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| David Zink |
David Zink, who resided in the Osceola area, was found guilty by a jury in St. Clair County in 2004 of the murder of Amanda Morton in July, 2001. Her body was found in St. Clair County in a shallow grave the day after she disappeared.
According to previous accounts of the murder, in the early morning hours of July 12, 2001, police responded to the report of a traffic accident near Stafford. On their arrival, they found Amanda Morton’s car abandoned with the keys in the ignition, engine running, headlights and hazard lights on with the driver’s window down. Police found the victim’s personal items in the vehicle, including her purse, credit cards and medication. After the evening news broadcast the victim’s disappearance, the owner of a motel near Camdenton recognized Amanda’s picture as the woman who checked into a room with David Zink. The motel owner provided police with Zink’s motel registration card and, using this information, law enforcement officers apprehended Zink at his home in the Osceola area.
After police showed him evidence that placed him near the scene of the abduction, Zink waived his rights and confessed to killing and burying the victim. He led law enforcement authorities straight to the spot in a cemetery near Osceola where he said he had buried the victim’s body. Police discovered the body positioned just as Zink had described. Pathologists found that Amanda’s neck was broken. She had sustained injuries consistent with strangulation and being tied up. The victim had eight broken ribs and between 50 and 100 blunt force injuries. Hair samples taken from Zink’s truck matched Amanda’s hair and paint left on the victim’s car matched paint from Zink’s truck.
In two videotaped confessions, Zink described the murder in detail. He said that he rear-ended Amanda’s car on an exit ramp. In one confession, Zink told police that the victim voluntarily left the accident scene with him in his truck, but later threatened to call law enforcement authorities if he did not return her to her vehicle. In another confession, he said that he gave the victim no choice but to get in his truck, but that she willingly went with him after she was in the truck. He drove around with Amanda in his truck. They stayed for a short time at the motel near Camdenton. Zink then decided to kill Amanda because he was worried he would go back to prison if she called police. He took her to the cemetery and tied her to a tree. He told her to look up and then broke her neck. Zink strangled her with his hands and then with a rope. He stuffed her mouth with mud and leaves.
Zink looked for a spot to bury her and then dragged Amanda’s body to that location with a rope. Because he was worried she might revive, he stated that he stabbed the back of her neck with a knife to cut her spinal cord. He then covered her body with leaves, went home to get a shovel and came back to the cemetery and covered the body with dirt.
And it should not come as a surprise to almost everyone, as these things go, David Zink is still on death row in 2014 at the Potosi Correctional Center, Potosi Missouri
Courtesy of The Clinton Daily Democrat
