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Montco killer pleads guilty, gets life

Raped victim, 9, in apt. complex

A SOUDERTON MAN will spend the rest of his life in prison for raping and killing a 9-year-old girl in the basement of the apartment complex where they both lived.

James Lee Troutman pleaded guilty yesterday to strangling Skyler Kauffman and slamming her head against the basement floor before dumping her body in a commercial trash bin last May.

Defense attorney Craig Penglase told the Bucks County Courier Times that his client has wanted to plead guilty since his arrest and confession.

He said he was pleased that prosecutors accepted a deal that would spare the victim's family the ordeal of a trial.

Pleading guilty also spared Troutman from the possibility of getting the death penalty.

Souderton police found Skyler's body on May 9.

She had been strangled, sexually abused, and dumped in the trash bin yards from the apartment she shared with her mother and grandmother.

Troutman was a suspect from the start.

Skyler's mother, Heather Gebhard, questioned why police did not press charges at the time, saying that might have prevented her daughter's death.

Court documents said that Troutman had convinced Skyler and a friend to come into his apartment and locked them in for a time.

No charges were filed in that incident.