SPENCER, Ind. — A small head of blond hair bobbed in the breeze. The 2-year-old girl beckoned her friend to push her on a swing. Her hair, held by a pink hair tie, was in a messy half-ponytail, which flew in the air as she swung higher and higher.
“Not so high!” Heather Henderson shouted from the other side of Cooper’s Commons Park in Spencer, Indiana.
Henderson watched her blue-eyed daughter, Aries, play with the other children. The kids have questions about Shaylyn Ammerman, Henderson said. But the mother said she can’t figure out how to provide an answer.
“I don’t tell them, ‘The baby’s dead,’” she said. “I just can’t.”
Almost a week has passed since 1-year-old Ammerman went missing from her father and grandmother’s Spencer home. Her body was found Thursday in Gosport, Indiana.
Police officers arrested Kyle Parker, 22, and charged him Monday with raping, strangling and murdering the toddler after kidnapping her from her home.
Parker is being held in the Owen County Jail and is not eligible for bail. He pleaded not guilty to his charges, and his preliminary trial date is scheduled for Aug. 10.
In June 2014, Parker was charged with criminal trespassing, possession of marijuana and illegal consumption of an alcoholic beverage. Later that year, he was charged with possession of a synthetic drug or look-alike substance and possession of paraphernalia.
This week, the small town of Spencer is trying to figure out who Parker is.
Although Parker said he was residing at a Spencer address at his charging hearing Monday, Henderson said she has no idea who he is.
Neither does her friend, Sara Whitaker. If anyone outside the Ammerman family would know his name, it would be these women, who grew up in the small town and went to Owen Valley High School with Jessica Ammerman, Shaylyn’s mother.
“Everyone knows everyone,” Whitaker said.
Whitaker actually met and held Shaylyn twice.
But she never heard the name Kyle Parker. Both women cannot understand how, or why, Shaylyn’s family on her father’s side would have been connected to Parker.
“We had no idea who he was,” Whitaker said.
Parker said in a court hearing Monday his most recent address was 7086 Locust Lake Road in Spencer. He stated his stepsister’s parents owned the house and that he had been living there for three to four months.
The home is a small, single-story white house at the end of a long, winding country road. The day before Shaylyn went missing, Parker offered to stop by this house and take his stepsister’s mother’s youngest child to school. The next morning, he never showed up, according to the affidavit.
Instead, he was at a house in Gosport, where two of his friends lived.
His friends said he showed up around 3:40 a.m. and was uncommonly quiet and distant, and that he began to wash his clothes after coming inside, according to the affidavit.
The friends told officers that Parker liked to watch pornography that was violent in nature and that he was attracted to younger girls, ages 12 to 14.
On Tuesday, black dogs barked viciously in the yard of the white house on Locust Lake Road, their necks held back by chains.
The yard was littered with aimless objects: a broken swingset, a child’s car seat, piles of lumber and what appears to be garbage.
“But it wasn’t always like that,” said neighbor Sue Zehr, who lives one house up the road.
She’s under the impression that no one stays in the residence very long.
“I’m just in shock,” Zehr said. “It’s all I’ve been talking about today. I’ve gotta stop thinking all these bad thoughts.”
In nearby Ellettsville, Indiana, Ron Wayt, a funeral director at Chandler Funeral Home, said he is shocked at the connection between Parker and Shaylyn.
Wayt and the funeral home owner, G.L. Chandler, knew Parker’s family before he started spending time at the business. They are still in touch with Mike Patton, Parker’s stepfather.
“They’re just really nice people,” Wayt said. “I think everybody that knew Kyle is shocked at this.”
He said Parker completed a job shadowing program there for about a month while he was in high school. Parker would come by the funeral home for a couple of hours a day, three to four days a week. Even after ending his program at the funeral home, Parker would still stop by and visit Wayt and Chandler just to say hi.
“He was a normal kid,” Wayt said. “It’s just shocking, heartbreaking to see what has come.”
Wayt said he remembered hearing about Parker’s taking classes at Ivy Tech Community College after graduation.
He said he never saw any red flags in Parker’s personality or behavior.
“I never saw this coming,” Wayt said. “It’s just been a horrible situation.”
Henderson and Whitaker said they cannot get over the shock of a crime so heinous occurring in their hometown, so close to their own children.
They said they are going to start locking their doors and that they’ve told their children to scream any time a stranger talks to them. These are precautions they never thought they’d have to take in Spencer.
“That shouldn’t happen around here,” Whitaker said. “Things like this happen around the world, but not to somebody you know.”
Contributing reporting by Samantha Schmidt
