PATTEN GUILTY OF MURDER: EMOTIONS RUN HIGH AS DRUG USER TRIES TO APOLOGIZE
FOR GIRL'S BRUTAL KILLING

A prosecutor broke down Tuesday as he read a statement from the father of
Jessica States just moments after a jury convicted her killer of murder.

Reading the victim-impact statement of Robert States, prosecutor David
Kidd's voice cracked and his voice halted. He was reading the father's
memory of tucking Jessica into bed when she asked a question.

"Daddy, are there really such things as monsters?"' Robert States
remembered his daughter asking. "'No honey, they're just make believe.'

"I've never been so wrong in my life."

Roderick Patten was convicted of first-degree murder. The jury took less
than three hours to reach a verdict.

Before he was sentenced to life in prison, Patten was asked if he wanted to
comment.

The 23-year-old, whose face remained impassive when the jury gave its
verdict, stood up to say he wanted to apologize.

"I would really like to apologize about what has happened. I'm very
ashamed," he told the court.

As he started to say he hoped the healing could begin for the family, he
turned to look at Robert States and Diane States, Jessica's mother. At that
moment he caught the full blast of a father's rage.

"Don't you dare look at me, you bastard. Talk to the court," said Robert.

Diane States started sobbing the moment the jury gave its guilty verdict,
and continued throughout the reading of the victim-impact statements.

The parents recalled the horror of learning their child had been murdered.
They kept Jessica's room intact for two years after her body was found in a
shallow grave. They would enter her room simply to sniff her scent on her
pillow.

Eleven-year-old Jessica disappeared from her favourite Port Alberni haunt
- --the local fast-pitch softball park -- on July 31, 1996. Her body was
found the following day, raped and beaten to death, hidden in a wooded area
close to the playing field. News of her death shocked the town. In the
following months, local citizens erected a small memorial at the park
commemorating the death of their "Angel in the outfield."

Autopsy evidence, recited for the jury during the trial, revealed the child
died from a massive beating about the head and neck.

Death was likely hastened by suffocation because her throat was stuffed
with forest debris. A stab wound to the brain was inflicted, according to
Patten's statement, by a stick.

At the time of his arrest Patten provided the statement and in an interview
with RCMP admitted hitting, sexually assaulting and killing Jessica States.
The interview was videotaped and played for the jury early in the trial.

But throughout the trial, defence lawyer Jim Heller never disputed that
Patten actually killed Jessica.

Heller led a defence based on the idea Patten was too high on a mixture of
alcohol, marijuana, hashish and a massive dose of LSD to understand what he
was doing. Instead of a murder conviction, Heller asked the jury to return
with a verdict of manslaughter.

Crown counsel Derrill Prevett contended Patten's actions -- the beating,
the killing and hiding the body -- were the actions of a man who was in
strong touch with reality. He knew what he wanted -- sex. He knew how it
achieve it -- beating Jessica into submission, and he knew how to cover up
his crime -- kill the only witness.

Patten appeared to have no friends or family in the courtroom when the
verdict was given. He sat in the prisoner's dock in an ill-fitting brown
suit and white prison-issue runners. He looked at no one as he was led out
of the courtroom in shackles to begin serving his life sentence.

Patten is not eligible to apply for parole until he has served at least 10
years of the sentence. The parole eligibility is 10 years because he was a
youth at the time of the murder. He must also give a DNA sample, which will
be kept for the rest of his life in a DNA data bank.