Wife gets life without parole for murder of sleeping husband

Oct. 8—PINEVILLE, Mo. — A judge has sentenced Dawn Wynn to life without parole in the fatal shooting of husband Harold Wynn three years ago to collect $100,000 in life insurance.

A McDonald County jury convicted the 50-year-old Anderson woman of first-degree murder and armed criminal action at a three-day trial in August, and Judge Kevin Selby assessed her the mandatory term for premeditated murder, plus a consecutive term of 15 years at her sentencing Monday in Pineville.

Harold "Lee" Wynn, 51, was found Nov. 16, 2022, lying in bed inside the couple's camper home near Anderson, almost completely covered up, as if asleep, with a gunshot wound to the back of his head.

The defendant told investigators at the time that she had been awakened by something brushing across her face and discovered that her husband had been shot. She said the gun had been on a shelf at the head of the bed and suggested that it may have fallen and discharged.

But Prosecutor Maleia Cheney pointed out at trial the shelves above the bed had raised lips to prevent objects from sliding off, and an accidental discharge was made all the more unlikely by the safety features of the gun and the fact that it had been found on examination by investigators to have fully cycled. The prosecutor maintained that could not have happened without persistent pressure on the trigger.

Cheney pointed out to jurors that the evidence also did not support suicide as the manner of death since the first deputy on the scene found the deceased's dominant hand lying beneath the covers and the .40-caliber handgun with which he had been shot wedged between two pillows behind his head and not within his reach.

The medical examiner who performed the autopsy in the case testified that he did not believe the wound could have been self-inflicted since there were no contact burns or stippling around it.

The case was plagued by some missteps in the McDonald County sheriff's office's investigation of the death.

The first deputy on the scene picked up the gun and took it out to her patrol car under an assumption the shooting had been either accidental or a suicide. Later, she brought the gun back inside and laid it on the bed to take a photo of it.

She then failed to begin logging who entered and left the camper until more than an hour after she arrived, raising additional questions about the integrity of the crime scene at trial.

Defense attorney Charles Oppelt also criticized the detectives who ultimately led the investigation for failing to find a shell casing at the scene that they said they later happened to come upon among the bedding they removed for further examination at the sheriff's office.

The defense tried to raise jurors' suspicions about a relative of the victim who lived in a cabin next to the camper and who had at one time owned the gun in question.

But trial testimony established that Dawn Wynn had been in charge of the accounting for the couple's failed plumbing business and that her husband was being urged by their two adult sons to leave her and start up another plumbing business with them.

In the meantime, Dawn Wynn, who had taken an accounting job with another business in order to make ends meet, applied for $100,000 of life insurance on her husband as a benefit of that job. In support of its charge of first-degree murder, the prosecution presented testimony at trial that a pay statement she received one day before her husband's death informed her that the insurer had approved her application.

Jeff Lehr is a reporter for The Joplin Globe.

___

(c)2024 The Joplin Globe (Joplin, Mo.)

Visit The Joplin Globe (Joplin, Mo.) at www.joplinglobe.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.