By Sharon Turco
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The brutal killing of 17-year-old Lonni "Kathy" Mahone shocked Cincinnati in December of 1978.

The Sycamore High School senior was stabbed more than 70 times and smashed in the head with a concrete block. Then her body was dumped in a cistern just two doors from her home in the Hazelwood subdivision.

This week, the man convicted of killing Mahone - during a time when there was a moratorium on the death penalty - will ask to be set free on parole.

A Hamilton County jury convicted Douglas Payne of attempted rape and aggravated murder, and sentenced him to spend life in prison. Had the death penalty been an option, prosecutors said they would have sought it.

This week, the Ohio Parole Board will hear Payne's plea for parole. But if Hamilton County Prosecutor Mike Allen has his way, Payne will stay locked up.

"This is an individual who should never see the light of day," Allen said. "The only way he should leave prison is on a stretcher."

Mahone disappeared Nov. 27, 1978.

Police searched her subdivision for days until an anonymous phone call led them to a cistern behind the suspect's house.

Payne tried to seduce Mahone, and when she tried to get away he lost control, according to trial testimony. He stabbed her with the screwdriver, and then hit her until she stopped screaming. Finally, he used the concrete block.

At the time prosecutors wanted to see Payne die for his crime, but Ohio had no legal authority to impose capital punishment. The U.S. Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972.

Two years later, the Ohio General Assembly revised Ohio's Death Penalty law, but the Ohio Supreme Court rejected the new law in 1978 - just before Mahone was murdered. As a result, 120 condemned prisoners had their sentences commuted to life. Left without the option of the death penalty, Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Peter Outcalt, who has since retired, sentenced Payne to life in prison, saying, "You viciously destroyed that flower."

In addition to the life term, Outcalt added an additional term of 5 to 15 years for the attempted rape.

E-mail sturco@enquirer.com