A man escapes the death penalty in an abduction and murder case from 2013 in Golden City. Tony Abati reports from southwest Missouri’s Nevada.
39-year-old Bobby Bourne was charged after 12-year-old Adriaunna Horton was kidnapped from a Golden City park in August of 2013 and her body was found later in some woods Southeast of the community.
During a hearing Friday in circuit court in Lamar, Bourne was sentenced to consecutive terms of life in prison for child kidnapping and life without parole for first-degree murder.
Barton County prosecutor Steven Kaderly says the state would have preferred to seek the death penalty, but Horton’s family members agreed to take it off the table because of their concerns about the lengthy appeals process in death-penalty cases. Bourne had been scheduled for trial beginning August 6th in Lamar.
