By Jeff Lehr
Globe Staff Writer
CARTHAGE, Mo. —
Matthew Laurin seemed angry Wednesday morning when he woke up a convicted man headed toward a life behind bars.
Laurin, 20, of Springfield, pleaded guilty Monday to the 2008 murders of Robert and Ellen Sheldon, of rural Carthage, and was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance at parole. That prospect likely was troubling him.
He had escaped the death penalty. That was the single mercy his guilty pleas gained him.
Still, the jail staff thought he seemed angry about something while he spent an allotted hour in an area outside his cell in F pod at the Jasper County Jail, according to Sheriff Archie Dunn. Laurin dropped a letter, or letters, in the pod’s mailbox about 10:25 a.m. and retreated back inside his one-man cell 23 minutes later to be locked up again for the rest of the day, the sheriff said.
It was the last time anyone saw him alive.
Detention officers delivering meals to inmates discovered Laurin at 12:47 p.m. hanging by a bedsheet from the grating of an air-conditioning duct high on the wall of his cell. He was lowered to the floor by jailers, and resuscitation efforts were started as emergency medical technicians were summoned.
The emergency efforts failed, and the newly convicted inmate died before he could be transported to a hospital. His body was sent to Springfield, where an autopsy will be performed today before the body is released to his family for funeral arrangements.
The sheriff said no foul play is suspected in the jail death. F pod is a segregated section of the jail, where only one inmate is allowed out in the open area of the pod at a time and inmates have no access to one another’s cells. Surveillance of the area outside the cells is maintained around the clock, but there is no video surveillance inside the cells.
Dunn said Laurin had not been placed on a suicide watch because there had been no indication that he might take his own life, even though in court Monday he acknowledged being on medication for depression. Dunn said that if Laurin had been on a watch, he would have been placed in a padded cell elsewhere in the jail.
“I do know that shortly after 9 o’clock (a.m.) today, he was talking to our counselor and was asked the question: ‘Are you contemplating suicide?’ And he said, ‘No,’” the sheriff said.
Dunn said that while the jail staff had reported that Laurin seemed angry, he did not know what his anger may have concerned. He said investigators from the Sheriff’s Department are scrutinizing the death. The sheriff said he did not know if the letter, or letters, that Laurin dropped in the mailbox may have included a suicide note to his family or a friend. He said he did not know if the mail had been posted or if investigators may be examining it for relevance to the inmate’s suicide.
Laurin was assessed two life terms for the murders of the Sheldons in their home west of Carthage. He also was sentenced to two 20-year terms and a 15-year term on related charges, with all five sentences to run consecutively. His co-defendant, Darren J. Winans, 22, of Jasper, who faces the same charges, remains in custody in another jail pending trial.
The sheriff said Laurin’s family was notified of the suicide late Wednesday afternoon.
The Globe contacted one of the sons of the Sheldons to see whether the family cared to comment. Danny Sheldon said the family did not wish to offer a public statement about the matter.
Confession
In his statement of facts in connection with his plea change in the case, Matthew Laurin wrote that it was he who stabbed Ellen and Robert Sheldon to death on Oct. 11, 2008, at their rural Carthage home.
