John Jefferson
Steven Calverley (KYTV).
A Missouri judge has sentenced the last of nine defendants who kidnapped two women, forced them to try and dig their own graves before dropping them into a well and shooting them, killing one while the other played dead in order to survive.
Christian County Circuit Judge Laura Johnson sentenced Steven “Chase” Calverley to 40 years in prison in the 2020 death of Sarah Pasco. She found him guilty in October of eight felonies including second-degree murder, kidnapping and robbery. Calverley was facing the death penalty but prosecutors took capital punishment off the table in exchange for a bench trial, according to records.
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According to a probable cause arrest affidavit obtained by Law&Crime, Calverley and co-defendant Gary Hunter Jr., along with others, kidnapped Pasco, 27, and the other woman on Aug. 16, 2020, and shoved them into the truck of a Toyota Corolla.
Hunter and Calverley drove in the Corolla while others followed behind in the surviving victim’s pickup truck. They traveled to a remote area where the suspects forced the two victims out of a truck and led them to an abandoned well. Pasco and the other woman were forced inside.
Hunter shouted at Pasco “Where is [redacted]?” When Pasco responded “I don’t know,” Hunter shot her in the head, “causing her to die instantly,” cops wrote. The other woman hid under Pasco’s body and “played dead” as Hunter fired his gun into the well. She waited until the suspects left, climbed out of the well and ran for help.
Deputies with the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office responded and rescued the woman. She was airlifted to the hospital for treatment for her gunshot wounds.
Meanwhile, Hunter called one of the codefendants and said “I need you to light up the truck or you are really going to screw me.” The suspects stuffed a T-shirt in the gas tank and lit it ablaze to burn the truck.
Hunter was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison. He testified at Calverley’s trial, according to a courtroom report from the Springfield Daily Citizen. The convicted murderer explained how he was high on methamphetamine and became enraged because he thought the two victims had set him up to be robbed. He got inside their pickup truck and then pulled out a gun before he forced them to try to dig their own graves. Hunter testified that he was calling all the shots and that Calverley was an “innocent man,” the newspaper reported.
But the surviving victim testified that Calverley was one of the main culprits, and threatened them with a gun and shears as they were digging their graves.
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