Suspect in girl's death joked about cannibalism

PURCELL, Okla. -- A man accused of killing a 10-year-old neighbor girl as part of a cannibalism plot joked about the subject in his online diary, discussed the effects of not taking his antidepression medication, and mentioned ''dangerously weird" fantasies.

All he wanted in life, Kevin Ray Underwood wrote in his blog, was ''to be able to live like a normal person."

People who knew Underwood described him yesterday as a quiet, ''boring," and seemingly trustworthy young man. His mother, who lives across town, called him a ''wonderful boy."

''This is something that I don't know where it came from," Connie Underwood said through tears in a telephone interview. ''I would like to be able to tell her family how sorry we are. I just feel so terrible."

The 26-year-old grocery store stocker was arrested Friday. After he aroused police suspicions at a highway checkpoint, investigators searched his apartment and found a plastic tub in a bedroom closet.

According to a police affidavit, he confessed that he killed Jamie Rose Bolin, telling FBI agents, ''Go ahead and arrest me. She is in there. I chopped her up."

McClain County District Attorney Tim Kuykendall said Underwood would be formally charged with first-degree murder today.

Authorities believe Underwood killed the girl Wednesday, when she disappeared after going to a library, by beating and smothering her. Her unclothed body was in the tub. Police said there were deep saw marks on her neck but she had not been dismembered.

Underwood lived alone in an apartment downstairs from the one where Jamie lived with her father, Curtis Bolin, an auto mechanic. Purcell is a small community 40 miles south of Oklahoma City.

On his blog, Underwood described himself as ''single, bored, and lonely, but other than that, pretty happy." He mentions cannibalism, asking ''If you were a cannibal, what would you wear to dinner?"

In an entry dated Feb. 4, Underwood wrote that he struggled with depression and social interaction.

''Pretty much the only time I believe in God is when I blame him for something," he said. ''Or, when I'm really depressed, to cry and beg him to make me better, to make whatever is wrong in my brain go away, so that I can live like a normal person."

He wrote that he rarely left his apartment for long stretches, except to go to work and to buy food. ''I just sit here at the computer every minute of the day, when I'm not at work."

In September 2004, he wrote that his depression deepened after several months without taking the medication Lexapro, an antidepressant also used in the treatment of anxiety disorders.

''For example, my fantasies are just getting weirder and weirder. Dangerously weird," he wrote. ''If people knew the kinds of things I think about anymore, I'd probably be locked away."

Underwood worked for nearly seven years at a Carl's Jr. restaurant, where shift leader Bill Berdan described him yesterday as a quiet person who kept to himself. However, he said Underwood was a ''boring" man who rarely smiled.

Berdan said he and his wife and young daughters never suspected anything unusual. ''He gave my wife rides home from work numerous times," he said. ''We never felt uncomfortable. "

Underwood's most recent job was as a stocker at a Griders Discount Foods grocery store in Oklahoma City, where he arrived early for his shift Friday, said Jerry Castro, a manager.

''He was the same as always," Castro said. ''He was quiet and kept to himself. He didn't interact with people. It just didn't dawn on you that this was something he'd do."