Jurors selected in double-murder trial of Lee’s Summit lawyer Susan Van Note

Opening statements are scheduled for Tuesday morning in the double-murder trial of Lee’s Summit lawyer Susan Van Note.

Van Note, 48, is charged in the Oct. 2, 2010, late-night attack and killings of her millionaire father and his girlfriend.

A jury panel of 15 — 12 jurors and three alternates — was selected Monday at the Laclede County Courthouse. Circuit Judge Kenneth Hayden had called a pool of 150 prospective jurors.

The nine women and six men will be sequestered in a Lebanon motel. They can watch TV together, but only shows on subjects like cooking or lawn and garden, Hayden said. The bailiff will control the remote.

When one juror asked if she could bring a book to read, Hayden said yes, “but not John Grisham.”

This is the third attempt to hold the trial. Hayden said he expected it to go at least into the middle of next week.

William Van Note and his girlfriend, Sharon Dickson, were attacked in a home invasion in their vacation home at the Lake of the Ozarks.

Dickson, 59, who was stabbed and shot, died at the house. Van Note, 67, a prominent Liberty businessman, was taken to a hospital in Columbia where he died four days later after his daughter showed up with a durable power of attorney for health care and asked that the ventilator keeping her father alive be shut off.

William Van Note’s signature was at the bottom of the document, which was dated 2009, but two persons who signed the document as witnesses admitted to investigators that they had signed it recently at the request of Susan Van Note.

Van Note, who specialized in end-of-life matters, has said she was in Lee’s Summit when the attack occurred. Prosecutors are expected to use cellphone evidence to place her near her father’s house.

Authorities allege that she wanted to get her hands on her father’s millions and was angry that he had named Dickson to receive the bulk of his estate. She faces two counts of first-degree murder.

This story was originally published February 6, 2017 at 1:09 PM with the headline "Jurors selected in double-murder trial of Lee’s Summit lawyer Susan Van Note."