News

Man Killer

Continued from page 3

At her trial Hughes testified that when he asked Patty about her affairs, she told him, "My fire burns hotter than most."

Patty insists she would never say anything that stupid.

The trial began on April 16, 1985, in Sedalia. More than 100 people from Holden, mostly Patty's family and friends, along with Bill Prewitt's relatives, packed the small courtroom. One juror remembers Patty appearing stoic as the soap opera unfolded.

Jon Hancock, the son of the mayor who called himself Boss Hogg, testified he and Patty had an affair in 1978 and that she told him she wished Bill would die in a car accident. According to Hancock, she also said she knew where his rifle was and talked about killing Bill in his sleep.

Patty says she may have said something like, "Bill makes me so mad; I wish he'd just keel over and die." But she insists she was never serious.

"If I had a nickel for every man or woman who's having an affair and said something along the lines of, 'I wish someone would shoot that SOB,' I'd be a wealthy and retired lawyer," says Phil Cardarella, the Kansas City attorney Patty retained for her defense.

Hancock wasn't the only one who claimed that Patty wanted Bill dead.

Mike Brown, a former lumberyard employee, told police in the days following the murder that Patty offered him money to kill her husband. But eight months later, in a signed statement, Brown said Deputy Hughes threatened to throw him in jail if he did not cooperate with police. He also said that Bill was present whenever Patty made jokes about having her husband killed.

Brown was not called to testify at Patty's trial. But his friend, Richard Hayes, told jurors that he and Patty had sex three times in 1978. On two occasions, he said, her kids were home, leading prosecutor Tom Williams to say Patty had "neglected her children."

Hayes told officers shortly after the murder that Patty offered to buy him a lumber company if Hayes "got rid" of Bill. Two months later Hayes signed a far more detailed statement prepared by police. In it, he claimed that Patty told him Bill beat her and that his life insurance "would make her a wealthy woman."

Patty insists that she never asked anyone to kill her husband but concedes she told her lovers that Bill beat her so "they wouldn't think badly of me."

At the trial, Hayes admitted that an assault charge was pending against him when he made statements to police. Shortly after, the charges were dropped.

On the stand, Ricky Mitts, the hippie who lived down the street from the Prewitts, said Patty feared losing custody of the kids if she asked for a divorce. He also said Patty claimed Bill beat her, but he doubted it was true. "Bill was one of the kindest people I ever met," Mitts says in a recent phone interview from his home in Grandview, Missouri.

When police interviewed Mitts after Bill's death, he told them he had visited the Prewitt house three weeks earlier. He also admitted he had shot Bill's semi-automatic rifle in the past. But he denied having an affair with Patty or that she had ever asked him to kill her husband.

A week later, Mitts says, he contacted police to tell them Patty had offered him $10,000 to kill Bill. "I had become a believer in Christ and [felt] convicted" about the need to tell the truth, he says.

But shortly after giving a statement to police, Mitts approached Patty and offered to divorce his wife and marry her. He thought that husbands could not legally be forced to testify against their wives.

"If I've ever wanted to commit murder, it was at that moment," Patty says during a prison interview.

Mitts says he was in love with Patty when he offered to marry her, even though he had just told police she wanted to kill her husband. "She was beautiful," he says. "I would have done anything for her but kill Bill."

Prosecutor Williams told jurors Patty finally grew tired of waiting for someone else to kill her husband and decided to do it herself.

"Her motive is clear," Williams argued. "Lust. Her fire burns hotter than most people's. And greed. With the insurance money, she would be free and independent."

Williams explained to the jury that the Prewitts were behind on Bill's life-insurance payments and that the grace period on both policies expired February 18, the day Bill was killed.

But when payments were missed, the whole-life policy remained in effect because the insurance company drew from the $14,000 in principal the Prewitts had already paid. The other policy would have been reinstated when the Prewitts made their monthly payment of $12. The two policies totaled $93,000. Patty testified that the couple's debts to banks, vendors and family members exceeded $170,000.

"Bill and I were civilized adults," Patty writes in a recent letter to the RFT. "We were not the kind of people who kill people for any reason. Divorce is the option civilized people use. Good Lord!"

Four days after Bill's death, officers used a magnet to recover the rifle from a pond 500 feet from the Prewitts' front door.

When deputies drained the mud and water from the pond, they found two footprints on the edge of the bank and another within one foot of the rifle. The prints matched the bottom of Patty's red rubber boots, which had been sitting outside the front door.

According to the state's theory, Patty ran through the thunderstorm to the pond and threw in the rifle. Williams argued that the gun stuck in the mud, "like a dart sticking straight up out of the water."

Williams said Patty waded into the water and pushed the rifle down. The shiny red boots were caked with an inch of mud when police presented them at a preliminary hearing.

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
Next Page »