Tuesday, April 1, 2008 5:27 PM CDT
Woman charged with murder in Mattoon soldier slaying suffers from personality disorder, says psychologist
By DANNY MALKOVICH, For the JG/T-C
BENTON — According to a clinical psychologist, Jenny Wolfe, who is charged with three counts of murder and one count of home invasion and conspiracy to commit murder, suffers from dependent personality disorder.
Dr. Daniel Cuneo of Belleville testified Friday without the jury present.
Wolfe was one of five people involved in a plot to kill then 16-year-old Lindsey Kasinger of rural Richland County. Three of those involved are serving time in prison. Irenia Cotner of Claremont was convicted on all counts and serving 57 years in prison. Oscar R. Eck of Olney pleaded guilty to murder and is serving a 20-year prison term. A third defendant, Misty Gangloff of Olney, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and was sentenced to seven years.
Former Mattoon resident Joshua Bennett, 20, was stabbed to death on Aug. 23, 2005, when he interrupted a home invasion. Eck and David Lindner had broken into the Claremont home of Lee Jackson with the intention of killing Kasinger, purportedly to break a hex that had been placed on the group.
Cuneo said testified that he believed Wolfe suffered from dependent personality disorder, based on a two-hour interview with her earlier this year and a review of police reports from the case, a letter entitled “Welcome to My World” and two letters to her mother.
He said Wolfe lived with Cotner since the age of 10 and that she was dependent upon the woman who was 15 years her elder. He said her greatest fear was that she would be abandoned by Cotner and that she would do anything for her so as to not feel abandoned.
Cotner told the others involved in the conspiracy that either Kasinger’s mother or grandmother had placed a hex on the group.
She told them Kasinger, who was pregnant and involved in a relationship with Cotner’s one-time boyfriend, Jackie Jackson, had to die to lift the hex.
Wolfe testified Friday that she did not know Kasinger prior to being told about the alleged hex.
Under questioning from defense counsel David Williams, Wolfe said she had never seen Kasinger in person prior to her testimony Wednesday at the trial.
She said during a police interview on the evening after the murder that she had gone to Jackson’s home earlier with the intention of killing Kasinger.
“I was too afraid,” Wolfe testified. “I kept telling him I couldn’t do it.“
“I ran like hell,” she said.
She also admitted the failed arson attempt at the Kasinger home in May 2005, saying the idea was Cotner’s.
She identified the knife introduced as the murder weapon as similar to one she had owned. She testified Lindner had the knife when the pair went to the rural Calhoun home on Aug. 21.
Lindner and Eck broke into Jackson’s house two nights later. Lindner first stabbed Jacqueline Bennett, Joshua’s mother, once in the chest and twice in the abdomen. He then stabbed Joshua Bennett in the heart, causing the 20-year old soldier to bleed to death on the kitchen floor of the Jackson house.
Lindner was then shot in the abdomen during a struggle with Jackie Jackson.
He died six months later at a St. Louis hospital.
Eck fled the scene but was taken into custody later that day when he went to Lawrence County Memorial Hospital to have a stab wound treated that he received during a scuffle with Jackson.
He had gone to the hospital after picking up Cotner and Wolfe, who had worked a partial shift at her job at the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Olney. Eck and Gangloff also worked there.
The trio headed to Lawrenceville shortly after the murder but first stopped at East Fork Lake to dispose of Eck’s hiking boots and socks.
Wolfe was arrested Aug. 30, 2005, and has been held in county jails in Olney, Newton, Fairfield and Benton for the past 942 days.
Closing statements were scheduled Monday.
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