State Missouri v. Lynn Wayne Hester

This is an appeal from a conviction and sentence of life imprisonment for murder in the first degree. The facts, as the jury
could find them, were established by the testimony of the appellant's accomplice, Joe Lester Slayton, and by the oral and
written admissions and confessions of the appellant as testified to by both lay witnesses and police officers, including the
appellant's uncle who was a defense witness. Briefly the facts were that on January 5, 1957, the appellant, Lynn Wayne Hester,
then eighteen years old, and Joe Lester Slayton, then seventeen years old, left Chaffee in a stolen automobile looking for
filling stations to "hold up." Hester had a .32 caliber revolver stuck in his belt. He had stolen the revolver from his uncle,
so he once said. They also carried black masks which they had made from grandmother's black cotton hose. They stopped at a
filling station in Grant City but there were too many lights and people and they decided against "holding up" that station
and so drove on into Sikeston in Scott County. As they drove down a road, a sort of "lovers' lane," near the railroad tracks
they saw a boy, Johnnie Malugen, and a girl, June, parked in an automobile. As they drove past Hester said, "Let's go back
and take this girl away from her boy friend." Joe said, "he might be too big for us and might kick the devil out of us" but
Hester answered, "If he doesn't get out we will use this and make him get out." Hester then drove the stolen automobile down
back of the parked automobile, three or four hundred feet, and stopped. Both boys put on their black masks and Slayton waited
near their automobile while Hester walked up to the left side of the automobile in which the boy and girl were sitting. Hester
opened the left door with the command, "get out of that car or I will kill you." As Johnnie slammed the car door shut he told
June to hand him a knife out of the glove compartment but before she could hand him the knife Hester again opened the door
and immediately fired two shots, one of the bullets going through Johnnie's heart. As Hester walked towards Slayton June attempted
to drive away but she "stalled" the car and so started running across a cotton field for help. As she ran Slayton caught her
and raped her and by the time she was able to find help and return the boys were gone. Because of the black masks, apparently, June did not know that there was more than one boy and she reported that he was a
Negro and so all efforts were directed to finding a colored man, particularly in Sikeston, until more than a year later. Slayton
had been sentenced to the reformatory in Boonville for stealing an automobile and from there, in February 1958, because "It
was on my mind and I wanted to get it off," he wrote a letter to his mother in which he told her that Hester had shot Johnnie
and raped June. After interviewing Slayton the officers arrested Hester at his mother's home in Wellston. He first denied
any knowledge of the murder and rape but after having one of Slayton's statements read to him he admitted shooting Johnnie
and subsequently made a detailed, written confession which was admitted in evidence without objection.