Guy lets ex-girlfriend call kids to say good-bye before killing her

[Luanne]

Brought to you by the most dangerous city in America...



Killer identified in hostage standoff

By Jeremy Kohler and By Jessica Bock

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

11/15/2008

O'FALLON, Mo. Authorities today identified a man who confronted and fatally shot his his ex-girlfriend at her job Friday afternoon.

[pic of girlfriend, not killer]

His name was Gary Sheets, 45, of Jefferson County, O'Fallon police said.

Sheets calmly walked into St. John's Mercy Urgent Care Center with a pistol about 4:30 p.m. Friday and told people inside to leave or move to another area of the building, police said. He held Jenenne Marie Meadows, a 47-year-old lab technician, as a hostage.

Police said Sheets let Meadows make one call to her kids to say goodbye before he shot and killed her.

Several of Meadows' friends, interviewed today, said she had broken off her relationship with Sheets about a year ago. What compelled him to attack her Friday night was not immediately clear.

Police said Sheets went to the second floor of the building and confronted Meadows, taking her hostage inside one of the rooms. At some point, police were told by a family friend, he allowed Meadows to call her children.

About an hour and a half after she was taken hostage, Meadows broke free from the Sheets and unlocked the door. That's when he shot her. SWAT team members outside the door then shot him.

"That's a very last option. Obviously, it's a tough day for both the families. It's a tough day for us," SWAT team Capt. Dave Todd said. The team and O'Fallon police officers were never able to make contact with the man. Negotiators were also on the scene.

"We had both of their cell phone numbers and the office phone, but he would not talk with us whatsoever," Todd said.

Authorities said a doctor and medics on the SWAT team immediately began treating Meadows and the gunman, who were later pronounced dead at an area hospital.

Most of the patients and workers in the building got out, but a few were hiding in a room on the second floor of the building during the incident.

Medical workers standing outside the building in the rain on Friday night declined to talk to a reporter as they waited for word about what had happened. One employee who declined to give her name said she was working on the first floor with patients when they were instructed to follow lockdown procedures. They moved patients to a secure area and later left the building.

"Everybody remained very calm, actually," she said as she stood outside waiting to see whether she could get her things, which were still inside.

The flashing lights of several squad cars in front of the urgent care center was a stark contrast to the building next door, which houses a pizza restaurant and Chinese buffet packed with families out to eat on Friday night. Several stopped and stood in the rain to watch police at the scene.

"You usually don't see this out here," said Fred Miller, who was taking his two children to eat Chinese food.

On Friday night, authorities said they were not aware of any history of domestic violence between Meadows and the man.

Court records show Meadows is divorced and the mother of three adult sons.

A hospital spokeswoman declined to give information about the shootings but did issue a brief statement: "All of us are saddened by the events this evening. We are trying to confirm identities: however, we are unable to release information pending family notification. We continue to work with the police in their investigation."

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stcharles/story/28179C2A98579DA58625750200608E84?OpenDocument

[Tracyb24]

How awful and sad.

[Armcast]

Psychotic Son of a Fucking Whore! If there is a hell, I sure hope this guy gets to spend eternity getting reamed daily by Satan. Meanwhile, he should be hung by his balls and beaten daily.

[Frank 'N' Howie]

Holy hell...What a freakin twatwaffle...I bet the son she contacted is in more pain than is humanly imaginable...

[Ivy]

Weird. She broke up with him a year ago and he does this now?

[kelbons]

That's what I'm not getting.

[TheMysterian]

another nut case

[guardmom2008]

How awful, I feel so sorry for her children.

[KarmaKat]

Weird. She broke up with him a year ago and he does this now?

Some times it can take a while for the pain to set in. Maybe he thought he could get over it and after a year realised he could'nt. Or maybe it took him this long to build up the courage.
Either way he is a whack job.
It does make you wonder why he had her for an hour and a half though. Maybe his whole intention was too try and persuade her to come back. The phone call was a scare tactic perhaps. She tried to escape and he fired on instinct or reaction. Not trying to defend his actions. But there are a few what if's with cases like this.

[cubbiecatz]

Yikes, my brother lives in O Fallon.

[Frazzzld Kat]

Some times it can take a while for the pain to set in. Maybe he thought he could get over it and after a year realised he could'nt. Or maybe it took him this long to build up the courage.
Either way he is a whack job.
It does make you wonder why he had her for an hour and a half though. Maybe his whole intention was too try and persuade her to come back. The phone call was a scare tactic perhaps. She tried to escape and he fired on instinct or reaction. Not trying to defend his actions. But there are a few what if's with cases like this.

I was thinking the same thing regarding him shooting her only after she tried to escape. But if the phone call to her kid wasn't a goodbye call then what was it? I hope there will be a follow up report on this tragic story.

[Mrs Tingles]

poor kids. saying goodbye to their mum

[endsleigh03]

He sat there for a year and let the anger build.

I feel so sorry for this woman and her kids

[Jazbabee]

What a huge fucknut !!!!!

[Luanne]

More about why this happened.


Killer of girlfriend in O'Fallon, Mo., sexually assaulted another in 1998

By Jeremy Kohler

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

11/16/2008

O'FALLON, Mo. — The Gary Sheets who shot his ex-girlfriend dead at St. John's Mercy Urgent Care Center is a stranger to an ex-wife who said he was never violent.

But he would be familiar to another girlfriend — the one who put him in prison for sexually assaulting her in 1998 and told police he threatened to harm her parents.

Information from Sheets' friends, and police reports, suggests parallels between Friday night's shooting of Jenenne Meadows and the sexual attack on the St. Louis woman with whom he moved to Colorado in 1998.

In both cases, he lived with strong-willed women in their homes and would not disconnect when they tried to break up with him.

Sheets, a former blackjack dealer, and Meadows, an avid poker player, met at a bar in the summer of 2007. The divorcees hit it off — but not for long.

The relationship soured after Sheets moved into Meadows' home in St. Peters that October, friends said. He moved out in May. But ill will festered.

Late Friday afternoon, Sheets, 45, calmly carried a pistol into the clinic in O'Fallon, Mo., where Meadows, 47, was a lab technician. He ordered the others out and held her hostage.

He let her call her eldest son, Kyle, 22, to say goodbye. When Kyle didn't pick up, she reached her next-oldest, Anthony, 21.

"She told Anthony what was going on," her ex-husband, Ken Meadows, said Saturday. "Then this guy Gary takes the phone over and got rather graphic as to what he was going to do and how he was going to deal with her."

Eventually, Sheets killed her. MetroWest SWAT officers stormed in and killed him.

What made Sheets snap? Police did not take questions Saturday. But Jeff Lesinski, a friend of Sheets, said the estranged couple had exchanged hostile text messages for weeks.

Ken Meadows, who had three sons with Jenenne Meadows before their divorce in 2002, said she had left Sheets because "he had a significant drinking problem she wasn't willing to tolerate."

Lesinski said Sheets was frustrated because "Jenenne had basically said it was her house and her rules and he wasn't the husband so he didn't get much input as to what happened with the house. Jenenne was pretty forceful and pretty strong-willed."

Dana Miles, of St. Louis, who had married Sheets in 1987, said he got alcoholism treatment during their marriage and was sober for about a year. She divorced him in 1992, after he started drinking again.

"He was a very nice and fun-loving guy, but had an alcohol problem," she said. "He hated guns. He was never comfortable with any of that. And he was not a violent person. He just wasn't. Even when he was drunk, when we were married, he was always the sloppy, fall-down-go-to-sleep drunk. I'm just shocked that it came to that."

In 1998, Sheets moved to Westminster, Colo., with a girlfriend from St. Louis. He continued to live in her apartment there, sleeping on a sofa, after she broke up with him. She would later tell police he refused to move out unless she paid him $4,000 for the cost of giving up a good job to go west with her. She would also say that he was becoming more aggressive, making her afraid with threats to "ruin her" and "destroy her." She told an officer Sheets had said he would not harm her "but would hurt her family, living in St. Louis."

The night of June 1, 1998, according to police reports obtained by the Post-Dispatch, Sheets would not stop banging on her barred bedroom door, so she opened it. She said he sexually assaulted her but stopped when she made fun of him.

The report said she asked him that night, "Why don't you just kill me? This is what you're doing to me anyway." She told police he replied, "Believe me, if I had a gun, I would. Maybe I could go into Denver right now and get one off the street."

She said he also warned her, "I don't care what happens to me, if you go to the police, I'm allowed one phone call. I will use it to call my friends in St. Louis and have them take care of your parents."

Records show that he pleaded guilty of sexual assault and served about two years in prison. After his release in 2000, he moved back to Missouri and had to register as a sex offender.

The conviction meant he could not return to his former job at the Alton Belle.

Lesinski said that he got Sheets a job at his mortgage business for about 2 1/2 years, and that his friend later worked as a pipefitter.

Sheets and Meadows met at a bar last summer, Lesinski said. "He had casino experience, he knew the game well, that's how they started things off, playing the game together," Lesinski said.

Meadows had competed regularly in a bar-based poker league with 6,000 area members.

"She was awesome," said Allan Zwick, the St. Louis-area manger for Nationwide Poker Tour. "She was fun, energetic. She'd get a little drunk and she'd be loud, and kind of fun."

Deziray Vickers, a tournament director, recalled her as "the life of the party" who "laughed a lot."

After the breakup, Sheets took a job with a salvage company that took him to the Western states. He returned about six weeks ago and complained to Lesinski that his chances of finding work were slim.

During that time, the angry texting with Meadows accelerated, Lesinski said.

At the Eagle's Nest in St. Charles on Friday night, word of her slaying stopped poker players in the middle of a game, Vickers said. "Some people were in tears and some were numb. People couldn't focus."

She said, "The shock to me was that Gary was such a nice guy when he was playing poker with me."


http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/new...E?OpenDocument

[MorbidMolly]

"The shock to me was that Gary was such a nice guy when he was playing poker with me."


Well hell that explains it.......look I`ve had a psycho ex....it took a lot of court dates and a kick ass judge to threaten him with prison, to get him to leave me alone....he soon moved out of state, because he KNEW he couldn`t stop messing with me....get my drift....there is NO way I believe they didn`t have contact in that year, whether she wanted it or not.....dude has been stewing for quite awhile.....and if she was like me she did the best she could to keep the crazy fucker calm......but that NEVER works....it will be interesting to see how the whole story plays out.....man oh man, I feel for those kids....and my heart breaks for chick....to be shot like a dog in the street while working your ass off just to make ends meet.....so very wrong