Neighbor charged with murder in killing of girl, 9

She narrowly escaped what could have turned into a sexual assault only three weeks ago, investigators said.

Monday, 9-year-old Skyler Kauffman wasn't so lucky.

Hours after discovering the Souderton girl's bludgeoned and beaten body wrapped in a comforter and tossed into a nearby dumpster, police arrested the same 24-year-old neighbor who allegedly locked the girl in his apartment and threatened to expose himself to her last month. Now, he was charged with her murder.

If police had only done something the first time, tragedy could have been prevented, said the girl's mother Heather Gebhard. Instead, she said, "they blew me off."

Prosecutors believe James Lee Troutman led the brown-eyed child who neighbors described as outgoing and friendly into a basement at the Souderton Garden Apartments just before 5 p.m. Monday.

There, in the dark, he allegedly raped and strangled her, banging her head against the concrete floors over and over again. And once he had disposed of her body, they said, he quietly crossed the small parking lot back to his apartment and sat down to dinner with his fiancé.

Meanwhile, Kauffman's mother, grandmother and neighbors began a desperate search for a child whose body lay only yards away. And this bedroom community near the Montgomery-Bucks County line began to grapple with the one of the most unnerving crimes it has seen in years.

"Things like this just don't happen here," said neighbor Corey Wagner, hugging her own 2-year-old daughter to her hip. "I just don't know what to think."

Troutman, whose only known previous arrest was for shoplifting, was charged with first- and second-degree murder, kidnapping and several sex crimes. He was arraigned at a hearing Tuesday afternoon held at the district court across the street from the apartment where Skyler lived with her mother and grandmother. The heavy-set man wearing a rumpled black T-shirt and jeans said little as Magistrate Judge Kenneth Deatelhauser denied him bond.

When investigators led Troutman to an awaiting squad car, a crowd of residents and onlookers which grew throughout the day unleashed its fury.

"Burn in hell," one man yelled. Others hurled obscenities as Troutman ducked his head and covered his face.

Across the street, officers continued to block off the basement scene where Skyler spent the last minutes of her life, her blood still pooled on the floor, spattered across a nearby water heater and streaked along a path leading from the building to the Dumpster where she was found hours after Gebhard, first reported her missing.

"The child obviously struggled, and as a result of that, she lost her life," Souderton Police Chief James P. Leary said.

Troutman became an early focus of the investigation, said Leary.

Police had been called to Souderton Gardens on April 18 after Skyler and a playmate reported that he had locked them in his apartment and offered to show them "his bird" after they asked to use his bathroom. His walls were covered with photos of naked women, the girls reportedly told police.

He allegedly let them go only after one of the girls began screaming. Although officers interviewed Troutman at the time, no charges were filed. And despite criticism from Troutman's family Tuesday, authorities defended that decision.

"You have to have a crime take place in order to file charges," Ferman said. "Everyone did what they were supposed to do and unfortunately it wasn't enough to prevent the death of this child."

But once they had Troutman in their sights this time, detectives acted quickly. As investigators fanned out across Souderton Gardens Monday night, an officer spotted what appeared to be blood on Troutman's tennis shoes. He initially told them he had had a nosebleed, according to the probable cause affidavit in his case. But detectives found more clothes saturated with blood in his apartment.

Troutman's fiancé told investigators she thought he had been working out at a nearby school at the time of Skyler's disappearance. And while she heard screams, "wailing" and "crashing sounds" coming from the communal basement they shared with three other units, she called Troutman and he assured her everything would be okay, she said according to the affidavit.

When confronted with the mounting evidence against him, Troutman purportedly confessed. He told investigators he led the girl into the basement, strangled her and then blacked out.

"I got rid of her," he is quoted as saying in the affidavit. "Once I took her down [there] I knew she could get me in trouble."

As details of the investigation trickled in throughout the afternoon, the crowd of neighbors gathered behind police lines continued to grow.

Many had seen Troutman and his fiancé when they moved into the complex less than four months ago, but few claimed to have interacted with them at all.

Tom DiNora III, 36, appeared visibly upset as he struggled to keep tabs on his own 5-year-old daughter Maria, a frequent playmate of Skyler's who scampered from stranger to stranger striking up conversations Tuesday.

"I tell her the same thing I told Skyler when I would see her. You don't go knocking on apartment doors of people you don't know," he said. "Now, I don't know what to do now with my daughter." Later that evening, nearly 150 - including Skyler's parents and grandparents -- gathered at a prayer vigil in downtown Souderton hoping to answer the same question about their own children.

"She's in heaven now," said Gebhard, Skyler's mother. "That's all I can say. She's safe."