Anthony Palma Was Convicted And Sentenced In 2017 For The Abduction And Murder Of Kirsten Hatfield

Anthony Palma was convicted and sentenced in 2017 for the abduction and murder of Kirsten Hatfield. The 8-year-old vanished in 1997 from her Midwest City home and has never been seen since.

Hatfield’s body was never found but in 2015, DNA from blood left behind on the young girl’s bedroom window and the girl’s underwear found in her yard were linked to Palma, who had lived two doors down at the time of the kidnapping.

Detectives say Palma was sexually assaulted and murder was verified.

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections confirmed Palma was killed on Friday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.

Detectives said during a unit check on Friday night, they found out Palma was covered in a blanket and was “lying face down on the floor.” The incident report states that guards made Palma’s cellmate pull the blanket off him, and that’s when they noticed blood all over the floor and that Palma wasn’t breathing.

Authorities say Palma’s cellmate, Raymond Pillado, is the one responsible for his death.

According to the report, Palma died on Jan. 11 from “ligature strangulation and blunt force trauma to the head,” KFOR reports.

He was allegedly murdered by his cellmate, 35-year-old Raymond Pillado, and was found laying face down in the cell covered with a blanket to conceal his bloody body, according to local station KOCO.

Pillado was already serving a life sentence for three murders when he allegedly attacked Palma.

Palma was sentenced to life without the chance of parole in October 2017.

Authorities say that they were hoping to interview Palma later this year in hopes of finding Kirsten’s body, but his death has extinguished that possibility.

“We’ve not had closure on this case and we may never have closure because we wanted to find her body and bring her home,” Midwest City Police Chief Brandon Clabes said. “Our hopes are, with any case like this, the suspect who’s convicted… in this case, it was Anthony Palma… that hopefully he would have some inkling of a conscience, maybe intervention by a higher power, maybe God and come out and tell us exactly what he did with her.”