CBS News
November 19, 2009
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/18/crimesider/entry5700716.shtml
LEXINGTON, Mo. (CBS/AP) Three alleged victims of what police call a horrible series of familial Missouri sex crimes, say one of the attackers forced them to help stab a man to death and bury him, according to court documents.
A search warrant, filed Nov. 9, but released to The Associated Press on Tuesday, stated three of the alleged child victims observed "several murders" and were forced to help kill and bury a man in April 1988.
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| Burrell E. Mohler Jr., in mug shot. |
The warrant said one of the accused, Burrell E. Mohler Jr., and the children followed a large man from a shopping center in Independence, Mo., 20 minutes outside of Kansas City, to his home. They parked outside, and then the children lured the man over to their car by telling him that their father was having a heart attack. When the man leaned over to help, Mohler Jr. allegedly "wrapped his arms around the victim's neck" and subdued him, the warrant said.
Mohler Jr. then drove the man 20 miles east to his father's property in Bates City, according to the warrant. Then Mohler gave knives to the three children and ordered them to attack the man and stab him.
One of the children then jumped on the man's back and stabbed him, but it was a stab wound from the adult that actually killed the victim, the warrant said. The children were then allegedly forced to help dig a grave for the man and bury him.
The warrant offers no details about the stabbing victim or why he was targeted. Independence police say their department had no information about a person disappearing in April 1988 after driving away from an Independence mall. Nothing in the warrant suggests where the man lived.
The Highway Patrol's online "missing adults" Web site lists only one active case from 1988, involving a man reported missing Dec. 11 of that year from the eastern Missouri town of Union about 200 miles to the east.
Authorities also have not provided additional details about the alleged stabbing and have declined to say what has been found on the property in Bates City.
Authorities said they are taking all the accusations seriously, but they insist their focus is on the sexual abuse case and refuse to comment on the murder allegation. "We are focusing on the sex crimes investigation," said Highway Patrol Sgt. Collin Stosberg.
Six members of the Mohler family from rural Missouri are accused of a decades-old series of sex crimes against young children who lived nearby. Their alleged victims have now come forward to accuse them of crimes including rape, sodomy, bestiality and other horrors.
Police say the victims claim the Mohlers told them to write down their bad memories and bury them in glass jars. Police searches have yet to recover the jars. Police say they are also searching for bodies on a Mohler property, but have so far not recovered anything.
Relatives of the Mohlers have said they don't believe the allegations against them.
Thus far, 29 charges have been filed accusing Mohler Sr., 77, of Independence, of rape, sodomy and the use of a child in a sexual performance, and accusing his four sons, Mohler Jr., 53, of Independence; Jared Leroy Mohler, 48, of Columbia; Roland Neil Mohler, 47, of Bates City; and David A. Mohler, 52, of Lamoni, Iowa, of rape.
The sixth suspect, Darrel W. Mohler, 72, was being held in Florida on two counts of rape from 1986. He has agreed to be extradited to Missouri.
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