'I didn't tell him enough,' dad says of love for son

Kevin Ray Underwood is escorted into the courtroom Tuesday during the sentencing phase of his trial. BY STEVE SISNEY, THE OKLAHOMAN

t he said Underwood had numerous disorders that could include bipolar disorder, pedophilia, social anxiety, post-traumatic-stress disorder and lifelong depression, among others.

Dr. Robert Prentky, who spent two days interviewing Kevin Underwood, said Underwood talked to him about witnessing his mother's episodic battles with extreme violence and also about enduring emotional and psychological abuse from his father.

Prentky described Underwood's early school years as tortured, as the youth was bullied and humiliated by other students who once held the boy down on the ground while they duct-taped his head.

"My professional opinion is that he spent his whole life afraid of people,” the expert testified.

Tests given to Underwood by Prentky revealed what the psychologist interpreted as a strong sexual attraction to young girls and boys, and that Underwood had sexual interest in acts involving urine, feces and vomit.

"He spent the better part of his young life overwhelmed by deviant sexual fantasies,” Prentky said.

Prentky also testified Kevin Underwood would not fare well in prison.

"If he was beaten up in the school yard, I can only imagine what it would be like in the penal population with his governing offense,” Prentky said, adding later that he is at a very high risk to be killed while in prison.

"Rarely do you see anyone as vulnerable as that man over there,” Prentky said.

When questioned by prosecutors, Prentky admitted that Underwood still appeared to have a morbid fascination with death, talking about serial killers while he has been in jail, and that he had to assume the man still had deviant sexual fantasies.

But Prentky said he could not say whether Undewood posed a continued threat to society, just as he could not pick a single diagnosis to tell why Underwood killed Jamie Rose Bolin at that particular time.

Always on the fringes

Earlier in the morning, jurors heard testimony from Kevin Underwood's aunts, who described him as an awkward and socially inhibited young boy who did not improve as he grew older.

Gayle Coburn, Kevin Underwood's aunt from Emporia, Kan., testified that her nephew was always on the fringes, even when his cousins were playing.

"He was always reaching out, wanting to play but not able to take the next step,” Coburn said.

She recalled a trip she planned for Kevin Underwood to go to the Natural History Museum to look at dinosaurs, but said her nephew refused to go at the last minute.

"He said there would be a lot of people there,” she recalled, adding that Kevin Underwood was always worried people would think he was weird or different.

"He was different,” she said.

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