Ozark County landowner found guilty of shooting daughter-in-law

Angaline Ryan, 60, of West Plains was recently found guilty by a Texas County jury of armed criminal action and first-degree assault in connection with the April 13, 2015, ambush-style shooting of her ex-daughter-in-law, Tammy Hathcock. According to the West Plains Daily Quill, the jury in the case deliberated about six hours before delivering the guilty verdict. A court-ordered sentencing assessment report, prepared by the Missouri Department of Probation and Parole, will be used by the court to determine an appropriate sentence.
The report assesses the offender’s risk level, the severity of the offense, prior criminal history and other relevant factors. Ryan is scheduled to be sentenced before Judge John D. Beger at 1 p.m.  Tuesday, July 17, at the Texas County Courthouse in Houston. The case was transferred from Howell County to Texas County on a change of venue motion filed Feb. 16, 2016. 

According to Ozark County records, Ryan and Donnie Haynes are owners of a residential lot on the North Fork of the White River south of Dora. The relationship between the two isn’t known. Another property owner in the area told the Times shortly after the charges were filed that the couple sometimes visits a primitive cabin on the lot on Gun Flint Trail.

Allegations

According to the probable cause statement in the case, Hathcock was in her driveway on County Road 6300 in Howell County about 2 p.m. the day of the incident. Minutes later, she drove into the parking lot of the nearby Fairview School, honking frantically to summon help. Employees at the school, on K Highway about 3 1/2 miles west of Highway 63 in West Plains, called 911.

The responding officers arrived to find Hathock inside a Toyota Camry, bleeding heavily from multiple gunshot wounds. Bullet holes and shattered windows were visible on the driver’s side.

Hathcock told officers she’d been in her driveway minutes before when an unknown suspect, with a “covered face,” appeared with a handgun and started shooting, the statement says.

It was in those minutes before Hathcock was taken by ambulance to a Springfield hospital that officers got  their first clue. According to Howell County Sheriff’s Depart-ment Investigator Justin Riley’s report, they were told the breakup of the woman’s marriage had become bitter. 

Riley and investigator H.D. Reid were the first to arrive at Hathcock’s home located on a single driveway, off a county road, that splits and leads to two separate homes. The other house is where Angaline Ryan and Donnie Haynes lived. Investigators collected glass as well as several shell casings from a .380-caliber Winchester handgun.

That evening, while still at Hathcock’s house, investigators heard a vehicle arrive next door and went over to talk to Ryan and Haynes. According to court documents, Ryan wasn’t interested in talking, “had no questions about a shooting that happened within eyeshot of her house” and asked investigators to leave because they “were disturbing her privacy.”

A concrete slab where Hathcock was parked when she was shot is not visible from the county road or from any other house other than the one in which Ryan and Haynes live, documents say.

Investigators were able to verify through surveillance footage obtained at a nearby bank that Ryan was not at her job at Regional Title Inc. on Main Street in West Plains for a two-hour stretch during which the shooting is believed to have occurred, court documents said.

Two days after the shooting, after executing a search warrant at Ryan’s business, officers found a .22-caliber handgun and discovered the serial number had been removed. 

According to the probable cause statement, “Ryan stated the handgun had been given to her from her son, Jordan Hathcock. Ryan stated Jordan obtained it from a friend who purchased it with the intent to kill his own wife.”

Hathock, 42, eventually recovered from the shooting and told investigators her husband’s family was “upset about the pending divorce.” At the time of the shooting, Hathcock’s husband was in another state, police say. He later told investigators he “never gave any firearm to his mother.”

Online court records show Hathcock and Jeremy Hathcock were due to appear at a hearing in the divorce, which included child custody issues, the same week as the April 13 shooting.

When Ryan was asked where she was at the time of the shooting, she initially told investigators she met Haynes for lunch and checked out a house, according to the probable cause statement. It also notes that, in separate phone calls, she later told investigators she and Haynes went home at lunchtime on the day of the shooting “to have sex” and then that she went back home to “get a zip drive.”

Court documents show that Ryan told investigators she did not own a .380-caliber handgun.

Search warrants turned up a partial box of .380-caliber ammunition at Ryan’s house in West Plains and .380-caliber shell casings at property she owns on Gun Flint Trail in Ozark County. An analysis from the Missouri State Highway Patrol Crime lab showed the casings found in Ozark County were the same as the casings discovered at the crime scene, according to the probable cause statement.

Two people connected to Ryan, a former employee and a business associate, told investigators they previously saw Ryan with a .380-caliber handgun, the probable cause statement said. The associate told Howell County Sheriff Mike Shannon that Ryan told him she had “bought the handgun without the serial number on it to kill her husband with.”