Scars Linger Even 20 Years After Attack

He remembers the stabbings, he says, as if they were yesterday instead of 20 years ago. To the face, the arms, the throat, the chest and then that final deep stab into his back, just before he found refuge under the kitchen table.

Twenty-three stab wounds in all. A nightmare for anyone, but especially a 10-year-old boy.

Add to that trauma the fear that his mother, stabbed more than 40 times, was bleeding to death. Then finding the tenant staying with them, the young woman who didn’t survive the killer’s rage.

Blaine Pensinger is now 30, but he’s far from anxious to relive that tragic night in a courtroom for a second time.

He might not have a choice.

Two weeks ago I wrote a column about Orange County’s oldest death penalty case. It was May 26, 1980, that William Charles Payton raped and murdered 21-year-old Pamela Montgomery at the Garden Grove tenant house owned by Blaine’s mother, Patricia Pensinger. Payton also attacked the Pensingers, mother and son, who miraculously survived.

Payton, now 46, has won a new penalty trial. But state prosecutors are vigorously fighting in federal court to get his death sentence reinstated.

I wrote in that column that I had tried, but failed, to locate the Pensingers. Prosecutors had lost track of them, and some even thought the mother was now deceased.

Lost Witnesses Located

But a reader from Indiana, who follows the Los Angeles Times on the its Web site, decided to use his considerable Internet skills to see if he could track them down--and did.

Patricia Pensinger, now 60, resides in northeastern Kentucky. Blaine has been in Kentucky too--housed at the Pendleton County Jail.

His troubles began, he says, the night of the Payton attack . . .

“My mom had to work late, so sometimes I’d fall asleep in her room so I could see her when she came in. That night, I rolled over into something wet, and saw it was blood. Then I saw Bill Payton standing over me with a knife in each hand.”

Payton had once been a tenant at the Pensinger home, and Blaine knew him well.

“He just kept stabbing at both Mom and me, but finally broke a knife. He headed back to the kitchen and Mom yelled at me to try to escape. But he caught me leaving the bedroom and stabbed me one last time in the back.”

Blaine slid under the kitchen table while his mother valiantly tried to save him by fighting off Payton, who finally fled.

Blaine heard his mother scream “Someone check Pamela! Check Pamela!”

It was Blaine who found her dead.

“She had just moved in the night before. She’d played the card game Uno with me,” he said. “She was an endearing lady, spending time with a young boy like that.”

After his recovery, Blaine says, his fears made sleep difficult for months. His school attendance became haphazard. At that early age, Blaine discovered marijuana, the only remedy to help him sleep. How could a 10-year-old get marijuana so easily? Blaine explained, as if anyone would understand: “We lived very close to Stanton. You could buy anything in Stanton. I’d mow lawns to earn marijuana money.”

There were good times. Blaine was a pitcher on the Rancho Alamitos High baseball team. He even played baseball one year at Golden West College in Huntington Beach.

After that year, he moved to Northern California to live with his father, and was married for a brief time.

But his marijuana addiction, Blaine says, led him to alcohol and cocaine, and then speed.

And speed led him to prison. He was arrested trying to sell dope to an undercover police officer. He served nearly two years at the Wasco State Penitentiary near Bakersfield.

He was released a few months ago, and immediately headed to Kentucky to be with his mother.

“My mom is unbelievable. She’s been my best friend since the night of the attack,” he said. Unfortunately, drinking with one of his brothers led to a civil disturbance, and Blaine was accused of parole violation.

The day after I interviewed him by telephone, he was picked up by California authorities, and returned here, possibly to serve up to another year in prison for parole violation.

Blaine acknowledges his mistakes, but says he cannot help but wonder if life would have been different for him had Payton not showed up that night.

Blaine was unaware Payton had won a new penalty trial. The thought that his own testimony might be needed again distressed him. Payton may be his attacker, but he’s also a fellow inmate.

“I’m liable to get in trouble in the next [prison] yard,” Blaine said. “This could really put me in a tight spot.”

But as our conversation carried on, Blaine became more comfortable with going back to court to face Payton again, just as he did as a 10-year-old.

“For what he did to me and my mom, he deserves to be in jail,” Blaine said. “But for what he did to that poor woman, he needs to die for that.”

Blaine says he’d love to face Payton to ask just one question:

“Why? Why did you have to ruin our lives like that? It’s all I’ve ever wanted to know from him.”

Payton has become well-known at San Quentin state prison for his Christian ministry to other Death Row inmates. But yet, Blaine says in all these years he’s never heard a word of remorse from Payton.

Though Blaine says the attack comes to mind every day of his life, it’s something he and his mother have never discussed in 20 years.

“We don’t need to talk about it,” he explained. “We were there. We lived it.”

By the way, I feel compelled to say a special thanks to my cousin, Larry Hicks, from Washington, Ind. He’s the reader who helped locate the Pensingers for me.

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Jerry Hicks’ column appears Monday and Thursday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling (714) 966-7789 or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com