Texas Jury Convicts Man in 1984 Murder of Friend Texas jurors convicted a man Friday in the brutal 1984 stabbing death of a teenage friend who prosecutors allege had rejected his romantic advances. Ryland Shane Absalon, 45, was found guilty of capital murder and automatically sentenced to life in prison because prosecutors didn't seek the death penalty. Prosecutors said he stabbed 18-year-old Ginger Hayden more than 50 times in her bed in Fort Worth, then confessed two years later during a drug-treatment program. But he wasn't charged until two decades later, after DNA evidence was tested. Absalon lowered his head as the verdict was read, and his wife began crying. She ran out of the courtroom sobbing loudly as the judge read the sentence. Hayden's relatives cried quietly in the courtroom. Mr. Absalon, it is not worth our time or energy ... to tell you what you have done. You have shattered our hearts and our lives forever," Jennifer Bass, who was Hayden's best friend, said in the victim impact statement after the sentencing. Defense attorney Gary Udashen had argued that Absalon falsely confessed because he was pressured and abused at the center and believed everything would be kept confidential. Some of Absalon's DNA was found in Hayden's apartment, the lawyer said, because they were former high school classmates and neighbors who would hang out. But prosecutors said Absalon's 1986 confession supported the evidence and included details that only the killer would know. His DNA was found on a towel and one of the bloody socks he used as gloves, investigators said. Absalon was arrested in 2010 at his home in Sierra Vista, Ariz., where he was working as a welder and living with his wife and young child.