State v. Cook

SOMERVILLE, Judge.

Two strangers were caught in a whirlpool of senseless events during the early morning hours of October 5, 1975, in Buchanan County, Missouri, resulting in the homicidal death of one and imprisonment of the other for fifteen years. One of the strangers, Edward Thomas Cook (defendant), was charged by information with murder in the second degree for killing the other stranger, Robert Allen Pistole (victim).

The charge was first tried to a jury in the court of Judge Frank D. Connett, Jr. and ended in a hung jury. Thereafter, defendant waived a trial by jury and the cause was…