Platte County was preparing second capital trial
By GLENN E. RICE
The Kansas City Star
Convicted killer Wayne DuMond (left) could have faced capital murder charges in another death, Platte County authorities said Thursday, but he died in prison while they were building the case.
DuMond, who was a suspect in the June 2001 homicide of Sara Andrasek in Platte County, was found dead Wednesday in the Crossroads Correctional Center in Cameron, Mo.
DuMond, 55, was serving a life term in prison in the murder of a Parkville woman, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections.
Andrasek, 23, was found murdered on June 21, 2001, in the apartment she shared with her husband at the Kelly Crossings, near Interstate 29 and Barry Road. She had learned only days earlier that she was pregnant with her first child, officials said publicly for the first time Thursday.
Platte County Prosecutor Eric Zahnd said although his office had not filed criminal charges against DuMond, material from a latex glove and a three-inch piece of rope found in the bathtub drain linked DuMond to the slaying. There also was DNA evidence, but it gave a match of only 1 in 224,000, Zahnd said.
DuMond was in prison for the murder of Carol Shields. In that case, Zahnd said, the DNA evidence gave a match of 1 in 470 billion.
Zahnd said his office would have sought the death penalty in Andrasek’s rape and strangulation.
“Wayne DuMond did not live long enough to face justice for all of his crimes,” Zahnd said at a news conference. “His untimely death cut short his prosecution. Had this man lived, he eventually would have been called to account for these crimes.”
A Clay County jury convicted DuMond in 2003 of suffocating Shields, 39, on Sept. 20, 2000, and leaving her bound in an apartment at 7918 N. Holly St. in Kansas City, North.
On Thursday, Zahnd said his office had spent the last three years developing their case against DuMond in Andrasek’s death. As recently as Aug. 26, witnesses were being interviewed again.
Zahnd said Andrasek’s murder was similar to that of Shields.
The women were killed in Northland apartments near each other. Their clothes were missing. Both women had been tied up, but the materials used to bind them were missing when police arrived. Medical examiners found evidence of possible sexual assault in both cases.
DuMond was arrested June 22, 2001, after police received a report from authorities in Arkansas that material under Shields’ fingernails matched his DNA in an FBI database.
He had moved to Smithville in August 2000 after he married a woman who was part of a local church group that had visited him in prison in Arkansas.
DuMond had been paroled after serving 13 years for the 1984 rape of a Forrest City, Ark., teenager who was a distant relative of former President Bill Clinton. He was awaiting trial in that case when he said someone castrated him in 1985 in his Arkansas home.
Janet Williams, the mother of Andrasek, said she and her family had wished the criminal case against DuMond had been brought before a jury.
“He violated her; he murdered her,” Williams said. “Her last moments were filled with fear and pain.”
To reach Glenn E. Rice, call (816) 234-5908 or send e-mail to grice@kcstar.com.
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