Six years after Melissa “Katie” Autry was raped and murdered in her Western Kentucky University dorm room, a hearing officer has recommended that her estate be awarded $200,000.

Bowling Green attorney Ben Crocker, representing Autry’s estate, said an officer for the state Board of Claims recommended the maximum amount allowable by state law to the estate, agreeing with claims that WKU failed to follow established security procedures in the incident.

Autry was raped, stabbed and set on fire in her Poland Hall dorm room May 4, 2003. The 18-year-old Pellville native died from her injuries four days later.

Stephen Soules of Scottsville pleaded guilty in 2004 to murder, first-degree rape, first-degree robbery, first-degree sodomy, first-degree arson by complicity, first-degree rape by complicity and first-degree sodomy by complicity.

He is serving a life sentence in prison with no possibility of parole.

Lucas Goodrum, also of Scottsville, was charged in the incident, but acquitted by a jury in Owensboro in 2005.

Autry’s mother, Donnie Autry, her aunt, Virginia White, and sister, Lisa Autry, are listed as co-administrators of the estate in a copy of the recommended order.

Crocker said he was notified Monday of the hearing officer’s recommendation, which had been made May 14.

“We’re obviously very happy to finally get a decision on this case and we felt comfortable all along that, once a fact finder sat down and reviewed the evidence, they would find that the reason Stephen Soules was able to do what he did was because of the negligence at Poland Hall,” Crocker said.

Autry’s estate claimed that the university had not locked the front door to the dorm, failed to monitor the lobby or require Soules, who was not enrolled at WKU, to sign in at the desk registry.

According to a copy of the order, the WKU desk staff manual for housing and residence life from the 2002-03 school year, which was submitted as evidence in the hearing, required the lobby doors to be locked between midnight and 8 a.m., the time period during which Soules entered the dorm.

“Although Soules told police several different stories about whether Autry was present with him when he entered Poland Hall on May 4, 2003, he consistently said that he entered through the front door, which was unlocked,” the ruling states.

Soules did not testify in the hearing.

Greg Stivers, the attorney representing the university, said that he is considering contesting the recommended order.

Allison Todd, the desk clerk at Poland Hall the night of the attack, testified that she had not seen Soules and did not know how he would have obtained access to the building, but she would have seen him if he had entered through the front door.

“The big issue in this case is that the hearing officer seems to have relied on the hearsay statements of Stephen Soules, a convicted murderer and rapist, over the testimony of the desk clerk, who was a straight-A student and model employee,” Stivers said.

The $200,000 award, if approved by the Board of Claims, can be appealed in circuit court.

The wrongful death claim had originally been filed in Warren Circuit Court in 2003.

While the Kentucky Court of Appeals subsequently agreed that the circuit court was the appropriate venue to hear the case, the Kentucky Supreme Court disagreed, deciding in 2007 that neither the university nor Student Life Foundation, which manages the campus dorms, could be included in the suit.

The state Supreme Court ruling placed the suit under the jurisdiction of the Board of Claims.