Admitted killer studied in disappearance

Authorities are investigating whether an Ohio prison inmate who pleaded guilty to killing three young Dallas-area girls in the 1980s could also be responsible for the disappearance of an East Texas girl.

David Elliott Penton, who is serving a life sentence for killing a 9-year-old Columbus girl in 1988, allegedly mentioned 5-year-old Ara "Niecie" Johnson to fellow inmates, said Detective Freddie Fitzgerald of the Upshur County sheriff's office.

Ara was abducted from her bedroom in Big Sandy, about 95 miles east of Dallas, in April 1986.

"We have to talk to him _ there is no getting around it," Fitzgerald said. "We have to err on the side of caution, but this information brings hope to a case where hope was all but abandoned."

In a prison interview, Penton told the Tyler Morning Telegraph authorities are using him as a scapegoat to settle old cases that he had nothing to do with.

"I'm not a monster, though I have been called a monster. But I didn't go around the country killing little kids," Penton told the newspaper.

Penton pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 1985 for the death of his 2-month-old son in Bell County in central Texas. Police said he shook the child. He fled during an appeal of that case.

In 2001, he was convicted in Ohio of the sexual assault and murder of a friend's 9-year-old girl. Penton was brought back to Texas two years later to face charges in the 1985 and 1987 deaths of three Dallas-area girls _ ages 3, 5 and 10 _ and pleaded guilty in all three deaths.

Penton also is a suspect in the cases of two other Texas girls who vanished in the mid-1980s, said Garland police Detective Gary Sweet, who investigated Penton for seven years.