State v. Danforth

• Decision Date: 29 March 1983
• Docket Number: No. WD,WD
• Citation: 654 S.W.2d 912
• Parties: STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. Loretta Ollison DANFORTH, Appellant. 32799.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

Page 912

654 S.W.2d 912

STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. Loretta Ollison DANFORTH, Appellant.

No. WD 32799.

Missouri Court of Appeals Western District.

March 29, 1983.

As Modified June 28, 1983.

Application to Transfer Denied

Aug. 16, 1983.

John C. Milholland (argued), Cenobio Lozano, Jr., Harrisonville, for appellant.

Theodore A. Bruce (argued), Asst. Atty. Gen., John Ashcroft, Atty. Gen., Jefferson City, for respondent.

Before NUGENT, P.J., and TURNAGE and LOWENSTEIN, JJ.

NUGENT, Presiding Judge.

Defendant was convicted by a jury of conspiracy to commit capital murder, § 564.016, ¹ and was sentenced to ten years imprisonment. On appeal, she contends that § 564.016 is unconstitutionally vague, that the statute does not make conspiracy to commit capital murder a crime, that much of the state's evidence was hearsay and inadmissible, and that the jury instructions were erroneous. We affirm.

On August 22, 1980, the decaying body of Dr. Duncan Danforth, a wealthy 75-year-old retiree, was found fifteen feet off a rural road between Greenview and Climax Springs, in Camden County, Missouri. Dr. Danforth had been shot in the head and chest, and had died from the head wound. He had last been seen on the night of August 17, 1980, just four days after marrying the 22-year-old defendant and revising his will to make her a beneficiary of his estate.

On October 7, 1980, the defendant was charged by information with conspiracy to commit capital murder. The information named Jack Pearcy, Harrison D. Williams and Mike Stith as her co-conspirators.

The facts surrounding the alleged conspiracy to murder Dr. Danforth are both complex and disputed. We begin our recitation of the facts, then, by noting the rule that where the evidence conflicts in a criminal case, the jury's findings are conclusive. State v. Johnson, 55 S.W.2d 967 (Mo.1932). We may neither weigh the evidence nor determine the credibility of witnesses. State v. Williams, 376 S.W.2d 133 (Mo.1964). The jury's determination of the facts based on conflicting testimony must be accepted by this court. State v. Keck, 389 S.W.2d 816 (Mo.1965).

The facts of this case, consistent with the jury's verdict, are as follows. In July, 1979 Loretta Danforth (then Loretta Ollison) met Mike Stith and began dating him later that year. Mr. Stith moved in with the defendant and her mother, and continued to live in their home through the events of August, 1980. Defendant was observed by Mr. Stith's aunt as late as August 17, 1980, sitting on his lap and "showing affection" for him.

In early August, 1980 Mr. Stith called Harrison Williams and told him he was looking for someone to "rough up" an "old man that was givin' him a hard time." Mr. Williams asked his friend Jack Pearcy to help in this endeavor, and the two men met Mr. Stith on the morning of Tuesday, August 12, to discuss the plan. At that meeting, Mr. Stith had with him a female companion to whom he referred as his girlfriend, identified at trial by Mr. Pearcy as the defendant, who waited in the car while the three men conversed. Mr. Stith gave the men an envelope containing $1500, a map to the Breckenridge Inn in Kansas City, Missouri, a photograph of Dr. Danforth, and a photograph of the doctor's car. For the first time, he informed the men he "wanted the old man killed," and he wanted it done that night. Mr. Pearcy and Mr. Williams said it could not be done that soon and that more money ($4,000 altogether) would be required if murder were involved. Mr. Stith then said that since Mr. Pearcy and Mr. Williams couldn't be there on Tuesday night, "they would make plans" to go to the Breckenridge Inn in Kansas City the next night, August 13, where the defendant and Dr. Danforth would be honeymooning. The defendant would send her husband out to the parking lot of the hotel at 9:00 p.m., and the men would kill him at that time.

The next day, August 13, Dr. Danforth and the defendant were married. They immediately went to the office of the doctor's attorney to revise his will before continuing on to the Breckenridge Inn where Mr. Pearcy and Mr. Williams were waiting in the parking lot. What followed was a macabre comedy of errors.

As had been arranged, the doctor emerged from the building, not once but twice. Rather than kill him, the two men decided that the many windows in the hotel, the people in the area, and the well-lighted parking lot made the plan unworkable. After Dr. Danforth's second trip outside, the two went to the hotel lounge, saw the defendant, and informed her that they could not do it as planned. She told them the murder had to be done that night before she had to go to bed with her husband, that Mr. Stith needed money and that this was the only way he could get it. Twice more, Dr. Danforth visited the parking lot and twice more the two men decided the plan was unwise. Once again, they talked with the defendant who told them she would drive with her husband to a nearby McDonald's restaurant and leave him in the car with the keys in the ignition. The men were to jump in the car, kill him and drive away, being careful not to get blood on the car which would soon be the defendant's. They agreed and followed the couple to McDonald's. Again, they decided too many people were around. Mr. Pearcy talked with the defendant inside the restaurant and told her they could not kill her husband there. She suggested that the two sneak into the hotel room and kill him with his own gun when the couple returned. Mr. Pearcy and Mr. Williams got as far as the hotel room door, decided that a shot would be heard throughout the hotel, and abandoned the plan. Again, they met with Mrs. Danforth, driving around with her while the three of them "came up with the idea" of killing the doctor the next day. During the drive home on August 14, Mrs. Danforth was to persuade her husband to stop the car along the highway, giving Mr. Pearcy the opportunity to force his way into the car and kill him. The two men thought better of the idea in the morning.

On Friday, August 15, the men met once again with Mike Stith, who drove them to the Ollison residence (the home of Loretta Danforth and her mother). ² Dr. Danforth was expected there for dinner that evening, and the two were to attack him at the front gate. Mr. Stith then drove the men to an old road, Kolb Hollow Road, and showed them where they could dispose of the body. That night, the two men decided that the plan was bad, and Mr. Pearcy decided to stand along Kolb Hollow Road and shoot the doctor as he drove by. However, when the opportunity came to shoot Dr. Danforth, Mr. Pearcy did not do so because the night was too dark and he didn't want to shoot "nobody that he wasn't supposed to."

On the following day, August 16, Mr. Stith showed Mr. Pearcy and Mr. Williams a rifle which they could use to kill the doctor. He also showed them where the doctor lived and informed them that the only other person who lived along the drive was a senile old woman who would pose no problems. When the two drove down the road later, however, they ran into the woman, Mrs. Vivian Scott, who asked them what they were doing, told them to leave, and wrote down their license plate number. Discouraged at last, Mr. Pearcy and Mr. Williams decided to give up and return to their homes in Olathe.

On August 17, Mrs. Danforth drove Mr. Stith to an aunt's home in Eldon, Missouri, where the two were observed displaying their affection for each other. Later that day, another of Mr. Stith's aunts, Angela Knoll, gave him a ride back to Climax Springs, during which he asked her if she would provide him with an alibi. Once they reached Climax Springs, he had her drive past the Ollison residence, let him out, drive through town and return to pick him up. On her return to where she had left him, a gray truck passed by, driven by an old man. Mr. Stith ducked down in his seat and told her this was the man he had been waiting for. As requested, Mrs. Knoll then drove him further down the road and let him out.

Dr. Danforth visited his wife at the Ollison home at 9:00 that evening to discuss her move to his ranch, and left thirty minutes later. He was not seen alive again.

At trial, the key state witnesses were Jack Pearcy and Harrison Williams, ³ whose versions of the events of August 12-16 were substantially the same. Much of their testimony consisted of the description of conversations and activities with Mr. Stith and with the defendant. Defense counsel apparently objected to the admission of this testimony as hearsay in a pretrial motion (although none appears in the transcript or record), but the court admitted the evidence on the condition that the state would later show independent evidence of the defendant's involvement in the conspiracy.

The testimony of the two fellow conspirators did differ on the question of intent to commit murder. Numerous comments by Mr. Williams indicated that he had intended to kill Dr. Danforth. As to the plan to stop the Danforth car on the way home from the Breckenridge Inn, he admitted that "we'd come up with the idea" of having the car pull over so that Mr. Pearcy could kill the doctor. In response to the question by defense counsel, "You never really intended on killing the doctor that day [at the hotel] did you?", he responded ambiguously, "I wasn't, no." But when asked, "You and Pearcy figured this whole thing out to be a scam on Mike [Stith], didn't you?", he said simply, "No." Later, although he testified that as time went by, he thought Jack Pearcy was losing his ability to do the job, he said that he was "always serious about it." He testified freely and casually as to his intent with such comments as, "After we'd killed him I'm sure we would have checked his pockets."

Mr. Pearcy, by contrast, when asked "Were you going to kill him?", replied, "No". He testified that he and Mr. Williams had talked about killing the doctor and "decided it'd be foolish." In response to...