Roy Ellis was sentenced to death by the State of Nebraska for the murder of twelve year old Amber Harris
According to court documents Roy Ellis would kidnap, sexually assault and murder twelve year old Amber Harris. The young girl was struck twice in the head with a hammer
Roy Ellis would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
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Roy Ellis is incarcerated at Tecumseh State Correctional Institution
Roy Ellis Case
Amber disappeared on November 29, 2005, after she was dropped off by her school bus about five blocks from her North Omaha, Nebraska, home. A few weeks later, Roy Ellis was arrested and incarcerated in the Douglas County Correctional Center on unrelated charges. Several witnesses reported that while in jail, before Amber’s body was found or Ellis was a suspect in her killing, he made a number of remarks suggesting that he was involved in Amber’s disappearance.To begin with, Ellis made telephone calls from jail suggest-ing that he needed to get out of jail to take care of some things and “find some stuff.” Ellis had lived in a boarding house on Lake Street, although he moved to another residence nearby before Amber disappeared. While in jail, Ellis called his former neighbors, asking repeatedly about any activity at the boarding house. but no more of those calls were made after February 14, 2006, when Amber’s bookbag was found in a large trash storage container behind the boarding house. Although Ellis continued to call his former neighbor after the bag was found, he no longer asked about the boarding house.While he was incarcerated during early 2006, Ellis also repeatedly asked Terrelle Smith, a Douglas County corrections officer, for information regarding Amber’s case. because Smith was studying criminal justice, Ellis also asked him questions about criminal investigation, regarding subjects such as finger-print identification and the decomposition of buried bodies. Ellis asked Smith whether blood or semen left outside would be contaminated by the elements and how long it would take before contaminated semen would no longer be considered rele-vant evidence. And Ellis asked Smith for books on forensics and DNA examination. Ellis also asked brandon Clark, another corrections officer, about how long semen would last inside a dead body and in a forested, rural area and asked Clark to per-form Internet research for him on the subject.Ellis also asked Darryl Chambers, a fellow inmate, if he knew how long semen would last inside a decomposed body. And another inmate, Clarence Dennis, heard Ellis asking other inmates questions about how long blood and semen would last when exposed to the elements and what was neces-sary to keep dirt from subsiding above a buried body.
Clenix Martin, another inmate, said Ellis had asked him about the persistence of DNA left outside, whether DNA could be traced after a body had decomposed, and how long it took a body to decompose.Ellis also made more particular statements that foreshad-owed what would be discovered about the circumstances of Amber’s disappearance after her body was found. Dennis heard Ellis say that he had previously taken women to Hummel park, in a rural area north of Omaha, and forced them to have sex with him by threatening to leave them in the park alone at night. Smith overheard Ellis saying that if a woman did not do what he wanted, “[h]e would just hit them upside their heads.” Ellis told Chambers that he liked underage girls. Ellis told his cellmate, David Shaffer, that he had sexually molested under-age girls, some of them at Hummel park.Shaffer said that Ellis expressed an unusual interest in Amber’s disappearance and cut out newspaper articles about the case. Ellis told Martin that he had sexually assaulted a young girl and strangled her. When Shaffer mentioned to Ellis that it was “crazy what happened to that Amber Harris girl,” Ellis replied, “that’s why I got to get out and cover my tracks.” And both Dennis and Chambers said Ellis had admit-ted to sexually assaulting Amber and striking her in the head According to Dennis, Ellis said he hit Amber in the head with a hammer.
Finally, on May 11, 2006, Amber’s decomposed body was discovered by passers-by, covered with a mound of soil, in a secluded, wooded area of Hummel park. Amber had been killed by blunt force trauma to the skull, resulting from at least two blows to the head with a blunt object. because of decom-position, it was impossible to tell whether Amber had also been choked or strangled. Although Amber’s sweater was still on, her jeans and underwear had been removed. Amber’s jacket, jeans, and bra had been found in her bookbag. Amber’s blood was on the jacket and jeans, and DNA was found on the jeans, in a shape resembling a handprint, in a mixture from which Ellis could not be excluded as a contributor.Ellis was charged with first degree murder on theories of both premeditated murder and felony murder, for which the predicate felony was sexual assault. Over Ellis’ objection, in addition to the evidence described above, the State adduced evidence that Ellis had sexually assaulted his former step-daughters when they were between 12 and 15 years old. The jury found Ellis guilty of first degree murder, and an aggrava-tion hearing was held at which the jury found two aggravating circumstances to exist. A three-judge sentencing panel sen-tenced Ellis to death
https://law.justia.com/cases/nebraska/supreme-court/2011/s09-148.html
