Bogeyman (22 page)

After Christie Proctor’s abduction, police detectives re-contacted Tiffany Ibarra who described the suspect for a police sketch artist.

Sketch/Dallas Police Department

Proctor’s remains: Christie Proctor’s skeletal remains were discovered beneath a mattress in a remote field near Plano, Texas in April 1988.

Photo/Plano Police Department

Shannon Sherrill was six years old in October 1986 when she disappeared while playing hide-and-seek in her mother’s yard in Thorntown, Indiana. David Penton later told fellow inmates that he abducted and murdered her.

Media File Photo

Jeff Heck was a young Indiana State Patrol officer whose area included Thorntown, Indiana when Shannon Sherrill disappeared. Years later, he would contact Gary Sweet about David Penton’s possible connection to Shannon’s abduction. He concluded that Penton was the prime suspect and filed a report with the prosecutor’s office in 2007 to that effect; the case remains “under investigation.”

Photo/Jeff Heck

In 2003, a woman named Donna Walker (center) contacted Shannon’s parents and claimed to be their long-lost daughter. Hoping for a “miracle” the parents’ were taken in until Lt. Jeff Heck’s investigation revealed that her claims were a hoax and arrested Walker.

AP Photo/Tom Strickland

Roxann Reyes was just three years old and picking flowers with her friend Julia Diaz in a field near an apartment complex managed by her mother when she was abducted Nov. 3, 1987.

Photo/Garland Police Department

Julia Diaz was ten years old when she narrowly escaped the man who then abducted her friend, Roxann. She described the killer for a police sketch artist; note the mole above the right eyebrow.

Sketch/Garland Police Department

David Penton after his arrest in April 1988 as a suspect in the abduction of Nydra Ross in Columbus, Ohio.

Photo/Columbus Police Department

Roxann Reyes’ partial skeletal remains and her hair with a barrette still in it were discovered in a remote field near Murphy, Texas, in May 1988.

Photo/Garland Police Department

When Penton became a suspect in the disappearance of Nydra Ross, police seized his van and discovered traces of blood on the floor. The van also matched Tiffany Ibarra’s description of the van her abductor was driving in 1986.

Photo/Columbus Police Department

Nine-year-old Nydra Ross was last seen alive talking to David Penton, a co-worker of her uncle who she was visiting in Columbus, Ohio in March 1988.

Photo/Columbus Police Department

Penton remained at large until 1990 when he was arrested for the murder of Nydra Ross. Convicted in 1991, he was sentenced to life in the Ohio State Penitentiary though would be eligible for parole.

Photo/Ohio Department of Corrections