May 26, 2013
Boone County Medical Examiner Eddie Adelstein is one of five pathologists who have said in a habeas corpus petition that Jay Dix, the late Boone County medical examiner, made an error in his assessment of a 1997 Adair County death that resulted in two men getting convicted for first-degree murder.
In 1997, Dix said Wendy Wagnon, a Kirksville woman found dead in April 1997 along an Adair County road, had died from being strangled, but Adelstein said Dix erred and that “beyond reasonable doubt,” Wagnon died of an overdose of methamphetamine.
Jessie McKim and James Peavler, who were associates of Wagnon, were convicted in 1999, based in part on the testimony of Melissa McFarland, who according to the petition smoked meth with Wagnon several times before her death. McKim filed the petition in Cole County Circuit Court against the superintendent of the Jefferson City Correctional Center. Peavler died in jail in 2010 from a terminal illness.
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