JENNINGS, Mo. — A Missouri inmate facing execution next month for allegedly killing his girlfriend and her three children in Jennings in 2004 has produced statements that he was 1800 miles (2,900 kilometers) away when the slayings took place.
Leonard Taylor, 45, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Feb. 7 for allegedly killing Angela Rowe, her two young daughters and her young son in November 2004.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Monday that Taylor's attorneys, Kent Gipson and Kevin Schriener, have obtained statements from Taylor's now 31-year-old daughter and her mother claiming that he was in California in November 2004 and couldn't have committed the murders.
Taylor's attorneys hope to trigger a provision in a state law that allows a prosecutor to request a hearing before a judge if he or she has information that a defendant could be innocent or erroneously convicted. Christopher King, a spokesman for St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell, said Monday that prosecutors were reviewing the new information.
Prosecutors have alleged that Taylor killed the family, admitted it in a phone call to his brother and fled to California.
Taylor has claimed Rowe and the children were still alive when he boarded a flight from Lambert Field to Ontario, California, on the morning of Nov. 26, 2004.
Police discovered the bodies of Rowe, 28; her daughters, Alexus Conley, 10, and AcQreya Conley, 6; and her son, Tyrese Conley, 5, on Dec. 3 at a house. All four had been shot.
A jury convicted Taylor in 2008.
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