Dad found guilty of 2nd-degree murder, incest, and rape (Cass County, Missouri)

It took the jury only 3 hours to find dad DANIAL RINEHART guilty as charged.

http://www.kctv5.com/news/23209137/detail.html

Rinehart Found Guilty Of Murder, Incest

POSTED: 1:54 pm CDT April 20, 2010
UPDATED: 2:30 pm CDT April 20, 2010

HARRISONVILLE, Mo. -- The jury in the case against Danial Rinehart found him guilty of second-degree murder, incest and rape after around three hours of deliberation Tuesday.

Prosecutors finished their case and Rinehart's attorneys finished their case in just a few hours Tuesday morning after an emotional day of testimony on Monday.

Rinehart has admitted to having a sexual relationship with his daughter Ashley, who had four children from her father. Only one of the children, a son, is still alive. The murder charge comes from the third child, a son, who got sick and later died as an infant.

Prosecutors accuse Rinehart of not allowing his daughter or anybody else to take the child to the doctor for medical attention, instead just giving it cold medicine.

On Monday, prosecutors introduced a letter they say was written by Danial Rinehart in jail to Ashley, where he calls her his fiancee and thanks her for giving birth to the four children. Prosecutors argued there is no proof he wrote the letter, and also argued that investigators didn't collect any DNA evidence.

The prosecution also argued that Rinehart was not negligent in the care for the third child with his daughter, rather that he was poor and could not afford any medical care. In the video of the interrogation, Rinehart admitted to investigators that he had sex with his daughter and helped her deliver their babies.

On Monday, Ashley, who is now 20 years old, took the stand. She sobbed uncontrollably throughout her testimony and said her father began molesting her when she was 5 years old. She said her first child fell off a couch and died when the infant was only a few months old.

Prosecutors said Rinehart knew his son was sick and never took him to a doctor, contributing to his death. Ashley said she begged her father to call a doctor but he didn't, so, she said, "I stayed up with him for two nights and then dozed off for five seconds, and then I woke up and he was dead in my arms."

Ashley's fourth child died in childbirth, prosecutors said.

"She come out not breathing," Ashley said. "She was as still as could be and I kept asking if she's all right. He told me that she passed."

She said her dad sealed the girl's body in a red cooler and put it behind a camper in a makeshift garage. Prosecutors said Ashley and Rinehart put the bodies of her last two children into coolers, sealed them shut, and then left them in a garage on her grandparents' property.

In October 2008, one of Rinehart's other daughters told police about her father, investigators said. Ashley said the family abandoned the property they were living on and moved to Gallatin, Mo., and a few months later, on New Year's Day 2009, the new tenants on the land in Harrisonville found the coolers with the babies' bodies.

Ashley told the jury that her mother, Linda Rinehart, knew about the incest but did nothing about it. Linda Rinehart has been charged with child endangerment.