Questions remain in Missouri farm murder

updated 1:51 p.m. ET Aug. 2, 2009

CHILLICOTHE, Mo. - It's been almost 20 years since the crime — a farm wife shot to death in her bed, her husband critically wounded.

Fourteen years have passed since the conviction of a neighbor who was just 16 at the time of the attack. After that decision was overturned, Mark Woodworth was convicted again of murder. That was a decade ago now — and still folks in this farming community believe the wrong man is in prison.

For teachers, doctors, politicians, farmers — even for the sheriff — there's just too much room for doubt.

"I have concerns about this entire case," said Livingston County Sheriff Steve Cox, who took office in 2000 after defeating the former chief deputy who was in charge of the Woodworth investigation. "I wish I could find a clear-cut piece of evidence supporting either innocence or guilt."

Doubts not misplaced
A five-month examination of the case by The Associated Press suggests the doubts about who killed Catherine Robertson are not misplaced.

Evidence pointing to other possible suspects — a mystery fingerprint, the reported sighting of a suspicious vehicle — was discounted or not fully explored by investigators. Motives ascribed to Woodworth had little support, or none at all. A prosecutor suddenly dropped out of the case, to be replaced by an ambitious special prosecutor who would be accused of misconduct in another case, in which a convicted youth had to be released after years in prison.

Even jurors expressed doubts. Soon after Woodworth was sentenced to four consecutive life terms plus 15 years, members of the jury told the judge they'd been wrong and had given in to pressure. But their plea for reconsideration was silenced.

Woodworth insists he's innocent. Among those who agree is Phil Thompson, a former Missouri state trooper and police officer.

"In the 40 or so years I was involved in law enforcement," said Thompson, who worked as an investigator for Woodworth's defense, "there were only a handful of times I felt that justice wasn't done. And this was one of them."

Asleep in their bedroom
Cathy and Lyndel Robertson were asleep in their bedroom when the shooting started, just before midnight on Nov. 13, 1990.

The 41-year-old mother of five, shot twice in the head and chest, was dead. Her husband survived bullet wounds to his mouth, cheek, neck and shoulder.

Claude Woodworth, Mark's father, was one of the first to arrive at the hospital to check on his farming partner. They had moved together to Missouri in 1974 after attending high school near Quincy, Ill.

According to the elder Woodworth and several others, Robertson identified his oldest daughter's boyfriend as the likely shooter.

Brandon Thomure denied any involvement, but Robertson had ample reason to suspect him. The 16-year-old had punched Rochelle Robertson and vandalized her car, according to investigative reports. One friend told investigators that Thomure threatened his girlfriend with a gun. Another reported witnessing Thomure grabbing Rochelle Robertson's neck and vowing to choke her to death.

Rochelle Robertson learned she was pregnant just before her mother's death. She agreed to an abortion but worried about her parents' reaction. They already wanted the two to break up.

Rochelle obtained a restraining order after the shooting. "He has struck me in the past, and has made frequent harassing telephone phone calls to me since Nov. 1," she wrote in the Nov. 21 court petition. "He may have murdered my mother and attempted to kill my father."

At first, the 30-plus law officers from across north Missouri who descended upon Chillicothe focused on Thomure.

Too much time elapsed
They swabbed his hands for gunpowder residue, and the test came back positive — though prosecutors would later minimize this evidence, saying too much time elapsed before the test.

Thomure had an alibi: He said he was asleep at home in Independence, 90 miles away. He had no car and usually relied on Rochelle for rides. His mother, stepfather and younger sister vouched for him.

Rochelle said she talked with him on the phone at about 10 p.m. after leaving work. But Thomure testified that he didn't wake up for any reason after going to bed hours earlier, and neither he nor his family members mentioned that phone call at trial or in interviews with investigators before Woodworth was charged.

Investigative records reviewed by the AP show that two women reported Thomure stashed a duffel bag in their car trunks while staying at their Chillicothe apartment after the Robertson shootings. Investigators found four .22-caliber shell casings, the type of ammunition used in the shooting, in one car, whose owner said they "might have come from her boyfriend's gun." But no record in the file shows the boyfriend was interviewed or that Thomure was asked about the bag. Thomure told the AP that the bag contained his clothing.

He also called irrelevant four instances when judges granted protection orders against him to a roommate, cousin, wife and ex-girlfriend, between 1994 and this year.

In a brief AP interview, Lyndel Robertson said he never identified Thomure as the shooter. "I said it could have been him," he said. (In fact, a state appeals court in 1997 overturned Woodworth's first conviction, saying jurors should hear that Robertson had named Thomure as a suspect.)

"I never did it," said Thomure, who now works as a mixed martial arts promoter and commodities broker in Lake of the Ozarks. "They made a judgment in that courtroom. Not once but twice. I told them everything I knew."

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