Murder of Lena Cukerbaum

   Another notorious incident that I considered including in my latest book, Lynchings, Murders, and Other Nefarious Deeds: A Criminal History of Greene County, but ultimately decided to omit was the murder of storekeeper Lena Cukerbaum on the night of Saturday, November 30 or the early morning of Sunday, December 1, 1974. Mrs. Cukerbaum's body was found in her living quarters at Luhn's store, located at the corner of Highway 13 and Greene County Route CC about ten miles north of Springfield, by a deputy who was dispatched to investigate a report that the elderly woman had not opened the store that morning as she was accustomed to doing. Mrs. Cukerbaum had operated the store for about 50 years.
   The woman's hands were bound behind her back with a coat hanger, her ankles were taped together, and she'd been brutally beaten. Investigators called to the scene speculated that robbery was the motive for the crime, since a box that was thought to normally contain money was found empty. Mrs. Cukerbaum was known to keep large sums of money on the premises, but the exact amount of missing money was unknown. Officers theorized that the victim had been tied up and tortured in an effort to get her to tell where her money was hidden. They further speculated that the 81-year-old widow had put up a strong resistance, since the tape around her ankles was almost loose and the coat hanger wire around her wrists was also stretched. Official cause of death was suffocation caused by collapsed lungs due to most of her ribs on both sides being broken. "In other words," said Greene County coroner Erwin Busiek, "she was stomped to death."
   No definite leads were uncovered or suspects identified in the immediate wake of the crime. On December 2, however, authorities announced that they wanted to question two men and a woman who were seen in the area of the store on Saturday evening driving a brown 1957 Chevrolet. The next day, December 3, officials further announced that they were looking at the possibility that three men who escaped from the Clay County Jail in Liberty, Missouri, in the wee hours of Sunday morning were responsible for the heinous crime committed 160 miles away the same morning. A car stolen in nearby Independence shortly after the escape had been found only about a quarter of a mile from Luhn's store. Over the next day or so, two other stolen cars entered the picture as possible evidence in the murder case.
   On Friday, December 6, authorities said that three definite suspects had been identified, although their names were not immediately revealed. Two men were already in custody in Iowa, while the third was still at large. The three were officially charged with first-degree murder on December 9, although they were still not publicly identified. One of the suspects was originally from the Springfield area. The three men who escaped from the Liberty jail were not the three men charged with murder.
   On December 11, the suspects were identified as James Teitsworth, 23, Ralph Parcel, 23, and Berton DeWitt, 25, all of Iowa. Teitsworth and Parcel were returned to Greene County a few days later, while charges against DeWitt were dismissed and a different Iowan, Earl Weeks, 35, was named in his place as the third suspect. Weeks was extradited to Missouri in early January 1975.
   In late January, Teitsworth agreed to testify against the other two defendants in a plea bargain deal that reduced the charge against him to being an accessory. He said he was the driver of the car and the lookout but that he did not enter the store and that the plan was only to rob Mrs. Cuckerbaum, not kill her. None of the defendants knew the woman, but Teitsworth knew of the store, because he had once stayed briefly with a family in the Brighton area.
   At his trial in early April, Weeks was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, with Teitsworth serving as the primary witness against him. When Parcel went on trial in late July, he testified in his own defense, claiming that he, too, did not go inside the store building. He said he stayed outside the door as a lookout while Teitsworth drove down the road as a lookout and that only Weeks actually entered the building. The jury, though, didn't buy his story, and he, like Weeks, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Meanwhile, Teitsworth's deal called for him to receive a five-year sentence with one year to be served in the county jail and the remainder to be served on probation, assuming he conducted himself properly.
   During the months and years after their convictins, both Weeks and Parcel filed and lost a series of appeals and requests for new trials, just as they had lost bids for changes of venue at the time of their trials. However, both men were finally furloughed and then paroled in 1989. The actions caused an uproar of protest in Greene County, especially among neighbors of Mrs. Cukerbaum, but to no avail.