INMATE 'SUICIDE' DOUBTED BY HIS FAMILY

In a letter to his ex-wife, Jason McCoy promised to spend more time
with his sons once he got out of Boonville Correctional Center.

McCoy won't keep that promise. On Aug. 13 - a day before that letter
arrived at Rena McCoy's home and 21 days before his scheduled release
- - McCoy, 31, was found dead inside a prison utility closet.

Early reports indicate McCoy killed himself. Friends and family
members don't buy it. Now, Rena McCoy and McCoy's cousin, Tammy
Wright, are separately seeking attorneys to deem whether legal action
against the Boonville center and Missouri's correctional system is
warranted.

McCoy was seven months into a five-year sentence from Buchanan County
for felony possession of marijuana in December 2005. He was expected
to be paroled Sept. 4. Relatives say he looked forward to returning
home to St. Joseph, where he planned to live with a friend and get
his life back on track.

"I can't picture him ever doing that to himself," Rena McCoy said of
the suicide scenario.

Jason McCoy "did stupid stuff and put himself in prison," said Mandy
Wright, a family relation by marriage. "But they're supposed to
protect him" in prison. "He was their property. He should have never
been able to harm himself, which I don't think he did."

McCoy had pending drug charges in Nebraska, but neither family
members nor Missouri corrections officials expected the charges to
interfere with his parole. Rena McCoy has acquired written
correspondence between her ex-husband and Nebraska dated in May, in
which Jason McCoy requested time after his parole to get an attorney
and deal with the charges.

McCoy's body was found on Aug. 13, although it's unclear at what
time. Rena McCoy said his death certificate lists the time of his
injuries as 3 p.m. and time of death as 5:12 p.m.

The Boonville Fire Department received a medical emergency call from
the center at 4:53 p.m., but the call was canceled before emergency
crews reached the prison.

Cooper County Coroner Larry Jones confirmed McCoy was found
barricaded inside a utility closet, a garden hose around his neck,
lacerations on both arms and a vertical cut down the center of his
neck, apparently made by a disposable razor. Jones declined to
speculate about the sequence of the wounds. Family members said they
were told McCoy died from blood loss. They were also told the razor
vanished down an open drain in the closet.

Tammy Wright, a cousin who grew up in the same home as McCoy, said
she can't imagine how he could have inflicted all of those wounds.

"One arm I could understand," she said. "To do them both and do it
with a disposable razor blade, it's not consistent."

Boone County Medical Examiner Eddie Adelstein conducted the autopsy,
but his office declined to release initial findings, saying officials
are awaiting toxicology results.

The state inspector general's office is investigating McCoy's death,
which they do any time a prison death includes an autopsy report,
said Brian Hauswirth, a Missouri Department of Corrections spokesman.

State investigators are looking into all circumstances surrounding
the incident, including any possible negligence.

Inmates might have access to some prison maintenance closets,
depending on the security level at the facility and which housing
unit a prisoner is assigned to in that center, Hauswirth said. If
prisoners are assigned cleaning duties, he said, they might be free
to get supplies such as brooms from closets.

Hauswirth declined to say where a garden hose might be stored at a
prison, calling that detail too relevant to the investigation.

Rena McCoy said she received a copy of another letter from prison
officials after McCoy died. The letter, reportedly found in McCoy's
locker, was not dated and did not have his name on it. All other
letters she received from her ex-husband during his incarceration
were signed, she said.

It's unsettling, she said of the unsigned letter prison officials
sent her more than a week after his death. The handwriting seems
different, she said.

In the letter, the writer apologizes for past mistakes and concludes:
"Love always, your new angel."

Rena McCoy is convinced her ex-husband would have asked her to tell
their sons he loved them, if he had written the letter.

"Maybe I'm reaching, but I think he would have said something to his
kids, especially if he was going to make them hurt like this."

By comparison, she said, the letter that arrived in her mailbox Aug.
14 talked about the future. "He said to tell the boys he wasn't ever
going to miss a ballgame or a play again."