By Jerald Jimenez
Jun 27, 2024, 11:14 AM EDT
A 66-year-old man is scheduled to receive the death penalty by lethal injection after the murder of his 7-year-old stepdaughter, the second in successive days in the country after the execution of a Hispanic man in Texas on Wednesday.
The subject, identified as Richard Rojem Jr., 66, was sentenced in 1985 for the kidnapping, abuse and murder of little Layla Dawn Cummings. The girl’s body was found in a field, discarded and brutally abused, still dressed in her mother’s nightgown.
“Everything Layla could have been was taken from her on one horrific night,” Mindy Cummings, Layla’s mother, said Tuesday in a statement to the Oklahoma Board of Pardons and Paroles. “She never became more than the adorable 7-year-old that she was. And that’s why she remains in our hearts, forever 7 years old.”
However, Rojem, who was 26 at the time of the murder, has maintained his innocence. The subject stated in a statement to the board on June 17 that “I did not kidnap Layla. I didn’t abuse Layla. And I didn’t murder Layla.” However, the board dismissed his clemency request.
Layla was reportedly abducted from her apartment in Elk City, Oklahoma, where she resided with her mother and older brother. When she was abducted, Mindy Cummings, the children’s mother and Rojem’s ex-wife, was working a night shift at a local fast food restaurant.
Layla’s remains were discovered the next morning in a field 15 miles from her home, near a farm in Burns Flat. Rojem and Mindy divorced just two months before Layla’s murder. The two met when Rojem was serving time in a Michigan prison for the abuse of two teenagers; Cummings was the sister of Rojem’s cellmate.
The subject was found guilty on May 31, 1985, and sentenced to death.
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