Natural causes cited in death of condemned Missouri killer

Brian Kinder's dying wish was to spend his final days at home with family. Instead, the condemned killer died in prison.

Kinder, 47, who suffered from throat cancer, died Wednesday morning in the hospital ward of the Potosi Correctional Center in southeast Missouri, prison superintendent Don Roper said.

"He had been ill for a considerable amount of time" Roper said. No autopsy was planned.

Last month, the Missouri Probation and Parole Board denied Kinder's request to be released from prison to the care of his family. The board did not explain its decision.

"I don't want to die in prison," Kinder, speaking through a mechanical device necessary because of the disease's ravage, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in July. He also claimed he was innocent of the murder that put him behind bars and on death row for more than 15 years.

In the interview, Kinder said he had complained for years about his symptoms but wondered if the state allowed him to die naturally because of his status as a condemned man.

Kinder, of Jefferson County, was convicted in the 1990 rape and murder of his cousin, 32-year-old Cynthia Williams, in Crystal City, Mo. Williams was beaten to death with a metal pipe at her home, three days before Christmas.

Last year, the Missouri Supreme Court agreed to retest the DNA evidence that helped convict Kinder. Those tests are still in progress, his attorney, Fred Duchardt of Kearney, Mo., said.

Duchardt said it took 10 years to persuade the courts to agree to take a new look at the DNA evidence that could have been flawed or contaminated.

"We're carrying forward on this as he would have wanted us to," Duchardt said.

Kinder's death leaves 44 condemned men awaiting execution in Missouri.

Though executions are carried out at a prison in Bonne Terre, all condemned inmates reside at the maximum-security prison in Potosi.