US3 min(s) read
Son's chilling act before allegedly stabbing dad to death and burying him in shallow grave behind their home
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A Missouri man is accused of committing a chilling act before allegedly murdering his father and burying his body in a shallow grave.
Richard Saettele is accused of murdering his 63-year-old father, Michael, after the pair argued in his dad's home in Foley in September.
The pair had allegedly got into an altercation outside the property, and the confrontation ended with Saettele allegedly killing his father and hiding his body under construction debris in a shed outside the home, per the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office in a Probable Cause Statement viewed by The New York Post.
During the argument, Michael had allegedly grabbed a flathead screwdriver and attempted to throw it at his son, who then grabbed the tool and stabbed his father in the eye with it.
Michael fell to the ground with the force of the stabbing, with police saying he cried out to his son: "Ricky, this is not the way."
Saettele claims he attempted to remove the screwdriver from his father's head but found it was "stuck".
Saettele claimed that in the following five minutes, while in excruciating pain, his father made "deeply moving statements" and recited the Lord's Prayer with his son.
Saettele then chillingly read his father his last rites before he allegedly retreived a kitchen cleaver and drove it into Michael's heart, killing him.
He claimed to believe that, rather than calling 911 to get medical help for his father, he thought the best thing to do would be to end his father's suffering by stopping his heart.
Saettele admitted to knowingly grabbing the nine-inch blade to use it to kill his father, and drove it into his father's body so hard that the handle broke, before finishing reciting the last rites after the killing, according to police.
When his father finally stopped breathing, Seattele then allegedly dragged his father's body approximately 20 feet and buried it in a shallow grave behind the home, which he'd reportedly dug with a military shovel and which was around one foot deep.
He told police that he had initially just covered his father's body with dirt, but found that it began to emanate a foul smell after a few days, so covered the corpse with multiple "blankets" of insulation.
Michael's body was found under a pile of construction debris and fiberglass insulation underneath the dirt floor of a lean-to shed attached to the home on Saturday. Saettele was found and arrested the same night.
Saettele was charged with murder, domestic assault, and two counts of armed criminal action, and medical examiners are working to establish whether Michael would have survived the initial stabbing, which forms part of the prosecution.
Lincoln County Prosecuting Attorney Mike Wood said, per Fox2Now: "The medical examiner is going to have to take a look at the body and make any type of determination whether or not that was going to be a fatal wound.
"Partly, whether or not the wound was fatal itself was whether or not you were able to seek treatment in a timely fashion."
Saettele told police that the killing took place in mid to late September but did not confirm the exact date of his father's death.
He is currently being held without bond at the Lincoln County Jail, and made an initial court appearance on Tuesday. His next hearing has been scheduled for November 3.