Sedalia police release disturbing photos of wooden box where accused killer imprisoned his girlfriend

One of the more fucked-up news stories in recent memory continues to unfold in the middle of Missouri. 

On April 30, a 46-year-old Sedalia woman named Sandra Sutton hysterically called the police and said she’d just escaped from a home where her boyfriend, James Barton Horn Jr., had been keeping her locked inside a wooden box on and off for the last four months. She was, she said, only allowed to leave the box when Horn was at the residence. Officers were dispatched to the home and discovered a box matching Sutton’s description: 4 feet high, 4.5 feet wide, and 8 feet deep. It contained, according to police, a bucket of urine and feces, a sleeping bag, and a small air hole.

Horn, a 47-year-old with a criminal record, was charged with kidnapping and went on the run. Sutton moved in with relatives in Clinton, Missouri. Then, on May 21, the bodies of Sutton and her 17-year-old son, Zachary Wade Sutton, were found dead at the Clinton home. Horn was named the primary suspect, and a manhunt ensued. He was shot and killed by police two days later in an abandoned house outside Knob Noster.

Lieutenant Sonny Lynch of the Rural Missouri Major Case Squad told reporters, “[Horn] was in a closet. He was armed. He refused to surrender, he threatened officers, and he was shot and killed.”

Sedalia police today released photos of the wooden box Sutton was confined in. They are grim. 



A service was held for the victims yesterday.