TEEN GUILTY OF KILLING GRANDMOTHER

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Joshua Wolf, who cried and shielded his face through most of his four-day trial, displayed a wooden expression Friday as a Boone County jury announced he would spend the rest of his life in prison.

Wolf, 17, was accused of killing the grandmother who raised him, Carol Lindley, 56, with a rifle shot to the head on May 8 and then setting fire to their Cape Girardeau County home two days later to cover up the murder.

The jury of 10 men and two women began deliberating at 10:50 a.m. and returned with guilty verdicts five and a half hours later. The jury found Wolf guilty of all three crimes with which he was charged -- first-degree murder, armed criminal action and second-degree arson.

Because Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle did not seek the death penalty, the murder conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole. The jury recommended maximum prison sentences of life for armed criminal action and seven years for arson.

"I feel a very dangerous person will never walk the streets again," Swingle said. "I'm proud of the job the Major Case Squad did in solving a case where a very intelligent individual was doing everything he could to get away with murder."

Mentally ill or not?

Defense attorney Stephen Wilson of Jackson, Mo., had sought verdicts of not guilty by reason of mental defect. Neither Wilson nor William Lindley, Wolf's grandfather and Carol Lindley's husband, cared to comment on the verdicts.

A parade of mental health experts testified for the defense that Wolf was mentally ill at the time of the crimes and, therefore, was neither in control of his actions nor legally responsible for them. However, the experts offered a variety of diagnoses as to Wolf's specific illness.

Swingle effectively attacked their testimony, which contradicted that of prosecution experts. Those experts said their evaluation of Wolf last summer showed his only disorder was depression, and that condition stemmed from his incarceration following his arrest.

The prosecution experts pointed to Wolf's actions in going on a shopping spree about an hour after the murder, installing a car stereo system and executing an elaborate cover-up plan as evidence he couldn't have been suffering from a psychotic episode.

During closing arguments, Swingle said in this case there was no mystery as to whether Wolf committed the crimes.

"This isn't a whodunit, because the whodunit is sitting over there," Swingle said. "Of course, he wanted to make it a whodunit. He did everything he could to make this an unsolved homicide."

Swingle said Wolf was "inches away" from getting away with the crime. However, Wolf failed to open upstairs windows in the home when he set it on fire, suffocating the flames. Arson investigators testified that had there been sufficient airflow, the house would have burned to the ground, obliterating most of the physical evidence that made Wolf a suspect.

Defense reponse

"This isn't a whodunit," Wilson agreed. "It is a why? That is the question you have to answer: Why did he do this?"

Wilson portrayed Wolf as an extremely ill boy and said there was no other explanation of the murder and, in particular, a gruesome act that followed. Wolf told police he had engaged in intercourse with his grandmother's corpse. The body was too badly damaged by fire for forensic experts to determine if that had occurred.

"This young man is sick," Wilson said. "He needs help in a hospital, not prison."

Had Wolf been found not guilty by reason of mental defect, he would have remained incarcerated at a state mental institution for life or until such time as a court determined he was no longer a danger to himself or others.

Motive was the weakest part of the prosecution case. Swingle argued Wolf was angry because Lindley refused to install a satellite television receiver in his room or buy him an all-terrain vehicle.

However, prosecution witnesses called to establish motive characterized conversations between Lindley and Wolf concerning those items as a teen-age boy begging for more stuff, not heated arguments that would lead to violence.

Formal sentencing before Boone County Circuit Judge Frank Conley will take place July 2. Wolf will remain in custody at the Biggs Forensic Center, a maximum security state mental facility in Fulton, Mo., until that time. Wolf had been held there while awaiting trial, which was moved from Cape Girardeau County.