Facts of the Crime:
McGehee was convicted by a Boone County jury on January 9, 1998, of capital murder and kidnapping in the August 1996 death of John Melbourne, Jr., 15. McGehee, then 21, was the leader of a group of six friends — teens and young adults — who lived together in a house in Harrison and survived by cashing stolen and forged checks. On August 19, 1996, McGehee sent Melbourne, the youngest of the group, into Harrison to cash a stolen check. The boy attracted the suspicion of a store manager who alerted police, who questioned Melbourne and released him into his father’s custody after he told the officers about stolen property at the house. The other residents, angry that Melbourne had “snitched,” later lured him to the house, where they beat him. The group then bound his hands and took him to an abandoned house in Omaha, where they beat him again, cut him and burned him. Finally, McGehee and two others took turns strangling him until he died.
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