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PrintThe sentencing of a 20-year-old man who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and first-degree robbery in connection with the 2001 killing of Kent Heitholt was pushed back Monday to June 13.
Dressed in a black-and-white jumpsuit from the Boone County Jail, Charles Timothy Erickson sighed heavily as he waited for a brief hearing with Circuit Judge Gene Hamilton.
Erickson is cooperating with prosecutors against co-defendant Ryan William Ferguson and will be sentenced only after Ferguson is tried, Boone County Prosecutor Kevin Crane said on Monday. He will face concurrent sentences of 15 years for the murder and 10 years for the robbery. Erickson has also been charged with armed criminal action — which carries a 10-year sentence — meaning he could spend up to 25 years in prison. “That is the way we normally deal with a co-defendant in agreement to testify,” Crane said.
Heitholt was attacked from behind, beaten and strangled as he stopped to feed a stray cat in the early hours of Nov. 1, 2001, in the Columbia Daily Tribune parking lot, 101 N. Fourth St., police said.
The then-Rock Bridge High School juniors Erickson and Ferguson, both 17, had left a nearby club and targeted Heitholt for no other reason then he was “someone in the parking lot,” Columbia Police Chief Randy Boehm said in March 2004.
Police said Erickson told them that after he hit Heitholt with a tire tool from Ferguson’s car, Ferguson strangled Heitholt. Police were led to Erickson and Ferguson after they received an anonymous call to CrimeStoppers on Jan. 21, 2004.
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