FORT WORTH -- The sobs finally came outside the courtroom.
After waiting nearly 30 years for justice, Sharon Hayden Harvey held her emotions in check Friday as a jury returned its verdict: Ryland Shane Absalon was guilty of capital murder in the brutal stabbing of Harvey's daughter, 18-year-old Ginger Hayden.Harvey sat quietly in her wheelchair until she could get to a private waiting area just around the corner. But then her sobs echoed through the hallways of the Tim Curry Criminal Justice Center."I was hoping they'd have it solved before I died," she said quietly later, still wearing the photo of her daughter that she'd worn every day in court for a week."I thought about Ginger every day."Jurors in state District Judge Everett Young's court deliberated about three hours Friday afternoon before convicting Absalon, 45. He received an automatic life sentence and will be eligible for parole in 20 years, based on the laws in place in 1984. Absalon was not eligible for the death penalty because he was 17 at the time of the killing.Absalon had been a schoolmate of Hayden's at Arlington Heights High School and lived in the apartment above the one she shared with her mother.Now a welder, he was living in Sierra Vista, Ariz., with his wife and preschool-age child at the time of his arrest.After the verdict was read, Absalon dropped his head and closed his eyes.His wife, who had sat with her family throughout the trial, left the courtroom sobbing. Several jurors were also in tears."Ryland Shane Absalon destroyed more than one person that day in 1984," Assistant District Attorney Lisa Callaghan said in a statement. "He killed a beautiful young woman, emotionally destroyed her mother and held a community hostage to fear."After 28 years, justice is long overdue."DNA evidence unearthed by the Fort Worth Police Department's cold-case unit linked Absalon to the stabbing in Hayden's bedroom on Sept. 5, 1984. But Absalon's graphic confessions while he underwent treatment for drug and alcohol abuse two years after the crime are what had jurors listening most intently.Former participants in the program stepped forward to testify about the confessions after seeing news reports of Absalon's arrest in 2010. His confession that he repeatedly stabbed a young woman closely mirrored the facts in the case; he told one participant that he even counted the number of times he stabbed her -- more than 50.He told one young participant that the young woman he killed had "embarrassed" him and made him angry after she rejected his advances.Jurors rejected the defense's suggestions that he falsely confessed to the crime because he was desperate to comply with requirements of the domineering Straight Inc. treatment program, which has since been closed by authorities.Callaghan, trying the case with fellow prosecutors Jim Hudson and Anna Summersett, had urged jurors to reject arguments that Absalon falsely confessed."Do not buy the idea that at 17 years old you cannot be experienced in evil," Callaghan said during closing arguments. "We've brought you evidence beyond any doubt. Bring her killer to justice after 28 years."Defense attorney Gary Udashen, however, told jurors that the assailant was an unknown serial killer who was believed to have been targeting young women in the Fort Worth area in 1984. He pointed to unidentified male DNA on a bloody sock and two spots of semen from an unidentified male found on a quilt on Hayden's bed."The person who killed Ginger Hayden is still out there, and the police need to find that person," Udashen said.Family and friends of Hayden sat in the courtroom each day throughout testimony, and one of Hayden's friends from church, Jennifer Bass, addressed Absalon on the family's behalf after the conviction."You have shattered our hearts and lives forever," she said quietly.A former boyfriend, Neal Kibler of Buda, was among those in the courtroom."I'm glad it's over," he said afterward. "She was probably one of the best things in my life."Harvey learned that she had multiple sclerosis two years before her daughter's death, but she said her condition advanced rapidly in the stressful years that followed.Hayden had hoped to become a physical therapist "to help her mother," Harvey said, and had attended just one day of classes at the University of Texas at Arlington when she was killed."I'm relieved that they finally put him away and he can't hurt anyone else," she said. "I prayed that God would do something."Dianna Hunt, 817-390-7084
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