A Senath man has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for murder. Thirty year old Christian Ault was sentenced to thirty years for the July 2024 murder of Jeffery Pendergrass in Senath, Missouri. The law enforcement investigation showed that Ault and Pendergrass were residents at Reliant Care Management’s Senath South Health Care Center where the homicide occurred.
On July 13, 2024, law enforcement officers from the Senath Police Department responded to Senath South Care Center in reference to an assault. They found the victim seriously injured and viewed surveillance footage that showed Ault approach the victim holding a toilet tank lid then striking the victim in the head with the lid multiple times until it broke over the victim’s head. Ault then threw the ceramic lid at the victim. The victim was air lifted to a hospital in Jonesboro, Arkansas where he died July 21, 2024.
The Dunklin County Sheriff’s Office conducted an additional investigation in the case. Dunklin County Prosecuting Attorney Nicholas Jain originally charged Ault with assault in the first degree which he upgraded to second degree murder after Pendergrass died. The autopsy showed the victim suffered strokes which were caused by the stress his body suffered during the assault.
Ault pleaded guilty to that charge without a plea agreement, and on December 10, 2025, he was sentenced to the maximum possible thirty-year sentence in the Missouri Department of Corrections by Dunklin County Circuit Judge Robert Mayer.