An inmate at the Jefferson City Correctional Center has been sentenced to life in prison without parole for pleading guilty to killing a fellow inmate in July 2013.
Terry Volner, 29, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for killing Jose Benitez, 67, by striking him.
This was based on an agreement and recommendation with the prosecutor's office. Initially, prosecutors had intended to seek the death penalty if the case had proceeded to trial.
No other details of the 2013 attack were released in the Cole County Grand Jury indictment or in previous reports about the murder and investigation.
However, in the notice telling the court of the prosecutors' plan to seek the death penalty, they noted Volner committed the murder "for the purpose of receiving money or any other thing of monetary value from the victim," and the killing "was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman in that it involved torture, or depravity of mind."
At the time of his death, Benitez was serving a 25-year sentence for a first-degree statutory sodomy conviction from Jasper County.
Volner, originally from Hartville, was already serving a life sentence without parole after pleading guilty to the 2011 murder of Dusty Guenther, 4.
Authorities said Volner babysat the boy and slit his throat, then dumped the body in a sewage lagoon.
Media reports in 2011 said authorities found Volner, then 22, had sent a text message to his mother containing a photo of the boy's body - and Volner's mother then called 911.
Officials also said Volner had planned to kill the boy's mother, her three other children and her boyfriend - but none of those people were harmed.
The attorney general's office prosecuted that murder case, and the life sentence was imposed through an agreement that included guilty pleas to first-degree murder and armed criminal action.
At the time of the Guenther murder in 2011, the new indictment and the death penalty notice said Volner already had been found guilty of or pleaded guilty to charges of knowingly burning or exploding; stealing (two different cases a year apart); second-degree burglary; third-degree assault, a misdemeanor; and animal abuse, a misdemeanor.