12 year old Michelle Winter

Michelle LyAnn Winter was born to Jacky Nowak and Charles Winter. She had one sister. Michelle was murdered when she was twelve years old and in the 7th grade. Her initial disappearance and then the discovery of her body was shocking to the town of Springfield Missouri. See Police search house for clues in slaying. At one point in time over 100 law enforcement were searching for what happened to Michelle. It was thanks to a new unit that used computers for analysis that the murderer was served justice months after her death. See Man charged in Winter case Michelle had been visiting a friend at a neighbor's house watching a movie where afterwards the stepfather of her friend brought an end to her young life. During the trial, Michelle's father said "My whole future has been taken away from me. For twelve years I was Michelle's father. Now there's just me, and I'm not so sure who that is.". Her mother said "Because it was someone we knew, it's made it very difficult to trust even the people I knew before. It's shaken my trust in a lot of things." During the trial the murderer's ex-wife testified that he had beaten her during their marriage, and his sisters said that they were 11 and 12 when their brother had molested them. It was decided after 43 minutes that the murderer would be killed by lethal injection. In 1998 the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the case "is disproportionate when compared to other like cases in which the death penalty was imposed." and changed the ruling for him to spend the rest of his life in prison. See Michelle Winter: Obituary.