The Key West Citizen

Priest Locked
Up In Murder
Of 11-Yr.-Old

By ALLAN MERRITT

LEBANON, Mo. (P)--Thurman Priest, avowedly as baffled as everyone else over the reason, was locked up today with months ahead of him to figure out why he killed the niece he says he worshipped.

The strange little man with a convincing way of talking was transferred to the Webster County Jail on the third floor of the courthouse in nearby Marshfield last night.

There he will await trial next year in Circuit Court at Lebanon on a charge of first-degree murder in the pistol killing of 11-year-old Jeannette Earnest last Wednesday.

The 48-year-old Grand Prairie, Tex., auditor led searchers Sunday night to the body of the child he abducted last Tuesday near her home in Fort Worth, Tex.

Again he insisted that his love for the child, who could pass for much older than her years, was similar to that of a father for a daughter. There was no sex factor, he said.

Eager To Talk
He seemed eager to talk to newsmen after his arraignment yesterday at Lebanon. With his brow creased in evident puzzlement, he said:

"I loved her better than anything, anybody. I don't know what they call loving something so much that you kill it. Just blame it on being crazy, I guess."

He said he had been drinking heavily for days and was in a mental fog that developed into almost a total blackout when he led Jeannette to the heavily wooded spot where searchers were to stumble upon her bruised body four days later.

Prosecutor Edgar Mayfield reported the FBI agents questioned Priest yesterday but got little if any new information from Priest.

In Kansas City. U.S. Dist. Atty. Edward L. Scheufler said the investigation would determine whether the man would be prosecuted under the federal Lindbergh kidnapping law.