Fourteen-year-old John Claypool was allowed into the home of his neighbor, Mayor Wilmer Strickland, after claiming he had been locked out of his own house.
By the time the mayor saw the gun, it was too late.Strickland was shot to death as he tried to warn his wife and flee. Verona Strickland was shot at close range as she huddled between her bed and a wall. A son found their bodies the next day.
Nearly 20 years after the double slayings mystified authorities and prompted this small town's 4,400 residents to start locking their doors, Claypool has come forward to confess to the slayings.
Claypool, 34, said he had liked his neighbors but wanted to see at the time "what it was like to kill someone," Wabasha County Attor
ney Jim Nord-strom said Wednesday.
"He said the murders always bothered him and eventually confided in a minister," Nordstrom said. "They came to the decision that the only way for him to find peace was to turn himself in."
Claypool was expected to plead guilty Thursday to second-degree murder. Under state guidelines, he could serve about 10 years in prison.
"Thanks to the Almighty for giving John Claypool the guidance and resolve to do what was right and come forward, ending the years of doubt, uncertainty and frustration," said Nick O'Hara, supervisor for the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
Claypool was one of the original suspects in this town about 60 miles southeast of Minneapolis, but there was never enough evidence to charge him, authorities said.
The unsolved killings were assigned to a "cold case" unit in 1993. On Oct. 16, authorities trying to refocus attention on the case offered a $25,000 reward.
Rochester Police Sgt. Jack LeClair, a member of a task force working on the case, said he believes that when the case was reopened, Claypool became worried and decided to confess.
"I can't understand why a kid would do what he did," Linda Strickland, the couple's former daughter-in-law, said Wednesday.
Claypool told authorities he had been drinking and smoking marijuana when he went to the Strick-land home about 2 a.m. on Dec. 21, 1975, armed with a .22-caliber rifle. He decided to kill them only 10 or 15 minutes before he arrived, Nordstrom said.