Joplin man given life in prison for murder
A man from Joplin has been sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Read the full press release below:
Judge Kevin Selby of the 40th Judicial Circuit sentenced 62-year-old Rickey Lee Lamb for the 2019 murder of his son’s longtime girlfriend.
Lamb previously entered the plea on Thursday, April 15, 2021, to one count of Murder in the Second Degree.
The sentence was entered on the two-year anniversary of Lamb going to the residence of his son and his son’s girlfriend, Sarah Tyminski, on Eloise Lane just south of Joplin. Testimony was provided by witnesses at sentencing that Lamb said he was going over to the residence to teach the two a lesson.
Mary Jo Curtis, mother of Sarah Tyminski, provided testimony of what she lost on the day her daughter was murdered, noting that Sarah wouldn’t see her children grow or get to know her grandchildren. Curtis stated that months prior to the murder, she had bought plane tickets to get Tyminski out of her abusive relationship, but the father of the children would not let them leave and she was unwilling to leave her children behind.
“The family of Sarah Tyminski will have some closure with justice being exacted on Rickey Lamb,” said Newton County Prosecuting Attorney William Lynch. In his argument for the life sentence, Lynch stated that Lamb may have described by defense witnesses as a protector and a giver, but he was also a taker. “Rickey Lamb took the life of Sarah Tyminski, he took a mother away from her children, and he took that family’s future together.”
Before pronouncing the life sentence, Judge Selby stated that despite the description of the defendant as a protector, “the only person that needed protected that day was Sarah Tyminski.”
The case was investigated by the Newton County Sheriff’s Office and prosecuted by William Lynch, J.D. Hatcher, and Sarah Crites, of the Newton County Prosecutor’s Office.