Arizona
Ex-Seattle man found guilty of dumping body parts
PRESCOTT, Ariz. (AP) — A former Seattle resident accused of dumping body parts around central Arizona has been convicted of more than two dozen felonies.
A Yavapai County jury on Thursday found Walter Harold Mitchell III guilty of 29 felony counts of concealing or abandoning a dead body, according to a statement from the Yavapai County Attorney’s Office.
Authorities linked Mitchell to human remains found on the outskirts of Prescott in late December 2020, through tags and medical gauze that accompanied them.
Mitchell had moved there earlier in 2020 from Washington state, where he owned a business that managed cadavers for research. His business permanently closed in April 2020 and he took the donor parts with him in a U-Haul truck on dry ice when he moved to Arizona, prosecutors said.
He kept the parts in a freezer in a shed north of Prescott in Chino Valley and told authorities later that he dumped them in late November 2020, prosecutors said. He was arrested after selling the freezer and moving to Scottsdale.
The remains that included arms, legs and heads have been linked to nine people, Deputy Yavapai County Attorney Casi Harris said previously.
Mitchell’s sentencing is set for late October.
Missouri
Health executives plead guilty in widespread fraud
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — Two former executives of a Missouri health nonprofit have pleaded guilty to their roles in a corruption scheme that ensnared several Arkansas elected officials and lobbyists, federal prosecutors said.
Bontiea Bernedette Goss, 63, and her husband, Tommy Ray Goss, 66, pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court to conspiracy charges arising from a multi-year federal investigation.
The couple were executives at Preferred Family Healthcare Inc., a Springfield-based nonprofit that provided services such as substance abuse treatments and counseling to people in Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Illinois.
Federal prosecutors said in a news release the Gosses and other co-conspirators paid bribes and kickbacks to Arkansas lawmakers to obtain favorable legislation and other official actions that helped the nonprofit.
As part of the plea agreement, the Gosses must forfeit up to $4.3 million as determined by the court at their sentencing. A sentencing date has not been set.
Bontiea Goss pleaded guilty to conspiracy to pay bribes and kickbacks to elected public officials in Arkansas.
Tom Goss pleaded guilty to being part of the conspiracy by embezzling funds from the nonprofit and paying bribes and kickbacks to Arkansas officials. He also pleaded guilty to preparing a false tax return.
Earlier this year, Preferred Family Healthcare agreed to pay more than $8 million in forfeiture and restitution to the federal government and the state of Arkansas under a non-prosecution agreement, which acknowledges the criminal conduct of its former officers and employees.
Other Preferred Family employees, Arkansas lobbyists and some Arkansas lawmakers, including former state Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, nephew of Gov. Asa Hutchinson, have pleaded guilty for their roles in the scheme.
New Hampshire
Boyfriend of slain boy’s mom gets 22 to 45 years in prison
NASHUA, N.H. (AP) — The boyfriend of a slain 5-year-old boy’s mother was sentenced in New Hampshire on Thursday to 22 to 45 years in prison for manslaughter and other charges that he pleaded guilty to, nearly a year after the child’s body was found in a Massachusetts park.
Joseph Stapf, 31, had filed an intent to plead guilty earlier this month. He also admitted to second-degree assault, falsifying physical evidence and witness tampering in connection with Elijah Lewis’ death.
The child was discovered missing and found dead last October. An autopsy showed he suffered facial and scalp injuries, acute fentanyl intoxication, malnourishment and pressure ulcers.
“I never wanted any of this to happen to Elijah,” Stapf said in court as he broke into tears. “I wish I could go back and change everything.”
He added, “I loved that boy. I’m so sorry for everybody who has to deal with this.”
Elijah’s father, who lives in Arizona, brought Elijah to live with Stapf and the child’s mother, Danielle Dauphinais, in Merrimack, New Hampshire, in May 2020.
Prosecutors said Elijah was starved, neglected and physically abused. They read a series of texts between Stapf and Dauphinais that expressed hostility toward Elijah and frustration if he didn’t behave according to their wishes.
Some of the texts from Stapf to Dauphinais told her to give Elijah more food to “fatten him up.”
When Elijah died and child welfare workers started to investigate his disappearance, the couple put his body in a container and brought him to Ames Nowell State Park in Abington, Massachusetts, where Stapf dug a hole and buried him, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said that when Elijah was found last October, he was 36 inches tall and weighed 19 pounds, while an average 5-year-old boy would be 43 inches tall and closer to 40 pounds.
Elijah’s father, Timothy Lewis, who was watching the hearing online, thanked law enforcement for helping to pursue justice for his son. A number of Merrimack officers and state police were in the courtroom.
“You could have stepped up to stop this at any point, had you been man enough,” Lewis said to Stapf. “You could have brought him home to us at any point. You could have rushed him to the hospital at any point. He could still be there.”
When Elijah was still missing, Stapf and Dauphinais were arrested in New York on charges of witness tampering and child endangerment. Days after their arrest, Elijah’s remains were found.
Dauphinais, 36, was indicted earlier this year on one count of first-degree murder alleging that she purposely caused her son’s death, one count of second-degree murder alleging she acted recklessly in causing his death, and three counts of witness tampering. She pleaded not guilty.
Stapf could receive several years’ credit if he completes a degree and another program. It’s possible he could testify against Dauphinais, although that was not brought up in court Thursday.
“We look forward to confronting Mr. Stapf at the appropriate time,” Dauphinais’ attorney, Jaye Rancourt, said in an email.
Maine
Mom pleads guilty to manslaughter in drug-related death
BANGOR, Maine (AP) — A woman on Thursday acknowledged causing the death of her 3-year-old daughter, who died from a brain injury consistent with opioid abuse.
Hillary Goding, 29, pleaded guilty to manslaughter under a plea agreement in which murder charges were dropped. Her attorney and prosecutors agreed to recommend a sentence in which she’d serve 17 to 22 years in prison, the Bangor Daily News reported.
Goding was arrested the same day her daughter Hailey was pronounced dead at Bangor hospital in June 2021.
She told police she believed her daughter ingested heroin from a plastic straw that she’d used to consume the drug. Heroin often is cut with the more potent fentanyl, which was indicated in a drug screen administered at the hospital.
Hailey was one of three children in the Bangor region allegedly killed by a parent that same month, contributing ongoing scrutiny over the state’s child welfare system.
Missouri
Execution set for inmate who killed ex-girlfriend
The Missouri Supreme Court on Thursday set a January execution date for Scott McLaughlin, who was convicted of raping and killing an ex-girlfriend 19 years ago.
The execution at the state prison in Bonne Terre, scheduled for Jan. 3, would come six weeks after another convicted killer is scheduled to die. Kevin Johnson faces the death penalty on Nov. 29 for killing Kirkwood Police Sgt. Bill McEntee in suburban St. Louis in 2005.
McLaughlin, now 48, was convicted of killing 45-year-old Beverly Guenther on Nov. 20, 2003. She was raped and stabbed to death outside of her workplace in St. Louis County.
A judge sentenced McLaughlin to death after a jury was unable to decide on death or life in prison without parole. A federal judge in St. Louis ordered a new sentencing hearing in 2016, citing concerns about the effectiveness of McLaughlin’s trial lawyers and faulty jury instructions.
But in 2021, a federal appeals court panel reinstated the death penalty.
The pace of executions nationally has slowed dramatically in recent years. Ten people have been executed so far this year in five states, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. One of them was in Missouri, where Carmen Deck died by injection in May for killing James and Zelma Long during a robbery at their home in De Soto, Missouri, in 1996.
Indiana
U.S. high court asked to undo state’s Lake Michigan ruling
PORTER, Ind. (AP) — Three property owners with land along northwest Indiana’s Lake Michigan shoreline have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to undo a 2018 ruling by Indiana’s high court which declared that the shoreline is owned by the state for the public’s enjoyment.
In their petition asking the Supreme Court to review the case, the plaintiffs from the town of Porter insist that their property deeds include a private beach on the lake, and that the loss of their ability to exclude others from “their” beach is unlawful without just compensation from the government.
The Porter County property owners’ request to the high court comes after the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled in May that they lack standing to challenge in federal court the Indiana Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling, and a 2020 state law that codified that decision.
That decision held that the plaintiffs never owned a private beach on the lake because Indiana owns — and has since statehood in 1816 — the land under Lake Michigan and the adjacent shoreline up to the ordinary high-water mark.
A decision on whether the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the case is likely to be made early next year, The (Northwest Indiana) Times reported. The high court typically receives between 7,000 and 8,000 review petitions each year and rejects all but about 80.
Massachusetts
Former shelter head gets jail for stealing from organization
BOSTON (AP) — The former head of a publicly funded nonprofit that ran homeless shelters in Massachusetts has been sent to jail for a year for stealing $1.5 million from the organization and lying under oath, prosecutors said.
Manuel Duran, 70, was also sentenced Thursday to four years of probation and 250 hours of community service after pleading guilty to larceny and perjury related to his time as executive director of Casa Nueva Vida, which sheltered about 150 primarily Spanish-speaking families at more than a dozen locations in Boston and Lawrence, according to the state attorney general’s office.
He was also ordered to pay restitution in an amount to be determined.
An investigation initiated after an anonymous tip found that Duran leased four properties he owned and one owned by a relative to the shelter. He then signed disclosure forms under oath that falsely said the organization was not a party to any transaction in which any of its officers, directors, or trustees had a material financial interest, authorities said.
In a related civil matter, Duran in January agreed to pay $6 million to settle allegations that he funneled state money to himself.
The organization’s programs have been taken over by a another shelter group.
