Mother Whose Daughter, 9, Was Raped And Murdered 40 Years Ago Is Left Devastated After Seeing Photos Of Daughter’s Dead Body For The First Time

After decades of declining to see photos of her 9-year-old daughter’s, Marcia Trimble’s, body — who was raped and murdered 40 years ago — finally decided to see the horrific photos of the crime scene, according to Daily Mail.

Virginia Trimble Ritter said she opted not to see the photos of her daughter’s crime scene because she wanted to keep the happy memory of her daughter alive. She and her then-husband didn’t want their last memory of their daughter to be filled with gory images.

40 years after a killer choked her girl to death, Virginia Trimble Ritter wanted to see police pics http://t.co/4u8FJGNa9R via @bradschmitt

— Jessica Bliss (@JLBliss) April 27, 2015

Her then-husband, Charlie, convinced her not to see the photos and later asked her, “Don’t you want to remember her running in and out of the house, blond and blue eyed?”

“I told him, ‘Yes, I do. Charlie said, We don’t know what her body’s gonna look like.’ ” Ritter said.

However, after four decades, she is now ready to view her daughter’s crime scene photos and this time, she wasn’t going to let anyone talk her out of it.

“I have never seen a close-up photo and I want to. I’m going to,” she said.

Ritter visited the office of the lead investigator in her daughter’s case, Mickey Miller, and asked if she could see the photos of her daughter. Due to how gruesome the images were, Miller tried to convince her to change her mind, but was unsuccessful – Ritter was determined to see them.

After viewing the horrific images of her raped and murdered daughter, she immediately wanted revenge, saying, “If I had a gun, I’d blow his brains out and enjoy every spurtin’ minute of it.”

“Her mouth was black,” Ritter said. “And her face, her head was swollen. It didn’t look like Marcia. But to see her other parts of her body looked like Marcia.”

Ritter also said her daughter appeared to have vomit covering her body, and she noticed there was blood coming out of her scalp.

Marcia Trimble’s mother is devastated by photos of her body http://t.co/h6GOQ4Xmmd

— Certified (@ayo_RAF) April 27, 2015

Marcia went missing from her home in Nashville, Tennessee, on February 25, 1975. Her clothed body was found 33 days later, about 150 yards from her home. A medical examiner concluded that the 9-year-old girl was raped just before she was strangled to death.

Marcia also suffered a fractured collarbone.

Investigators immediately pointed the finger at a 15-year-old boy who was their neighbor, but the charges were later dropped due to insufficient evidence.

In 2006, — 31 years later after the child was murdered — Nashville police finally made an arrest.

Jerome Sidney Barrett, now the age of 68, — who was living in Memphis — was taken into custody after the blood on Marcia’s clothing matched his DNA. It was later discovered that he had also murdered a Vanderbilt University student, Sarah Vannatta Des Prez, in 1975.

Barrett had been arrested for a slew of charges prior to his arest, including sex charges.

Justice was finally served in 2009 — 33 years after Marcia was raped and murdered — when Barrett was found guilty and convicted of second-degree murder.

A Davidson County judge sentenced Barrett to 44 years in prison.