'Natural life' in prison for child killer Allen

Convicted child killer Steven Ray Allen will spend the rest of his life in prison.

The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole announced a "natural life" sentence recently for the 62-year-old.

The board cited seven aggravating factors in reaching its decision, including Allen's minimization of his crime, the vulnerability of his victim, and his abuse of a position of trust. Only one mitigating factor was listed: Allen's lack of disciplinary problems while in prison.

During an Oct. 13 hearing, Allen told a parole board member that the jury that convicted him of murdering Michael Barrie failed to consider his account of the events that led to the boy's death. Allen said he and Barrie, 3, were sitting in a pickup truck outside a Moab store on Dec. 16, 1986, while the boy's mother and older brother went inside. The toddler was chewing on a piece of candy, Allen said, and tried to exit the truck to follow his mother.

"I grabbed him and pushed him back against the seat, slammed the door and yelled at him," Allen said during his first parole hearing since 1993.

"I think that scared him enough to make him inhale that candy into his windpipe," Allen said.

The boy stiffened, his eyes rolled back, and then he fell over in the truck's cab, Allen said, prompting the man to run into the store for the boy's mother and then take the child to the hospital, where Barrie died.

A jury convicted Allen of second-degree murder based on evidence presented by prosecutors that he struck and then smothered Barrie out of frustration over the boy's behavior. Allen was dating the boy's mother at the time. At trial, there was testimony that he had physically abused Barrie repeatedly in the weeks leading up to his death.

Allen has denied the allegations of abuse.

Three months after Barrie's death, the boy's mother agreed to have her son's body exhumed for an autopsy, prompting Allen to leave Utah. He landed in California, where he shot and killed a man in November 1987 during a dispute over stolen property — a shooting Allen maintains was accidental.

Allen pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the California case, but then disappeared into the mountains along the Idaho-Montana border before being sentenced. He was arrested in those mountains in August 1989 after being profiled on the TV show "America's Most Wanted."

Had Allen been paroled in Utah, he still faced at least 11 years in a California prison for the killing he committed in that state.