PROSECUTOR dies from cocaine O.D. after bizarre events.MURDER??!!

Prosecutor dies from cocaine injections He'd had a long decline, loss of family and home By JIM SUHR Associated Press Writer MACON, Mo. � A former prosecutor and family man once known for a firm grasp of the difference between right and wrong, David Masters arrived at his death bound to a chair, his final stop along a road of poor choices. Two housemates are accused of being his judge and jury, condemning Masters for owing three weeks of rent and making passes at a woman with whom he lived. When the woman pulled out a gun, court papers say, Masters said he'd rather die from drugs � so the father of seven was injected with syringe after syringe of cocaine. The 52-year-old's body was found the next day near a river in the Ozarks, a couple hundred miles from this small town where he made his name upholding the law. "No one in their wildest imagination would ever dream he would succumb to an illicit drug problem and associate with the people he did," said James Foley, a former Macon County prosecutor and retired judge. "They try and rationalize it, but you couldn't even make this up in TV fiction. That's what his life became." No one will say if Masters might have been using drugs as his life fell apart. Since losing re-election in 1998, he'd abandoned clients, separated from his wife and surrounded himself with drug users, his daughter said. Brad Funk, an assistant prosecutor under Masters for more than five years in the 1990s, said his one-time mentor always "tried to do the right thing. That's why it's so shocking, sickening that David ended up such a lost soul." Masters came to Macon in 1990, when then-Gov. John Ashcroft tapped him to be the county's prosecutor. Masters was a sharp, organized litigator who devoted full-time hours to the part-time job, and had a private law practice on the side to make ends meet. Masters often was in the courthouse readying his cases before dawn, then could be seen at his private practice downtown into the wee hours of some mornings. "He was as productive as two or three attorneys put together," says Funk, since 2001 an associate circuit judge in Mercer County. "I never questioned his decency or his integrity or his abilities as an attorney. He was an officer of the court, and he took that very seriously." The job took a physical toll on Masters, a Diet Coke-swigging diabetic who didn't seem to make his health a priority. "Some days he just wouldn't look good, his color wouldn't be good or whatever. He just didn't look rested or healthy," said Judy Roberts, who has run the county's circuit clerk's office for the past 11 years. "I just figured he was working too hard, too many hours" =^.^=