A Boone County jury will hear from additional prosecution witnesses Wednesday morning in a high-profile Columbia double murder trial.
It took about six hours to select a jury in 37-year-old Cadilac Derrick’s murder trial. Boone County prosecutors have charged Derrick with two counts of first degree murder and four other felonies. Derrick is charged with shooting and killing 22-year-old Lea’johna Sanders and 53-year-old Laura Myers, Sanders’ mother.
939 the Eagle News was at the Boone County Courthouse for opening statements on Tuesday afternoon. Cadilac Derrick wore a black suit, a white dress shirt and a red tie. Court documents say that Derrick and Sanders had an infant son, and say Sanders called 911 in November 2022 to say Derrick had been abusing her. Sanders told the dispatcher that Derrick would not leave her house and that he told her if she didn’t stay with him, he was going to kill her and her mother. That short 911 call was played in open court on Tuesday, and the jury could hear multiple gunshots, perhaps four or five, on the tape.
Boone County assistant prosecutor Risa Perkins tells the jury in opening statements that Derrick had repeatedly threatened to kill Sanders and had once threatened to “blow her head off.” Prosecutor Perkins also says Derrick strangled Sanders three months before she was killed and also struck her in the stomach. Defense attorney Joseph Whitener tells the jury that this is not and never was a murder case: he says it’s a self-defense case. He says Sanders and Myers were killed in self-defense. Counselor Whitener tells the jury that both women were intoxicated that night, and that one of them had a hammer. He also says Myers “unleashed chaos” that night by coming to the house and banging on the door.
Boone County Circuit Judge Brouck Jacobs has said in open court that the trial could last into Friday.
Columbia Police and city manager De’Carlon Seewood have noted that 9 of Columbia’s 11 homicides in 2022 involved domestic violence.
