By Seamus McGraw
April 19, 2006
PURCELL, OK. (Crime Libarary) — As expected, an Oklahoma judge on Tuesday issued a gag order in the case of Kevin Underwood, the 26-year-old former supermarket stock clerk accused of sexually assaulting and then suffocating a 10-year-old neighbor who, authorities said, he had planned to cannibalize.
The order, signed by Special District Judge Gary Barger, bars attorneys and law enforcement officials from discussing details of the case. The judge also ordered that Underwood's court-appointed attorney Silas R. Lyman II be permitted to examine Underwood's apartment.
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| Kevin Underwood |
Authorities have said that it was there that Underwood, described as a depressed loner who spent much of his time detailing his personal angst on Internet blogs, lured the Jamie Rose Bolin. Authorities have said that Underwood then attacked the child, whom her parents described in a brief interview with the Oklahoman newspaper, as loving and inquisitive. He raped her, authorities have alleged, and then suffocated her with his hands and duct tape. And in the most chilling revelations to date, authorities have said that Underwood admitted to trying to dismember the girl before he stuffed her remains in a Rubbermaid tub which he kept in his bedroom, planning to consume her flesh. He had, authorities have alleged, bought meat tenderizer and metal skewers for the purpose. Authorities said Underwood led them to the girl's body and admitted that he had "chopped her up." Though there was no evidence that the girl had been dismembered, investigators have said they did find saw marks on the child's neck.
The graphic details that have emerged thus far about the case have been "inflammatory, prejudicial and conclusory," Underwood's lawyer complained in seeking the gag order.
And while there is a downside from the defense's point of view in barring officials and defense attorneys from talking about most further developments in the case — the order effectively precludes the defense from challenging those assertions outright in the press — there are advantages for the defense as well, says noted criminal defense attorney Gerry Boyle.
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