Second man sentenced in gruesome Missouri murder of woman who was kept in a cage

A second southwest Missouri man has been sentenced to life in prison in the gruesome killing of a woman who authorities say was kept in a cage.

In a Dallas County courtroom Tuesday, Timothy Leroy Norton pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for the death of Cassidy Rainwater and was immediately sentenced.

His plea — which came about two months after his co-defendant James Phelps also was sentenced to life in prison without parole — ended a two-year saga for the Dallas County sheriff’s department.

“I’m just very glad it’s done with,” Sheriff Scott Rice said in a phone call Wednesday. “It’s been very trying on my office. It required everybody that worked here to contribute many, many man hours to it.”

Rice said he doesn’t disagree with the plea deals the prosecutor obtained, but for him, “I wish they had gotten the death penalty … for everything that she went through.”

When asked how Rainwater’s family is doing, Rice said, “I don’t know they’ll truly get over all of it, but they’re glad that they’ve seen justice happen.”

The Rainwater case dates back to September 2021. That’s when the Kansas City office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation received an anonymous tip with photos of Rainwater’s partially nude body inside a cage.

Some photos showed the woman’s body “bound to a gantry crane, commonly used for deer processing, and her evisceration and dismemberment,” the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department posted on its Facebook page back then.

That tip led the FBI to Dallas County, about 160 miles southeast of Kansas City, and launched a weeks-long criminal investigation. The tip the FBI received was titled “Cassidy.” Phelps and Timothy Norton, both of Dallas County, were charged in September 2021 with kidnapping the 33-year-old woman and facilitating a felony, inflicting injury and terrorizing.

After tests confirmed that the labeled remains found in a freezer inside Phelps’ rented home were Rainwater’s, the charges were upgraded to murder several weeks later. The men also were charged with abandonment of a corpse.

Deputies searched the property for seven days, according to the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department. Skeletal remains believed to be Rainwater’s were located on the adjacent property.

Rainwater had ties to the Kansas City area. In a 2003 yearbook from Harrisonville High School in Cass County, she was listed as a freshman.

She was reported missing in late August 2021 by a woman named Cora Terry. She told authorities that the last time Rainwater was seen was about six weeks earlier and she believed that a “James Rainwater” was the last person to see her.

Authorities later learned that she was talking about James Phelps.

Deputies went to Phelps’ home at 386 Moon Valley Road near Windyville and asked if he knew Rainwater. Sheriff’s officials have said that Phelps said he did but that he hadn’t spoken to her in roughly a month. He said that Rainwater was talking about going to Colorado.

About a week later, a Dallas County detective went to Moon Valley Road and spoke to Phelps about the missing person case. Phelps then said that Rainwater had been staying with him “until she could get back on her feet,” according to the probable cause statement related to the initial charges filed against Phelps.

He also told the deputy that at the end of July 2021, Rainwater had left in the middle of the night and met with someone in a vehicle at the end of the driveway and he had not seen or heard from her since.

After receiving the information from the FBI, deputies went back out to Moon Valley Road and “recognized items in Phelps’ back yard that coincided with the photos.”

Authorities said Norton told them that he knew that Rainwater was being held at the home of Phelps and that she had been kept in a cage, court records show. Norton further said that Phelps had contacted Norton to come to Phelps’ home, an affidavit said.

“Norton then admitted that after arriving at Phelps’ home he did physically confine CR by holding her down for a substantial period of time, for the purpose of facilitating the commission of a felony, or inflicting physical injury on, or terrorizing CR,” the document said.

Rice said on Wednesday that Norton and Phelps “never showed any remorse.”

“They had this planned out,” the sheriff said. “This is a fantasy that they had planned out to do.”

Phelps entered an Alford plea in late April. An Alford plea is when a defendant does not admit guilt but acknowledges that prosecutors have enough evidence to convict if the case had gone to trial.

Rice said authorities investigated whether there could have been other victims. They “had evidence” that several other women may have been at Phelps’ home at some point and wanted to make sure nothing had happened to them.

“There were eight other people that we were concerned about,” Rice said. “But we found every one of them people alive.

“I think it was the beginning of something worse. Just glad we stopped it before it got further down the road.”