Murder Triggers Mom’s Crusade for Legal Change

Kristi Blevins’ impish smile greets every customer at the grocery store across the street from the abandoned home where she died.

The 7-year-old beams from a wallet-sized photograph taped to petitions at two registers. She smiles, too, at people getting fill-ups at gas stations down the road. Even in a grocery store in the next county, Kristi’s wide-eyed grin stops customers who add their names to a growing list of signatures under her photo.

Since last week, Rhonda Blevins has counted more than 2,000 signatures on petitions backing a law she thinks could have saved her youngest child.

Blevins wants juvenile sex offenders included in an Oklahoma law that alerts the public to adult sex offenders in their midst. On a rented computer and the $50 printer she bought last week, she has cranked out more than 1,000 petitions and taped a photo of Kristi to each one.

“The kids come home, mom’s sitting there working petitions. They go to bed, I’m working on petitions. If I didn’t,” says the 34-year-old mother of three other children, “I would probably be crying all the time.”

On Aug. 19, she and her husband discovered that Kristi and a 12-year-old friend, who had been playing outside, were missing from their Oilton home.

Searchers found the two in an abandoned home. The 12-year-old had been raped. Kristi had been strangled. With them, police found Robert Rotramel, a 19-year-old with a juvenile record of detention for forcible sodomy.

Rotramel faces murder, rape and kidnapping charges. A preliminary hearing is scheduled Monday.

Others in Oilton say they knew about Rotramel’s juvenile record--but not Blevins.

Her teen-age son worked at a bait shop owned by Rotramel’s father. Sometimes Kristi and her other siblings visited the shop when Rotramel was there.

“If I would have known he was a sexual offender when he was a juvenile, my kids would not have had anything to do with him,” Blevins said.

At Ballard’s, the grocery just across the street from the murder scene, owner Kathy Ballard signed her name. A regular customer--Roy Rotramel--said he signed it, too.

“He deserves whatever he gets,” Roy Rotramel said of his son. “I said he should never have been released.”

State lawmakers say Blevins’ petitions won’t be the determining factor if juvenile violators are added to the state’s Sex Offenders Registration Act.

Rep. Larry Ferguson said House staff members have already begun to investigate such laws in other states and that legislation to change Oklahoma’s law likely will be introduced. But the petitions add impetus to that effort, he said.

Every state now has what is known as a Megan’s Law, which requires convicted sex offenders to register with local police and community notification of their presence. The law extends to juveniles in 21 states. The laws are named for Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old New Jersey girl who was raped and murdered in 1994 by a convicted sex offender who lived across the street from her.

Critics argue that applying Megan’s Law to juveniles undermines the intent of juvenile court: to protect minors and rehabilitate delinquents.

Ferguson doesn’t think including juveniles would prompt much opposition in Oklahoma.

“I’m more interested in giving innocent people a first chance than I am in giving someone else a second chance,” he said.