CORALVILLE, Iowa (AP) — Officials say an inmate convicted of first-degree murder in the 1976 slaying of an Omaha man in Pottawattamie County has died of natural causes.
The State Department of Corrections said Kenneth Boyd, 65, died Monday. He was assigned to the hospice care unit at the Iowa Medical and Classification Center in Coralville. Boyd’s death was due to complications from renal failure.
He was serving a life sentence in the slaying of Charles Sallis. Boyd was convicted along with Charles Reese and Sallis’ wife, Katherine. Another man, Isaiah Jerry Jones, initially was charged with murder, too, but the charge was dropped when he agreed to testify for the prosecution. Boyd and Reese were from Gary, Indiana. Jones was from Omaha.
Jones testified that Katherine Sallis asked him to hire two men to kill her husband. Testimony indicated that the men were to be paid with money from an insurance policy on Sallis that totaled about $6,000. Katherine Sallis contended that she was tricked by Jones into signing a statement offering the payment.
People are also reading…
Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
According to testimony at the trial, Charles Sallis was shot in the back of head with a shotgun in a culvert on Interstate 80 near Neola as he knelt with his hands bound behind him.
Katherine Sallis was released from prison in 1992, after Gov. Terry Branstad commuted her life sentence to a term of 99 years, making her eligible for parole. In his ruling, the governor said he had concluded that Sallis “was an abused woman who feared her husband” and that law enforcement officials thought she would not be a threat to society.
In 1980, Jones was convicted of murdering Ann Speese and her 12-year-old daughter, Tina, in Omaha in 1979.
This report includes material from the Omaha World-Herald archives.
