60-year-old James Phelps will spend the rest of his life in prison after he is said to have kept a woman in a cage and dismembered her.
Phelps has been charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping, and abandonment of a corpse. This is in connection to the death of 33-year-old Cassidy Rainwater in 2021.
Authorities say that Phelps was charged after pictures revealing the victim’s body, that was dismembered, were discovered on his phone.
Rainwater had been tied to a gantry crane normally utilized to put deer carcasses in.
Detectives had determined that Rainwater’s last known location was at Phelps’s residence in Lebanon, Missouri. However, he told authorities that she had been there, but it had been a month before.
Phelps and Timothy Norton were charged in 2021 after DNA tests found that the remains found in Phelps’s home was Rainwater’s.
They had first just been charged with kidnapping until the FBI discovered that there had been pictures of Rainwater’s partially nude body, in a cage, on Phelps’s phone.
Phelps had entered an Alford plea which meant that he didn’t admit guilt but was aware that there was enough evidence to find him guilty.
After the discovery, Phelps’s home burned to the ground, and it was investigated as arson.
Norton, who was charged with the same offenses, will appear in court on Tuesday.
