TACOMA, Wash. — Tyler Savage, the man charged with murdering a developmentally disabled teen, has learned his fate.
A jury found Savage guilty of first-degree aggravated murder for strangling Kimberly Daily in South Hill on Aug. 17, 2010.
Initially, Savage told Pierce County sheriff's detectives he murdered the girl after the two arranged a meeting on Facebook. In a taped confession, Savage told detectives he choked Daily then tied a bra and T-shirt around her neck because she wanted to leave while the two were talking and he thought that was "lame."
"This was a rape, this was a murder, that's what we pointed out to the jury", Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Lindqust said after the verdict was read. "The jury clearly and definitively rejected that this was a sex game gone wrong.".
But when the trial started, Savage changed his story, saying Daily asked him to choke her in a dangerous sex game and her death was an accident.
Prosecutors say the evidence shows Daily, who had the mental and emotional capacity of a fourth or fifth-grader, was murdered.
Savage’s attorney, Leslie Tolzin, told jurors Daily had a secret life she hid from her father and was boy crazy.
But the prosecution used Savage's own words against him, playing clips of his taped confession. In it, Savage broke down as he admitted strangling Daily, stripping her and dumping her naked body in blackberry bushes a few block from her home.
"He took her shirt and her bra and wrapped it around her neck and he tied it," Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Phil Sorenson told the jury. "He murdered her and then he threw her away."
Jury deliberations started Monday.
His sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 17. His only possible sentence is life in prison without parole.
KIRO
