West Virginia
Judge rejects plea agreement in submarine secrets sale case
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A Navy nuclear engineer and his wife withdrew their guilty pleas Tuesday in a case involving an alleged plot to sell secrets about American nuclear-powered warships after a federal judge rejected plea agreements that had called for specific sentencing guidelines.
Jonathan and Diana Toebbe of Annapolis, Maryland, pleaded guilty in February in federal court in Martinsburg, West Virginia, to one count each of conspiracy to communicate restricted data.
The sentencing range agreed to by lawyers for Jonathan Toebbe had called for a potential punishment between roughly 12 years and 17 years in prison. Prosecutors said Tuesday that such a sentence would be one of the most significant imposed in modern times under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Prosecutors also sought three years for Diana Toebbe.
U.S. District Judge Gina Groh said that while she generally honors plea agreements, in this case she said the sentencing options were “strikingly deficient” considering the seriousness of the charges.
Groh said the act to which the couple pleaded guilty was done “for selfish and greedy reasons, but could have caused great harm” to the Navy and others.
“I don’t find any justifiable reasons for accepting either one of these plea agreements,” Groh said.
Wearing orange jail jumpsuits and seated at separate tables, the couple then separately withdrew their guilty pleas, leading Groh to set a trial date for Jan. 17.
Prosecutors said Jonathan Toebbe abused his access to top-secret government information and repeatedly sold details about the design elements and performance characteristics of Virginia-class submarines to someone he believed was a representative of a foreign government but who was actually an undercover FBI agent.
Diana Toebbe, who was teaching at a private school in Maryland at the time of the couple’s arrest last October, was accused of acting as a lookout at several prearranged “dead-drop” locations at which memory cards containing the secret information were left behind.
The memory cards were devices concealed in objects such as a chewing gum wrapper and a peanut butter sandwich. The couple was arrested after he placed a memory card at a dead drop location in Jefferson County, West Virginia.
None of the information was classified as top secret or secret, falling into a third category considered confidential, according to testimony Tuesday.
The FBI has said the scheme began in April 2020, when Jonathan Toebbe sent a package of Navy documents to a foreign government and wrote that he was interested in selling to that country operations manuals, performance reports and other sensitive information. He included in the package, which had a Pittsburgh return address, instructions to his supposed contact for how to establish a covert relationship with him, prosecutors said.
That package was obtained by the FBI in December 2020 through its legal attaché office in the unspecified foreign country. That set off a monthslong undercover operation in which an agent posing as a representative of a foreign country made contact with Toebbe, ultimately paying $100,000 in cryptocurrency in exchange for the information Toebbe was offering.
Jonathan Toebbe, who held a top-secret security clearance through the Defense Department, had agreed as part of the plea deal to help federal officials with locating and retrieving all classified information in his possession, as well as the cryptocurrency paid to him.
The country to which Jonathan Toebbe was looking to sell the information has not been identified in court documents and was not disclosed in court.
FBI agents who searched the couple’s home found a trash bag of shredded documents, thousands of dollars in cash, valid children’s passports and a “go-bag” containing a USB flash drive and latex gloves, according to court testimony last year.
During a December 2021 hearing, Diana Toebbe’s lawyers denied prosecution assertions that cited 2019 messages exchanged by the couple in which she had contemplated fleeing the United States to avoid arrest. Instead, the defense said it was contempt for then-President Donald Trump as the reason behind the couple’s emigration plans.
Nevada
Vegas man faces death penalty in boy’s body-in-freezer case
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty for a Las Vegas man accused of killing his girlfriend’s 4-year-old son and hiding the body in a freezer — where police found it when the boy’s sister gave notes to her teacher saying her mother was being held captive at the man’s home.
Brandon Lee Toseland, 36, has been jailed since his arrest in February and is due for trial in December after pleading not guilty to murder, kidnapping, child abuse and domestic battery by strangulation charges.
Prosecutor Michelle Fleck declined comment Tuesday about a notice of intent to seek the death penalty filed Aug. 11 in Clark County District Court.
A lawyer who represented the boy’s mother has alleged she was physically, sexually and emotionally abused by Toseland. The woman is not facing criminal charges in the boy’s death.
The mother filed a wrongful death and negligence lawsuit against Toseland in March. He responded with a counterclaim alleging the mother was aware the boy died in December and said she would help Toseland “preserve” the body.
The Clark County coroner ruled in July that the boy died of blunt force injuries and that his death was a homicide.
Minnesota
Jury convicts man in 1986 killing on Iron Range
DULUTH, Minn. (AP) — A jury on Tuesday convicted a man charged with raping and killing a woman 36 years ago on Minnesota’s Iron Range in a case that was revived by genealogy database analysts.
Michael Allan Carbo Jr., 54, of Chisholm, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder while committing criminal sexual conduct in the 1986 slaying of 38-year-old Nancy Daugherty, also of Chisholm. Her death “prompted one of the most exhaustive investigations in St. Louis County,” county attorney Kimberly Maki said in announcing the verdict.
Daugherty was found dead in her home on July 16, 1986, by police conducting a welfare check. Investigators over the years interviewed and collected DNA from more than 100 people but were unable to find a solid lead.
The break came in 2020 after Chisholm police approached the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension about providing a sample of the DNA evidence to a company that analyzes public genealogy databases. The company identified Carbo as a potential suspect.
Investigators obtained a DNA sample from Carbo and it matched, authorities said. Carbo was 18 at the time, lived less than a mile from the crime scene and attended school with Daugherty’s children.
