Jurors watch videotape of man's confession

CLAYTON, Mo. -- A man on trial in the slayings of a pregnant woman and her three children dozed off in court Wednesday as jurors watched his police-videotaped, waffling account of how he helped strangle the mother but never touched the children.

Harold "Bobby" Lingle's attorneys did not explain whether their client's medication made him sleep through the several-hour afternoon showing of his interrogation by an investigator of the 1999 deaths of Erin Vanderhoef, her full-term fetus and her children, ages 9 to 11.

Throughout the tape, Lingle blamed Richard DeLong, an acquaintance convicted last June and serving life terms in the Springfield killings Jan. 19, 1999. On videotape, Lingle said DeLong hatched the plan to kill Vanderhoef to rid her from his love triangle, then strangled her with an electrical cord while Lingle held her arms.

Still, Lingle insisted "I didn't have nothing to do with the kids" who died, declaring "I'm not a man that kills kids."

Lingle said he only helped restrain Vanderhoef during what he described as her 20-minute death struggle after being threatened by DeLong.

"He looked over at me and said, 'If you don't help me, I'm gonna kill you,"' Lingle said, adding that DeLong afterward threatened, '"You don't tell anybody. If you do, I'll make sure you're dead."'

Lingle's versions varied on the tape. At first, he said, "Honestly, I didn't do nothing to this woman (Vanderhoef). I just stood there," then said he helped restrain the woman while DeLong coiled the cord around her neck and pulled it tight.