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Brent King, turning to address her in her front-row seat, said she would always bear "our pain on your soul." "She knew what you were capable of and did nothing," Kelly King said. Osborn dabbed her face with tissue as McGonigle described her devastating loss. McGonigle said she often obsessed about her daughter's final moments. "Was she scared? Was she calling my name? No one can appreciate the horror that is my life until they can appreciate the joy that was my Amber," she said. Calls to stiffen penalties for child sex offenders began almost the moment Gardner was arrested Feb. 28, three days after he attacked Chelsea on an afternoon run in San Diego, strangled her, and buried her in a shallow, lakeside grave. The discovery of Chelsea's semen-stained clothing during a massive search quickly led authorities to Gardner. Days later, he led investigators to Amber's remains in a remote, mountainous area north of San Diego. The case has also put California's parole system under the microscope, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has ordered a state board to review the system. Gardner faced a maximum of nearly 11 years in prison for molesting his neighbor in 2000, but prosecutors called for six years. A court-appointed psychiatrist urged the maximum sentence allowed by law. He said in court documents that Gardner was a "continued danger to underage girls" and "an extremely poor candidate" for treatment.
Gardner lived little more than a football field's length from a San Diego preschool for at least 16 months while on parole from 2005 to 2008. That violated a condition of parole that prohibited him from living within a half-mile of a school. A corrections department official let him stay until his lease expired in 2006 but no one noticed he was still living there until a year later.
[Associated
Press;
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