A growing dread

Beginning on Valentine's Day, a sense of dread built around the story of a missing Mississippi family with Southeast Missouri ties.

First they were only missing, but blood and shell casings were found in their rural house. The FBI was called in, and police arrested a cousin on drug and firearms charges. When the three bodies were found in a wooded area 100 miles away on March 1, the cousin was charged with murder. The bodies were found on property owned by acquaintances of the cousin.

Last Friday, Michael and Rebecca Hargon, both only in their 20s, and their 4-year-old son, James Patrick, were buried in Canton, Miss. The Rev. Dan Hirtz, the priest who conducted the funeral Mass, is Rebecca Hargon's uncle. He asked mourners to give their support to a life sentence rather than death for the man suspected of the killings.

But the district attorney in Yazoo County, Miss., has said he will seek the death penalty for Michael Hargon's cousin, Earnest Lee Hargon, a 43-year-old former cattle-truck driver.

For a possible motive, authorities have only the fact that the suspect's adoptive father had written him out of his will shortly before his death in January. Michael Hargon was given 50 acres of land in the will.

Relatives said Michael and Earnest Lee Hargon had last seen each other three years ago.

Rebecca Hargon was born in Cape Girardeau, and her parents lived here before moving to Poplar Bluff, Mo., where they now reside. Her uncle, David Fuemmeler, lives in Cape Girardeau County.

This was a national story that hit home.

Nothing about this story isn't tragic. A family disappears and then is found murdered. Perhaps familial bad blood was involved, perhaps not. As Yazoo County district attorney James Powell said, "In our society, we have a tendency to look for excuses for bad conduct."