(AP) – A woman is charged with killing her live-in boyfriend 17 years ago, the second murder charge handled through a new unit of the Missouri Attorney General’s Office that investigates cold cases.
Attorney General Eric Schmitt on Thursday announced that Alice Weiss was charged with second-degree murder in the death of James Summers, who died in April 2004 in the eastern Missouri town of Dittmer. The charge was filed Wednesday.
“We will continue to fight for the families and loved ones of victims of violent crime who have little hope, who have waited long years and sometimes decades for justice to finally be served,” Schmitt said in a statement.
Schmitt, a Republican, established the Cold Case Unit in December, and the Weiss case was the second resulting in a murder charge. The first, announced when the unit was established, charged a man with second-degree murder for a 1986 killing in Franklin County.
In the latest case, Summers was found dead in the driveway of his home on April 27, 2004. He had been shot in the back and the face.
Weiss, now of Columbia, was questioned at the time. Investigators said there were inconsistencies in her statements, but that she was never previously charged.
A probable cause statement from the new investigation said Weiss was asked by a cousin in 2008 why she shot Summers and she replied there was “little difference between love and hate.” The statement said Weiss also told the cousin that, if accused, she could say her father, who had since died, was the shooter. The father was suffering from late-stage dementia at the time of Summers’ death.
Weiss does not have a listed attorney.
WebReadyTM Powered by WireReady® NSI