Troutman gets life without parole in death of Skyler Kauffman

Calling himself a monster, James Lee Troutman begged detectives to kill him hours after confessing to raping and strangling 9-year-old neighbor Skyler Kauffman.

That was last year. On Monday, he decided he wanted to live.

An emotionless Troutman pleaded guilty in a Montgomery County courtroom to charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping, sexual assault, and abuse of a corpse, two months before a jury was to hear his case.

As part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, Troutman, 25, of Souderton, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and an additional 10 to 20 years.

"Without question, this is one of the most horrific crimes we've ever seen in Montgomery County," District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman, who prosecuted the case, said. "From our perspective, we know the community will be safe because he is behind bars."

Skyler's mother, Heather Gebhard, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with her daughter's smiling photo, wept in the back of the courtroom as Common Pleas Court Judge William Carpenter accepted Troutman's plea.

"Justice was done," Gebhard said upon leaving the courtroom. "Now she can rest in peace."

Troutman's decision to plead guilty provided a surprise ending to one of the region's most disturbing recent murder cases.

Up until last week, defense attorneys and prosecutors were still arguing over what evidence should be admissible at trial and preparing to select an out-of-county jury because of the level of publicity the case had received.

"It happens this way sometimes," Troutman's attorney, Craig Penglase, said. "We were starting to go over portions of the case that were somewhat grisly. I think he started to realize he didn't want to go through a trial either for his family or Skyler's family."

On May 9, Souderton police found Skyler's body strangled, sexually abused, and dumped in a trash bin yards from the apartment where she had lived with her mother and grandmother.

Troutman was a suspect from the start. Police had been called to the complex a month earlier after Skyler and another girl allegedly told their parents that he had locked them in his apartment.

Souderton police later said they chose not to arrest Troutman at the time because there were too many questions about whether he had shut the girls in or they had accidentally locked themselves in his bathroom.

But under questioning on the night of Skyler's death, Troutman confessed. He told detectives he lured the girl to the basement of the apartment building, saying he had "just snapped."

Prosecutors alleged he sexually assaulted her there, then repeatedly banged her head against the concrete floor while strangling her. Her blood was found on Troutman's shoe.

But despite having a strong case, prosecutors created a wrinkle for themselves by having Troutman's jail cell raided in October; writings that defense lawyers claimed were confidential communications between him and his attorney were seized.

Prosecutors maintained they were only looking for letters that prison officials said Troutman had written to fellow inmates. But Carpenter chastised them for failing to be more selective in choosing which documents to take from the cell - including one note titled "21 things to talk about with my lawyer, each of them very important."

Penglase said Monday that although prosecutors had offered a life-sentence deal to his client from the beginning, the allegations of prosecutorial overreaching might have played into the decision to keep that offer on the table.

"I think it was a real issue that the appeals courts would have been wrestling with for years had this gone to trial," he said.

Throughout Monday's hearing, Skyler's father, mother, and other relatives were visibly emotional as they sat in the back of the courtroom. At times, even the judge appeared to choke up as the girl's grandfather Spencer Kauffman took the stand to describe attending a father-daughter dance, watching her dance recitals, and looking on as she learned to swim and ride a bike.

"She had a zest for life," Kauffman said. "Life is a gift regardless of the length, and we will all remember the good times whenever we can."