Colorado
Drug dealer convicted in fentanyl death gets life in prison
DENVER (AP) — A drug dealer who was convicted of being the source of fentanyl that killed a man in 2017 was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday at the urging of the government and parents of overdose victims.
Prosecutors said Bruce Holder was responsible for bringing tens of thousands of pills spiked with fentanyl to western Colorado.
Holder, 57, was convicted in 2021 of distribution of fentanyl resulting in the death of John Ellington, 30, of Carbondale, as well as conspiracy to distribute fentanyl and counterfeit substances, distribution of fentanyl and distribution of a counterfeit substance.
U.S. District Judge Christine Arguello handed down the life sentence for Holder after concluding the government also had proved other conduct by Holder of which he was not convicted, factors which lengthened his possible punishment.
Those factors included possessing guns, allegedly using bribes to help secure the pills on frequent trips to Mexico, being the leader of a criminal enterprise of five or more people and recruiting his teen son to sell pills to help pay for shoes and equipment he needed to play sports.
Holder’s wife and daughter also were previously prosecuted and sentenced for their role in the operation.
Arguello also considered evidence that the pills Holder obtained, which were made to look like oxycodone but instead contained fentanyl, caused or contributed to the deaths of two other people, including Ashley Romero.
Romero’s mother, Andrea Thomas, recalled how her own mother collapsed after they learned Romero died in June 2018 at the same time Holder and his family was vacationing in Mexico.
“While you were sipping tequila on the beach, we were choosing whether we would cremate my daughter in a pine box or a cardboard box,” Thomas said as Romero’s son held a portrait of his late mother in the courtroom gallery behind her.
Holder became frustrated during the sentencing hearing, at one point heading toward a courtroom door before being blocked by U.S. Marshals.
When it came time to address his sentence, Holder repeatedly tried to talk about how he was being wrongly accused despite being urged by Arguello to stick to his punishment. Sometimes his attorneys pulled him aside, temporarily cutting him off.
“I am asking for less because there is so much you don’t know or don’t want to consider,” he said.
U.S. Attorney Cole Finegan, standing with Thomas and her grandson and investigators outside court, said the sentence was the longest ever handed down in Colorado federal court for such a case. But he noted it was a bittersweet ending.
“While justice has arrived, there is no joy,” Finegan said.
Florida
Teachers move to block DeSantis questions on CRT
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A group of Florida college professors on Wednesday asked a federal judge to block Gov. Ron DeSantis from requesting spending data on diversity, equity and inclusion and critical race theory programs in state universities.
The filing comes as part of a lawsuit against the so-called “Stop WOKE” Act, which restricts certain race-based conversations and analysis in colleges. Tallahassee U.S. District Judge Mark Walker has blocked the law, though DeSantis’ office is appealing the decision.
The Republican governor in late December requested that state colleges submit spending data and other information on programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion and critical race theory, which examines systemic racism. The schools were asked to submit the data by Friday.
The college educators, who are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and Legal Defense Fund, argue the governor’s request violates the court order blocking the “Stop WOKE” Act.
“This is just another step towards enforcing this unconstitutional law and is clearly intended to continue to chill the speech of instructors and students in Florida. We cannot allow these threats against free speech to continue,” Jerry Edwards, staff attorney of the ACLU of Florida, said in a statement.
DeSantis’ office did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
The law prohibits teaching or business practices that contend members of one ethnic group are inherently racist and should feel guilt for past actions committed by others. It also bars the notion that a person’s status as privileged or oppressed is necessarily determined by their race or gender, or that discrimination is acceptable to achieve diversity.
The governor began pushing for the law late last year and the Republican-controlled Legislature passed it during the 2022 legislative session.
Critical race theory was developed during the 1970s and 1980s in response to what scholars viewed as a lack of racial progress following the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. It centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions and that they function to maintain the dominance of white people in society.
Conservatives have rejected critical race theory, arguing the philosophy racially divides American society and aims to rewrite history to make white people believe they are inherently racist.
Wisconsin
Man’s retrial begins in wife’s antifreeze death
KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — Prosecutors and attorneys for a Wisconsin man accused of killing his wife with antifreeze in 1998 delivered opening statements Wednesday in his retrial, nearly two years after a judge vacated his previous conviction.
Mark Jensen, 63, was convicted in 2008 of killing his wife, Julie Jensen, at their home in the Kenosha County village of Pleasant Prairie and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
But a Kenosha County judge vacated his conviction in April 2021 after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that Jensen deserved a new trial. The court found that a letter his wife wrote incriminating him in the event something should happen to her could not be used by the prosecution.
Jensen, who is charged with first-degree intentional homicide in his wife’s death, remains in custody on a $1.2 million cash bond, the Kenosha News reported.
Prosecutors allege that he began poisoning his wife with antifreeze in December 1998, drugged her with a sleeping medication and later suffocated her to death over a three-day period.
Jensen has maintained his innocence, with his attorneys arguing that Julie Jensen was depressed and killed herself after framing her husband.
Kenosha County Assistant District Attorney Carli McNeill told the jury during her opening statements that prosecutors would present evidence “that the defendant murdered his wife with ethylene glycol, that this was not Julie Jensen ingesting that substance to commit suicide.”
“She lived for her kids, and she died because the defendant murdered her,” McNeill said.
Jensen’s defense attorneys said Julie Jensen’s infidelity and depression strained the couple’s marriage and led her to take her own life.
“What brings us here today is Julie Jensen’s suicide,” said Mackenzie Renner, Mark Jensen’s attorney. “The suicide of a woman who was in declining mental health.”
Jurors began hearing testimony from witnesses after Wednesday’s opening statements. Jensen’s trial is expected to last four to five weeks.
New York
Daughter, boyfriend plead guilty to killing mother as teens
GREECE, N.Y. (AP) — A young woman and her boyfriend have pleaded guilty to fatally shooting the woman’s mother in her upstate New York home in 2020.
Hannah Thomas, who was 17 years old at the time of the killing and is now 19, pleaded guilty Wednesday to first-degree manslaughter for causing the death of Ottilia Piros. Thomas’ boyfriend, Richard Avila, 16 when the murder occurred and now 18, pleaded guilty to the same charge on Tuesday.
Each face 25 years in prison and five years of post-release supervision, according to a statement Wednesday by the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office.
Both are scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 28.
The couple were pulled over for speeding on Dec. 29, 2020, by police in Missouri, who attempted to contact the teens’ family members. When police arrived at Otillia’s home in Greece, N.Y., they found the 36-year-old dead from a gunshot wound.
The pair were extradited to New York to face charges in the death.
“Richard Avila and Hannah Thomas murdered Hannah’s mother without provocation or reason,” Assistant District Attorney Kevin Sunderland said in a statement. “This senseless murder not only took the life of Ottilia Piros but will also ruin the lives of both Hannah Thomas and Richard Avila.”
District Attorney Sandra Doorley called Piros’ murder “heartbreaking” and a “violent act of betrayal.”
Ohio
Alleged ‘boogaloo’ member denies threatening law enforcement
TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio man who federal officials said is a member of the far-right anti-government group the “boogaloo boys” has pleaded not guilty to charges that he threatened law enforcement and unlawfully possessed a machine gun.
Aron McKillips, 29, of Sandusky, entered his pleas Tuesday during a court hearing in Toledo. The charges he faces were included in an indictment that was handed up last week by a federal grand jury.
McKillips and another alleged group member were both arrested last November, when authorities were increasingly concerned about the potential for violence in the leadup to the midterm elections.
The “boogaloo” movement is embraced by a loose network of gun enthusiasts and extremists. The group started in alt-right culture on the internet with the belief that there is an impending U.S. civil war.
The FBI has alleged that McKillips made at least five online threats to harm and/or kill law enforcement members between September 2021 and July 2022, including one to kill a police officer and another to kill anyone he determined to be a federal informant.
The indictment also alleged that McKillips unlawfully possessed a drop-in auto sear that could convert an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle into a fully automatic machine gun.
McKillips’ lawyer, Neil McElroy, was not immediately available for comment on Wednesday.
Missouri
Cold case arrest: Man charged in 2004 killing
ST. ANN, Mo. (AP) — A man has been charged with murder and jailed in a case that baffled police for nearly two decades — the death of a woman whose decapitated torso was found at a Missouri rest stop along Interstate 70.
Mike A. Clardy, 63, of Maryland Heights, Missouri, was charged Wednesday with second-degree murder and abandonment of a corpse in the killing of Deanna Denise Howland. His bail was set at $1 million.
Police say DNA evidence connected Clardy to the crime, and they say he confessed after his arrest, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
The remains found on June 26, 2004, down a hill near a picnic area at a rest stop in Warren County were not identified for 12 years. In 2016, DNA samples determined that the victim was Howland, of Alton, Illinois.
DNA evidence also helped find the suspect. Police matched Clardy’s DNA to DNA fragments left on Howland’s body and a knife found in a sewer near the rest stop, according to charging documents.
Officers who interviewed Clardy on Tuesday say he admitted killing Howland at his home before dismembering her and abandoning parts of her body in St. Louis County and Warren County. Clardy has no criminal record in Missouri, according to online court records.
Howland was a 35-year-old mother of four who struggled with drug addiction, her daughter, Ashley Kinnear, told the Post-Dispatch in 2016.
