Parole Board considers fate of boy's killer

Draper » Alexander James Bybee was 16 years old in 1996 when he murdered a 6-year-old boy -- his cousin by virtue of a polygamous relationship -- and hid the body in a shallow grave in the southern Utah community of Big Water in Kane County.

Bybee was sentenced to prison for five years to life after pleading guilty to first-degree felony murder.

On Tuesday, Bybee, who turned 30 last month, told a member of the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole: "I'll do the rest of my life in prison, if that's what it takes. I'm here to take responsibility [for the slaying]."

Parole board member Keith Hamilton said it could take up to six weeks for the five-member board to decide Bybee's fate.

Hamilton said the board will weigh Bybee's young age at the time of the homicide against the fact that he waited months before revealing the crime.

"The family was suffering, and you don't say a word," Hamilton said. "That shows a callousness beyond killing someone."

Bybee said the murder of young Lance Guevarra the night of Aug. 13, 1996, started with an accidental injury to the boy, followed by Bybee's fears of being punished by the boy's father, who lived next door.

The two boys were in a tugging match over a video game, Mortal Kombat 3, when Bybee heard a popping sound from Lance's arm, which had recently healed from a break suffered in a trampoline accident.

Bybee said his life

at the time was dominated by depression over the divorce of his parents and mistreatment by Lance's father.

So when Lance collapsed in shock, Bybee panicked.

"What do I do? Should I get help? No, that's just more pain for me," Bybee recalled. "I felt his dad would kill me, and everybody would end up hating me more than they already did."

"I thought I was going to die," he added. "I chose to kill [Lance]."

Bybee said he carried the injured boy a quarter-mile into the sandy desert, then stepped on the boy's windpipe until he was dead. He buried the body and marked the grave with a milk crate.

Bybee tried to commit suicide in January 1997 after moving to Nevada -- an attempt that landed him in a mental hospital. He confessed to the killing a month later. Bybee then led authorities to the boy's scattered, decomposed remains.

In a letter to the parole board, Lance's mother, Kimberly Guevarra, said her son's remains fit into "a brown paper bag, the size you put your lunch in."

"Lance would now be 19," the woman wrote. "I miss him every day. He was my sunshine and Alexander put my sunshine out."

Bybee agreed the boy was "a good kid. He was kind-hearted. I was an awful person back then."

shunt@sltrib.com