Missouri Death Row

In the early morning hours of July 12, 2001, police responded to the report of a traffic accident near Stafford.  On their arrival, they found the victim’s car abandoned with the keys in the ignition and the engine running, the headlights and hazard lights on, and the driver’s window down.  Police found the victim’s personal items in the vehicle, including her purse, credit card and medication.

After the evening news broadcast the victim’s disappearance, the owner of a motel near Camdenton recognized the victim’s picture as the woman who checked into a room with Mr. Zink.  The motel owner provided the police with Mr. Zink’s motel registration card, and, using this information, the police apprehended Mr. Zink at his home. After police showed him evidence that placed him near the scene of the abduction, Mr. Zink waived his rights under Miranda v. Arizona,1 and confessed to killing and burying the victim.  He led police straight to the spot in a cemetery where he said he buried the victim’s body, and the police discovered the body positioned just as Mr. Zink had described.  Pathologists found that the victim’s neck was broken, she sustained injuries consistent with strangulation and being tied up, and she had eight broken ribs and between 50 and 100 blunt force injuries.  Semen found in the victim’s anus matched Mr. Zink’s DNA, hair samples taken from Mr. Zink’s truck matched the victim’s hair, and paint left on the victim’s car from the accident matched paint from Mr. Zink’s truck.

In two videotaped confessions, Mr. Zink described the murder in detail.  He said that he rear-ended the victim’s car on an exit ramp.  In one confession, Mr. Zink told police that the victim voluntarily left the accident scene with him in his truck but later threatened to call police if he did not return her to her vehicle.  In another confession, he said that he gave the victim no choice but to get in his truck, but that she willingly went with him after she was in the truck.

After he drove the victim around in his truck, they stayed for a short time at the motel near Camdenton.  Mr. Zink then decided to kill the victim because he was worried he would go back to prison if she called the police.  He took her to the cemetery and tied her to a tree.  He told her to look-up, and then he broke her neck.  He strangled her with his hands, and then with a rope, and stuffed her mouth with mud and leaves.  He looked for a spot to bury her and then dragged her body to that spot with the rope.  Because he was worried that she might revive, he stated that he stabbed the back of her neck with a knife to cut her spinal cord.  He then covered the body with leaves, went home to get a shovel, and came back to the cemetery and covered the body with dirt.

Download Opinion_SC88279 (PDF)

Supreme Court of Missouri, En Banc., June 1, 1999

On November 7, 2008, Carman L. Deck was sentenced for a third time to death for the 1996 fatal shootings of an elderly couple from De Soto. Two previous death sentences for Deck, now 43, had been overturned on appeal. The death sentence was imposed today at Hillsboro by Jefferson County Circuit Judge Gary Kramer, who accepted the recommendation of a jury that heard the arguments for the death penalty in September.

Case Facts: In June 1996, Deck planned a burglary with his mothers boy friend, Jim Boliek, to help Boliek obtain money for a trip to Oklahoma. Deck targeted James and Zelma Long, the victims in this case, because he had known the Longs’ grandson and had accompanied him to the Longs’ home in DeSoto, Missouri, where the grandson had stolen money from a safe. The original plan was to break into the Longs’ home on a Sunday while the Longs were at church. In preparation for the burglary, Deck and Boliek drove to DeSoto several times to canvass the area.

On Monday, July 8, 1996, Boliek told Deck that he and Deck’s mother wanted to leave for Oklahoma on Friday, and he gave Deck his .22 caliber High Standard automatic loading pistol. That Monday evening, Deck and his sister, Tonia Cummings, drove in her car to rural Jefferson County, near DeSoto, and parked on a back road, waiting for nightfall. Around nine o’clock, Deck and Cummings pulled into the Longs’ driveway.

Deck and Cummings knocked on the door and Zelma Long answered. Deck asked for directions to Laguana Palma, whereupon Mrs. Long invited them into the house. As she explained the directions and as Mr. Long wrote them down, Deck walked toward the front door and pulled the pistol from his waistband. He then turned around and ordered the Longs to go lie face down on their bed, and they complied without a struggle.

Next, Deck told Mr. Long to open the safe, but because he did not know the combination, Mrs. Long opened it instead. She gave Deck the papers and jewelry inside and then told Deck she had two hundred dollars in her purse in the kitchen. Deck sent her into the kitchen and she brought the money back to him. Mr. Long then told Deck that a canister on top of the television contained money, so Deck took the canister, as well. Hoping to avoid harm, Mr. Long even offered to write a check.

Deck again ordered the Longs to lie on their stomachs on the bed, with their faces to the side. For ten minutes or so, while the Longs begged for their lives, Deck stood at the foot of the bed trying to decide what to do. Cummings, who bad been a lookout at the front door, decided time was running short and ran out the door to the car. Deck put the gun to Mr. Long’s head and fired twice into his temple, just above his ear and just behind his forehead. Then Deck put the gun to Mrs. Long’s head and shot her twice, once in the back of the head and once above the ear. Both of the Longs died from the gunshots.

After the shooting, Deck grabbed the money and left the house. While fleeing in the car, Cummings complained of stomach pains, so Deck took her to Jefferson Memorial Hospital, where she was admitted. Deck gave her about two hundred fifty dollars of the Lung’s money and then drove back to St. Louis County. Based on a tip from an informant earlier that same day, St. Louis County Police Officer Vince Wood was dispatched to the apartment complex where Deck and Cummings lived. Officer Wood confronted Deck late that night after he observed him driving the car into the apartment parking lot with the headlights turned off. During a search for weapons, Officer Wood found a pistol concealed under the front seat of the car and, then, placed Deck under arrest. Deck later gave a full account of the murders in oral, written and audio taped statements.

Case Facts: On Dec. 3, 2004, a police officer in Jennings, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis, responded to calls from relatives worried that they had not heard from Angela Rowe or her children for several days. The officer went to the home where Rowe lived with her boyfriend, Leonard Taylor.

The officer found the bodies of Rowe, 28, and her three children, daughters: Alexus Conley, 10, and AcQreya Conley, 6; and her son, Tyrese Conley, 5. They had been shot.

Taylor had boarded a Southwest Airlines flight from Lambert International Field to Ontario, Calif., on the morning of Nov. 26, 2004. He claimed the victims were still alive when he left. Witnesses and phone records indicated Taylor had already murdered them before his departure. From California, Taylor had traveled to Texas, Alabama and Kentucky before police and federal marshals caught him in the back of a car in Madisonville.

A speck of blood on one of three pair of Taylor’s specatacles police found in his luggage matched Rowe’s blood, a DNA test later revealed.

Case facts courtesy of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Case Facts: Kirkwood police Sgt. William McEntee was 43, the father of three, and a Kirkwood police officer for nearly 20 years. On the evening of July 5, 2005, McEntee took a call for another officer to the Meacham Park neighborhood over a complaint of fireworks. He was talking to three juveniles when Kevin Johnson walked up to the police car, fired several shots inside it, and then walked away.

Shot in the head and chest, McEntee still managed to get his car in gear and drive it about 200 feet before he crashed into a tree. Some neighbors tried to help the stricken officer, others called police and McEntee managed to get out of the police car. Kevin Johnson returned, fired three more shots and killed him.

Two hours earlier, Johnson’s younger half-brother, Joseph “Bam Bam’ Long collapsed at the house of Johnson’s grandmother. Police and paramedics arrived. “Bam Bam’ was taken to a hospital where he died of a congenital heart condition, an autopsy later revealed. Johnson was upset over his brother’s death. He testified he was in a trance when he shot McEntee.

Case facts courtesy of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Vincent McFadden faces the death penalty in two separate cases.

Case Facts: Todd Franklin had been a witness against two members of McFadden’s gang, the “6 Deuces,’ and they had gone to jail. On the evening of July 3, 2002, in the 6200 block of Lexington Avenue in Pine Lawn, a St. Louis suburb, two young men chased Franklin, 19, to a house where men were working. The suspects were later identified by the witnesses as McFadden and Michael Douglas, now serving a lengthy prison sentence.

Witnesses said Douglas shot Franklin and then McFadden fired shots into the prone body of the victim after McFadden took the handgun from Douglas and complained that Franklin was still alive.

On May 15, 2003, just a few blocks from the scene of Franklin’s death 10 months earlier, Leslie Addison, 18, was fatally shot after an argument with McFadden in which he told her to get out of Pine Lawn. McFadden was the boyfriend of Leslie’s sister, Eva Addison, with whom he had a child.

Eva Addison was hiding in bushes when she saw her sister plead for her life and then saw McFadden shoot her. The victim had been shot under the chin and alongside the head.

Case facts courtesy of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

When Beverly Guenther got off work on Nov. 20, 2003, she was attacked on her employer’s parking lot in Earth City, a light industrial area across the Missouri River from St. Charles. Her assailant stabbed her, raped her, and took her body that night to a wooded area off South Broadway in St. Louis, near Bellerive Park.

Before her death, Guenther, 45, of Moscow Mills, Mo., had filed written statements of domestic violence in Lincoln County against a former boyfriend with whom she had broken up that summer. She wrote that she had been repeatedly harassed by phone and in person by Scott McLaughlin, and at one point, she said, he had jumped out of bushes at her on the Earth City lot. A hearing on her domestic violence allegations was set for Nov. 21, 2003, the morning after her disappeance.

On the night she disappeared, a worried neighbor at her mobile home park called her boss, who called police and they found Guenther’s pickup truck on the parking lot where she worked, along with a trail of blood. Guenther was already dead when her killer raped her, an autopsy showed.

McLaughlin, 33, of Wright City, admitted the murder in audiotaped and videotaped statements to police but never admitted the sexual assault on either an alive or dead victim. He led police to her corpse after his confessions.

Case facts courtesy of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Case Facts: On July 8, 1987, Charles Taylor was supposed to appear in U.S. District Court in St. Louis to testify against Charles Shurn, whom authorities considered an area drug dealer. It never happened.

On the morning of July 6, two men confronted Taylor, 48, outside his home in the Mansion Hills Condominiums in Normandy, a St. Louis suburb; chased him across a putting green and shot him. Witnesses said the pair got into a car but the car stopped and one of its occupants got out and shot Taylor again. The victim was shot six times in the head and once each in the stomach and arm.

Police caught one man, Daryl Shurn, nearby and a second suspect, William Weaver, running in neighboring Pasadena Hills, about a mile from Taylor’s murder. Daryl Shurn is Charles Shurn’s brother. Daryl Shurn is serving a life sentence after his death penalty conviction was set aside.

Authorities said Weaver was a hitman hired by the Shurns to silence a federal witness. Weaver claimed he was out jogging and exercising the morning of his arrest. He was shoeless. Tennis shoes were found at the crime scene.

Case facts courtesy of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Missouri Supreme Court Case Number SC83745

Kenneth Baumruk was sentenced to death, again, and returned to the Potosi Correctional Center at 5:00 p.m. on March 19, 2007.

Case Facts: In May 1992, Kenneth Baumruk came to the St. Louis County courthouse for a hearing in his divorce case. At the time, the courthouse did not have metal detectors in place, and Baumruk was able to bring into the courtroom two loaded .38-caliber guns that he had purchased in the state of Washington, where he was living at the time. At the same time, a security meeting was occurring elsewhere in the courthouse.

While his wife, Mary, was testifying that she wished to waive a conflict of interest involving her attorney, Baumruk stood and shot her in the neck. He then shot Pollard in the chest and his own attorney, Garry Seltzer, in the chest and back. He then put a gun near his wife’s head and shot her again, killing her. He next shot at the judge, who fled through the door behind the bench.

By the time Baumruk was subdued, he had shot nine people, including a bailiff and security guard, in various parts of the courthouse.

Baumruk was shot nine times, including two shots to his head. As he was being handcuffed, he asked two police officers if he had killed his wife. Later, in the emergency room, he told a doctor he had shot Mary because of the divorce. After the shooting, which received much media attention, the county paid to double the number of security guards at the courthouse and to install metal detectors there.

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Hand down from Supreme Court of Missouri: SC88497, State of Missouri, Respondent, vs. Kenneth Baumruk, an appeal from St. Charles County that was argued Wednesday morning, April 30, 2008, and was resubmitted on briefs after additional briefing on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2008.

Overview: A man challenges, on direct appeal, his conviction for first-degree murder and his death sentence for killing his wife during a 1992 hearing in a dissolution proceeding. In a 6-0 decision written by Judge Patricia Breckenridge, the Supreme Court of Missouri affirms the man’s conviction and sentence. Substantial evidence supports the trial court’s findings that the man was competent to stand trial but not able to represent himself. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in using jurors from the county where the case was transferred after a change of venue or in preventing defense counsel from telling potential jurors the specific number of individuals at whom the defendant shot. The trial court did not commit plain error in failing to strike, on its own motion, a certain juror; in allowing a psychiatric expert to rely on a particular conversation as one basis for his conclusion; or in failing to intervene, on its own motion, during the penalty phase closing arguments when the prosecutor made certain statements. Further, the evidence shows the imposition of the death sentence here did not result from passion, prejudice or other arbitrary factor; supports the jury’s findings of 10 statutory factors in aggravation of punishment; and that the sentence is not excessive or disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases.

Case Facts: On August 11, 1998, Williams drove his grandfather’s Buick LeSabre to a bus stop and caught a bus to University City. Once there, he began looking for a house to break into. Williams came across the home of Felicia Gayle. He knocked on the front door but no one answered. Williams then knocked out a window pane near the door, reached in, unlocked the door, and entered Gayle’s home. He went to the second floor and heard water running in the shower. It was Gayle. Williams went back downstairs, rummaged through the kitchen, found a large butcher knife, and waited.

Gayle left the shower and called out, asking if anyone was there. She came down the stairs. Williams attacked, stabbing and cutting Gayle forty-three times, inflicting seven fatal wounds. Afterwards, Williams went to an upstairs bathroom and washed off. He took a jacket and put it on to conceal the blood on his shirt. Before leaving, Williams placed Gayle’s purse and her husband’s laptop computer and black carrying case in his backpack. The purse contained, among other things, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch ruler and a calculator. Williams left out the front door and caught a bus back to the Buick.

After returning to the car, Williams picked up his girlfriend, Laura Asaro. Asaro noticed that, despite the summer heat, Williams was wearing a jacket. When he removed the jacket, Asaro noticed that Williams’ shirt was bloody and that he had scratches on his neck. Williams claimed he had been in a fight. Later in the day, Williams put his bloody clothes in his backpack and threw them into a sewer drain, claiming he no longer wanted them.

Asaro also saw a laptop computer in the car. A day or two after the murder, Williams sold the laptop to Glenn Roberts.

The next day, Asaro went to retrieve some clothes from the trunk of the car. Williams did not want her to look in the trunk and tried to push her away. Before he could, Asaro snatched a purse from the trunk. She looked inside and found Gayle’s Missouri state identification card and a black coin purse. Asaro demanded that Williams explain why he had Gayle’s purse. Williams then confessed that the purse belonged to a woman he had killed. He explained in detail how he went into the kitchen, found a butcher knife, and waited for the woman to get out of the shower. He further explained that when the woman came downstairs from the shower, he stabbed her in the arm and then put his hand over her mouth and stabbed her in the neck, twisting the knife as he went. After relaying the details of the murder, Williams grabbed Asaro by the throat and threatened to kill her, her children and her mother if she told anyone.

On August 31, 1998, Williams was arrested on unrelated charges and incarcerated at the St. Louis City workhouse. From April until June 1999, Williams shared a room with Henry Cole. One evening in May, Cole and Williams were watching television and saw a news report about Gayle’s murder. Shortly after the news report, Williams told Cole that he had committed the crime. Over the next few weeks, Cole and Williams had several conversations about the murder. As he had done with Laura Asaro, Williams went into considerable detail about how he broke into the house and killed Gayle.

After Cole was released from jail in June 1999, he went to the University City police and told them about Williams’ involvement in Gayle’s murder. He reported details of the crime that had never been publicly reported.

In November of 1999, University City police approached Asaro to speak with her about the murder. Asaro told the police that Williams admitted to her that he had killed Gayle. The next day, the police searched the Buick LeSabre and found the Post-Dispatch ruler and calculator belonging to Gayle. The police also recovered the laptop computer from Glenn Roberts. The laptop was identified as the one stolen from Gayle’s residence.

Williams was tried for Gayle’s murder and convicted.

Missouri Supreme Court Case Number: SC86689

Case Facts: A six-year-old girl disappeared in July 2002 from her Valley Park home after Johnny Johnson stayed the night in the home. That morning, Johnson awoke to find the girl standing near the couch on which he had been sleeping. He took the girl, still in her nightgown, to an abandoned glass factory nearby that is surrounded by wooded areas and a series of trails. He took the girl into a pit with walls more than 6 feet high, exposed himself, tore off the girl’s underwear and forced her to the ground. He attempted to rape her and then hit her in the head with a brick multiple times. Eventually, he knocked her to the ground and fractured the right side of her skull. Because she still was moving, Johnson lifted a basketball-sized boulder and brought it down on the girl’s head and neck. She stopped breathing soon after. Johnson buried the girl with rocks, leaves and debris from the pit, then went to the nearby Meramec River to wash blood and other evidence from his body. Police found Johnson and took him to the police station, where he was identified by a witness who had seen him carrying the girl earlier in the morning. He signed a waiver form after being advised of his rights and told police he wanted to make a statement.

After several hours of denying seeing or being with the girl that morning, Johnson ultimately told police the girl was in the old glass factory and that she had died in an accident. Before police were able to find the girl’s body, a private citizen who had joined the search for the girl chanced upon her body in the pit. A detective who investigated the scene told Johnson he did not believe the girl’s death was an accident. Johnson told the detective that he had exposed himself to the girl and had pulled down her underwear and killed her only after they both began “freaking out.” He did not admit that he intended to take the girl, rape her or kill her before entering the pit. Around 11:30 that night, while Johnson was awaiting booking, he began discussing the Bible and eternal salvation with another police detective. Johnson admitted he had not been completely honest to that point, returned to police headquarters, again waived his rights, and made verbal and audiotaped statements in which he admitted that he intended to take the girl to have sex with her and then kill her. An autopsy showed the girl died from blunt force injuries to her head.

At trial, Johnson did not deny killing the girl but disputed that he deliberated before doing so. He also presented a diminished capacity defense asserting that he could not deliberate because of schizo-affective disorder that caused command hallucinations telling him to rape and kill the girl. The jury convicted Johnson of first-degree murder, armed criminal action, kidnapping and attempted forcible rape. It recommended a sentence of death for the murder conviction, finding all three statutory aggravating factors presented by the state. It recommended life sentences for the remaining convictions. In accord with the jury’s recommendations, the court sentenced Johnson to death for the murder and, as a persistent offender, to consecutive life sentences for the other crimes.

This summary is not part of the opinion of the Court (11/7/06). It has been prepared by the Communications Counsel for the convenience of the reader. It has been neither reviewed nor approved by the Supreme Court and should not be quoted or cited. The opinion of the Court, which may be quoted, follows the summary.