SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — A above average academy football drillmaster was begin accusable on Thursday of abduction a 10-year-old babe from a quiet Missouri adjacency in advanced of abashed assemblage and again raping and killing her.
Jurors bedevilled Craig Wood of first-degree annihilation in the February 2014 afterlife of Hailey Owens. Jurors will apprehend added arguments afore chief whether to acclaim the afterlife sentence.
Wood's attorney, Patrick Berrigan, didn't altercation that Wood dead Hailey, but arguable that Wood didn't advised first, as prosecutors allege. Berrigan declared the abduction as impulsive, adage Wood had "no beard whatsoever." Berrigan abhorrent long-suppressed animal urges and methamphetamine.
During the trial, attestant Carlos Edwards testified he was raking leaves aback he saw Wood drive accomplished his Springfield home several times afore stopping, allurement Hailey for administration and again affairs the fourth-grader into his auto truck. Edwards said he took off active but a arising canal at the bend of his backyard chock-full him from accepting to the truck.
His wife alleged 911 and appear the truck's authorization plate, which led badge to Wood's home. Hailey's anatomy was begin in a accumulator alembic in his basement. The babe had been attempt in the aback of her arch from abutting range, according to Greene County Prosecutor Dan Patterson.
Dr. Carl Stacy, the argumentative pathologist who oversaw Hailey's autopsy, testified that marks on Hailey's accoutrements adumbrated she was disturbing adjoin some blazon of actual acclimated to bind her. A few jurors wiped abroad tears afterwards they were apparent pictures of Hailey's body.
Patterson said badge begin girls' accouterment in a band capital debris bin abreast Wood's home. Surveillance footage showed Wood affairs achromatize and cesspool cleaner at a Walmart. Patterson said Wood's clothes and bedding were begin at a beard abreast Missouri State University.
Berrigan, Wood's attorney, acclaimed that badge begin handwritten belief in Wood's bedchamber chiffonier about animal fantasies, two of them involving 13-year-old girls. Badge additionally begin four pictures of adolescent girls who abounding the academy area Wood formed as an in-school abeyance supervisor.
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