By Heather Ratcliffe
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Friday, May. 08 2009
ST. LOUIS — A man who authorities claim helped a Mehlville firefighter commit a murder for hire in 1992 has been indicted in U.S. District Court. (TruthDetector: James Kornhardt was vice president of Mehlville Fire Fighters union, Local 1889 when arrested last year)
Steven A. Mueller, 49, of south St. Louis County, pleaded not guilty during his arraignment on Thursday to the federal charge of conspiracy to commit murder.
Two others, James Kornhardt, the firefighter, and the victim's widow, Karen Coleman, were indicted on similar charges in December.
Prosecutors allege that Coleman paid Kornhardt and others to arrange the murder of her husband, Danny H. Coleman, of Franklin County, so she could profit from his life insurance.
Danny Coleman, 38, was bludgeoned to death, then doused with gasoline and set aflame. His charred body was found in a truck near Interstate 44 outside Stanton on Oct. 22, 1992.
The case went unsolved for years, until investigators recently announced that they had linked a fingerprint on a book of matches near the crime scene to Kornhardt.
According to court documents, Karen Coleman met Kornhardt through a man in prison, Larry G. Nolan, who arranged the killing; Nolan sought help from two others, who made a silencer for Kornhardt's revolver.
Nolan died in prison in 1997.
According to the new indictment, Kornhardt recruited Mueller to assist in the attack. They used a baseball bat, fists, feet and other weapons to beat Danny Coleman. The silencer on the gun did not work.
Karen Coleman received almost $100,000 from her husband's death, and paid out $2,000 to the plotters, the indictment says.
After his arrest, Kornhardt contacted Mueller from jail asking him to dispose of the revolver and silencer from a garage on Kornhardt's property, court records say.
Mueller threw the items into the Mississippi River from the Jefferson Barracks Bridge that day, the indictment says.
