By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times
August 31, 2010
Reporting from Burney, Calif. — On an April morning 18 years ago, Kristi Lyn Bateson dressed her two small daughters for the hourlong drive to Mount Shasta Mall. Her husband, Charlie, was sleeping after his graveyard shift at the sawmill.
"Hon, we ran down to Redding for a few more groceries and to look at a few things in the Target ad," she wrote on a note fixed to the refrigerator with the N from 3-year-old Kayla's alphabet magnets. She'd be home around 1 p.m., she said, signing it: "Love, your three girls."
Charlie probably never read the note. He was found at noon, dead from a single gunshot wound to the head. The body position and blood spatter told the coroner he had been asleep on his back when the shot was fired.
Within two weeks, police had four sources connecting the killing to drug deals at the house where the Batesons had moved less than two weeks earlier. But homicide investigators were looking at Kristi. It's usually the spouse, they told her.
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