Letter To Speaker Of Gage Case

Mr. Speaker, this is Jetsetta Gage, 10. She was kidnapped and sexually assaulted and murdered this year, in 2005, in Iowa, Cedar Rapids. According to news reports, Jetsetta Gage's goal each day was to give 20 compliments to people. She wanted to give them to her teacher. She gave them to a cab driver who took her to school. She gave them to her grandmother and anybody that came into her view.

Her mother said that she was friendly, and she liked to say hi to everyone. She would come up to you and say, you look nice today. She would tell everyone that, even strangers. The adults who knew Jetsetta described her as bubbly, a happy girl. She would wear colorful but mismatched outfits. She loved the outdoors, and she loved her mother and her grandmother.

Trina Gage was attending classes at Hamilton College the night her daughter was taken. Roger Bentley, a family friend, went to the Gage's home on the evening of March 25 of this year supposedly to fix the car. While there, he kidnapped Jetsetta.

He took her to an abandoned mobile home in rural Johnson County about 45 miles south of Jetsetta's Cedar Rapids home in Iowa. In the darkness of the night he sexually abused her. He bound her feet. He suffocated her by putting a plastic bag over her heard. Twelve hours after killing and kidnapping Jetsetta, authorities came to the mobile home, and Roger answered the door with blood stains still on his cloth. Officials searched the home and they found the little girl's body.

Jetsetta's mother, Trena Gage, had met Roger Bentley through his brother James Bentley whom she had dated several years ago. Court documents suggest that Jetsetta was sexually abused over a 2-year period by this James Bentley. James Bentley, well, he had already been arrested and charged with sexually assaulting Jetsetta in two counties. He is scheduled for trial on October 3 in Linn County. The second trial on the same charges follows in November 3 in