Second Person Charged with Abandoning Corpse in Missouri

A second person has been charged with a felony after a Missouri jail inmate led law enforcement to a location where he said he helped bury a man’s body in 2015.

Fifty-eight-year-old Sandy Gallaspie, of Jefferson City, was charged Sunday with abandonment of a corpse. That’s the same charge filed last week against the victim’s ex-wife, 47-year-old Suzanne Ponder-Williams. No attorney is listed for either of them in online court records.

The Jefferson City News-Tribune reports that the body was discovered June 27 after an inmate at the county jail asked to speak with a detective, claiming to know where a body was buried. The Cole County Sheriff’s Department said in the probable cause statement that Gallaspie admitted to the killing after being taken into custody Saturday.

The remains have been taken to the University of Missouri Medical Examiner’s Office for further analysis and identification.