Suspect 'sat down to dinner with fiancée just minutes after beating schoolgirl to death in basement'The fiancée of a man accused of raping and strangling a nine-year-old girl has revealed she overheard the attack.
Heather Clemens was in the apartment directly overheard as young Skyler Kauffman was killed in the basement - allegedly by Miss Clemens' fiance James Lee Troutman.
She said heard a female voice 'wailing', along with screams, crashing sounds and someone crying, 'Nooooo!' according to a police complaint.
'I thought maybe it might have been a parent arguing with a child, and the child was going 'Nooooo,' like, 'Why are you taking my toy?'' Miss Clemens told KYW-TV.
'I thought any number of things at that point except what this turned out to be.'
She told the station that she felt disbelief and shock when Troutman was arrested.
'I was horrified that they actually said that he was the one who did it,' she said.
'Never in a million years did I think he was capable of doing this.'
She told another station: 'I felt like I was living with a stranger, a monster, maybe even a demon.'
The badly-beaten body of nine-year-old Skyler Kauffman was found wrapped in a blanket and thrown into a rubbish bin behind her apartment block in Souderton, near Philadelphia, after she failed to come home for dinner.
Police arrested 24-year-old James Lee Troutman when a detective spotted blood on his trainers, and allegedly found blood-soaked clothes stuffed into a hamper in his bedroom.
Yesterday Skyler's mother, Heather Gebhard, said she believed the tragedy could have been avoided if police had listened to her. She said: 'They blew me off.'
She called police on April 18, after her daughter and a friend came home saying Troutman had locked them in his apartment, and only let them go when they started screaming.
Surrounded by hundreds of mourners at a vigil for her daughter yesterday, Miss Gebhard wept as she said police 'twisted everything my daughter said, they didn't believe her.'
She described Skyler as outgoing and friendly, and said 'it's like a nightmare. She was loved by everybody.'
But the girl's father, Eric Kauffman, said he believed it wouldn't have made a difference if police had arrested Troutman at the time
'I guess either way it probably would have happened,' Mr Kauffman told The Associated Press yesterday from the home he shares with his parents in Harleyville.
Troutman admitted he strangled Skyler with his hands and said her head hit the basement floor 'a couple of times at least', according to the arrest affidavit.
He told investigators 'it was like white-out' and he 'snapped'. According to the affidavit he said: 'I got rid of her. Once I took her down [there], I knew she could get me in trouble.'
He allegedly wrapped her body in a blanket, carried her outside and threw her into a nearby dumpster, leaving a trail of blood behind. Read More
