On July 13, 2020, tragedy struck the community of Lamar, Missouri, when 51-year-old Terry Glenn Harless was found dead at his residence on Broadway. Harless, a welder by trade who was known to friends and family as 'Bubba' or 'Billy Bob,' had been shot and killed in his home. The homicide investigation was immediately launched by the Lamar Police Department with assistance from the Missouri State Highway Patrol, leading authorities to identify multiple suspects involved in the violent
incident.
The investigation eventually led to the arrests of three individuals: Tre Robert Ackerson, Lane R. Bronson, and David William Morris. Lane R. Bronson, a resident of Carthage, was taken into custody and later entered a guilty plea to second-degree murder on October 7, 2021. Despite the early plea, his sentencing did not occur until nearly three years later. On July 23, 2024, Bronson was sentenced to twenty years in the Missouri Department of Corrections, with the term set to run concurrently with a separate federal sentence he was already serving.
Tre Robert Ackerson, of Joplin, was also implicated in the crime. He formally pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the Circuit Court of Barton County on July 18, 2024. Like Bronson, Ackerson received a twenty-year prison sentence to be served concurrently with a significant federal sentence he had received for a separate, unrelated capital murder case involving an Osage Nation citizen.
The third suspect, David William Morris from Duenweg, became the subject of a manhunt after the murder. He was eventually captured in Grove, Oklahoma, and taken into custody. As of mid-2024, Morris remained in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons but was expected to be returned to Barton County to face the charges related to Harless's death, distinguishing his legal status from the other two defendants who had already been sentenced.
