Penton’s deviant behavior was all just talk and fantasy. He denied having participated in any actual abductions, including Shannon’s, and passed a lie detector test.

  Finally, there was only one thing left to do, and that was to talk to the bogeyman himself. On February 4, 2007, Jeff Heck found himself sitting in a motel room in Toledo, Ohio. Outside, it was snowing while inside on the television the Indianapolis Colts were playing the Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl in Miami, Florida. However, his mind wasn’t on the game or the weather, but on the fact that the next day he’d be talking to the man he believed abducted and murdered Shannon Sherrill.

  Heck knew there was no point in appealing to Penton on an emotional level. A psychopath wasn’t going to care about giving “closure” for Shannon’s parents by telling the truth and revealing where he’d left her body. The only person David Penton cared about was David Penton. So Heck was going to have to appeal to the monster’s self-interest.

  One advantage he had was that Penton didn’t know he was coming. He wanted to be better prepared for the confrontation than the psychopath he was about to meet. He also didn’t want to give Penton the opportunity to say no to the interview. Or if he did, he was going to have to say it face-to-face, and Heck wanted to meet him first. Up to that point, Penton was only a photograph; seeing him in the flesh would make the bogeyman real.

  They were brought together in an interview room off of Penton’s cellblock. After introducing himself and why he was there, Heck noted that Penton struggled for a moment so as not to appear surprised but quickly gathered himself.

  The detective didn’t waste any time beating around the bush. “I know you did it,” he said. “And you know you did it. Let’s get this thing closed. I can’t get you drunk, or get you dope, or get you laid, but if you’ll show us where you dumped or buried the body, maybe there’s something I can do for you.”

  Heck said he’d talked to the Boone County prosecutor and could offer the one thing he knew Penton valued: his life. If he’d admit to the murder and helped find Shannon’s remains, they wouldn’t pursue the death penalty. He’d even brought a letter to that effect signed by the Boone County prosecutor, Todd Meyer.

  The detective pointed out to the killer that he was treating him with respect. Prison inmates don’t have much, so respect was something they clung to. It wasn’t easy to stomach. Heck had to pretend to treat him as an equal, when what he wanted to do was push his head through the bars of a cell. Instead, he noted that rather than do things that could have made life more difficult—such as have him transported to the Boone County jail, where he wouldn’t have his television, commissary, nearby relatives to visit him, yard time, his friends, and the safety of being kept in protective custody—he’d taken it easy on him.

  Penton, of course, knew that Heck was playing a part. Still, he appreciated it enough to talk to the detective for three hours. He acted like they were just a couple of guys sitting down to talk. During that time, he admitted that he had a “taste for young girls.” But he denied murdering Shannon Sherrill, or any of the others for which he’d been convicted. He was obviously trying to “sell” Heck on the idea that he was just this unfortunate, misunderstood guy, who hadn’t committed the crimes he’d been accused of doing.

  It was difficult to sit across from Penton, knowing what he’d done and listen to his lies. But what bothered Heck more was the man’s arrogance. Penton was smug when he answered the questions he knew the detective was going to ask, and his facial expressions didn’t match his protestations of innocence. He’d talk about the crimes in Texas, but always in general terms and didn’t refer to the three girls by name. They were just “things” to him.

  Finally, Heck thought he’d gone about as far as he was going to with Penton. Short of the threat of a trial, the killer wasn’t going to cooperate. It wasn’t just the possibility of the death penalty that would make him talk, either, though certainly Penton would do whatever it took to protect his miserable life. Heck realized there was something else at play.

  Penton was “institutionalized.” He wasn’t suffering in prison; he’d accepted that he was never getting out and had everything he wanted or needed to be comfortable in his incarcerated life. He had a television, food, shelter, friends, and a social life. His relatives visited and put money in his prison account.

  However, all of that would be messed up if he was indicted in another state. He’d be moved from his comfortable surroundings to a place he didn’t know, such as a county jail—which would be like stepping down from the Hilton to a fleabag motel. If he was convicted in another state, he’d be starting all over in the pecking order, without friends and his established comfortable routine. Nor could his family visit as easily. And if sentenced to death somewhere, he’d be confined to a tiny cell on Death Row, twenty-three hours a day, without contact with the other inmates.

  Penton liked to boast about his crimes to his fellow inmates. But unlike some serial killers, who enjoy the notoriety once they know they’re not getting out again, Heck realized that Penton was concerned that more publicity might lead to being prosecuted again. He wasn’t g
oing to admit anything to cops or the media.

  Heck knew that Penton was worried, even if he didn’t talk, mostly about DNA evidence. The science had been in its infancy when he was abducting and murdering little girls in the 1980s, but it since had grown into a major crime-fighting tool. He’s afraid there’s something out there that could convict him, he thought.

  “Well,” Heck said, as the guard appeared to lead Penton back to his cellblock. “I hope to see you soon.” He hesitated then asked. “Would you prefer to drive or fly back to Indiana?”The dig was intentional. He wanted Penton to be thinking about him as much as Heck had thought about the murderer. He hoped that he would be Penton’s bogeyman.

  As Heck left the Ohio prison, he felt exhausted. Like most officers after an important interview, such as the one he’d just conducted, there was always an adrenaline dump, followed by a tendency to second-guess what he’d said or left out. He worried until he later read a transcript of the interview and felt he’d covered all the bases. There was one thing he was now absolutely certain of: David Penton abducted and murdered Shannon Sherrill.

  When he got back to Indiana, Heck met with Mike and Dorothy Sherrill and showed them a photograph of Penton. “This is the man I believe took your daughter,” he said. He felt they deserved that, whether Penton was ever prosecuted for it or not; he hoped it brought them some relief.

  He also updated retired ISP detective Shrock and former Sheriff Ern Hudson about the case. They’d been a good sounding board for him as he pursued the case against Penton and felt that they deserved to know. Their lives, too, were impacted by the abduction of Shannon Sherrill.

  On March 15, 2007, Lt. Jeff Heck of the Indiana State Police forwarded his case to the Boone County Prosecutor’s Office. He realized that it was a circumstantial case, and only a fair one at that. The main problem with it from his vantage point was that he’d been unable to put Penton in Indiana, except through statements made by the other inmates, and a former girlfriend of Penton, who told him that he’d been ticketed for speeding in the state, a claim he couldn’t substantiate. But he felt, in his experience, that it was a case that could be won.

  Still, it was Meyer’s call. Meyer had prosecuted Donna Walker and knew the Sherrill case well. And his decision was that there wasn’t enough to go forward with the case … yet.

  The day after Heck turned in the case was his last on the job. He respected Meyer’s decision. It wasn’t an open-and-shut case, but he’d done all he felt he could for Shannon Sherrill and her family, his fellow officers, and his community. Otherwise, he didn’t think he would have been able to leave.

  After filing the case with Meyer and retiring, Heck didn’t want Penton to think he’d forgotten about him. So that year for every holiday and special occasion—Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Halloween, and Christmas—he bought cards and sent them to the prisoner with small messages such as: “See you soon.”

  The cards had the desired effect. After receiving a Christmas card from Heck, Penton contacted a lawyer who wrote and demanded that the retired officer stop. Apparently, it frightened the murderer of little girls to know that he wasn’t forgotten or forgiven.

  EPILOGUE

  David Elliot Penton cast the shiny pebbles of the young lives he took into the foul dark pond and devastated so many others who were overtaken by the spreading horror of what he did. Thanks to lawmen in Texas and Ohio, four families at least know the truth and have the remains of their children to mourn over. But a cold gravestone is scant solace for the warm love of a child and the joy of watching her grow into a young woman. There will always be those reminders—the birthdays, the photographs, that face in the crowd, a voice on a playground—that tug at the heart and bring on the tears.

  Other families still wait, wondering if the bogeyman will ever reveal all of his crimes and the locations of his victims’ bodies. Or will he carry his secrets to the grave with him and only answer to a higher power, not just for murders, but for the anguish he could have ameliorated by simply telling the truth.

  These families can hope, perhaps, that charges will be brought against Penton for one of the other pending cases. Then, faced with the death penalty or with being moved from his comfortable life in an Ohio prison, maybe he will talk.

  It could be just a small piece of evidence that tips the scales enough to encourage a prosecutor to move forward. For instance, on the back of one of the photographs seized from Penton’s cell depicting a gray sedan, he’d written “Monrovia, packed for Texas.” When he saw the inscription, Sweet thought Monrovia might be a person’s name. What he didn’t know was that there is a town called Monrovia in Indiana, less than an hour’s drive due south of Thorntown, where Shannon Sherrill disappeared. Unaware of the possible connection, Sweet didn’t show the photograph to Jeff Heck, whose case lacked for being able to place Penton in Indiana. That possibility was noted recently, but it is not yet determined what effect, if any, it might have on the case.

  In the meantime, the ripples continued to spread after Penton pled guilty to the three Texas murders. On July 10, 2011, Tiffany Ibarra died of a drug overdose. Even though Penton told her to get out of his van that day in 1986, in some ways the bogeyman never let her go. It wasn’t just the terror he imposed on her personally. There was also survivor’s guilt, knowing that just a few days later, on the same street, one of her schoolmates, Christie Proctor, suffered the fate he’d intended for Tiffany.

  For twenty-five years, Tiffany saw his face and heard his voice in her nightmares. Yet, she had twice summoned the nerve to identify him to police detectives, and bravely prepared to face him in court. Doing so, she exhibited far more courage than the vile and evil creature who took her innocence, then murdered another little girl in her place. But while he continued to exist at taxpayer expense, eat warm meals, watch television, and regale his fellow inmates with his tales of horror, she had to live within the prison he created in her mind.

  She was not alone in that prison. Tammy Lopez died in her sleep January 9, 2013, never having recovered from the abduction and murder of Roxann. For fourteen years, she’d held out hope that the remains found in the field near Murphy, Texas, weren’t her daughter’s. She wanted to believe that her husband kidnapped their child and took her to Mexico, where she was alive and happy.

  However, the pebble that Penton tossed into the pond of her life overtook her. First, the necessities of Sweet’s investigation forced her to face the reality of Roxann’s brutal murder. She then waited for the case against “the devil” to be made and charges brought so that he would be exposed in a court of law for the beast that he is … only to lose her day in court when the Collin County District Attorney’s Office made a strategic decision to ensure the killer would never leave prison, rather than gamble on his execution.

  After his confession and guilty plea, there had been some degree of satisfaction, knowing that Penton had been forced to admit that he was a monster. But then, he’d torn Tammy’s wounds open again, claiming in a newspaper article that he’d only pleaded guilty to avoid a possible death sentence.

  Tammy moved back to her mother’s property in Ohio, where she’d grown up. She stayed in a small mobile home in front of her mother’s house, where she lived quietly, visiting with her mom, two daughters, and six grandchildren, planting flowers around the home, and mourning the child who was taken from her.

  Although a type II diabetic with health issues, Tammy’s death was unexpected. The coroner ruled “natural causes,” but her mother believes that she died of a broken heart.After Penton’s sentencing, Sweet called Joyce and told her about how well Tammy held it together when she spoke in court. “She wasn’t the broken person she’d been for years,” Joyce recalls. But the strength didn’t last long, and when Tammy’s husband, Jesus, died in November 2012, Joyce believes, “she didn’t have anything left to live for.”

  All Joyce has left are the photographs of her daughter and granddaughter, and the pain. “Sometimes, I wish a day could go
by in my life when I don’t have to think about what happened to Tammy and Roxann.”

  Still, she says, the family will be forever grateful to Sweet, who she still hears from occasionally. She understands that the investigation took its toll on him and the other detectives, too. “In a way, they were all victims of David Penton.”

  As for Penton, Joyce wishes he’d received the death penalty. “I think he deserves it, but one way or the other, he better be worrying about God.”

  As a society, we rarely think about the impact of the ripples caused by a David Penton on detectives and their families. Except for the reported instance of unique bravery or sacrifice, usually the only stories we hear about law enforcement are those in which one bad apple defines the vast majority in the barrel. But as Joyce Davis noted, there are the police officers who invest their hearts, minds, souls, and sometimes health trying to bring the bogeyman to justice.

  Indiana State Police detective Shrock died in 2008. There was some satisfaction for Jeff Heck that his mentor had lived long enough to be convinced that Penton was Shannon’s killer and that he’d never be free to hurt another little girl. But “charged and convicted” is the measure of a detective’s success, and that has not yet happened in the Sherrill case.

  In the years since Heck left the ISP, nothing much has been done to move the case forward.In October 2009, his files were given to an ISP cold case detective. At the time, prosecutor Meyer told the media that there were several “persons of interest” in Shannon’s disappearance, including Penton. The prosecutor was complimentary about Heck’s investigation. “He’s done an excellent job of putting together the investigation.” But, he said, his office was at the same place regarding pursuing charges as it had been in 2007. “There is no smoking gun. I hate to say it, but it’s still a mystery to us.”

  Mike Sherrill said in the same story that he wasn’t sure what the cold case team would accomplish. “Lt. Heck worked on the case for a whole year. I don’t know what (they) can do than what he did. … All we can do is hope. I just want to bring her home.”