The children of Winford S. Griffith defended their father Saturday as an honorable man who snapped this week, tormented by innuendo about his private life and betrayed by his best friend of 50 years.

Meanwhile at Ed's Bar, where Griffith's life ended in a shoot-out Friday, patrons reeled at the idea that something like that could happen in a place that had always been a neighborhood haven.

Griffith, 64, was killed after a bullet entered his right side and pierced both lungs. He had allegedly been shot three times by his friend, Cleo Johns.

He died in the Southeast Missouri Hospital emergency room about two hours after exchanging gunfire with Johns, who was not injured.

Police said Griffith had earlier shot at and missed a woman in Fruitland, Mo., and shot part-time Ed's bartender Mary Boitnott in the head in her home off Kingshighway, leaving her for dead.

Late Saturday she remained in critical but stable condition at St. Francis Medical Center.

Jaynee Brown, owner of Ed's Bar, said even in the wake of the shooting her clients have shown loyalty.

The crowd there Saturday were all regulars. They knew everyone involved in Friday's tragedy and said the incident was an aberration for the normally peaceful neighborhood bar.

Bartender Wanda Blankenship described Ed's as a blue-collar place. "Guys come in with dirt on their feet and we don't mind," she said.

Dillon and Karen Rhymer work in a nearby business and often stop by Ed's on the way home. They traded lighthearted insults with each other and another patron, John A. Heuer, who remembers coming into Ed's with his father after work on Saturdays.

Blankenship was tending bar when the shooting occurred, but said she wasn't afraid to go to work Saturday.

"Hopefully, yesterday was a once in a lifetime thing," she said. She declined to comment about Griffith, or Johns or her badly injured friend and co-worker Boitnott.

Defending father

Rod Metzger, Debbie Metzger and Chuck Griffith said they believe their father, Winford Griffith, had been driven to such extremes that he entered the bar intending to provoke Johns into killing him.

They said there's a missing piece to the story, and wonder what happened Friday morning to make him pull a gun on a close friend in Fruitland.

"She's the last person he would have wanted to hurt," Rod Metzger said.

Metzger said he was very close to his father-in-law.

"He's my dad," he said.

Griffith was a Navy Seal and a marksman, he said.

"Last summer he took eighth in a nationwide sharp-shooting contest," Rod Metzger said. "He didn't miss his mark. If he wanted to kill Johns, he would have."

He said Griffith hit the only person he intended to hit, Boitnott.

Family members said Griffith found out on Thursday that Johns seemed to be taking Boitnott's side by sharing things Griffith had confided in him as a best friend.

abuchanan@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 160