Norton denied parole
Morning Sun
June 28, 2011
Kenneth Norton Jr., the former prison guard convicted of murdering his girlfriend's 3-year-old daughter 18 years ago, has been denied parole in his first opportunity for early release.
Norton was the central figure in a tragic case that riveted much of Michigan in the summer of 1993.
Monday was the first day Norton was eligible for parole, but after a hearing several months ago he was denied release by the Michigan Parole Board.
"The board looked at him and denied him parole," said Russ Marlan, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections. "They gave him a standard code that means he's still considered a risk to the community."
Norton's next parole review was set for 18 months after the first, or the fall of 2012.
Isabella County Prosecutor Larry Burdick's office monitors parole processes for certain cases and can also appeal early releases.
"It's extremely unlikely somebody convicted of murder would be paroled on their first time up," Burdick said. "I could see it possibly happening the next time he's up."
Norton was convicted of killing Tabatha Horn and sentenced to 22 to 35 years by Isabella Circuit Court Judge Paul Chamberlain after a two-week trial in January 1994. His maximum release date is in 2022.
Trial testimony indicated that disciplining of Tabatha, who died of suffocation, was a source of conflict between Norton and the girl's mother, Wendy Gokee.
Tabatha's case gripped much of Michigan in July 1993 when Norton reported her missing and presumably kidnapped from a Brighton convenience store.
Norton told police he was headed from Vestaburg to Ann Arbor with Tabatha to visit the girl's hospitalized mother.
Searches for Tabatha continued for several days, but investigators became increasingly suspicious and eventually started to also look for her body.
Tabatha's case took another bizarre twist when a woman claiming to be a psychic called police and said her body would be found in a green duffle bag near a wishing well.
Investigators found Tabatha's naked body, wrapped in a towel and baby blanket, at the end of a two-track road, 150 feet from a wishing well.
The makeshift grave was about two miles from the house Norton shared with Gokee and nine children, two belonging to Gokee, three to Norton and four to Norton's brother.
Norton, then 34, was a state prison guard working at the Carson City Correctional Facility at the time.
Now 52, Norton is imprisoned at the Lakeland Correctional Facility in Coldwater, a dormitory-style facility for prisoners who have displayed good behavior while incarcerated.
The Morning Sun
01/09/2013
http://www.themorningsun.com/article/MS/20130109/NEWS01/130109664
A former Isabella County man is free after serving two decades in prison for the second-degree murder of a 3-year-old girl.
Kenneth Monroe Norton Jr., 54, was released from a prison in Muskegon County Dec. 11, after serving nearly 19 years of a 22- to 35-year sentence.
Norton, who will be on supervised release in Muskegon County for two years, was convicted in Isabella County of killing his girlfriend’s daughter, Tabatha Horn, in July 1993.
He was sentenced Feb. 10, 1994, four years prior to the passage of Truth in Sentencing by the Michigan Legislature, which mandates that prisoners serve maximum minimum sentences before being eligible for parole.
Because Norton, who lived in Fremont Township at the time of the murder, was incarcerated before Truth in Sentencing, he was eligible for time off for good behavior.
Norton was denied parole in June 2011 but served less than the maximum-minimum sentence, Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman John Cordell said.
Former Isabella County Prosecutor Larry Burdick, who handled the murder case, contacted the Michigan Parole Board in June to comment on the “tragic and disturbing aspects of” Tabatha’s murder, and cautioned the board to “look carefully at the case and Norton’s record when reviewing the matter for parole.”
“In the end, his release is a function of his sentence, which makes him eligible, and the parole board’s determination that he is not a risk to the public,” said Burdick, who retired in September after being prosecutor for 24 years.
Early releases were the one of the driving forces behind the Truth in Sentencing law, Burdick said.
An Isabella County jury found Norton guilty of second-degree murder in January 1994.
Tabatha disappeared in July 1993; her body was found less than two miles from Norton’s home, just inside Montcalm County.
Norton reported the girl missing July 5, 1993, telling authorities that she vanished from his car at a convenience store in Livingston County’s Brighton while the two were headed to Ann Arbor to visit Tabatha’s mother, Wendy Gokee.
At the time of the disappearance, Norton was a corrections officer at the Carson City Correctional facility, and Gokee was in the University of Michigan Hospital undergoing tests.
Norton told police in Brighton that he didn’t remember when he last saw Tabatha but that he was certain she started the trip with him.
Norton’s car yielded no clues, and nobody at the convenience store saw the girl.
Norton was arrested July 8, 1994 after police discovered her body the same day in a shallow grave.
A woman who wanted to remain anonymous offered a tip that the girls’ body would be found in or by a green duffle bag near a wishing well, police said at the time of the investigation.
Police followed a two-track road and discovered the grave, about 150 yards away from a wishing well, on land near County Line Road, according to previous reports.
Tabatha’s body was identified later than night.
Police said at the time that Norton was linked to the murder because he was the last person to see Tabatha and because there were inconsistencies in his account to police about what happened.
Although not admissible in court, Norton also refused to take a polygraph test.
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