Cold case arrest: Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, far right, listens as Jefferson County Sheriff Dave Marshak speaks Thursday, Aug.
DITTMER, Mo.
Alice Patricia Weiss, 65, of Columbia, was arrested Wednesday and charged with second-degree murder in the death of James Summers.
Summers, 47, had been shot in the face and in the back, according to the Missouri Attorney General’s Office.
Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who in December created a Cold Case Unit in his office, said his investigators decided to take another look at the Summers case.
“As Missouri’s Attorney General, one of my most solemn duties is to tackle the violent crime issue in Missouri,” Schmitt said in a statement.
Jefferson County Sheriff Dave Marshak told the St.
“She wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Armush told the news station from her Washington, D.C., home.
Armush, who has set up a website devoted to her aunt, as well as a GoFundMe page, said online that Weiss uses a wheelchair due to health issues.
A probable cause affidavit written by Jefferson County Detective Kevin Sullivan states that Weiss called 911 the night of the homicide to report that she’d found Summers lying on the driveway of their home in Dittmer, a small, unincorporated community about 40 miles southwest of St.
When deputies arrived at the house, they found Summers dead and Weiss, who was dressed in a pink bathrobe and towel, standing nearby.
She said she went outside and found Summers, whose keys and drinking cup were on the ground next to his body.
Weiss told detectives who responded to the scene that she had not gone near Summers’ body but “could just tell” he was dead by looking at him from a distance.
The cousin did tell detectives more recently, however, that Weiss confessed to the shooting after her father, Gilbert Weiss, succumbed in 2008 to his illness.
Armush, Weiss’ niece, wrote on social media that her aunt, who she said uses a wheelchair because of health issues, is not being provided with her medication in jail.
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