Town note
The earliest evidence of ancient people in the area was excavated from the Fenton Mounds, two conical earthen burial mounds near the south-western border of Fenton.
about 0:04:27The story
Cheryl had moved in with Bob Hayes, whom she married the day after her last alimony cheque. Hayes was a heavy drinker who beat the boy, dragged him by the ear in front of neighbours and, according to relatives, gave him beer from the age of two.
They settled on a trailer belonging to a man they had heard called a 'voodoo man', rumoured to have owned hotels and to keep a lot of money. The other two walked to a neighbouring trailer park and found a back window ajar. The resident was not the voodoo man but Shirley Ann Crook, a 46-year-old truck driver whose husband Steve was away on the road.
The light woke her. They forced her to the floor. Then they walked her out, put her in the back of her own 1988 Ford Aerostar and drove to Castlewood State Park in St Louis County. As they took her out she had worked her hands free and torn away some of the tape, so they tied her again with her purse strap, her bathrobe belt, a towel from the van and electrical wire found on the trestle, hogtied her, covered her head with the towel and taped it down. She drowned. They threw her purse into the woods, drove the van back to a trailer park across from hers and went home with six dollars.
That evening Steve Crook came home, found damage in the house and the poodle taped up on the bedroom floor, and reported his wife missing. The next day four fishermen found her body floating three-quarters of a mile downstream; she was identified by her fingerprints. The medical examiner counted 29 bruises and four fractured ribs and gave drowning as the cause of death.
In 2005 the US Supreme Court went further and barred the death penalty for all offenders who were under 18 when they committed their crimes, the ruling that began with this case.