Murders Missouri

A philandering husband accused of giving the AIDS virus to four girlfriends was killed when someone shot him in the back of the head two weeks before he was to go on trial in one of those cases. "This was not a robbery; it was an execution," said Sgt. Andre Hill, a homicide detective. Robert Warren, 24, was working in a friend's backyard Thursday afternoon when he was shot once at the base of the head and once in the right shoulder, police said.

A homosexual man convicted of brutally murdering a teenage boy was put to death despite claims that anti-gay bias led to the execution. Stanley Dewaine Lingar, 37, died of a lethal dose of chemicals at the Potosi Correctional Center as about 40 demonstrators protested outside the prison, said prison spokesman Tim Kniest. Lingar was sentenced to die for the January 1985 murder of 16-year-old Thomas Allen.

Convicted murderer Mark Woodworth, 22, will await his new trial at home with his family, thanks to friends, who raised the $500,000 for his bond through hog roasts and bake sales. People in Chillicothe, a northwest Missouri community of 9,000, have been holding fund-raisers since February, when the Missouri Court of Appeals ordered a new trial for Woodworth. Many believe he is innocent.

A Kansas City, Mo., man was charged with second-degree murder, robbery, child abuse and kidnapping in the death of a 6-year-old dragged outside of his mother's allegedly stolen car. Kim L. Davis, 34, was jailed without bail. The family of the boy, Jake D. Robel of Blue Springs, released a statement: "We love him, miss him and will always keep his spirit with us. We want to take this opportunity to extend thanks and appreciation to the people who ended this tragedy."

In this city, like so many others, violent death among inner-city youth has become so routine that people hardly notice any more. But, since May, City Councilwoman Carol Coe and a handful of civic leaders have laid a plan to engage the machinery of law enforcement, social services and media saturation to prove it doesn't have to be that way. They have resolved to make August a month without murders. It's a tall order.

Three teenagers who had hoped to get on the national news by taking over their boarding school at gunpoint killed a classmate because they thought he would stand in their way, an investigator says. Will Futrelle, 16, of Boca Raton, Fla., was found dead Monday in the woods at the 160-acre Mountain Park Baptist Academy, a school in the Ozarks for troubled youngsters. He had been beaten and his throat had been slashed. Anthony Gene Rutherford, 18, of Siloam Springs, Ark.

Prosecutors say they are outraged over a judge's decision to put a man on probation after he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the shaking death of his baby son. Eric J. Coffey, 21, said he shook his 3-month-old son in frustration because the boy would not quit crying. On Tuesday, state Judge Jack Gant sentenced Coffey to the probation and ordered him to attend classes on anger control and parenting.

A Granada Hills teenager was convicted of first-degree murder Thursday for killing a classmate at a Baptist boarding school for troubled youths in Missouri. Joseph Stanley Burris, 16, was the second teenager to stand trial in the March 25, 1996, slaying of William Futrelle, 16, of Boca Raton, Fla., at the Mountain Park Baptist Church and Boarding Academy in the town of Patterson, about 110 miles south of St. Louis.

Pandemonium erupted Monday when a man fatally shot an aerobics instructor, then fired at her class of 20 or so women at a suburban St. Louis fitness center. Laura West, 32, was shot three or four times. No one else was hurt. Police were looking for her ex-husband, said Police Chief Robert Lowery. Police said the suspect went to the Total You Fitness Center to pay alimony to West, then sat down to wait for a receipt. As class ended about 9 a.m.