JENNINGS, Mo. — Governor Mike Parson confirmed the state will carry out the execution of a man who was convicted of the 2004 killing of a woman and her three children in Jennings, Missouri.
In a statement, Parson said Leonard Raheem Taylor would be executed Tuesday, as ordered by the state's Supreme Court. He said Taylor's conviction has been upheld numerous times by different courts.
"Despite his self-serving claim of innocence, the facts of his guilt in this gruesome quadruple homicide remain," Parson said in the statement. "The State of Missouri will carry out Taylor’s sentences according to the Court's order and deliver justice for the four innocent lives he stole."
Taylor, 58, shared a house in the St. Louis suburb of Jennings with Angela Rowe and her children — 10-year-old daughter Alexus Conley, 6-year-old daughter AcQreya Conley, and 5-year-old son Tyrese Conley. Taylor boarded a flight to California on Nov. 26, 2004.
On Dec. 3, 2004, police were sent to the home after worried relatives said they hadn't heard from Rowe. Officers found the bodies of Rowe and her children. All four had been shot.
Authorities first believed the killings happened only a few days before the bodies were discovered, at the time when Taylor was in California. But at Taylor's trial, Medical Examiner Phillip Burch said the killings could have happened two or three weeks before the bodies were discovered.
Kent Gipson, one of Taylor's attorneys, said several people, including relatives of Rowe and a neighbor, saw Rowe alive in the days after Taylor left St. Louis. Meanwhile, Taylor's daughter in California, Deja Taylor, claimed in a court filing that she and her father spoke by phone with Angela Rowe and one of the children during his visit. The court filing said Deja Taylor's mother and sister corroborated her story.
Former St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch, whose office prosecuted the 2004 case, told The Associated Press that Taylor's claims of innocence are "nonsense," and that the evidence against him was overwhelming.
McCulloch said those alibis provided by Taylor's daughter and her relatives were "completely made up."
McCulloch said evidence suggested that Rowe and the kids were killed on the night of Nov. 22 or on Nov. 23, 2004, when Taylor was still in St. Louis County. He noted that Rowe typically made around 70 outgoing calls or texts each day. Starting Nov. 23, she made none.
Meanwhile, DNA from Rowe's blood was found on Taylor's glasses when he was arrested, and a relative taking him to the airport saw Taylor toss a gun into the sewer, McCulloch said. Authorities believe Taylor shot Rowe during a violent argument, then killed the children because they were witnesses.
Parson's statement comes after the president of the national NAACP urges him to halt the execution.
"There are many reasons to spare Mr. Taylor's life, but they all come down to one: the State of Missouri has the life of a man in its hands, and, in this life and death decision, lies the weight of moral responsibility," NAACP President Derrick Johnson wrote to the Republican governor. "The evidence presented at trial does not support Mr. Taylor's conviction."
Separately, nearly three dozen civil rights and religious groups asked St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell to reconsider his decision not to ask a judge for a new hearing on Taylor's claim that he was not even in Missouri when the killings occurred.
The letter said Bell has a "clear opportunity here to free an innocent Black man whose case was riddled with prosecutorial misconduct, police coercion and brutality, and ineffective assistance of counsel."
Bell said in his Jan. 30 decision that the "facts are not there to support a credible case of innocence."
The execution would be the third in Missouri in three months, following those of Kevin Johnson and Amber McLaughlin. Johnson was executed on Nov. 29 for killing a Kirkwood, Missouri, police officer. McLaughlin was executed on Jan. 3 for fatally stabbing a woman in St. Louis County.