Wayne DuMond was convicted of one murder: the September 2000 death of Carol Sue Shields, 39, in the Kansas City suburbs of Missouri. A Clay County jury returned the verdict in November 2003, and in January 2004 he was sentenced to life in prison. A second Missouri death, that of 23-year-old Sara Andrasek in June 2001, led to his being the suspect, and the Platte County prosecutor's office was preparing to pursue it when he died in custody in August 2005. Decades earlier, in 1972, he had admitted a part in a killing in Oklahoma for which he was never charged.
His name was known well beyond Missouri because of what came between. In Arkansas he had been convicted of kidnapping and rape in 1985, and the case divided public opinion for years: supporters called the conviction a miscarriage of justice, the courts repeatedly refused to set it aside, and the sentence was shortened in 1992; a parole decision in 1997 led to his release in 1999. When he went on to be convicted of murder in Missouri, the decisions that freed him became part of the 2007 presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who had taken an interest in his case.
Wayne Eugene DuMond was born on September 10, 1949, in DeWitt, in Arkansas County, Arkansas. He was one of two sons. He served as a soldier during the Vietnam War, and afterward worked as a handyman and carpenter in DeWitt, in Forrest City and in Texas. He married three times: in DeWitt in 1968, in Ethel in 1983, and in Smithville, Missouri, in 2000, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
On August 8, 1972, in Lawton, Oklahoma, DuMond and two other men were accused of killing a man. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas records that DuMond admitted his own part in the killing, and that prosecutors did not charge him because he agreed to testify against the other two. The victim's name is not on record, and the outcome of the case against the other two men is not on record.
The 1972 record consists of an admission and a decision not to prosecute. It is not a conviction. ABC News, writing in 2009, summed up the same period more briefly, saying his history before the Arkansas conviction included an assault conviction and alleged involvement in a killing.
The Encyclopedia of Arkansas lists two earlier cases that did not end in a conviction for a serious offense. In 1973 he was charged with assaulting a teenage girl in Tacoma, Washington, and was given five years' probation on condition that he attend counseling. In 1976 he was charged in DeWitt with rape; that charge was dropped before trial on condition that he undergo counseling. Neither case produced the verdict of a court, and neither is counted as a conviction.
In 1984 a 17-year-old girl in Forrest City, Arkansas, was the victim of an offense for which DuMond was tried the following year. She is not named. She was a distant relative of Bill Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, a fact that later gave the case its political weight.
While he was awaiting trial, in March 1985, DuMond said that two men had attacked him. No one was arrested. He later received a settlement from the county in a lawsuit over how the aftermath was handled. That episode brought the case wide attention before the trial began.
A jury convicted him of kidnapping and rape. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, in its 1989 opinion, records the sentence as "consecutive sentences of life imprisonment and twenty years." The Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed the conviction in 1986 and denied post-conviction relief in 1988. Newspaper accounts describe the sentence as life in prison plus 20 years.
DuMond challenged the Arkansas conviction in federal court by a petition for habeas corpus. The case, Dumond v. Lockhart, reached the Eighth Circuit twice. His claims in the first round, decided on September 1, 1989, included that a magistrate judge had wrongly quashed subpoenas, among them one for the victim's testimony; that a genetic test on trial evidence pointed away from him; that his lawyers had been ineffective; and that the state had withheld evidence of misconduct in the identification procedure. The claim that the state withheld evidence about the identification procedure was rejected, and the ineffective-assistance claims were found to be without merit. On the genetic evidence it sent the case back to the magistrate for a hearing at which the victim and the testing experts could be examined.
The second opinion, issued on August 9, 1990, describes what the hearing showed. DuMond's expert had concluded that, if the sample tested was uncontaminated, there was a greater than ninety-nine percent probability that DuMond was not its source; if it was mixed with other material, the result was inconclusive. The magistrate found that the victim's testimony left the question of contamination unresolved, that the identification evidence at trial was strong, and that the other trial evidence was sufficient. The Eighth Circuit applied the rule that new evidence must show that it "would probably produce an acquittal on retrial." DuMond could not show that the sample was uncontaminated, the court held that the standard was not met, and it affirmed the dismissal of the petition. Rehearing was denied in October 1990.
Outside the courts, a campaign grew around the claim that DuMond had been wrongly convicted. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas notes that the conviction drew attention during Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, that some commentators alleged that Clinton had arranged a frame-up, and that Guy S. Reel's 1993 book Unequal Justice argued that DuMond was innocent. A pastor, Jay Cole, also took up his cause on the radio. The Eighth Circuit's rulings, however, found the new evidence inadequate for relief. DuMond's second wife campaigned for his release; she died on January 8, 1999, of injuries from a car accident on Christmas Eve while traveling to visit relatives, before he was freed.
In 1992, with Clinton out of Arkansas campaigning for the presidency, Lieutenant Governor Jim Guy Tucker, acting as governor, reduced DuMond's sentence. The Associated Press gave the new term as 39 years and six months; the Encyclopedia of Arkansas calls it a little more than 39 years. The change made DuMond eligible for parole. The Washington Times reported in 2001 that Tucker had cited "serious questions about his guilt."
Tucker resigned in July 1996 after a conviction in the Whitewater investigation, and Mike Huckabee became governor. Huckabee said publicly that he doubted DuMond's guilt and considered commuting the sentence to time served. After the victim and her supporters protested, he did not commute it. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas says that in January 1997 Huckabee wrote DuMond that he wanted him released, denied his request for commutation to time served and recommended supervised parole instead, and met with five of the seven members of the parole board. CBS News quoted the letter as saying "my desire is that you be released from prison."
The parole board approved DuMond's release in January 1997, on condition that he have a firm plan to live in another state. Huckabee has denied urging the board to parole him. Charles Chastain, a board member at the time, said that several members changed their votes after Huckabee met with the board; Huckabee's press secretary, Alice Stewart, said the governor had no influence on the board's decision and that governors lack parole authority. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas notes that board members disputed or declined to discuss Huckabee's account. The Washington Times reported that Florida and Texas refused to accept DuMond, and that he stayed in custody until the state parole board released him in 1999. He was freed in October 1999 and went first to his stepmother's home in DeWitt, then to Missouri.
DuMond moved to Smithville, a town just north of Kansas City, in August 2000, and that year married for the third time. The Smithville police chief told the Washington Times in 2001 that DuMond had not been involved in any disturbances since moving there: "You wouldn't even know he was there."
Carol Sue Shields was 39 years old and lived in Parkville, Missouri. She was killed on September 20, 2000, in Clay County, in the Northland area of Kansas City, about ten miles from DuMond's home, according to the Associated Press. Her mother later became one of the best-known public voices on the case.
The killing was unsolved until 2001, when DNA evidence from the investigation was matched to a sample on file from the Arkansas case. The Washington Times reported that Kansas City police were told of the match on a Friday and moved against him at once.
DuMond was arrested on June 22, 2001. He was held in the Clay County jail in Smithville on a parole-violation warrant, and a Kansas City police spokesman said that his court appearance on July 3 would concern only the parole matter. The Missouri Department of Corrections said the warrant rested on evidence linking him to a homicide. His lawyer, Bruce Houdek, said DuMond denied any connection to the deaths being investigated.
A Missouri grand jury indicted him for the murder of Carol Sue Shields on July 25, 2001, and he pleaded innocent the next day. In November 2001 he asked that his trial be moved out of Liberty, the Clay County seat, saying he could not get a fair trial there; a hearing on the request was postponed. The outcome of the request is not on record.
The second Missouri death involved Sara Andrasek, 23, of Platte County. The Platte County Citizen reported in 2019 that she was killed in 2001 in Kansas City North, and that her killing took place the day before DuMond's arrest for the death of Carol Sue Shields. The Washington Times reported on July 2, 2001, that police said the DNA match in the Shields case led them to look at DuMond more closely, and to consider the second death "just last week." Both killings were in the Northland area, near where DuMond worked.
DuMond was never convicted of any offense in her death. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas says charges were being prepared when he died. The Platte County Citizen wrote in 2017 that he died in custody "before Zahnd's office could bring a death penalty case against the suspect," referring to Platte County prosecutor Eric Zahnd, for whom the case was a first major prosecution, and wrote in 2019 that it "had intended to be a capital murder case." A statement by Zahnd on the matter is not on record.
Andrasek's family and the prosecutor's office have kept her memory in public view. Each year, during National Crime Victims' Rights Week, the Platte County prosecutor's office presents a memorial award in her name at a victims' luncheon. Her mother has taken part in presenting it.
The case against DuMond for the death of Carol Sue Shields went to trial in the Circuit Court of Clay County, in Liberty, Missouri. The court's docket lists the judge as Larry Dale Harman. In November 2003 a jury convicted him of first-degree murder. In January 2004 he was "sentenced Friday to life in prison on his first-degree murder conviction," as the Southeast Missourian's report of the sentencing put it. Whether the life sentence carried the possibility of parole is not on record.
DuMond appealed to the Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District, in a case numbered WD63710. The court's docket gives a hand-down date of August 30, 2005, and the Encyclopedia of Arkansas says the court unanimously upheld the conviction. The Associated Press reported that he lost the appeal on August 30. The court later listed the opinion as withdrawn.
The Associated Press reported that a Missouri prisons spokesman said DuMond was found dead in his cell on the morning of August 31, 2005. He was 55. Officials said he had been diagnosed with throat cancer about two months earlier and that his death appeared to have been natural. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas gives the date as September 1, 2005, and places him at Crossroads Correctional Center in Cameron, Missouri; the Platte County Citizen also places his death in Cameron.
When Huckabee announced his campaign for president in 2007, the DuMond case returned to the news. In early December 2007 Shields's mother appeared in a widely shared video and on CBS News's Early Show, saying she did not think Huckabee should be president. Huckabee has said the decisive step was Tucker's reduction of the sentence in 1992 and that he did not pardon DuMond or commute his sentence. CBS News reported in December 2007 that his campaign denied he influenced the parole board but acknowledged he had discussed DuMond's clemency request with board members. ABC News revisited the case in November 2009 in a report on Huckabee's clemency record.
The Arkansas rape conviction was contested for years by supporters of DuMond, who held that he had been framed; the courts that reviewed the claims, including the Eighth Circuit in 1989 and 1990, did not set the conviction aside. The 1972 killing rests on an admission and a decision not to prosecute, with no verdict. The second Missouri death never reached a charge decided by a court, and no one was convicted of it. Accounts differ on the date of his death (August 31 or September 1, 2005), the month of the Missouri conviction (November 2003 or summer 2003) and the length of the commuted Arkansas sentence (39 years and six months or a little over 39 years).
September 10, 1949: Wayne Eugene DuMond is born in DeWitt, Arkansas.
August 8, 1972: a man is killed in Lawton, Oklahoma; DuMond admits a part in it and is not charged after agreeing to testify against two other men.
1973: charged in Tacoma, Washington, with assaulting a teenage girl; five years' probation.
1976: charged in DeWitt with rape; the charge is dropped before trial on condition of counseling.
1984: the Forrest City offense for which he is tried the next year.
March 1985: he says two men attacked him; no arrests.
1985: convicted in Arkansas of kidnapping and rape; consecutive sentences of life imprisonment and twenty years.
1986: Arkansas Supreme Court affirms the conviction.
1988: Arkansas Supreme Court denies post-conviction relief.
September 1, 1989: Eighth Circuit remands for a hearing on the genetic evidence.
August 9, 1990: Eighth Circuit affirms the dismissal of the habeas petition.
1992: acting governor Jim Guy Tucker reduces the sentence to 39 years and six months.
July 1996: Mike Huckabee becomes governor.
January 1997: the parole board approves parole on condition that DuMond live in another state.
January 8, 1999: his second wife dies after a car accident.
October 1999: DuMond is released and goes to Missouri.
August 2000: moves to Smithville, Missouri.
September 20, 2000: Carol Sue Shields, 39, is killed in Clay County.
June 2001: Sara Andrasek, 23, is killed in Platte County.
June 22, 2001: DuMond is arrested on a parole-violation warrant.
July 25 and 26, 2001: indicted for the murder of Carol Sue Shields; pleads innocent.
November 2003: Clay County jury convicts him of first-degree murder.
January 2004: sentenced to life in prison.
August 30, 2005: Missouri Court of Appeals decides his appeal.
August 31, 2005: found dead in his cell, according to the Associated Press.
December 2007: the case becomes an issue in the Republican presidential campaign.
November 2009: ABC News revisits the case.