On a seemingly ordinary day, January 19, 1985, five-year-old Christi Lynn Meeks was enjoying a game of hide-and-seek with her older brother outside her mother's apartment complex in Mesquite, Texas. This innocent afternoon took a dark turn when a man lured her into his vehicle. Christi's brother was a witness to his sister's abduction. For months, her family waited with fading hope until April 3, 1985, when two fishermen made a grim discovery in Deer Haven Cove at Lake Texoma.
It was there that Christi's body was found floating in the water. An autopsy would later reveal that she had been raped and strangled to death.
The investigation into Christi's murder would eventually lead authorities to a man named David Elliott Penton, a former U.S. Army mechanic with a disturbing past. Penton was already a convicted criminal, having previously pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the 1984 death of his own infant son, whom he had violently shaken. While out on bond and appealing his sentence for that crime, Penton fled and embarked on a horrifying crime spree. In addition to Christi Meeks, Penton was responsible for the abduction and murder of at least two other young girls in the Dallas area: nine-year-old Christie Dianne Proctor and three-year-old Roxann Hope Reyes.
For years, Penton evaded justice for these heinous crimes. It was not until he was incarcerated in Ohio for the 1988 murder of another child, nine-year-old Nydra Ross, that his connection to the Texas cases came to light. In June 2003, while serving a life sentence in Ohio, Penton was indicted for the murders of Christi Meeks, Christie Proctor, and Roxann Reyes. To avoid a possible death sentence, Penton signed a plea deal in January 2005, pleading guilty to all three murders. He was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences in Texas, to be served after he completes his sentence in Ohio. The resolution of this case brought a measure of closure to the families of his victims, though the story of Christi Lynn Meeks serves as a chilling reminder of a predator who moved through communities, leaving a trail of devastation in his wake.
