PINEVILLE, Mo. — Jurors may decide today whether they believe Kevin Scott or four women who say he turned their teenage slumber party 13 years ago into a nightmare by sexually assaulting them for hours on end.

Scott, 47, originally from Elm Springs, Ark., chose to testify Thursday at his retrial in McDonald County Circuit Court. He did not testify at his first trial nine years ago, making much of his account Thursday new to the case.

Closing arguments in the trial that started Tuesday were interrupted about 6 p.m. Thursday by a sudden storm and power outage in Pineville. Associate Circuit Judge Kevin Selby kept jurors at the courthouse with the intention of finishing closing arguments and letting them at least begin deliberations once the power was restored.

The Globe was unable to confirm that any verdict had been reached by 10 p.m.

Defendant’s account

Scott told jurors that he spent the night in the trailer home in rural McDonald County where the four girls were having a slumber party, but he said he never sexually assaulted any of them. His account suggested that the girls, one 13 and the others 14 years old at the time, fabricated their allegations to hide from their parents the fact that they drank beer and smoked marijuana with him the night in question.

Scott acknowledged that he and a co-worker were driving around drinking beer on July 2, 1997. They went to the trailer home where the girls were having the slumber party looking for the father of the two girls who lived there, he said.

The defendant said he knew both the parents of the two sisters involved but was not aware they were separated until he and his companion got to the house, and the girls informed them of that. The girls told them that their father lived in Anderson and their mother was gone. Scott said he and his co-worker decided to wait for the mother to return to get directions on how to get to the father’s home.

He said that while they waited, they played cards and drank beer with the girls. He told the court that all but one of the girls went out on the porch with him and his co-worker, and they smoked a joint of marijuana that he had with him.

Scott testified that eventually he and the co-worker left at about the time the girls had testified that the men left, between 10:30 and 11 p.m. They drove into Arkansas, where his car broke down and the co-worker contacted his brother to come and get them, he said.

According to Scott, the brother took them back to the trailer home in Missouri to see if the mother had returned. When they got there and she was not back, it was decided that he would stay and wait for her, Scott said.

Bat attack

That’s the point at which his account began to differ even more markedly from the girls’ accounts in court on Wednesday. He said the girls let him back into the home willingly. He said one of them went to bed, but the rest stayed up and played more cards with him. The girls gradually all went to sleep in the bedroom except for the older sister who lived there; she stayed up playing the card game War with him until she also was ready for bed, he said.

Scott said she suggested that he sleep on the couch. He said he hesitated to accept because he was still in his work clothes and thought he would soil the couch. He told the court that the girl got a sleeping bag and a clean pair of jeans for him, and he cleaned up in a bathroom and went to sleep on the couch.

He said the next thing he knew, he was being awakened by someone screaming that partying and sex had been going on all night long. He said he didn’t realize it, but someone must have hit him with something while he was lying on the couch.

“I didn’t even understand I’d been hit,” Scott said.

He tried to get up but fell into the coffee table while he was still half in the sleeping bag, he said. He was hit a second or possibly third time across his hand and head, he said.

“The next thing I knew, I had blood making a curtain in front of my eyes,” Scott said. “I couldn’t see where I was going.”

He said he crashed into three or four of the girls as they were looking out of the bedroom at what was going on. He said he did not know who was attacking him, and he stumbled blindly into the bedroom. At that point, he said, he was finally able to see and realized it was the two sisters’ aunt who was attacking him with a bat.

“It wasn’t just a little bat out of her truck,” he told the court. “It was a full-sized aluminum bat.”

Flight into woods

There had been testimony Wednesday that a male friend of the aunt’s accompanied her to the trailer home after one of the girls managed to escape Scott’s control about daybreak and ran barefoot to the aunt’s home for help. The male friend grabbed a small, billy club-type bat from the aunt’s truck and entered the home swinging at the girl’s alleged assailant, who had passed out naked on top of one of them on a love seat, according to the testimonies of the girls and their rescuer.

The male friend had testified that Scott was frantically grabbing clothes and attempting to get dressed as he was confronting him with the bat. He said Scott fled out a door into some woods wearing jeans he had picked up off the floor.

Scott said he fled the trailer home wearing the girl’s jeans he had been given and headed down the road. He said he could hear the aunt yelling behind him that he was headed toward her home, so he soon switched course and doubled back through a wooded area along a dry creek bed. He said he eventually lost consciousness and passed out in the woods.

Hours later, he said, he heard a patrol car on a nearby road and made his way toward it from the creek bed. He said he encountered a deputy and was taken to a hospital before being arrested on charges based on the girls’ accounts.

Scott denied having sexual contact with any of the girls, and denied pulling their hair, threatening them or harming them in any manner. He told the court that he believes the two sisters’ aunt attacked him because he had taken beer and marijuana to the trailer home, and let the girls have some.

Frank Yankoviz, the public defender representing Scott, emphasized investigators’ failure to come up with any forensic evidence that his client raped any of the girls or forced any of them to perform oral sex on him as they alleged. None of the oral and vaginal swabs obtained from the girls had any trace of semen or sperm in tests conducted at the crime lab of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, Yankoviz said.

The girls testified that they drank soft drinks or other liquids before rape kits were conducted at a hospital in Neosho, a factor that a doctor said could explain the negative test results on oral swabs. Assistant Prosecutor Sherrie Hansen also solicited testimony from the doctor that just because semen and sperm were absent on vaginal swabs does not mean a rape did not take place.

Hansen pointed out to the jury in closing arguments that of all the witnesses called at the trial, no one else corroborated the bulk of Scott’s account.

“Kevin Scott wasn’t having a nightmare that night,” Hansen said. “Those four girls were.”







Second trial



Kevin Scott was convicted on two counts of statutory rape and three counts of forcible sodomy at his first trial in 2001, and was assessed two life sentences and three 15-year terms. He has been serving time ever since then at a state prison in Licking.

Associate Judge Gregory Stremel of the 40th Judicial Circuit ruled that Scott had received ineffective assistance of counsel and overturned the convictions. The disbarment of Scott’s attorney, Bill Crosby, of Springfield, a couple of years after the trial was a factor in Stremel’s ruling.