OGDEN — Idaho inmate Gregory L. Seamons is denying responsibility for the 1983 rape and slaying of 11-year-old Rebecca Lemberger, of Ogden.
“I am innocent,” he wrote in a recent letter to the Standard-Examiner. “I didn’t murder anyone.”
Seamons 45, said in the nine-page, handwritten missive that fellow prisoners at the Idaho State Correctional Facility near Boise have vilified him because he faces first-degree rape and aggravated murder charges in the Lemberger killing.
“The whole prison was in an uproar over the media coverage on me and this case,” he wrote. “It was like crashing and burning at 300 miles an hour because before that I was one of the most popular people here.”
Seamons has been an inmate at the Idaho State Correctional Institution since 2007 following a conviction for second-degree kidnapping. He is scheduled to complete his sentence in December 2017.
Seamons could spend the rest of his life in a Utah prison if convicted of raping and killing Lemberger. She was last seen at 8 a.m. March 2, 1983, when she left home to walk to Edison Elementary School at 935 E. 1050 North. She never made it to school.
The next day, Lemberger’s body was found in a shed in a field west of 729 N. Mountain Road in Ogden.
She had been sexually assaulted and died as a result of blunt force trauma to the head.
Ogden police obtained an arrest warrant in September for Seamons. Investigators say his DNA matches evidence from the crime. Seamons lived in Lemberger’s neighborhood at the time of her death, detectives say.
It hasn’t been determined whether Seamons, who was 15 at the time of Lemberger’s slaying, will waive extradition or when he will be returned to Utah.
Seamons barely mentions Lemberger’s slaying in his letter but blasts lawyers who will defend him against charges that he killed her.
“I’m hoping I get a decent attorney who will help me,” he wrote. “But since I’m poor and can’t afford my own attorney I’ll have a public defender. Most of us call them public pretenders because they usually don’t even ask you if you are innocent. They just come with a plea deal.
“I call them public processors because they usually don’t defend you they just process you like sheep in a line getting their throats cut.”
Seamons goes on to say that his life is a “terrible, tragic story.”
“I’m all alone in this world, most of my family is dead,” he wrote. “But even when they were alive, I was still alone. I have faced life and most difficulties, broke and alone. I don’t see anything changing now.
“I have $18 to last me the rest of my life and a family that wants me to keep my mouth shut so they won’t be involved. They don’t even want to testify for me because they don’t want to face the public or the media; so once again I feel flushed down the toilet to face the wolves alone.”
The letter also offers a glimpse of Seamons’ life behind bars, in protective custody and segregated from other inmates.
“I’m so depressed and in shock and as usual I’m broke and alone. I’m divorced and have no kids,” he wrote. “I just have a life that’s the biggest nightmare I’ve ever imagined. I have real nightmares and wake up screaming.”
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