Child murderer who raped a seven-year-old girl and left her body in a field executed today

A man found guilty of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and murdering a seven-year-old girl in 1984 was executed today in Oklahoma.

Richard Rojem, 66, received a lethal injection at Oklahoma State Prison and was pronounced dead at 10:16 a.m., prison authorities confirmed. He had always denied any involvement in the death of his former stepdaughter, Layla Cummings.

The young girl’s mutilated and partially clothed body was discovered in a field in Washita County near Burns Flat on July 7, 1984. She had been stabbed to death. Rojem had previously been convicted of raping two teenagers in Michigan.

Prosecutors insisted that Rojem harbored a grudge against Layla Cummings because she accused him of sexual abuse, which led to his divorce from her mother and another prison sentence for violating probation.

During a pardon hearing earlier this month, Rojem’s defense argued that DNA evidence found under the child’s fingernails did not incriminate him. “If my client’s DNA is not there, he should not be convicted,” his attorney Jack Fisher said, Mirror US reports.

In a heartfelt letter to the parole board, Layla’s mother, Mindy Lynn Cummings, expressed her ongoing grief. “For many years, the shock of her loss and the knowledge of the sheer fear, pain and suffering she endured at the hands of this soulless monster was more than I could imagine how I would cope day to day,” she expressed.

Rojem, testifying via video link from prison, protested his innocence in the tragic death of the young girl. But his pleas fell on deaf ears as the panel unanimously decided, by a decisive 5-0 vote, not to recommend a pardon to the governor.

“I was not a good person in the first half of my life, I don’t deny that,” Rojem confessed from behind bars, dressed in a red jumpsuit and with his hands tied. “But I went to prison. I learned my lesson and put it all behind me.”

The prosecution was unconvinced and cited strong evidence to convict Rojem. His fingerprint was found on a mug from a pub he had visited shortly before the child’s horrific ordeal, and a condom wrapper found near her body was matched to one from his house.

A Washita County jury took less than an hour to find Rojem guilty in 1985, and returned the verdict after just 45 minutes. Although appeals courts twice overturned his death sentences due to procedural errors, a Custer County jury finally upheld his death sentence in 2007.

Oklahoma, notorious for having the highest number of executions per capita in the U.S. since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, has continued its controversial reign. The state has carried out 13 executions since reinstating lethal injection in October 2021, after a series of shockingly botched attempts previously led to a temporary halt.