Missouri Mother Maintains Innocence After Brother Kills Ex-BF in Front of 14-Year-Old Son

Lucille Duncan is a convicted killer from rural Columbia, Missouri, in Boone County, a town located 125 miles east of Kansas City and 125 miles west of St. Louis. As featured in the 2017 Snapped episode, she had three older brothers and had a stable upbringing on a farm on Columbia’s outskirts.

Lucille Duncan had a son, Jeremiah, with her first husband in 1989, and following their split, she had another son in 1996. But Duncan was unlucky in love, and she went on to enter several failed relationships over the years, a streak she hoped had ended when meeting local Columbia, Missouri man, Jimmy Pruitt.

Pruitt was a divorced landscaper and father of three described by his children as being a kind person who struggled with alcoholism and substance abuse over the years, as detailed in the Oxygen series Snapped. Pruitt’s adult daughter, Holly Pruitt, told The Columbia Daily Tribune in 2003 that at the time of her father’s death, Pruitt lived with his mother in her Green Hills trailer park home, according to an archived news clipping reviewed by Oxygen.com. The ailing mother, according to Holly Pruitt, lived with Alzheimer’s disease.

“My father wanted a new beginning,” Holly Pruitt told the outlet. “And Lucy took that away from him.”

After meeting in 2002, Lucille Duncan and Pruitt moved in together (it’s unclear whether the couple lived with Pruitt’s ailing mother), as featured in Snapped. However, the relationship lasted less than one year, and in May 2003, Lucille called her brother, Gerald Duncan — a former U.S. Marine — to pick her up and exit the relationship.

Soon, Lucille Duncan filed a criminal complaint against Pruitt, citing physical abuse, and officials charged him with assault. The Columbia-based news outlet reported Pruitt was due in court on the week of his death “to respond to allegations that he violated parole by beating up Lucille Duncan.”

Pruitt would be killed before he could face a judge for those charges, though his loved ones told the Tribune that no such abuse took place.

Prosecutors said that on July 4, 2003, Jimmy Pruitt was in the front passenger’s seat of a car driven by Lucille Duncan when Gerald Duncan, in the backseat, shot the victim one time in the back of the head, according to The Columbia Daily Tribune. Lucille Duncan’s 14-year-old son, Jeremiah, was riding in the backseat as his mother drove.

Pruitt’s body was found the next day, wrapped in a blanket near Boone County’s Gleason Road, a dead-end street.

The four of them were purportedly driving home from a Fourth of July get-together at the Missouri River, where they’d shot off fireworks. Loved ones, according to the 2003 Tribune article, claimed Lucille Duncan knocked on Pruitt’s door and reportedly lured the victim to the river, though Gerald Duncan told Snapped that the exes prearranged a meeting.

“He had charges pending, so he wanted to go out and talk to my sister,” Gerald Duncan told Snapped producers in 2017. “She was afraid to talk to him by herself.”

By the water, the four of them made a fire and seemingly had what appeared to be a nice evening. But, as the 14-year-old boy would later tell detectives, he was shocked and horrified when Gerald Duncan shot Pruitt on the way home.

Gerald Duncan would tell Snapped that he had the gun on him because he “liked having some protection.”

There existed the courtroom argument whether Lucille Duncan was surprised by Pruitt’s homicide or a willing participant. But then Jeremiah, facing charges as an adult, testified against his mother, claiming she and Gerald Duncan planned the entire thing beforehand.

For his cooperation, Jeremiah pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence in 2004 and was sentenced to seven years’ probation.

Three years later, Jeremiah (who attorneys said was on mental health medication at the time of the trial, according to the Tribune) recanted his statements to law enforcement and claimed he only pointed to his mother and uncle because he was threatened with 20 years behind bars, according to the Tribune.

For his part, Gerald Duncan pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole after 25 years. Lucille Duncan, refusing to take a deal, was found guilty of first-degree murder, as featured in Snapped.

Lucille Duncan is currently housed at the Chillicothe Correctional Center in Chillicothe, Missouri, where she continues to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to online prison records reviewed by Oxygen.com. She maintains her innocence and began appealing her conviction in 2005, though lower courts have repeatedly upheld the decision, according to The Columbia Daily Tribune.

In November 2015, Lucille Duncan challenged her conviction with the state Supreme Court, citing prosecutorial misconduct and ineffective counsel, according to The Columbia Daily Tribune. The defendant and her legal defense argued that leading prosecutor Kevin Crane — now a circuit county judge — threatened the teen with second-degree murder charges in order to obtain his damning testimony, prompting Jeremiah to lie on the stand.

Attorneys claimed Pruitt’s killing was all on Gerald Duncan, who acted “in the heat of the moment.”

Filings by Lucille Duncan’s team in the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court were both denied in 2017.

In 2018, Lucille Duncan again tried to appeal her conviction in county court. Her attorney, Thomas Schneider, pointed to Crane for failing to disclose evidence that would have helped the defense.

So far, all of Lucille Duncan’s appeals have been denied.