By MIKE CORN

mcorn@dailynews.net

This year, it was a matter of murder by the numbers.

Twenty-four people collectively listened to testimony for nearly four weeks, then spent just seven hours to determine the fate of two men, resolving the anguish of dozens of friends and family members of the two men who had been murdered.

One man convicted was sentenced to 50 years in prison, making him eligible for parole when he's 95 years old. The other was sentenced to life in prison, with no possibility of parole for 25 years. He will be 86 years old by the time the Kansas Parole Board can consider his case.

While there were two murder trials this year, northwest Kansas might have escaped the year without a single murder.

The cause of death of a Hill City man in late September remains undetermined, however.

Graham County Sheriff Cole Presley said the coroner is still waiting on toxicology reports from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation to help determine what caused the death of Kevin Hackerott, 48, at his Hill City residence.

In the case of the murder trials this year, both were unrelated, one in Gove County while the other was in Osborne County. Both men were killed in March 2008, at the hands of another person.

In the Osborne County case, Kenneth Eugene Wilson was found guilty of the March 2008 murder of Jeffery Scott Noel. Noel was killed in his Portis residence.

In the Gove County case, David A. Stevenson was convicted in the March 13, 2008, death of his 85-year-old father, Walter A. Stevenson.

While there are striking similarities to the two cases, the details are starkly different.

Noel was killed in his home, by a gun that was either pressed against the back of his neck or was within very close proximity at the time it was discharged, investigators testified. Noel's body was discovered by his wife, Carol.

The elder Stevenson was killed in a shop on the farm he owned and operated. After being struck on the head several times, his body was put under the bed of a truck to make it look like a farm accident. He was nearly decapitated when the truck bed came down, pinning him.

In both case, the presiding judges had harsh words for the convicted men.

"I'm not here to grant you salvation, but punish you for the offense you committed," District Judge William B. Elliott told Wilson before announcing his sentencing decisions. "You are a plague on society and need to be removed. You can't be rehabilitated."

In Stevenson's case, District Judge Ed Bouker was no kinder.

"What you did was despicable," Bouker said at the outset of handing down the sentence. "I don't know any other term for it. You got a fair trial for a despicable act."