Appeals Court Rejects State’s Woodworth Challenge

A state appeals court says Missouri prosecutors cannot use key ballistics evidence used to previously convict Mark Woodworth of murder at the Chillicothe man's third trial in his neighbor's 1990 death.

The Missouri Court of Appeals' Western District on Tuesday upheld a Platte County judge's April ruling that a bullet surgically removed from shooting survivor Lyndel Robertson may have been tampered with by a private investigator hired by the victim.

Woodworth was first convicted of killing Lyndel Robertson's wife Cathy in 1995. That conviction was overturned on appeal, but a second jury found Woodworth guilty four years later and sentenced him to life in prison. The Missouri Supreme Court overturned his second conviction in January over evidence it said Woodworth and his previous lawyers never received.