Former Jailer Convicted Of Murder After Convincing Her Ailing Father To Kill Her Estranged Husband Before Taking His Own Life

A former jail guard has been convicted of murder after convincing her terminally ill father to kill her estranged husband during a bitter custody dispute, before turning the gun on himself.

A jury convicted Elizabeth Kilgore of first-degree murder, introducing a dangerous instrument into a county jail, acceding to corruption and possession of a methamphetamine earlier this month, more than two years after the murder-suicide that took the lives of her husband, Lance Kilgore, and father Charles Sander, according to a statement from the Missouri Attorney General’s Office.

Prosecutors said Charles Sander, 77, “ambushed and murdered” his son-in-law on the morning of Sept. 7, 2018 at a convenience store in Osceola, Missouri where Lance Kilgore had gone to pick up his son as part of a custody exchange. But instead of meeting his estranged wife as he had expected, he encountered Sander, who had traveled approximately three hours from his West Plains, Missouri farm to carry out the deadly act.

Sander shot and killed Lance when he arrived at the convenience store before shooting himself in the head. The violence was captured by a nearby surveillance camera, according to prosecutors.

Elizabeth allegedly arrived at the scene a few minutes later with her son and claimed that she had been “running late,” according to charging documents obtained by the Hays Post.

After splitting up her with husband, Elizabeth had moved in with her mother and began working as a jailer at the St. Clair County Jail. While there, prosecutors said she tried to elicit two different inmates to kill her husband so that she could secure full custody of the couple’s young son, even making the requests on recorded jail calls, according to the statement from the attorney general’s office.

Prosecutors said she smuggled contraband to the inmates throughout 2018 to seemingly build a positive relationship.

She was fired from the post one month before the murder after one of the inmates turned her in for making the request, the Hays Post reports.

In a recorded call with a second inmate, she said that her father had agreed to “handle my problem for me,” according to the charging documents.

Elizabeth also said she wanted to get methamphetamine for her dad to help him “go out with a bang.” She threatened to turn her father in for drugs if he didn’t murder her husband, prosecutors said.

Sander reportedly had an extensive history of drug-related arrests and was described by investigators as being “terminal” and in poor health, according to local station KY3.

Elizabeth was taken into custody on Sept. 16, 2018—just over a week after the murder-suicide was carried out. Police found methamphetamine, a note from an inmate and more than $9,000 in cash she had described as “run money” in the vehicle, according to authorities.

She’s scheduled to be sentenced in April.