Michael Scott Geiger.
The state of Oklahoma is seeking the death penalty against a 51-year-old man accused of luring a 2-year-old girl into his motel room where he allegedly raped and strangled her before throwing her off of the second-story balcony into the pool while she was still alive.
Prosecutors formally informed the Fourth Judicial District Court for Garfield County that they believe Michael Scott Geiger “should be punished by death” for the horrific sexual assault and murder of young Caliyah J. Guyton earlier this year, court documents obtained by Law&Crime show.
Canadian County District Attorney Michael J. Fields on Wednesday filed a Special Bill of Particulars arguing that Geiger’s alleged crime involved numerous aggravating factors that make him eligible for the death penalty under state law.
According to the filing, the first aggravating factor is that Geiger was previously convicted of a felony involving the use or threat of violence to another person. Geiger in 1995 was convicted in Oklahoma County District Court on one count of felony robbery with a firearm, prosecutors say.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, Geiger also served a 10-year sentence in an Oklahoma state prison for kidnapping and had been released from detention less than a month before Caliyah’s murder.
Second, prosecutors claim that the alleged crime was “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel” as to mandate the assailant be put to death. As part of that assessment, prosecutors pointed to DNA evidence and “extensive damage” to the victim’s body caused by a “violent[] rape.”
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner performed an autopsy on Caliyah and determined her additional injuries showed that she was “physically brutalized in the process of being murdered,” the filing continues. The injuries to her neck and “burst blood vessels throughout her face, head, chest, and vital organs” indicated that she was “forcibly strangled” to the point that her brain became swollen.
“After the violent rape and physical abuse, the Defendant threw Caliyah into the swimming pool inside the Grand Prairie Hotel from a second-floor — where she was still alive, and, while struggling to breathe after being strangled, drowned in the water, causing her lungs to swell and develop a white frothy fluid that was found throughout her airway,” prosecutors wrote. “She then died due to lack of oxygen caused by both strangulation and drowning.”
Court documents provide additional details about the heinous series of crimes preceding Caliyah’s death.
In Geiger’s rooms, officers wrote that they found clothes that belonged to the girl.
Prosecutors wrote that one of the rooms “clearly been staged to lure [Caliyah] as it had gummy worms spread across the bed” as well as juice bottles strewn about. The television was allegedly tuned to a channel that showed cartoons.
The night before the girl died, those documents allege, the girl’s parents and Geiger hung out together in one of the defendant’s rented rooms – after Geiger made contact with the family at the pool earlier that same day. There, he offered allegedly offered Guyon “chips or candy.” Investigators believe the girl’s parents and their daughter’s eventual killer consumed alcohol and methamphetamine together.
At some point during the night, Geiger is believed to have offered Guyton’s mother $5,000 to “spend 24 hours with him.” She didn’t, the documents note, but she and her husband then agreed to find “a woman in Enid who agreed to spend time with” Geiger. They left before midnight to go retrieve that woman, police believe, and when they returned it was too late.
The hotel’s front desk clerk claims to have seen the defendant leaving the hotel while wearing gloves and holding a pillowcase around 11:47 p.m. The clerk then told a maintenance employee about the sighting. The second employee went upstairs and saw what he thought was the defendant carrying a baby doll.
Additionally, prosecutors emphasized that Geiger’s history of criminal activity meant there was a high probability that he posed a continuing threat to society as the third and final aggravating factor
According to the filing, in 1992 and 1993 he “engaged in several distinct acts of sexual assault” upon a 13-year-old which constituted first-degree rape, forcible sodomy, and rape by instrumentation. In June 1994, prosecutors say he broke into a man’s home, held him at gunpoint, robbed him, then forced him into a car and held him against his will. Furthermore, while incarcerated, he was found with a “homemade knife” on one occasion and later was convicted of assault and battery on the state correctional departments medical director.
He is also a member of the United Aryan Brotherhood, prosecutors say.
Geiger is set to appear in court next month for his arraignment.
[images via Enid Police Department]