West Plains, MO. – 36-year-old Joey Marcak was recently sentenced to life in prison following a case where he murdered two individuals.
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The murders occurred on May 5, 2020, when three individuals met two others on a county road for an alleged drug deal. 30-year-old Richard Kuntz and 28-year-old Frankie Ziegler were found in a car, dead, with gunshot wounds after the staged meeting.
On May 7, 2020, 34-year-old Kyla Croney implicated herself and 37-year-old Levi Gunter. During an interview, she stated that she and Gunter had met up with a male she did not know before heading to a location on County Road 4000. Once there, they called the two victims and lured them to the area under the pretense of a drug deal. She said that the third individual, later identified as 31-year-old Joey Marcak, had hid in the bushes and waited till the two victims showed up. As they pulled up he got out and repeatedly shot them in their car. Marcak had reportedly told Croney and Gunter that the victims had stolen a car and money from him.
After the murder, they headed back to Marcak’s place where they destroyed Croney’s SIM card from her phone, tried to burn the 5 shotgun shells, and put Marcak’s clothes in the furnace. After failing to burn the 5 shotgun shells they split them up and buried them in multiple places around Marcak’s property.
At the time, both Gunter and Croney were charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of criminal action, and one count of attempted robbery. Marcak was charged with six different felonies after he was finally arrested on May 7, 2020.
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After the recent sentencing trial, Joey Marcak received life in prison for the deaths of Richard Kuntz and Frankie Ziegler. He pled guilty to two counts of second-degree murder. Kyla Croney was also sentenced by a judge for possession charges in October 2020 after she pled guilty. Gunter was found deceased in January of this year.
