Continued from above article:
http://www.scrippsnews.com/content/3-ad ... rd-lessonsTUESDAY, NOV. 14, 2006
Darkness had fallen when the Welty family -- parents Ronnie and Lori, Owen and his younger sister Veronica -- drove the few miles back to their Bloomfield-area home from a visit and apple pie with Lori's mom. Someone spotted a light on at their neighbor's farm -- strange for about 8:30 p.m. Don McCollough, a construction foreman who lived in the nearby city of Dexter, Mo., often stopped by his farm and its workshop but usually left before dark.
Ronnie Welty pulled into McCollough's driveway, and his wife climbed out of the car to check on their neighbor. Moments later, her family heard her scream.
Owen ran to his mom outside the workshop, where he saw McCollough lying motionless on the ground, dead from a wound to the head. His thick white Santa beard -- source of his nickname "Fuzzy" -- was matted with blood.
Ronnie Welty raced to the home of another neighbor, who phoned for help. Six minutes later, at 8:52 p.m., a Stoddard County sheriff's deputy arrived.
With no eyewitnesses, the investigation quickly turned to the Welty family. By 11:10 p.m., a juvenile officer and state highway patrol detective were questioning Owen, with his father present, at county offices.
Owen acknowledged he'd spent the afternoon hunting on another neighbor's property, about 100 yards from where McCollough's body was found. Owen said he'd fired a single shot -- at a turkey, though out of season -- down a ravine and in the opposite direction from McCollough's workshop.
Owen and his parents insisted he hadn't shot at McCollough. But they faced skepticism. Early that afternoon, McCollough had met with Stoddard County Sheriff Carl Hefner to say he suspected that Owen had shot and killed his bull a couple of months earlier. McCollough told Hefner he'd confronted the Weltys and was concerned that Owen might be dangerous, according to the sheriff's report.
Later that night, authorities asked to interview Owen alone and to have him take a polygraph. His father refused. At 2:17 a.m., the "interview" ended and the family went home.
At 3:55 p.m. that Wednesday, a sheriff's deputy and juvenile officer knocked on the family's front door with a warrant for the arrest of Owen Austin Welty.
Owen was escorted out in handcuffs, "bawling my eyes out," he remembers.
WEDNESDAY, NOV. 15, 2006
A few miles away at the 25-bed Stoddard County Juvenile Detention Center in Bloomfield, Owen got a physical, an orange uniform and a one-person cell.
The center provided structure -- seven hours of classroom instruction on school days, group discussions and recreation -- along with crisis intervention, substance-abuse services and access to a licensed counselor, psychologist or psychiatrist.
Inmates got three unlimited meals a day -- with fare such as meat loaf and mashed potatoes -- plus ice cream and other bedtime snacks. Owen said he never went hungry.
But, except for frequent visits with his parents, he went without much social interaction during his month-long stay. Owen didn't participate in classes or other activities -- he said he wasn't aware of them. When he wasn't in his cell, Owen said he sat a common-area table and shuffled a deck of cards.
Owen caused "problems (by) banging on walls/sink where other detainees can't sleep," according to psychologist Patricia Carter, who reviewed his records for a court-mandated psychological assessment. Carter's written report detailed a long history of psychological difficulties.
He was prescribed Strattera and Trazodone, drugs usually used to treat hyperactivity and depression.
Juvenile officer Mike Davis declined to talk about Owen's time in the youth facility, saying that as long as the teen was in the juvenile justice system, he retained a right to privacy.
A day after Owen's arrest, Sheriff Hefner and Davis announced in a press release that the 13-year-old was being charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action. It noted Davis' request for a hearing to consider prosecuting Owen as an adult -- which almost inevitably would mean transfer to an adult jail and, if convicted, a harsher sentence.
Bail was set at $250,000, cash only -- 10 times what Ronnie Welty made in an average year as a truck driver. Lori Welty is a homemaker.
"We are poor people," Ronnie Welty said.
Meantime, investigators were building a case. An autopsy ruled McCollough's death a homicide, noting that a bullet had entered McCollough's jaw on the left, traveled through his neck and to his right shoulder.
A ballistics test on a bullet fragment found at the crime scene initially ruled out Owen's .243-caliber Rossi single-shot rifle. But Kathleen Green, the Missouri State Highway Patrol's crime lab expert, decided to repeat her test a month later -- and overturned the finding, ruling that his gun could have shot the bullet.
He was a juvenile "and that bothered me. I just wanted to make sure I did everything possible in this case one way or another," Green said in an August phone interview. "... I just felt like I missed something."
TUESDAY, DEC. 19, 2006
At the hearing a month after Owen's arrest, juvenile officer Davis recommended to the youth court that the teen's case be transferred to the adult criminal justice system.
The judge presiding over the case, in the juvenile division of the Circuit Court of Stoddard County, agreed.
"It is not possible to devise a treatment or rehabilitative program in the juvenile justice system," Judge Joe Satterfield wrote in his decision a week later.
He also noted that Owen -- who at 13 weighed about 200 pounds, according to medical records -- might be a threat. "The protection of the community requires that the juvenile be transferred to the court of general jurisdiction," he wrote.
Satterfield declined interview requests.
That day, Owen was moved a few doors down to the county jail -- a 32-bed adult facility in a low-slung concrete-and-brick building. Owen had an "observation" cell, a tiny space with room for little more than a bed. A small window in the door broke the monotony of cinderblock walls.
Owen spent 23 hours there each day, with a break for recreation.
"I couldn't do anything," Owen recalls. "It was like sitting in juvenile (detention) ... and not being fed all the time."
Food took on increased prominence.
Sometimes, jailers would "'forget' to feed me. I don't want to sound like a violent person but I'd start kicking the door and raising hell," Owen says, a claim Sheriff Hefner contests.
Unlike the juvenile center's menus designed for growing youths, a typical jail lunch might be a hot dog or bologna sandwich served with orange Kool-Aid, though dinner would be more substantial, Hefner says.
For recreation, Owen was taken outside to a narrow, grassy yard, its fence topped with coiled barbed wire. His rec time initially coincided with that of female inmates, then with male inmates, he claims.
Owen says he spent the time walking in circles and talking with other inmates. Hefner says Owen sat by himself, was supervised constantly and never was in physical danger.
The rest of the time, Owen did pushups or read James Patterson crime thrillers or Louis L'Amour westerns he found on a jail bookshelf.
Hefner says Owen frequently disobeyed orders, shouting and chipping at a crack in the concrete floor so he could communicate with -- and pour water on -- an inmate in a basement cell below.
"I don't think he was crazy. I think he was just mischievous," Hefner says of Owen. He "was 13 years old. He was bored to death. Every time you would walk by, he would be looking out the door and yelling."
Owen claims he had reasons to yell.
One day while he was crouched in his cell, trying to talk through the door's open food slot, a jailer kicked it shut and the metal plate gashed his nose, Owen alleges. Weeks later, his parents photographed the scab using a cellphone smuggled into a visitation room.
Hefner says he doesn't know what caused the injury -- "you mean that little scratch on his nose?" he asked -- or whether Owen received medical attention.
Neither account could be verified; the sheriff didn't respond to an open-records request.
Owen says there were other problems. Once, a jailer took him to the bathroom for a strip search and "grabbed me in between my legs," he says. Another time, a jailer used a stun gun on him.
Hefner disputes these allegations, saying the jailer in question has a stellar reputation and that any incident would have been recorded on cameras around the jail. But Hefner admits that Owen's cell did not have a camera during most of the nine months the teen spent in the Stoddard County jail.
Owen has a history of making unsubstantiated sexual assault claims. In 2004, he accused a school official of fondling him but recanted in 2005 after he was caught telling "another student to lie about it," Carter wrote in her psychological report.
While he was in jail, Owen and his parents sought help from federal authorities.
Owen wrote several letters that his parents mailed to the White House and U.S. Justice Department, including one dated March 29, 2007:
"I'm thirteen and it's really hard to be in an adult jail. Only seeing my parents once a week. ... I just want to go home to my family & friends. ..."
The letter reached Tammi Simpson, a senior trial attorney in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Simpson responded in a letter to the family that she could not help. Ronnie Welty says he also emailed an FBI tipline.
Simpson declined to speak with Scripps Howard, and an FBI spokeswoman said the agency had no record of contact with the Welty family.
