The medical examiner's report discusses the death of Charla Nicole King in clinical detail, using words like "ligature" and "petechia hemorrhages."
Between the lines of the forensic jargon, however, emerges a picture of a brutal murder that was preceded by humiliation, pain and terror."It was a nasty, nasty crime," says Reed Richards, an assistant attorney general who helped prosecute the case against condemned killer John Albert Taylor. Taylor is scheduled to face a firing squad at 12:01 a.m. Friday.
On June 23, 1989, Charla was home alone in her apartment in Washington Terrace, WeberCounty. She was likely looking forward to the next day, when she would turn 12 years old.
The birthday never came. A man, who some say had been stalking the girl like a predator stalks its prey, broke into the King apartment and then into a murderous episode of perversion and rage.
According to court testimony, the man forcibly stripped Charla of her clothes, then sodomized and raped her, masking her screams by stuffing her panties into her mouth.
The sexual acts caused bleeding and pain to the prepubescent girl. Apparently fearing she would tell, the attacker then decided to kill her.
To do that, he yanked a phone cord from the wall and cut it from the phone with a knife. He wrapped it snugly around Charla's neck, tying it in a knot. Forensic pathologists call the phone cord a type of "ligature," or strangling device.
Within seconds, blood being pumped into her head by the powerful carotid artery became trapped as the ligature cut off the return flow in her veins. The built-up pressure caused a rupturing of the "petechiae," or small capillaries, in the girl's forehead, mouth, face, behind her ears and in her eyes.
Within minutes, Charla would lose consciousness and die as her oxygen-starved brain cells ceased functioning.
Sometime during the crime, the assailant wrapped her mother's nightgown around her head. It is not known whether the nightgown was put on her head to keep her from identifying him or to shield himself from the horror displayed in the victim's eyes.
Taylor, a convicted sex abuser who was living with his sister in the same apartment complex, admits he was in the King apartment but only to steal $3, which he said he found under the phone. He maintains his innocence of the murder.