LEBANON (AP) - A Missouri attorney specializing in end-of-life matters is poised to go on trial in the 2010 deaths of her millionaire father and his girlfriend in what prosecutors believe was a slaying motivated by the defendant's quest for her businessman dad's estate.
Jury selection is expected to begin Monday in southern Missouri's Laclede County in the murder trial of Susan Van Note of Lee's Summit, The Kansas City Star reports.
Van Note, 48, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder related to the late-night October 2010 attack on 67-year-old William Van Note and 59-year-old Sharon Dickson at the couple's Lake of the Ozarks house. The couple had been together about 20 years.
Prosecutors say Susan Van Note forged her father's signature to a document to have his hospital ventilator shut off four days after the deadly home invasion. Authorities also allege Susan Van Note, who in 2009 claimed she was nearly $375,000 in debt and filed for bankruptcy, wanted her father's millions and was angry that he had named Dickson to get the bulk of his estate.
Court documents say William Van Note had a net worth in 2009 of nearly $8 million, and that after his death his daughter assumed the role of the estate's executor.
Dickson died at the scene after being stabbed and shot. William Van Note suffered similar injuries and died four days later at a Columbia hospital, where authorities say his daughter produced a document that suggested she had power of attorney.
Investigators say she asked that the ventilator keeping him alive be shut off.
William Van Note's signature was on the document, dated 2009, although investigators believe it was created after the attack.
The trial initially was to have been in June 2015, but a mistrial was declared. A second attempt at the proceedings two months later ended when Susan Van Note's lawyers challenged the admissibility of cellphone evidence.
Dickson's son, Andrew Dickson, has a wrongful death case pending against Susan Van Note.
Susan Van Note's mother, Barbara Van Note, told investigators that her daughter was home in Lee's Summit when the killings happened 119 miles away in Sunrise Beach. Barbara Van Note went to prison in 2005 for forging her own mother's name to a power of attorney, and she was ordered to repay $108,000 to a trust fund.