Scott City shocked by alleged murder

The investigation by the Scott City Police Department into the alleged murder of 45-year-old Stanley Frank Hagan seems to have been well kept secret.

Many in Scott City hadn't even heard about Thursday's grand jury indictment for murder and armed criminal action against 18-year-old Marcus Bowers of Scott City, or that an investigation into the murder had gone on in secret for months.

Bowers was indicted Thursday by a Scott County grand jury for allegedly murdering Hagan, of Kelso, Mo., on Sept. 23 by slamming Hagan's head against a mobile home tie-down stake.

Police kept the investigation secret for months to keep from tipping off Bowers and to protect witnesses.

Most of the people a Southeast Missourian reporter spoke with over the weekend had no knowledge that there had been a suspicious death or a murder investigation until news of the charges against Bowers after the grand jury made its indictment.

Kevin Hettenhouser lives next to the trailer court where police say Hagan was murdered. He was at home that night.

"I was on the Internet and watching TV, and I had the blinds open, so I saw the police come by," Hettenhouser said Sunday. He said he saw police and medical personnel respond, saw the police asking people questions, but never heard anything about a possible murder.

The commotion was unusual in a neighborhood that's typically quiet, Hettenhouser said.

Hettenhouser said he just thought a man had fallen down some steps. He heard the incident had been deemed an accident a few days after it happened, and never heard anything about a murder investigation.

For those at Scott City's businesses Friday, the news of an alleged murder in their hometown came mostly as a surprise, to those who had already heard the news, that is.

Many of those asked Friday by the Southeast Missourian said they hadn't even heard the news yet of the three-month-old incident that led to the murder charges.

Damien McElhaney, a clerk at Tank's One Stop convenience store, hadn't heard about the charges against 18-year-old Marcus Bowers.

Betty Calhoun, co-owner of Berghoff's Cafe in Scott City and owner of Sands Pancake House in Cape Girardeau, said she hadn't heard much about the charges either, but she was surprised that such an incident would happen in the small town.

One man eating at Berghoff's on Friday, who asked that his name not be used, said he'd heard of the alleged murder and pending indictment just a few days before Bowers was indicted. He praised the police for their work on the case.

"I think it's a good deal they caught him," he said. "It was good police work and good cooperation between the police in the county and here in the city."

When approached by a Southeast Missourian reporter over the weekend, the people in Bowers' neighborhood either hadn't heard about the case, or declined to speak about Bowers out of respect for Bowers' family.

Like the typical small-town neighborhood, many of them knew Bowers, and other, younger children in the Bowers family.

Last murder in 2002

The last murder that actually occurred within the city limits happened in July 2002, when police arrested then-18-year-old Christopher Lance Jones of Scott City for stabbing his stepfather, 48-year-old John David Mayabb, repeatedly in the chest and abdomen and killing him. Jones later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The same day Mayabb was murdered, police responded to a murder-suicide in Scott City's Woodland trailer court. Police said the murder-suicide came after an argument between a husband and wife. Two days before the shooting, the wife had obtained an ex parte order against her husband in a parallel to the recent Moshiri murder-suicide in Jackson.

In July 2004, a Scott City man was charged with first-degree murder in an incident that happened just outside the city limits at a popular party spot known as "Red Gate."

Chad L. Chaney, 23, of Scott City was fatally stabbed, and 21-year-old Robert L. Grant Jr., also of Scott City, was charged with his murder. Grant later pleaded guilty to a reduced charge.

Jake Culver lives in Cape Gir-ardeau, but his mother lives in Scott City. On a stop to get gas at the Scott City Rhodes 101 on Friday, he said he was disappointed to hear a murder had allegedly happened in a small town that last saw such a violent act over three years ago.

"One murder in Scott City is too much," Culver said.

Buster and Helen Kluesner of Kelso said the news was a shock to them as they ate lunch at Berghoff's on Friday afternoon.

The Kluesners said it seems like such violence is occurring more and more often in Southeast Missouri.

The alleged murder of Hagan is just one in a string of violent crimes in the local area within the past six months.

In December, six people were killed in murder-suicides in Perryville, Mo., and Jackson. In July a Jackson teenager shot another boy at a local car wash in what the shooter says was a dispute over a girl.

On Tuesday, a man was shot in the parking lot of a Rhodes 101 Stop in Cape Girardeau, but not fatally.

Two people were shot in separate incidents in Cape Girar-deau on Dec. 29.

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182