Elliot David Penton

Victims

5 killings covered by convictions - 1 manslaughter, of his infant son, 1 aggravated murder in Ohio, and 3 murders by guilty plea in Texas - and at least 4 further child killings attributed to him and never charged, which he denies

Years active

1984 - 1988

Location

Ohio/Texas, USA

Method

Strangulation

Status

Pleaded guilty in Texas in 1984 to the manslaughter of his own two-month-old son, Michael James Penton, whom he had shaken to death, and absconded while appealing that sentence. He remained a fugitive until his arrest in Ohio in 1988 for the abduction and murder of nine-year-old Nydra Ross, the niece of a friend; he was charged with kidnapping and aggravated murder and convicted in 1990, receiving a life sentence. Extradited to Texas in 2003 after a Collin County grand jury indicted him on capital charges over three Dallas-area girls killed in the mid-1980s, he pleaded guilty to all three in January 2005 to avoid a death sentence and received three consecutive life terms, to begin only after his Ohio sentence ends. Held in Ohio, where he became eligible for parole in 2027. Investigators in Texas, Indiana and other states have examined him for further unsolved child killings, and some have said he may be the most prolific child killer in American history; he has denied those cases and said authorities are using him to settle old files.

Penton was born in 1958 and moved between Ohio and Texas.

Between 1984 and 1988 children were abducted and strangled in both states. He was convicted in Ohio in 1992 of the murder of a child and sentenced to life imprisonment, and in Texas in 2005 of the murder of Christi Meeks, five, taken from a Dallas apartment complex in 1985, receiving a further life sentence.

The children named in the record are his own two-month-old son; Christi Lynn Meeks, five; Christie Diane Proctor, nine; Nydra Ross, nine; and Roxann Hope Reyes, three.

The Texas cases had been open for two decades. Other men had been named as suspects in them over the years and one had been the subject of extensive publicity. Penton was identified after he began talking to investigators from prison in the 1990s, and the Meeks prosecution followed from that.

The range of five to nine and more covers further child disappearances in Texas and Ohio in those years that have been attributed to him. Two convictions.

The entry keeps that separation carefully, because in cases involving missing children the attributions are numerous, the families are still alive, and an unproved connection stated as a fact does real harm.