Alan Bannister was executed by the State of Missouri for the murder of Darrell Ruestman
According to court documents Alan Bannister was paid $4000 to murder Darrell Ruestman by Ronald Rick Wooten whose wife had run off with Ruestman. Bannister would fatally shoot Darrell Ruestman
Alan Bannister would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Alan Bannister would be executed by lethal injection on October 22 1997
Alan Bannister Photos
Alan Bannister Case
A death-row inmate who won celebrity sympathy was executed early Wednesday for killing the lover of a woman whose husband paid $4,000 to end the relationship.
“The state of Missouri is committing as premeditated a murder as possible,” Alan J. Bannister, 39, said in a final statement after appeals were rejected Tuesday.Originally from Chillicothe, Ill., Bannister was convicted in 1983 of killing Darrell Ruestman of Joplin a year earlier.
Ruestman died from a single shot to his heart after answering a knock at the front door of his mobile home. Prosecutors said Bannister had been hired for $4,000 and given a pistol to kill Ruestman, who was living with another man’s wife.
Bannister admitted killing Ruestman, but said the gun went off accidentally during a scuffle. He said he should have been convicted of nothing worse than second-degree murder, which isn’t punishable by death, but a bungled defense led to a guilty verdict.
An Illinois businessman was indicted on murder solicitation charges a month after the 1982 slaying. Ruestman was living with the man’s wife.
The man eventually was convicted of lesser charges, served 90 days in jail and paid $10,000 to Ruestman’s estate to settle a civil lawsuit.
The case received considerable attention. Bannister was the subject of two documentaries by London-based filmmaker and death penalty opponent Stephen Trombley
https://www.deseret.com/1997/10/22/19341223/missouri-inmate-subject-of-documentary-is-executed
