Missouri men kidnapped woman to make her recant witness testimony: charges
Two southwest Missouri men were charged Friday with kidnapping a woman and threatening to kill her and her family unless she recanted her testimony against one of the men in a criminal case, prosecutors said.
Jeffrey Marsh, 32, of Oronogo, and Zaqouri Archer, 31, of Joplin, were accused of kidnapping the woman who had reported Marsh as a suspect when her gun was stolen, according to prosecutors in the Western District of Missouri.
The investigation began when police in Oronogo received a call in early February from a woman who said another woman, who was listed in court records as Jane Doe, left her a voicemail saying she was going to tell police she, not Marsh, had placed a stolen gun in Marsh’s bedroom. The gun had been seized by police in January, and she said she was going to “turn herself in.”
The woman arrived at the Oronogo Police Department in tears, saying she wanted to recant her past statement about Marsh. A police corporal asked if she was threatened.
The woman then said Marsh and Archer held her at gunpoint the day before, forcing her into her car and driving her to an area in Jasper County, about 150 miles south of Kansas City, where she was held most of the night, prosecutors said.
According to the charges, the men wore black during the abduction and one of them had a Taser. The woman felt the barrel of a gun against the back of her neck as she was kidnapped, and her eyes were duct taped.
Marsh pushed a gun’s barrel into the woman’s mouth and pulled the trigger, but the gun did not shoot, according to prosecutors. She was struck in the jaw, police said.
“Marsh told Jane Doe that she needed to make his weapon charges go away or her kids would die,” a Joplin police detective, who is assigned to the FBI Kansas City division, wrote in charging documents.
The men did not yet have attorneys listed in court records who could be reached for comment Monday.
