Richard Darren Emery: Quadruple Murder Conviction and Stay of Execution

Richard Darren Emery is a Missouri man sentenced to death for the December 28, 2018, shooting deaths of his girlfriend Kate Kasten, her mother Jane Moeckel, and Kate’s two children, ten-year-old Jonathan and eight-year-old Zoe, at the family’s home in St. Charles. A jury convicted him on four counts of first-degree murder in September 2022 and recommended death on each count. The Missouri Supreme Court affirmed the sentences in November 2024. His scheduled April 22, 2025, lethal injection was stayed while the U.S. Supreme Court considers a petition arguing that the trial judge improperly weighed Emery’s lack of religious faith at sentencing.¹

The Night of the Killings

Emery had moved into Kate Kasten’s home in December 2017, roughly eight months after her husband Kory Kasten died of cancer.² Jane Moeckel, Kate’s 61-year-old mother, was staying at the house while recovering from knee surgery.³

On the evening of December 28, 2018, an argument started after Emery responded rudely to Jonathan, who was showing him a LEGO set. Kate slapped Emery and told him to leave. He punched her and knocked her down. When she called for someone to phone police, Emery went to a nightstand in the primary bedroom, opened a gun safe, and took out a 9-millimeter pistol. He shot Kate twice at close range, once through the shoulder and once in the top of the head.⁴

Jane Moeckel had barricaded herself with the two children in a second bedroom and was on the phone with 911. Emery kicked in the door and shot all three at very close range. Jane sustained one gunshot wound, Zoe one, and Jonathan three.⁴ The 911 recording, later played for the jury, captured the sound of the door being kicked in, followed by gunshots. Kate’s father, Rick Moeckel, said the call captured Zoe asking Emery why he was doing what he was doing.⁵

Nine shots were fired inside the house. Seven struck victims; two hit a wall and floor during a struggle over the gun.⁶ Forensic testing later confirmed all rounds came from the same pistol, blood on the weapon carried DNA consistent with three of the four victims, and bloody footprints traced Emery’s path from the primary bedroom to the second bedroom.⁴

Who the Victims Were

Kate Kasten was 39. She had been Emery’s live-in girlfriend for about 18 months. Her husband Kory, a 43-year-old military veteran buried at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, had died in April 2017 after a six-year battle with cancer.⁷ Jonathan was ten, Zoe was eight, and both had already lost their father before they were killed alongside their mother and grandmother. Jane Moeckel, 61, was Rick Moeckel’s ex-wife.³

Rick Moeckel had attended a holiday dinner at the home five days before the killings and later said he had no prior reason to suspect domestic violence. Of a booking photo, he said: “The look on his face is not the Darren that I knew. That picture looked to be a picture of a person with no soul.”³

Shootout, Stabbing, and Arrest

After the killings, Emery changed clothes, locked the front door, and drove away in his pickup. An arriving officer saw him leave the house and calmly walk to the truck.⁶ Officers who tried to stop him found the truck loaded with an assault rifle and a duffel bag holding more than 900 rounds of ammunition. Emery pulled over, stepped out, and fired the pistol until it was empty. Officers returned fire, striking him twice. He ran into the woods.⁴

While on foot, he encountered a woman identified in court records as A.K. and stabbed her seven times, including five times in the chest, trying to steal her car.⁴ About an hour later, he walked into a QuikTrip gas station in bloody clothing and asked for an ambulance. Police arrested him there while paramedics treated his gunshot wounds.⁸

The Trial and the Dissociative State Defense

Emery was charged with 15 crimes: four counts of first-degree murder, seven counts of armed criminal action, three counts of first-degree assault, and one count of attempted robbery. The 11 non-murder counts were severed and tried separately.⁹

The murder trial began in September 2022 in St. Charles County Circuit Court before Judge Michael Fagras. There was no dispute that Emery killed the four victims. The fight was over his mental state. Assistant prosecutor Phil Groenweghe called the killings “deliberate, intentional and purposeful” and argued that Emery acted to eliminate witnesses.¹⁰ Prosecutors also noted that Emery did not harm his dog, which was in the house, as evidence he was making choices throughout the rampage.⁶

Public defender Samuel Buffaloe argued that mental illness left Emery unable to deliberate, the mental state required for first-degree murder in Missouri. Clinical psychologist Dr. Michael Hendricks testified that he had diagnosed Emery with major depressive disorder and borderline personality disorder, and that people with the latter can experience severe dissociative symptoms and act emotionally before regulating their reactions. The defense described Emery’s state during the killings as “dream-like” or “video game”-like, aware but not in control.⁹

The state used Emery’s conduct after the killings to rebut that theory. Body-camera footage and testimony from the shootout and the carjacking showed what the Missouri Supreme Court later called a “calm demeanor” and “methodical” conduct.⁴

Death Sentence on All Four Counts

On September 23, 2022, the jury found Emery guilty on all four murder counts. Four days later, after a penalty phase that included victim impact testimony from Kate Kasten’s aunt, stepmother, and father, from law enforcement officers, and from the carjacking survivor, the jury recommended death on each count.¹⁰ The jury unanimously found the statutory aggravator of “depravity of mind,” concluding that each murder was “outrageously and wantonly vile, horrible, and inhuman” because Emery killed as part of a plan to kill more than one person.⁹

Judge Fagras imposed the death sentences. On September 13, 2023, Emery was sentenced on the 11 severed non-murder counts and received 210 years, to run consecutively to the death sentences.¹¹

Rick Moeckel, who attended every day of the trial and stepped out only for the crime scene photos, said the death recommendation brought “a sense of relief” and rejected the defense’s reliance on borderline personality disorder: “I believe every step of the way he had control over what he was doing.”⁵

Missouri Supreme Court Affirmance

Emery raised 13 points of error on direct appeal. On November 5, 2024, in State v. Emery, 701 S.W.3d 585, the Missouri Supreme Court affirmed the convictions and death sentences in full. The court called the evidence of deliberation “overwhelming,” pointing to Emery’s retrieval of the pistol from a safe, his decision to lock the front door before leaving, his forcing open the barricaded bedroom door, and his shooting of four people in sequence. It held that evidence of the shootout and the stabbing was properly admitted as part of a “continuous sequence of events,” found no abuse of discretion in jury selection, rejected the claim of judicial religious bias, and concluded on independent review that the sentences were proportionate and not the product of passion, prejudice, or arbitrary factors.⁹ A motion for rehearing was overruled on December 23, 2024.¹²

Stay of Execution and the Pending Supreme Court Petition

Emery was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on April 22, 2025. In March 2025, the Missouri Supreme Court granted a stay so his attorneys could file a petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court.¹³

The petition, docketed as No. 24-6847, raises one constitutional question: whether a sentencing court violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by invoking a defendant’s lack of spirituality, while crediting the religious faith of others, as part of its rationale for imposing death.¹²

The argument centers on Judge Fagras’s remarks at the formal sentencing hearing. The judge described Emery’s son Tyler, who had testified for the defense, as a young man on mission trips and studying to be a Christian counselor, then recalled Emery’s own testimony that “I’m not a spiritual person,” and concluded that Tyler’s development into “a young man of high achievement and worth” was owed to his mother’s parental upbringing. Emery’s attorneys argue that the judge used the “not a spiritual person” line, which Emery had offered during the guilt phase to explain why he did not attend a Christmas Eve church service, to reject his mitigation evidence and diminish him as a father. They note that no testimony was presented about Tyler’s mother’s religious beliefs. Trial counsel did not object to the remarks.¹²

The petition relies on the U.S. Supreme Court’s January 2025 decision in Andrew v. White, which held that clearly established federal law bars evidence so unduly prejudicial that it renders a trial fundamentally unfair.¹⁴ Emery’s reply brief also cites decisions from Florida, Nebraska, and the Fourth Circuit, including U.S. v. Bakker, which criticized “sentencing procedures that create the perception of the bench as a pulpit.”¹⁵ Missouri argues that Judge Fagras was assessing the credibility of Emery’s abandonment claim using Emery’s own words, not imposing a religious test, and the Missouri Supreme Court adopted that reading.⁴

As of June 2026, the petition remains pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, and no new execution date has been set.¹

1
First Alert 4. Killer of 4 Family Members Granted Stay of Execution
2
Oxygen. Kate Kasten Allegedly Murdered Along With Kids by Boyfriend Richard Emery
3
ABC News. Father Speaks After Daughter, Grandchildren, and Ex-Wife Killed in Shooting
4
Justia. State v. Emery, SC99869
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KSDK. Victims Father Reacts to Quadruple Murder Death Penalty Case
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First Alert 4. St. Charles Jury Finds Richard Emery Guilty of First-Degree Murder
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Kutis Funeral Homes. Kasten, Sergeant Kory
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Fox 2 Now. Richard Emery Acknowledges Killing St. Charles Family
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FindLaw. State v. Emery, SC99869
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Spectrum News. Richard Emery Convicted of Killing Four People in St. Charles County
11
St. Charles County. Sentencing of Richard Emery
12
U.S. Supreme Court. Emery v. Missouri, Petition for Certiorari
13
Fox 2 Now. Missouri Grants Stay of Execution for Richard Emery
14
U.S. Supreme Court. Andrew v. White, No. 23-6573
15
U.S. Supreme Court. Emery v. Missouri, Reply Brief in Support of Petition for Writ of Certiorari