Mom Quotes Onstott: 'I Didn't Do It'

Before David Lee Onstott was arrested in the death of a 13-year-old girl, he called his mother, Refugia Whitten, in Michigan.

"Mom, I didn't do it," Whitten later told sheriff's detectives, quoting her son.

The conversation was recalled in court records released Wednesday.

Onstott told his mother that with his previous rape and driving under the influence convictions, prosecutors would send him to prison.

"Mom, I'm scared," Whitten said, quoting her son. " I don't want to go back to prison."

Onstott told his mother he was going to run and meet her at her Flint, Mich., home. She told him not to run.

A few days later, after Onstott's arrest, Whitten came to Florida to meet him at the jail. Before they could meet, Onstott's attorney called.

Detectives told Onstott he could speak with his attorney but probably would not be allowed to talk with his mother afterward. Onstott told them he didn't want to talk to the lawyer, just his mother.

After a 1 1/2 -hour, tape-recorded conversation between Onstott and his mother, Onstott called his attorney.

He spoke to his mother again, then sat down with detectives. "I did it," detectives quote him as saying.

The conversations were described in records released Wednesday, per a judge's order. Onstott's public defenders asked that the documents not be released. An lawyer hired by The Tampa Tribune filed legal papers and argued in court for the records to remain public.

The judge declined to release records that describe Onstott's statement to detectives.

Although the public defender's office asked for the records to be sealed, much of the information has been reported. Reports included information about an ex-girlfriend's restraining order against Onstott and an ex-wife's statement that Onstott had molested her teen daughter.

New information released Wednesday included:

Onstott's girlfriend said she was with him hours before Sarah Michelle Lunde disappeared but that when she woke the next morning, he was gone. Later, he said he did not feel well but wasn't sick.

After his statement to detectives, Onstott told a sheriff's investigator that he hoped to die as soon as possible.

A man who shared a holding cell with Onstott said Onstott told him he had a previous rape conviction and in this case, like that time, "the girl told him to stop and he just went ahead and did it."

After a five-day search, Sarah's body was found in a pond near her Ruskin home. Autopsy reports state that her body was weighed down with concrete blocks. Her skull was fractured.