James Rodden was executed by the State of Missouri for a double murder
According to court documents James Rodden would leave a bar with Terry Trunnel and would head back to his apartment where his roommate Joseph Arnold. Before the night was over Rodden would murder the pair and attempt to set the apartment on fire
James Rodden would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
James Rodden would be executed by lethal injection on February 24 1999
James Rodden Case
Around 11:00 p.m. one night in December 1983, Rodden offered acquaintance Terry Trunnel a ride home from a bar. On the way, they stopped by Rodden’s apartment to smoke some marijuana. Rodden’s roommate, Joseph Arnold, was there. Rodden’s former girlfriend called about purchasing some furniture from Rodden, who was moving to California with Arnold the next day. When Rodden demanded to see her, she refused, but Rodden went to her apartment anyway. She would not answer her door and called the police. When Rodden returned to his apartment at 2:00 a.m., he saw Arnold and Trunnel “making love.” According to Rodden, they were in Rodden’s bed. Rodden claims that although he heard no disturbance, he later saw blood on the floor, questioned Arnold, and Arnold came at him with a bloody knife. Rodden says a struggle ensued, and Rodden stabbed Arnold in self-defense. As Rodden tells it, Arnold had already stabbed Trunnel in Rodden’s bedroom. After killing Arnold, Rodden spread lamp oil around the apartment and on Trunnel’s body and set the apartment on fire, to “make it all go away.” Taking a bloody knife with him, Rodden fled north in Arnold’s car around 6:00 a.m. He was bleeding from deep cuts in his right hand, which could have resulted from his hand slipping forward onto a knife blade as he stabbed someone. Rodden later passed out from blood loss and crashed Arnold’s car into a house.
A maintenance man who entered the apartment around 8:00 a.m. to install new cabinets discovered the bloody bodies of Arnold and Trunnel and a smoldering fire. Arnold had been stabbed eight times in the face, head, chest, and back. He lay in a pool of his own blood on the floor of his bedroom. Trunnel had been stabbed eleven times in the chest, back, arm, and leg. Her faced was bruised and her arm was broken. Cords were tied around her left wrist and right ankle. Her body was blistered and charred in spots from being burned. Contrary to Rodden’s story, blood evidence showed she had been killed in Arnold’s bedroom and then dragged into Rodden’s bedroom. Her blood was on the knife Rodden carried in fleeing the scene.
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-8th-circuit/1455199.html
