JACK RINEHART - 4 months (2009) - Harrisonville (S of Kansas City) MO

It was wrong having a baby with her father, the girl knew, but when
Jack was born, she loved him as a mother should.She tried to keep
him warm in the overhead camper — the family’s home — when the
4-month-old got sick and wheezed that cold January. When baby Jack ran a
high fever, she pleaded with her father for a doctor.“I stayed
up with him for two nights,” Ashley Rinehart, now 20, tearfully told a
Cass County court Monday on the first day of her father’s trial.“I
just dozed for a few minutes, and when I woke up he was dead in my
arms.”As she told her story of years of alleged incest that began
when she was 5 and produced four babies, her teal headband, chosen to
match her blouse, bobbed with her cries.


Ashley Rinehart pointed to her father in court Monday in Cass County.
Among other things, Danial Rinehart is charged with
second-degree felony
murder and two counts each of
incest and abandonment of a corpse.

Twenty feet away in the
Harrisonville courtroom, Danial Rinehart, 49, leaned back in his chair
and swiveled, peering over the top of his glasses as if listening to a
stranger.He is charged with second-degree felony murder,
statutory rape and two counts each of child endangerment, incest and
abandonment of a corpse.Authorities say that DNA identifies him
as the father of the babies and that he did not allow Ashley, who
attended school only through the eighth grade, or any of the babies
medical attention.After his arrest in January 2009, he told
police he didn’t want to take any of them to a doctor because his father
had died in an ambulance.The jury saw a video of a police
interrogation in which Rinehart appeared to admit sex with his daughter
but blamed his actions on medicine he took.“It makes the back of
my head swell up, and I didn’t know what I was doing,” Rinehart said.He
also said his daughters would peep at him through a hole in the wall
when he took a shower and that the victim sometimes would want to have
sex with him.“How would she let you know that?” a detective
asked.“She would rub my shoulders,” Rinehart answered.Over
the years, the family, including three other daughters, moved from town
to town, traveling a nomadic life in a pickup and spending nights in an
overhead camper. By late 2005, the family had settled on a small farm
north of Harrisonville that belonged to Danial Rinehart’s parents.Assistant
Cass County Prosecutor Scott Wright said new owners of the property
found remains of two infants in chest-type coolers there. Defense
attorney Janeal Matheson said the trial, which is expected to continue
at least through Thursday, would not be the “slam dunk” that prosecutors
indicated it would be. She hinted that a key part of the defense would
be that Jack’s death was accidental. The murder charge stems from the
death of that child.The investigation began when Hayley Rinehart,
the year-younger sister of Ashley, ran away and called police from the
Walmart in Harrisonville.Their father had threatened the sisters
with death if they ever revealed the abuse, Hayley said, but she
couldn’t go on knowing what was happening to her sister.The
sisters also told of neglect and hunger. Authorities say Rinehart’s
wife, Linda, knew of the incest but did nothing to stop it. She is
charged with two counts of child endangerment and is scheduled for trial
in August.Court documents say Linda Rinehart was jealous of the
relationship between her husband and daughter but helped with the
deliveries of the babies.Investigators say the first baby, Ethyl,
was born in 2004 and buried in Oklahoma. Ashley was 14 at the time. The
second, a boy, now 4, survives. The last two babies were the
remains found in the coolers. The jury saw graphic photos of the
containers’ contents, bones and infant toys.During her time on
the witness stand, Ashley told how she buried Jack with a little stuffed
bear, a Hot Wheels truck and a stocking cap with “Touchdown” on it.The
last baby, a girl, Goldie, was born April 6, 2008. Ashley had gone into
labor while painting her father’s race car.Goldie died soon
after birth.“I kept asking him (her father) if she was OK, and he
said she was,” Ashley said. “But then he wrapped her in a blanket and
left her at my feet.”The judge stopped her testimony several
times so Ashley could compose herself. Danial Rinehart also
talked about the ordeal of burying the dead babies. The detective told
him he could have called a mortuary, and they would have taken care of
all that.“They would have?” Rinehart asked.“Sure,” the
detective answered. “But they might have asked some questions.”

A 47-year-old Missouri man accused of impregnating his daughter four
times and causing the death of one of the babies has been found guilty
of second-degree murder.
Jurors took less than three hours to convict the man. He also was
found guilty of incest and rape.

The murder charge stems from the death of his daughter's third
child, who did not receive medical attention after falling ill. The
baby's remains were put in a plastic container and sealed inside a
cooler.
Remains of the daughter's fourth child, a girl who was stillborn,
also were found in a cooler on rural property belonging to the
defendant's mother.

A Cass County Judge will sentence Daniel Rinehart on
Monday. A jury already convicted him of murder and raping his own
daughter. A jury recommended that Rinehart spend the rest of his life
behind bars after his trial in April.

At that time, Rinehart was convicted of second degree murder, incest,
rape, child endangerment and abandonment of a corpse. It took a jury
less than three hours to convict Rinehart.

Rinehart fathered four babies with his daughter. He was convicted in the
death of one of the babies because he didn't seek medical attention
when the child got sick.
According to court testimony, Rinehart began molesting his daughter when
she was just five-years-old. His 20-year-old-daughter, Ashley,
testified in tears, about years of sex abuse, the deaths of three of her
four babies, and death threats if she ever told anyone.

Linda Rinehart, Ashley's mother will go to trial in August. Rinehart
never testified in his own defense. He is scheduled for sentencing
Monday at 1:30 p.m.

A 49-year-old man who fathered four children with one of his
daughters, including one who died after not receiving medical treatment
after becoming ill, was sentenced Monday to spend the rest of his life
in prison.The man, shrugged and shook his head when
asked by Cass County Circuit Court Judge Jacqueline Cook if he had
anything to say, then stood motionless as she read her sentence."No
sentence I can impose will correct or take away the harm you have
done," Cook said. "I see no reason not to follow the jury's
recommendation."The man was convicted in April of all charges
against him, including second-degree murder, second-degree rape, two
counts of incest and two counts of abandonment of a corpse. The jury
recommended the maximum sentence on each count, including life in prison
for the murder charge. He was sentenced to another 22 years in prison
for the other charges.Three of the four children the man had with
his daughter died, including one who fell off a couch, one who got sick
and didn't get proper medical attention, and one who was stillborn. The
murder charge stemmed from the death of the child who died after
falling ill.The man's mother, who didn't attend his trial on her
doctor's advice, was in the courtroom when Cook proclaimed he would
spend his life in prison.She said her son has found God, and she
believes the man's daughter and his wife shared the blame for what
happened — much of it in a trailer parked on her property on the
outskirts of Harrisonville."(She) was with her daddy constantly,"
the man's mother said. "To me, if he was bothering her, why didn't she
do something about it?"The woman also blamed the man's wife,
saying that if she would have been "the right kind of mother, the right
kind of wife, none of this would have happened."The man's mother
said she didn't know about any of the babies. Since her son was charged,
she said many other family members, including her granddaughter, the
victim, won't have anything to do with her.She said she visits
her son about once a month and that he talks about having found God."He
smiled at me when he came in, and it broke my heart," she said, her
voice quivering.During the man's three-day trial, the daughter —
now 20 — testified that her father first had sex with her when she was 5
years old. She said she gave birth to her first child, a daughter, at
age 14. The girl died four months later after falling off a couch in the
recreational vehicle the family lived in.Two years later she had
a son — the only one of her children who survived. A year later, she
had another son, but he died after becoming ill and not receiving
medical attention.His body and that of the victim's fourth child,
a daughter who was stillborn, were found in January 2009 in coolers on
the rural Harrisonville property where the family — the defendant, the
victim, her mother and three sisters — lived in their recreational
vehicle.The man's wife — who is the victim's mother — is
scheduled to go on trial in August. She has pleaded not guilty to two
counts of endangering the welfare of a child and one count of hindering
prosecution. She is free on $10,000 bond.