Eldon Man Sentenced To Life After Laclede County Jury Finds Him Guilty Of Murder

Judge Phillip Hamner has sentenced an Eldon man in Laclede County court for his involvement in the 2019 murder of a Columbia man. 46-year-old Christopher English received two life sentences, one without parole, plus four years in prison for the murder of Aaron Brantley.

English was found guilty by a Laclede County Jury of first-degree murder, armed criminal action, and abandonment of a corpse in December 2022. The case had initially begun in Miller County, but a change of venue motion had transferred it to Laclede County. A motion by English’s attorney for a new trial was denied.

The charges against English stem from March 11, 2019, when Brantley’s wife reported him missing, and his body was discovered later in a wooded area by the Miller County Sheriff’s Office with a gunshot wound to the head. Court documents indicate that Brantley planned to meet with English at a bowling alley in Kaiser.

Two other men, Daniel Cole, and William Lucas, were also charged with being accessories to murder, armed criminal action, and conspiracy to abandon a corpse in 2019, but two of those charges were later dropped in July of that year.