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GREELEY, Colo. — A former longtime Idaho gubernatorial candidate was convicted Monday of kidnapping and killing a 12-year-old Colorado girl who disappeared nearly 40 years ago. Jurors found Steve Pankey, 71, guilty of felony murder, second-degree kidnapping and making a false report in the 1984 disappearance and death of Jonelle Matthews, District Attorney Michael Rourke’s office said. A judge then sentenced him to life in prison with the possibility of parole, the Greeley Tribune reported. It was Pankey’s second trial in the case. Last year, jurors were unable to reach verdicts on the kidnapping and murder charges, and prosecutors decided to retry him. Pankey was a neighbor of Jonelle and her family when she disappeared after being dropped off at her empty home by a family friend after performing at a Christmas concert in Greeley, Colorado, a town about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Denver. He emerged as a person of interest in the case three decades later – shortly before Jonelle’s body was found in 2019 – after claiming to have information about what happened to her and seeking immunity from prosecution. Pankey’s attorneys said his behavior may have seemed unusual, but argued that police failed to secure hard evidence against him and failed to exonerate an alternate suspect who died in 2007, the Tribune reported. Prosecutors said Pankey had been briefed on the case over the years, even as he moved his family across several states before settling in Idaho, where he ran unsuccessfully as the Constitution Party candidate for Idaho governor in 2014 and in the Republican gubernatorial primary. in 2018. the year authorities said he was named a person of interest in the girl’s death. Jonelle’s case came to the attention of then-President Ronald Reagan as his administration launched a national effort to find missing children. Her picture was printed on milk cartons across the United States as part of a project by the National Child Safety Council. She was considered missing until workers digging a pipeline in a rural area near Greeley in July 2019 discovered human remains that matched her dental records. Her death was ruled a homicide. He died from a single gunshot to the head, prosecutors said. x
