Auguries Of Innocence

In rural Missouri, a boy posthumously finds justice

When paramedics answered an emergency call at the farm of James and Julie Schnick in the south Missouri hamlet of Elkland (pop. 200), they found James Schnick rolling on the floor and wailing in pain from a gunshot and stab wounds. He had spotted an unknown intruder in the house and fatally stabbed him after a ferocious struggle, he told Webster County Sheriff Eugene Fraker. In the bedroom Schnick's wife lay dead, shot twice in the head. The mysterious intruder, who was sprawled dead in the hallway, a .22-cal. pistol clutched in his hand, turned out to be Kirk Buckner, Schnick's...

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