Muscatine man who killed his family had criminal record
A Muscatine man who fatally shot six family members last week before killing himself had two felony convictions — including one where an 8-month-old infant died while sleeping in his illegal home daycare center.
But nothing in his criminal record foreshadowed the Monday mass killing in this Mississippi River city.
Ryan Willis McFarland, armed with a gun, killed his ex-wife, Lesa McFarland, 51, and five of their children — Ryan McFarland Jr., 13; Mark McFarland, 16; Ryle McFarland, 20; Austin Harris, 29; and Dakota Whitlow, 32.
McFarland’s other son, Johnathan McFarland, 22, the only survivor of the family, spoke last week during a vigil for the victims in Muscatine.
"It is hard to think this is even real," Jonathan told those at the Tuesday vigil. He said he was going to miss his mother, sister and four brothers.
He was the only one at the vigil to speak his father’s name.
“This might hurt some people for me to say,” he said. “No matter what is being told to me, I will always love and miss my dad.”
Police first discovered Lesa, Ryan, Mark and Ryle fatally shot at 12:12 p.m. Monday in their home at 210 Park Ave. in Muscatine. McFarland had left the house, which is listed as his residence in court documents, before officers arrived.
A short time later, officers found McFarland, 52, on the city’s Riverfront Trail near the pedestrian bridge with a self-inflicted gunshot injury. He died at the scene while talking to police.
Investigators learned there might be additional victims at other locations. One man was found inside a residence at 1509 Mill St., and another man was found dead at a business at 808 Grandview Ave. The two men were McFarland’s older sons, Whitlow and Harris, police said.
Muscatine Police Chief Tony Kies hasn’t released much detail about a possible motive for the shootings, except that it stemmed from a “domestic-related dispute.”
The Muscatine house on Park Avenue, where police believe a man shot and killed four people Monday, June 1, 2026.
McFarland’s record
According to an online search of Ryan McFarland’s criminal history, he was never charged in any domestic abuse crime, which is not unusual for those who kill family members.
McFarland’s criminal record starts in 1994, when he was 20 and charged with attempted armed robbery and burglary, according to Rock Island County, Ill., court records. He pleaded guilty to lesser felony charges and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Three years later, in 1997, he was out of prison and charged with theft, also in Illinois, and was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Because of the age of the case, those records are unavailable online and no further information was immediately available.
Child endangerment
In 2011, when McFarland was 37, he was charged in Muscatine with child endangerment resulting in death, a Class B felony, and neglect of a dependent person, a Class C felony-habitual offender. Those felony charges can result in long prison terms, but in 2012, McFarland pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.
McFarland was accused of operating an illegal childcare business at his residence, 210 Park Ave. in Muscatine, on Aug. 17, 2011. His childcare license had been revoked by the Iowa Department of Human Services because he had lied about previous “violent convictions” on his license application, according to a criminal complaint filed Nov. 19, 2011, in Muscatine County District Court.
“Defendant was specifically forbidden by DHS from operating a childcare home,” the complaint stated.
McFarland was watching an 8-month-old boy, Charles James Lockwood Negus, and other children in his home on Aug. 17, 2011. He placed the child on his stomach in a crib with the child’s head resting on a “soft” pillow. The infant died, according to the complaint.
In court documents The Gazette obtained from the Muscatine County Clerk’s Office, McFarland’s lawyer, Murray Bell, filed a motion to dismiss the charges against his client in May 2012. He termed the death of the infant, born Dec. 15, 2010, as a “sudden unexplained infant death.”
The documents state McFarland placed the infant in his crib with some toys after 3 p.m. and, when the child started “fussing a little,” McFarland turned him onto his stomach and started patting his back and bottom.
The infant fell asleep within a few minutes.
Before McFarland put the sleeping infant into a crib, he placed a “bed-sized” pillow in the crib. After Charles fell asleep, McFarland left the room to attend to other children getting ready to leave for the day, leaving Charles lying on his stomach, the court documents stated.
When McFarland returned to get Charles ready to be picked up, he saw the infant’s face directly on the pillow, according to court documents. McFarland attempted to awaken the child, but Charles wasn’t moving and there was a clear fluid on his face.
McFarland called 911 and began CPR. The infant was taken to a hospital, where lifesaving efforts continued before the baby died.
According to an autopsy, the cause of death was undetermined. The infant didn’t have any injuries, illnesses or other defects to cause his death, Bell said in the motion to dismiss.
However, a University of Iowa Health Care doctor who performed the autopsy was prepared to testify at trial that placing an infant on its stomach onto a pillow is “hazardous” because a child can die from positional asphyxia, according to the documents.
Bell, in the motion to dismiss, argued positional asphyxia can’t be typically determined during an autopsy due to lack of injuries. That determination would require other evidence.
A judge denied the motion to dismiss, and McFarland was offered a plea agreement on a lesser charge — child endangerment-no injury, an aggravated misdemeanor. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one year in jail and probation in August 2012.
The court documents offer no information about why McFarland was offered a plea agreement.
Des Moines lawyer Alan Ostergren, who was the Muscatine County attorney at the time, declined to comment about the case last week. He said he didn’t recall enough details about it to “feel comfortable commenting on it with any specificity.”
Fraud charges
In January 2016, McFarland was charged with ongoing criminal conduct and seven charges of second-degree fraudulent practices. He was living at the 210 Park Ave. home at that time, according to the criminal complaint.
The complaints stated McFarland was lying about the mileage of cars he would sell to others. The vehicles’ odometers had a much lower mileage than what the title stated.
During the investigation, investigators found McFarland offered about 90 vehicles for sale from Jan. 1 to Dec. 24, 2015, on Craigslist, according to a search warrant affidavit. The documents included several examples of vehicles McFarland advertised with false mileage.
McFarland pleaded to two counts of third-degree fraudulent practices as a habitual offender, which carried a sentence of up to 15 years in prison on each charge. The sentences were run consecutively, but the judge suspended those and sentenced McFarland to five years probation in February 2020.
According to court documents, McFarland’s wife, Lesa Ann McFarland, filed for divorce Jan. 1, 2023, noting the two had been married since September 2002. A judge granted the decree Oct. 13, 2023, and they were awarded joint custody of their two minor children — Ryan and Mark. The other child they had during their marriage, Ryle, was already 18 at the time, the document stated.
