3 charged in baseball bat beating death

updated 3:40 p.m. ET June 12, 2007

LEBANON, Mo. - Two brothers and a woman were charged with murder Tuesday in the death of a teenager whose skull was fractured by a baseball bat during a nighttime beating in a city park.

Police said the fight was over text messages sent to the girlfriend of one of the defendants.

Jerry Broyles and Terry Dunkin are charged with first-degree murder and Kimberly Dunkin, Terry's wife, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of 17-year-old Zachary Jones, Laclede County prosecutors said.

Broyles, 25, and Terry Dunkin, 32, have the same mother, police said in a probable cause statement. Police did not immediately respond Tuesday to calls seeking additional comment.

Jones died Monday from multiple skull fractures, authorities said.

Police said Jones and Matthew Bankston had been sending text messages to a girlfriend of Broyles and arranged a meeting at the park Sunday night with Broyles and several others.

Broyles and his brother hit the two younger men with bats and a metal rod, according to the probable cause statement.

Bankston was hospitalized in critical but stable condition.

Broyles and Terry Dunkin were denied bail. Kimberly Dunkin, 36, remained in jail in lieu of $250,000 bail.

It was not immediately clear whether the three had attorneys.

It was the second killing this year in Lebanon, a manufacturing town of about 13,000 people in southern Missouri. The town had no murders last year.

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