Wednesday, Jan. 25 2012 3:44PM
Mothers of slain children urge parole board to keep killer in prison
By Miranda Wycoff, mwycoff@lsjournal.com
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ReprintOn Feb. 16, Carol Berger and Helen Curtright will once again be traveling to Jefferson City to make sure the man who gruesomely murdered their children 37 years ago will stay behind bars.
Curtright and Berger, their families and several Lee’s Summit residents who remember that day have made it their mission to ensure James A. Love never gets paroled.
Although Love was sentenced to two consecutive 150-year sentences in the summer of 1975, neither the death sentence nor “life without parole” was an option for the jury.
So every five years in February, Berger and Curtright plead their case to the parole board in hopes that the man who killed Jeffery Berger, 2, and his baby sitter, Sheila Curtright, 14, on New Year’s Eve 1974 will stay in prison. “We just want to make sure he stays there,” Berger said.
“It’s hard,” Curtright, now 77, said about reliving that day every few years, “but I wouldn’t even think about not going.”
According to the Journal archives, Berger and her former husband had hired Sheila to baby-sit their firstborn Jeffery that night while they went to the Lee’s Summit Jaycee’s New Year’s Eve dance. According to the prosecution’s case from the Journal’s 1975 trial story, Love, a 25-year-old and former Marine, had left the Jaycees New Year’s Eve dance shortly before 11 p.m. to secure the dance proceeds since he was treasurer. He lived next door to the Bergers in the other side of their 600 block of Columbus St., duplex.
Apparently at that time he knocked on the Burger’s door to try to find extra chairs for the dance, but Sheila answered.
According the Journal’s archives, the motive for what happened next was never quite clear to law enforcement, but Love entered the home and savagely murdered both children, slashing their throats. Reports also indicate that Sheila’s head had been stomped on.
“It was routine for us when our daughter babysat that we would check on her. So when we couldn’t reach them, (my husband and I) headed over there,” Curtright said.
What they found was that someone had set fire to the duplex. When Roy Curtright, Sheila’s father, a former firefighter kicked in the door, he found the grisly murder scene.
It didn’t take long for the police to apprehend Love and prosecute him for the murders. The trial was conducted just six months after the murder and lasted four days. When the jury reached its verdict, Judge Tom Stubbs congratulated the jury on the decision and said, “If you made a mistake, it’s because you did not give him more.” That wasn’t the first time Love had been charged with murder, according to the Jan. 9, 1975 issue of the Journal.
In June 1974, Love was charged with first degree murder in connection with the fatal shooting of his landlady, Lauvina McWilliams, but he was later released for lack of sufficient evidence.
Letters: Curtright and Berger said the Parole Board reviews and every letter written on file. They encourage the Lee’s Summit community to write letters urging the board not to release Love on parole.
Letters should be sent to: Missouri Board of Probation and Parole Attn: Office of Victim Services 3400 Knipp Drive, Jefferson City, MO 65109
