By Nancy Simpson, KTTS
Missouri State University teachers and faculty are having to push through the sadness after one history professor has been charged with stabbing Wednesday night a colleague in a Springfield home.
Dean of the College of Humanities and Public Affairs at MSU Dr. Victor Matthews says he’s baffled by the events that have unfolded. Matthews says Dr. Marc Cooper, 66, who taught history for nearly 35 years, was kind and funny. Cooper continued to work part-time at the university.
MSU officials not aware of any conflicts that could’ve led to deadly encounter between two professors
He says Dr. Edward Gutting, charged with busting into Cooper’s home and brutally stabbing him, had never been disciplined at the university.
Mathews says he wasn’t aware of any conflict, including with Gutting’s wife, Angela Hornsby-Gutting, who also teaches history at MSU.
Matthews says the plan is for Hornsby-Gutting to be back in class when school starts on Monday.
This week, police wrote in court papers that she was not cooperating with their investigation.
KTTS Assistant News Director Nancy Simpson asked Dr. Matthews if he believed Dr. Cooper could make someone so mad that they would want to murder him and he answered quickly. “Never,” Matthews said.
Matthews says when he hired Angela Hornsby-Gutting five years ago, her husband came with her.
“There’s a lot of, what we call, trailing spouses. When I hired Angela Horsby-Gutting in 2011, one of the conditions of that, in addition to her being hired as a tenured professor, was that she asked me to make an accommodation for her husband, Ed Gutting, who had a doctorate in Classics. I employed him as an instructor. He taught primarily the survey course of World Civilization. Ultimately, because of his doctorate and interest in Classics, I made arrangements for him to be transferred to Modern Classic Languages where he could teach courses in his specialty area,” says Matthews.
Cooper’s wife, Nancy, was hurt trying to help her husband during the attack. She tells officers Gutting told her to stay back – that it was between the two of them. Nancy Cooper told investigators she did not know Gutting.
