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A Cook County jury has convicted Richard Lyons in the 2008 beating and stabbing murder of his 9-year-old daughter, Mya.

Hours earlier during closing arguments, Assistant State’s Attorney Maria McCarthy told jurors that she would spare them from seeing more gruesome photos of the brutal injuries inflicted on the 9-year-old girl.

“You’ve seen enough,” she said in a near-whisper. “The hardest part of your job is accepting that a parent could do that to their child.”

She said Lyons repeatedly stabbed his daughter after beating her outside their home when she came home late with her older brother from a friend’s house.

“He knew (she was dead) when she crumpled to the ground,” she stold jurors.”He immediately jumped into self-preservation. He decided he was going to make it look like some crazed killer killed his daughter.”

But Christopher Anderson, Lyons’ lawyer, said prosecutors fell far short on their evidence, providing no motive for why Lyons would brutally kill his daughter and no proof that in fact did. Instead prosecutors depended on testimony of a blood-spatter expert witness he referred to as a "scam artist.”

"Rod Englert sees what they want and he sells it to them (prosecutors),” Anderson told jurors. “...He's working this scam on the state."
[...]

Prosecutor Fabio Valentini finished arguments by saying that Lyons’ story doesn’t hold up.

"It's a compelling story. I think I saw it in a TV movie one time. But then you look at the details and it doesn't really fit…It's a story told by a killer trying to walk away."

"If you follow the evidence it shreds his story," Valentini said. “…Mya told you her story with her blood...Mya Lyons’ blood is in places it should not be."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...f-killing-daughter-9-20140117,0,3779790.story
 
I wonder - if the dad did this, wouldn't the brother know? I want to know if the brother testified.

Off to google...
 
Lyons, who prosecutors said destroyed the clothes he wore at the time of the murder, never came to the vigil Barnes held a year after she was killed, Barnes said.

Mata, this is why I don't believe him. These are not the actions of an innocent man.
 
In July 2009, the father filed a lawsuit against Metra alleging the transit rail company failed to properly maintain the area where Mya’s body was found. The end of the poorly lit alley where she was found had overgrown weeds near the tracks and in a vacant lot.

To me, this makes him look guilty as well. Maybe the motive was no longer having to pay child support AND being able to get a big pay-off. Or maybe she knew about the alleged sexual assault of the neighbor kid?
 
60-year prison sentence for father in murder of 9-year-old daughter
A judge sentenced Richard Lyons to 60 years in prison for the murder of his 9-year-old daughter in 2008.

Prosecutors say they know what Richard Lyons did, how and where he did it. But they’ll likely never understand why

“What motive can anyone ever have to kill their own child?” asked prosecutor Fabio Valentini.

“There’s a reason that we don’t have to prove motive- and it’s because of cases like this, where the evidence speaks for itself,” said Assistant State’s Attorney, Maria McCarthy.

It was a horrifying crime. Mya Lyons was beaten, strangled and stabbed 13 times then dumped near an overgrown lot.
Lyons himself went before the tv cameras in the summer of 2008, begging for help finding his little girl before, investigators say, pretending to find her body.
Police took three years to charge him.

Mya Lyons’ grandfather, Orland Barnes, said the family can now go on following Friday’s sentencing.
[...]
http://wgntv.com/2014/04/04/60-year...-murder-of-9-year-old-daughter/#ixzz2xxtdFS16
 
What a weird case. There seems to have been no precursor to it, no abuse, separated parents civil and even friendly with each other, the little girl apparently enjoying time with her father. What the hell happened??
 
I wish they could have established motive, what could have made him do this? I believe that he is guilty, but there are still too many unanswered questions.

Richard Lyons was sentenced to 60 years in prison Friday for the brutal stabbing death of his 9-year-old daughter, Mya.

Ericka Barnes called her ex a “coward and psychopath” for killing their daughter on July 14, 2008.

Lyons, now 45, initially “confused” police by telling them he found Mya lying in pool of blood in a dilapidated lot near his home in the 8400 block of Gilbert Court, Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Fabio Valentini said in Lyons’ January trial.

But his farce was blown 2 1/2- years later when blood spatter expert Rod Englert determined that Mya wasn’t attacked in the grassy alley where Lyons had claimed but just outside his home and in the dark van he said he drove to frantically to search for her.

Lyons was arrested after Englert delivered his findings.

In his closing arguments, prosecutors said Lyons just went into “self-preservation” mode the minute he slammed Mya’s body against a lock box behind his house.

He then took Mya into his van where he stabbed her before dumping her body in the dark, secluded lot, changing his clothes and playing “hero” by pretending to find her, prosecutors said.

He had no remorse, Valentini said Friday.

http://homicides.suntimes.com/2014/...ed-to-60-years-in-stabbing-death-of-daughter/
 
She was sexually assaulted according to one of the earlier articles, I think right there is your only motive.
I know that some articles said she was, then they said she wasn't, and then she was, and so on. So, I'm not sure which one to believe. He's guilty, and she's gone regardless, so I guess it doesn't matter. :(
 
Something about this story really doesn't seem right to me. I really hope that they didn't just pin this on the father so they could have someone to blame. Something tells me he did not do this. How many times, on this very site, have we seen stories of men convicted and of horrific crimes and then a couple years later we read that they didn't do it.

Very sad story, I hope they have the right person. How horrible would it be to lose a child and then accused of killing them. If this happened to me I would kill myself and spare any more pain. That poor girls face will haunt me for a long time.
 
I would really like to hear what the older brother said... In one of the first couple articles it said..... Her father stabbed her over and over after coming in late with her older brother.... But I cant find anything on what the brother said..
 
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