KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - Two men have been charged with capital murder for the alleged contract killing of a pregnant Kansas mother who was found dead on Christmas Day, according to investigators.
Prosecutors allege in a criminal complaint filed Monday that Mashaun Jay Baker hired his co-defendant, Dion Jamel Green, to kill 31-year-old Jenna Schafer. The woman was found dead around 9:30 a.m. in an apartment in Junction City, which is near the Fort Riley military base in central Kansas.
Green was arrested later that day, while Baker was arrested on Jan. 2, police said.
How either man knew Schafer wasn’t detailed in the criminal complaint. Police declined to comment on the case Tuesday, saying no other details would be immediately released.
Green and Baker, both 33, are charged with capital murder because Schafer’s death was part of an alleged murder-for-hire plot. Green faces an additional capital murder charge because Schafer’s unborn child also died.
Capital murder carries a possible death sentence in Kansas.
Baker is jailed without bond, while bond for Green is set at $2 million. Their public defender Jillian Waesche didn’t immediately return a phone message
According to an obituary, Schafer also had two daughters who are both safe. It’s unclear whether the girls were with their mother when she was fatally shot. Friends and relatives are raising money for the children.
The criminal complaint states that the shooting happened either on Christmas Day or Christmas Eve, but provided no information on what led up to the killing, how far along Schafer was in her pregnancy or how Schafer may have known Baker.
Junction City Police Capt. Trish Giordano said she wouldn’t release details about the case Tuesday. Geary County’s prosecutor, Krista Blaisdell, was in court Tuesday and didn’t immediately return a phone message from The Associated Press.
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