Horror of 10-year-old's final hours seen in court records

Iowa City, Ia. — Jetseta Gage's final hours were filled with horror, court records filed Wednesday show.

Roger Paul Bentley, a convicted sex offender, sexually abused the 10-year-old Cedar Rapids girl, bound her feet and tied a plastic bag over her head, causing her to suffocate, according to formal charges filed in Johnson County District Court.

Records state that Bentley, 37, of Brandon, hid the girl's body in a cabinet inside an abandoned Johnson County mobile home, where the abuse and murder are alleged to have occurred on March 24 or 25.

The new information about Jetseta's slaying was listed in trial information formally charging Bentley with first-degree kidnapping and murder, both crimes punishable by life in prison without parole.

A district judge ordered Bentley to enter a plea on April 14.

Linn County Attorney Harold Denton said he will dismiss a child-stealing charge filed against Bentley in the county.

"We filed that initially to make sure he was held," Denton said Wednesday. The more serious charges in Johnson County cover the same allegations made in the Linn County charges, he said.

Bentley, an acquaintance of Jetseta's family, is accused of abducting the girl the evening of March 24 from her house in northwest Cedar Rapids.

Johnson County sheriff's deputies arrested Bentley around 7:15 a.m. March 25 after a woman who knew Bentley called the sheriff's department to report seeing the man's pickup truck parked outside the mobile home.

Deputies later found Jetseta's body inside the home. An autopsy showed the girl died of asphyxiation.

Jetseta's case has gained national media attention and prompted Iowa legislators to call for tighter restrictions on sex offenders living in Iowa.

Bentley's brother, James Bentley, is scheduled to stand trial in late May on charges that he molested Jetseta over a two-year period.