Prosecutor nixes offer of man trying to avoid death sentence

The Associated Press

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- A man offered to plead guilty Monday to five counts of first-degree murder to avoid the death penalty for killing a pregnant woman and her three children, but the prosecutor rejected the plea and said the man deserved to die.

Greene County prosecutor Darrell Moore said he would take Richard DeLong to trial and seek the death penalty.

DeLong's offer would have resulted in life in prison without possibility of parole if it had been accepted.

"In correspondence to me and the courts his attorneys have indicated he would do that," Moore said of the offered plea bargain. "But I have not accepted that and do not intend to accept that."

He said the crime, which police believe may be the worst mass killing in Springfield history, was heinous and DeLong deserves nothing less death if convicted.

"The public thinks prosecutors play games with the death penalty," Moore said. "But I really looked at the issue of did this case really warrant a death penalty. I studied it and decided it did. You had three kids, a baby and a mama killed, and in my judgment that warrants the death penalty."

DeLong has been ordered to stand trial on five counts of first- degree murder in the Jan. 19 death of Erin Vanderhoef, her three children and her full-term fetus. According to testimony at a pretrial hearing in February, DeLong and two accomplices strangled Vanderhoef and her children after DeLong's girlfriend learned he and the Springfield woman had had an affair.

One of DeLong's attorneys, Tom Budesheim of the public defender's office in Kansas City, didn't immediately return a call for comment.

DeLong's girlfriend, Stacie Leffingwell, and a neighbor, Harold "Bobby" Lingle, are charged with helping DeLong kill Vanderhoef and her children and also face the death penalty if convicted.

Moore said a number of issues still need to be resolved before the cases go to trial. But he added he hopes to see DeLong in court early next year and the other two sometime soon after that.

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