Police: Suspect in killing, rape of boy planned escape

Phone call from jail was monitored

Police have filed an attempted escape charge against a Butler County man accused of raping and killing his girlfriend’s 4-year-old son last month in a case the district attorney called “horrific.”

Keith Jordan Lambing, 20, has been charged with planning an escape from the Butler County Prison, where he is being held on homicide and sexual assault charges.

Mr. Lambing is accused of assaulting the boy, Bentley Miller, who was found bleeding and unresponsive in a car March 21 with Mr. Lambing’s mother, Kristen Herold, at a business on Renaissance Drive in Butler. The boy was pronounced dead a short time later at Butler Memorial Hospital.

According to a criminal complaint, Mr. Lambing developed an escape plan about two weeks ago during a monitored call he made to his grandmother, Toni Herold. During that call, he referred to a note he planned to give her.

A guard found the note in Mr. Lambing’s cell, which referred to how someone could help him cut his restraints while he was being transported to a court hearing, the complaint said.

Mr. Lambing is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday on the escape charge. A preliminary hearing is set for April 20 on the main charges.

Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger is weighing the death penalty in the case.

Kristen Herold has been ordered to stand trial on charges she helped her son evade police in their investigation of the boy’s death.

The boy’s mother and Mr. Lambing’s girlfriend, 21-year-old Mackenzie Peters, has been charged with two counts of endangering the welfare of children. Authorities said she failed to seek medical treatment for a severe burn to the boy’s hand and wrist two weeks before his death. Bentley was with Mr. Lambing at a motel when he suffered the burns, according to a police affidavit.