David Russell Hosier, 58, faces the death penalty for his conviction in the killing of Angela Gilpin, 45, on Sept. 28, 2009.
But Angela's estranged husband - Rodney Gilpin, 61 - was murdered during the same shooting, and his body was found underneath Angela's that Monday morning 49 months ago.
However, last week's trial involved only Angela's murder - and defense attorneys raised continuing objections to the prosecution's including some evidence about Rodney's death during the trial.
Boone County Medical Examiner Carl Stacy - who did the autopsies of both bodies at Cole County's request - testified last Wednesday that Angela Gilpin was shot six times, including two shots to her head, and that Rodney Gilpin died from three shots in the chest, and also had been hit in his elbow.
Pictures from the crime scene showed both bodies - but jurors saw only pictures from Angela's autopsy, not Rodney's.
On Sept. 29, 2009 - the day after the bodies were found lying across the doorway to Angela's apartment in the 1100 block of West High Street - Cole County Prosecutor Mark Richardson charged Hosier with first-degree murder and armed criminal action for both killings, in separate cases.
In December 2009, a Cole County grand jury indicted Hosier on both charges - again, in separate cases.
Until early this year, the dockets in both cases carried similar, and often identical, entries for both cases, including a scheduled jury trial for both in June 2012.
That trial later was rescheduled to January 2013.
And that's where the parallel paths stopped.
After attorneys didn't find enough jurors in Clay County, northeast of Kansas City, to hear the trials in January, only the charges for Angela's murder moved forward.
An April trial date was dropped when "the jury pool was insufficient" in Cass County, south of Kansas City, to select a jury to hear the case.
Last week's trial used 12 jurors, and three alternates, from St. Charles County.
No docket entry shows a decision to try one case, while the other remained to be rescheduled.
But Donald Catlett, one of Hosier's two public defenders, told a reporter last week that had been the agreement.
It now is up to Richardson and his staff to decide when, or how, to pursue the murder case involving Rodney Gilpin.
Richardson declined last week to comment on that case.
Historically, he has not commented when another case involving the same crime still was pending - but last week Richardson declined to say if the case about Rodney Gilpin's murder was a reason for his not talking about the jury's verdicts in Angela's case.