By Jeff Lehr

jlehr@joplinglobe.com

ST. LOUIS, Mo. — A Barry County woman is accused in a federal indictment of helping another woman kill her husband three years ago for insurance money.

Katherine A. Mock, 55, of Cassville, and Elain Kay Young, 55, of Novinger, are each charged with conspiracy to commit murder for hire and murder for hire in an indictment handed up Thursday by a federal grand jury in U.S. District Court in St. Louis.

The indictment, announced Friday in a news release from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Missouri, alleges that Young and Mock planned and committed the murder of Young’s husband, Melvin B. Griesbauer, on March 23, 2006, at the couple’s home in Novinger in northeast Missouri.

The women arranged the murder so that Young could collect $737,500 from three insurance policies on her husband’s life, according to the indictment.

Young is accused of recruiting Mock to pursue a scheme to murder her husband, the U.S. attorney’s office said. The Cassville woman allegedly tried to hire someone to do the job for $6,000 in March 2006. Mock later attempted to get another person to commit the crime for $10,000, according to the charges.

The U.S. attorney’s office said that Mock finally traveled to the couple’s home in Novinger on March 22, 2006, and that Young went to pick up her husband in nearby Kirksville at the end of his work shift late that night or early the next day.

When they returned to their home, “Mock and Young caused the death of Griesbauer by causing him to be shot in the head,” the news release states. The news release does not state who allegedly shot him. It refers to the murder weapon as a .30-30-caliber Winchester rifle believed to have previously been in the possession of Young and her family.

According to news accounts at the time, Griesbauer was discovered dead outside his home from a single gunshot wound to his head by Adair County sheriff’s deputies responding to a report of a suicide. A Winchester rifle was found alongside his body.

Authorities did not believe it was a suicide and Mock was arrested and accused of murder about one week later. Young was not arrested and charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action until March 2008.

The news release from the U.S. attorney’s office does not state why federal prosecutors have taken over the case.