Angry that his stepdaughter had spoken out about his sexual abuse, the stepfather kidnapped Layla Cummings. She was raped, stabbed and mutilated.
“Justice has been served. » After nearly forty years on Oklahoma’s death row, the oldest inmate in this antechamber, Richard Rojem, was executed on the morning of Thursday, June 27. The 66-year-old man never admitted to the charges against him, namely raping and killing his stepdaughter, Layla Cummings, in 1984, reports USA Today.
In 1982, Richard Rojem was serving a four-year prison sentence in Michigan for raping two teenage girls when he met his cellmate’s sister, Mindy Cummings. Released “on parole”, the then 26-year-old man quickly moved in with this woman, who lived with her little boy and her daughter, Layla Cummings.
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But two years after that meeting, the seven-year-old reported the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepfather. Her mother immediately filed for divorce, and Richard Rojem returned to prison for “violating his parole.”
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Revenge
On July 6, 1984, little Layla Cummings was kidnapped while she was alone in the family apartment with her 9-year-old brother, just as her ex-stepfather was on leave. The girl’s lifeless body was found mutilated and partially naked in a field the day after her kidnapping. The autopsy showed that the child had been raped and stabbed multiple times.
The investigation quickly turned to Richard Rojem, especially since a DNA trace and a used condom pointed him out. Sentenced to death in less than 45 minutes in 1985, he had his sentence overturned twice for “errors of judgment”, before being definitively confirmed in 2007.
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I didn’t kidnap Layla. I didn’t rape Layla. And I didn’t murder Layla.
Richard Rojem on June 17, 2024 during his pardon hearing
Having become a Zen Buddhist in prison, Richard Rojem admitted not having “been a good human being during the first part of [s]for life”, but felt he had “learned the lesson” and that all that was behind him, during his pardon hearing on June 17. At the time of his death, he did not wish to make a statement. He never apologized to Layla Cummings’ mother.
A monster “
“Justice was finally served for Layla Cummings this morning with the execution of the monster responsible for her rape and murder,” Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a statement cited by Fox News. “We remember her, honor her and forever hold her in our hearts as the sweet and precious 7-year-old she was,” said the little girl’s mother, Mindy Cummings.
