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Murder of Melvin Griesbauer

In 2006, 51-year-old teacher Elain Kay Young had financial issues and was about to lose her farm and dog breeding operation in Novinger, Missouri.

She realized that getting rid of her fourth husband would be the only way to prevent that from happening.

Her husband, 48-year-old Melvin Griesbauer, had several life insurance policies totaling 1.2 million dollars because he wanted his wife to be financially secure if anything ever happened to him.

Young recruited her friend Katherine Mock to help her with her deadly plot. She lied and told Mock she was being abused. She also told Mock that her husband had taken out a $300,000 life insurance policy on her, and she feared for her life.

Mock asked several relatives if they knew a good hitman. She was offering between six thousand and ten thousand dollars, but no one took her seriously.

Mock decided to get her hands dirty, and on March 22nd, 2006, she drove over 5 hours from her home in Cassville, Missouri to Young’s farm.

In the early morning of March 23rd, 2006, Young picked up Griesbauer from work. When they returned to the farm, he was shot and killed with a 30-30 Winchester caliber rifle.

A crying Mock called 911 at 2:01 am to report finding him. She told the operator, “There’s a big hole in the side of his face.”

Investigation and Arrest

The women tried to make it look like an accident or suicide, by leaving the rifle near his body. But the rifle was cocked after he was shot, so investigators knew it was a homicide.

On the farm, they found a ski mask and rubber gloves that were sent in for forensic tests. Mock’s and Young’s DNA was on the ski mask, while Mock’s was on the gloves. Both items had gunshot residue on them.

Police spent years investigating and learned that Young tried to hire someone to kill a previous husband, Frank, in 1994 so she could collect three hundred thousand dollars in life insurance.

They also discovered that she was trying to kill another husband she was married to from 1996 to 2003.

Despite all the evidence of Young’s evil history and the DNA evidence pointing to Mock, the district attorney did not feel like they had enough to convict the duo of murder. So they went for lesser charges.

Police arrested two women in the fall of 2009 for felony conspiracy to commit murder and felony murder for hire—both federal charges.

Legal Proceedings

At trial, the prosecution claimed that Young killed her mother in 2000. They also revealed that she had a new man one month after Griesbauer’s death. She quickly became the beneficiary of that man’s insurance.

The two women maintained their innocence, but the evidence against them was overwhelming, and they were both convicted at their March 2012 trial.

A judge later sentenced both women to life in prison.