The Associated Press | Posted: Tuesday, March 8, 2005 6:00 pm
SEWARD A trial has begun in the case of a 1998 murder of a man in his cabin home.
Opening statements began and a jury was selected Tuesday in Seward County District Court for the trial of Lora McKinney. McKinney has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Harold L. Kuenning, 56, her boyfriend at the time.
McKinney, 32, was arrested in 2003 for the murder of Kuenning, who was found shot twice in the chest and once in the head in 1998 in his remote river cabin along the Big Blue River.
Investigators interviewed more than 100 people and studied evidence collected at the cabin for five years until McKinney became a suspect in 2003. She was in jail on suspicion of possessing drugs with intent to deliver when she was served with an arrest warrant in connection with Kuenning's murder.
McKinney had also been arrested on suspicion of possessing crack cocaine 10 days after Kuenning's body was found, records show.
Kuenning owned a Lincoln plumbing business until he encountered financial problems after a divorce.