2 Collect Ransom, Kill Their Hostage
At least two gunmen demanding a $100,000 ransom shot and killed a bank president’s wife at her home Thursday and wounded her husband and another bank officer who delivered about $20,000 to them, police said.
The gunmen fled into the rugged countryside as the Missouri Highway Patrol launched a search.
Authorities found the body of Wanda Byler, bound and shot several times, under her bed, said Lt. Ralph Biele of the highway patrol.
Her husband, James Byler, president of the Farmers State Bank of Texas County, and Kay Jordan, the bank’s executive vice president, were shot and wounded when they brought ransom money to the gunmen at the Byler home near Raymondville, Biele said.
Byler was at the bank’s Houston branch Thursday when he received a call from his home telling him to deliver the ransom, said John Hutcheson, the bank’s attorney.
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