Free Bogeyman by Steve Jackson Page B

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 Army. 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;