Not-guilty plea in Missouri incest case

The Missouri man's wife has an arraignment scheduled for next week.
Associated Press

HARRISONVILLE, Mo. - A man accused of fathering four children with his teenage daughter was arraigned Monday on second-degree murder, child endangerment and other charges involving three of the children.

The 47-year-old man was ordered to remain in custody on a $500,000 bond during a brief hearing in Cass County Circuit Court. The man agreed to a not guilty plea that the judge entered on his behalf, but was quiet beside that.

Judge Jacqueline Cook set a case review hearing for April 20.

Janeal Matheson, the man's public defender, also did not speak during the hearing. She did not return a phone call from the Associated Press for comment Monday.

The AP is withholding the man's name to protect the identity of the daughter, an alleged sexual assault victim.

Prosecutors believe the defendant impregnated his daughter four times and had been having sex with her since she was 13. The daughter is now 19 and only one of the four children she birthed is still alive. The father is charged in one of their deaths.

The bodies of two of the babies were found in January in coolers on rural property where the family had lived near Harrisonville, a town of about 9,000 people about 40 miles south of Kansas City. The second-degree murder charge against the father is related to the death of an infant boy found in one of the coolers.

The child, born in November 2006, showed symptoms of pneumonia before dying in February 2007. Prosecutors allege that the defendant failed to get medical help for the baby and later left his remains in the cooler.

No charges have been filed in the death of the infant found in the other cooler.

Late last month, the body of a third infant was recovered in a wooden box in a shallow grave near Dustin, in eastern Oklahoma, where the family also apparently lived for a short time. Family members traveled from Missouri to Oklahoma to help authorities find the unmarked grave.

Oklahoma officials haven't filed any charges in that child's death, but they continue to investigate.

Prosecutors in Missouri have said the one surviving child, a 3-year-old boy born in August 2005, is in state custody.

The man faces a total of eight felonies: one count each of second-degree murder and statutory rape, and two counts each of endangering the welfare of a child, incest and accessory abandonment of a corpse.

If convicted of all the charges, he could be sentenced to life in prison plus 37 years.

His wife, also 47, has an arraignment scheduled for March 23 in Cass County. She is charged with two counts of endangering the welfare of a child and one count of hindering prosecution. She is free on $10,000 bond.