I live about 5 miles from Souderton. It is a small middle class town surrounded by farms. I’m sure it has a very low crime rate. People who live in Souderton and my town feel safe. It is 30 long miles from the squalor and crime of West Philly. Then in an instant, a beautiful 9 year old girl is playing outside her apartment in the middle of the afternoon and is abducted, raped, bludgeoned, and strangled to death by her 24 year old demented neighbor. My faith in humanity just took another body blow. How can this happen? What is it in our society that makes men do such a thing? This act is so incompehensible to me that I’m just left depressed and wondering whether our society is so far gone that there is no hope.

This fiend had never had any trouble with the law. He had a fiancee. How many more of these ghouls are sitting in their apartments fantasizing about murdering little girls? Is it TV? Is it his parents? Is it a genetic defect? Is it the devil? I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I don’t know about a lot of things anymore. The older I get, the more I don’t understand.

But, even with my complete disillusionment with our society, I still had a few questions after reading this horrifying tale. His fiancee told police she heard  a little girl screaming in pain and terror. Why the fuck didn’t she do something? Why didn’t she run toward the screams and save this little girl. She didn’t even call the police. She called the killer.

Secondly, the police in this country will taser you during a traffic stop and treat you like a Muslim terrorist at our airports, but three weeks ago this demented killer had this girl and her friend in his apartment with the door locked and asked them if they wanted to see his dick. The girls reported it to police and they DID NOTHING!!!!

In what kind of society does a 24 year old man ask two 9 year old girls if they want to see his dick and the police don’t think that is a problem?

We live in a sick sick world that is spiraling downward. I’m completely disgusted with everything.

Souderton girl murdered

When 9-year-old Skyler Kauffman didn’t come in for dinner after playing with friends Monday evening outside her Souderton Garden Apartments home, her family went looking, then notified police who continued the search and put out an Amber alert.

“It’s one of those situations where everyone did what they were supposed to do,” Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said, but, unfortunately, it wasn’t enough this time.

James Lee Troutman, 24, who lived in another apartment in the same complex at Second and Chestnut streets, was arraigned Tuesday evening on charges including murder, kidnapping and rape of a child.

Minutes before midnight, Detective George Moyer had found Kauffman’s body wrapped in a comforter under bags of trash in a trash container behind the apartments.

Troutman had no significant police record, Ferman said.

“This is one of those terribly disturbing situations where they happen seemingly out of nowhere,” she said.

During the arraignment, Troutman sat for much of the time with his head cupped by one or both of his hands.

He answered “yes” to Magisterial District Judge Kenneth Deatelhauser’s question of whether he understood the charges, then was returned to prison. Because of the charges, Troutman is not eligible to be freed on bail, Deatelhauser said. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for 1 p.m. May 19. Troutman did not have an attorney at the arraignment.

“Dirtbag” was the first of the epithets shouted at Troutman as he was taken, wearing a bullet-proof vest, from a police car into the arraignment.

After the arraignment, the shouts became such a din that individual ones could not be made out.

“You’re gonna burn,” one said.

“Die, Troutman, die,” another said.

Police were called by Kauffman’s mother and grandmother about 7:11 p.m. Monday, May 9, according to the affidavit of probable cause. Kauffman had last been seen by the family about 5 p.m.

Another resident told the responding officer he had seen blood in a basement area of one of the apartment buildings. When the officer went to the basement, he found both blood and a clog that was similar to the one Kauffman had been described as wearing, the court papers say.

Montgomery County Detective Edward Schikel, of the Forensic Services Unit, who met and talked to Troutman while investigating at the scene, saw what appeared to be blood on one of Troutman’s sneakers, police said.

That attention to detail helped speed up the investigation and lead to the arrest, Ferman said.

“Without that observation, I don’t know if we’d be here today,” she said.

After going to Troutman’s apartment and being given permission by Troutman’s fiancé to search for the missing girl, Schikel found bloody clothes, police said.

Troutman’s fiancé, Heather Clemens, said that Troutman left the apartment about 5 p.m. Monday and said he was going outside to play games on his cell phone, investigators said.

Clemens later heard a female voice screaming loudly, “wailing” and saying no in a way that was “long and drawn out when she said no, like nooooooo! while she was still crying,” investigators said.

When Clemens called Troutman, investigators said, she did not get an answer, but he called back about five minutes later and said he was exercising at Indian Crest Middle School. After she told him about the screams, Clemens told investigators, Troutman said he hoped “everything’s OK.”

He later came home, changed, took a shower and they ate dinner, police said.

Troutman initially admitted to talking to Kauffman around 5 p.m. Monday night, but denied killing her, police said.

He later admitted choking her, police said.

Troutman described the killing as having happened when he “snapped” and “It was like a white out,” police said.

Asked by officers why he killed Kauffman, he said he had to because once he took her down the basement he knew she could get him in trouble,” police said.

An autopsy showed Kauffman died of asphyxia and blunt force trauma, police said.

There was no previous connection between Kauffman and Troutman, other than being neighbors, Ferman said. He was not a relative or friend of the family.

There was, however, a previous incident, police said, in which on April 18, Kauffman and another girl were near Troutman’s apartment when they needed to use the bathroom and he invited them to use his.

Taking them to the bathroom, he told the girls to ignore the photos of naked women on the walls, police said.

The girls became nervous and tried to leave, but found the apartment door was locked, then unlocked it and escaped, police said. In that incident, Troutman also allegedly asked the two girls if they wanted to see his “bird,” police said.

No charges were filed in that case.