'Brutal and barbaric': Missouri man charged with murder after survivor escapes dungeon

A Missouri man previously charged with kidnapping and rape has been indicted by a grand jury in the killing of a woman found in the Missouri River.

Timothy Haslett Jr. was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder in the death of 36-year-old Jaynie Crosdale, whose body was found in a barrel by kayakers on the river in June 2023, according to a probable cause statement obtained by USA TODAY on Wednesday.

It is the 10th charge brought against Haslett after a woman escaped from his home in 2022. The woman said that she was held in a dungeon, drugged and forced to endure severe sexual assaults. Haslett told her that two other women he had kidnapped, "didn't make it," she told police.

"(The) indictment represents the next step in our pursuit of justice for the victims, the families and our community," Clay County prosecutor Zach Thompson said at a news conference Tuesday. "The physical, psychological and sexual torture described by the defendant's surviving victim is brutal and barbaric."

USA TODAY reached out to the public defender representing Haslett and she declined to comment.

Case brings criticism of police

Haslett faces nine charges − including rape, sodomy in the first degree, second-degree assault, kidnapping, and endangering the welfare of a child − in connection with the disappearance and assault of a woman who escaped from his home on Oct. 7, 2022.

The woman appeared at the door of a home near Haslett's in Excelsior Springs wearing a metal collar and a latex minidress, telling the residents that she had been held hostage since September, according to the probable cause document. The woman told police that she had been kidnapped from an area in Kansas City known to be frequented by sex workers.

Kansas City Police previously denied that a number of Black women had been taken from the area, causing community leaders to criticize the department for not taking the disappearances of Black women seriously.

“We got a serial killer … and ain’t nobody saying nothing,” Bishop Tony Caldwell of the Eternal Life Church and Family Life Center said in a TikTok video, posted by The Kansas City Defender news outlet on Sept. 25, 2022. “We got three young ladies that are missing. Ain’t nobody saying a word. What is the problem? Where’s our community leaders, where’s our activists, where’s our public officials, where’s our police department?”