“Disgusting. Cruel. Heinous. Heartless. Horrible. Unspeakable. Atrocious. Indescribable. The product of a depraved heart.”
Judge Lynn Leibovitz spared few words today when describing Rodney McIntyre‘s sexual assault on and murder of his teenage daughter, Ebony Franklin, in Columbia Heights last November.
“It is hard to put into words Mr. McIntyre’s degree of culpability,” she said, before sentencing him to 40 years in prison. Leibovitz said McIntyre could have received a much longer sentence had the case gone to trial and had he been convicted, but that a 40-year sentence in this case likely amounts to life-in-prison.
McIntyre, 46, pleaded guilty in July to first-degree premeditated murder while armed in Franklin’s death. Prosecutors agreed to not pursue any other charges related to the case. Leibovitz said that even those crimes which were not prosecuted “are unspeakable.”
Franklin was 17 years old when she was reported missing from Prince Georges County in November 2010. On Nov. 29, her body was found in a trash can in a Columbia Heights alley. Prosecutor Jocelyn Ballantine said it had been there for four days before being found. Charging documents in the case said Franklin had been stabbed 15 times and had been sexually assaulted.
“Ebony Franklin was a beautiful young woman. She was vivacious and spirited,” Ballantine said, adding that the teen was a dancer and a student.
McIntyre’s sexual assault on and murder of Franklin was a “violation of his duty to protect and nurture her,” she said.
She described McIntyre as an aggressively jealous man, who would sweep the carpet in the doorway in order to catch the footsteps of any unwanted visitors and who carefully watched the washrags in the bathroom for evidence that any of his sexual partners were sleeping with other men.
He began a sexual relationship with his daughter soon after he was released from prison, at which time Franklin was 13, sentencing documents state. He told investigators that he had slept with 50 woman and needed sex three to four times a week, preferring his partners to be young woman between the ages of 17 and 20. Ballantine said the government’s investigation determined that the partners that he sought out “skews younger” than what McIntyre reported.
Ballantine said McIntyre believed that Franklin was having sex with her step-father and was unhappy that she had an “age appropriate” boyfriend. The day Franklin’s step-father dropped her off to visit McIntyre Franklin “smelled like sex,” Valentine said McIntyre told authorities
“He is not just an abuser or a sexual predator. He is a murderer,” Ballantine said. “He killed her because he couldn’t control her.”
McIntyre’s personal message to the court Thursday was brief.
“I took the life of my daughter. I robber her of her childhood,” he said. “She didn’t have a chance to become a dancer or a model or a counselor. I just want to say how deeply sorry I am for what I’ve done.”
His attorney, Elizabeth Mullins, appeared to struggle with the horrificness of the crime, too.
“As a mother myself, I can’t even imagine the pain of the family,” she said.
She said McIntyre was “haunted and troubled” by “demons” and just a month before he killed Franklin had reported feeling “irritable and depressed” and had sought treatment. He did not take his medication the day Franklin was killed, she said.
Reading a letter she said McIntyre had composed, she offered McIntyre’s explanation for his daughter’s killing.
“I’m sorry my demons got the best of me,” she said on McIntyre’s behalf.
Read the Government’s Memorandum in Aid of Sentencing and press release below.
District Man Sentenced to 40 Years in Prison For the Killing of His Teenage Daughter- He Left Her Body in a Trash Can, Tried to Cover Up the Crime -
WASHINGTON - Rodney Mc Intyre, 45, of Washington, D.C., was sentenced today to 40 years in prison on a charge of first degree murder while armed in the slaying last year of his 17-year-old daughter, U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. announced.
Mc Intyre pled guilty in July 2011 in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. He was sentenced this morning by the Honorable Lynn Leibovitz, who said that Mc Intyre’s conduct “was the product of a depraved heart in the truest sense of the legal meaning of the term.”
According to a statement of facts presented at the plea hearing, and signed by the defendant, the victim, Ebony Franklin, was raised by her mother in Maryland. In 2008, after her father’s release from prison, where he had served time for threats in a domestic violence case, Ebony reinitiated contact with him. She was then 15.
On Friday, November 26, 2010, Ebony was to meet Mc Intyre in the Columbia Heights area of Northwest Washington to shop for Christmas presents. After that meeting, she was to return to her mother’s home to complete her chores. Once those chores were completed, Ebony planned to spend the weekend with her father, as well as visit her boyfriend.
Upon arriving in the District on November 26, Ebony met with her father near Meyer Elementary School, where Mc Intyre worked for an after-school program. At the school, in the 2500 block of 11th Street NW, Mc Intyre stabbed the victim at least 15 times, causing her death.
At some point after the murder, Mc Intyre disposed of his daughter’s body by placing it in a trash can. He then covered the body with trash and wheeled the can to the rear of a building in the 1000 block of Fairmont Street NW. Ebony’s body was discovered three days later.
Between May 2008 and the time of her murder, Mc Intyre engaged in sexual intercourse with his daughter on multiple occasions. Before the body was discovered, he attempted to conceal his daughter’s disappearance and murder. He used her cellphone to send multiple text messages, including some directed to her stepfather that asked if her mother was upset that she had not come home. On the morning of November 28, 2010, Mc Intyre used the cellphone to send a text message to the victim’s mother, saying, among other things, “Remember.the.bitch.told.on.my.man.now.yoo.get.her.out.the.trash.”
The defendant also visited local police stations over the weekend to report that Ebony was missing. He was arrested for the murder in May and has been in custody ever since.
“It is difficult to imagine a crime more horrific than a father murdering his own daughter,” said U.S. Attorney Machen. “We want to extend our deepest condolences to Ebony’s mother. We hope that the justice meted out today brings some comfort to all those who loved Ebony and have suffered this terrible loss.”
In announcing the sentence, U.S. Attorney Machen praised those who worked on the case from the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, including Detectives Thomas Braxton and Lee Littlejohn, Paralegal Specialist Alesha Matthews Yette, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jocelyn Ballantine, who prosecuted the case.
