California
Sex offender gets life for killing 4 women
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A California sex offender who with his best friend kidnapped, raped and killed four women, some of them while wearing a GPS tracker, was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without parole.
Franc Cano, 36, entered murder pleas in Orange County and was immediately sentenced.
Cano, who has been in custody since 2014, entered the pleas after county District Attorney Todd Spitzer took a potential death penalty off the table, the DA’s office said in a statement.
“Pursuing the death penalty was not an appropriate punishment based on the entire reassessment of the case,” said Spitzer, who called Cano a monster. “I am thankful I met with each victim and they concur with my decision.”
He didn’t explain further.
Cano’s attorney, Chuck Hasse, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Cano and another convicted sex offender, Steven Gordon, were indicted in 2014 after data from GPS monitors they wore because of previous separate sex crimes tied them to 21-year-old Jarrae Nykkole Estepp, whose naked body was discovered on the conveyor belt at an Anaheim recycling facility that same year.
Gordon, 53, acted as his own attorney at trial and said he deserved the death penalty, although he contended that Cano strangled the women. He was convicted by a jury in 2016 and sentenced to death.
Cano acknowledged that in 2013 and 2014 he killed Estepp along with 20-year-old Kianna Jackson, 34-year-old Josephine Vargas and 28-year-old Martha Anaya.
The bodies of the other three victims were never found.
Authorities have said they believe the men knew each other since at least 2010. The men met while both were homeless.
Gordon was on probation after serving a federal prison term for molesting his nephew, and Cano was on parole after a state conviction for molesting a 9-year-old niece, authorities said.
“Despite being legally prohibited from being associated with each other due to their registered sex offender status, Cano and Gordon were transients who camped in the back of a paint and body shop in Anaheim,” Spitzer’s office said.
“While on GPS monitoring, Cano and Gordon patrolled the streets of Anaheim and Santa Ana looking for young sex workers to abduct,” it added.
The men slept in a Toyota 4Runner in an Anaheim industrial area where Gordon did odd jobs, and they took their victims to a nearby RV to rape and kill them, authorities said.
They wore GPS devices during at least three of the murders, according to grand jury testimony.
New York
Woman admits to unwittingly funding Iran critic kidnap plot
NEW YORK (AP) — A California woman pleaded guilty on Thursday in connection with her unwitting role in a foiled plot to kidnap a prominent Iranian opposition activist living in New York City and take her back to Tehran.
U.S. prosecutors have not accused Niloufar Bahadorifar of participating in the plot to abduct Masih Alinejad, a journalist and vocal critic of the Iranian government for its treatment of women and other issues.
But authorities said four Iranians who plotted to kidnap the activist paid an American private investigator to watch her used Bahadorifar as a go-between.
Bahadorifar pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to violate U.S. economic sanctions on Iran by helping channel money to the investigator.
Her lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, told The New York Times that Bahadorifar was herself a victim of a “cancerous” Iranian regime.
“When Iran’s terrorist leaders aren’t slaughtering their own people,” he said, “they’re traveling the globe trying to kill their critics, including the despicable manipulation of Ms. Bahadorifar by an old family friend.”
Bahadorifar said in court she was unaware the money was used to pay the investigator to conduct surveillance. She told the judge she had sent the funds to the investigator via PayPal on behalf of a government official in Iran who was a longtime family friend.
An Iranian intelligence officer and others were charged in New York last year with attempting to kidnap Alinejad and take her back to Iran. The Officials in Iran have denied the charge.
The private investigator, who also was unaware his employers were actually Iranian agents, later cooperated with the FBI and has not been charged.
Alinejad became a U.S. citizen in 2019 after working for years as a journalist in Iran. She fled the country after its disputed 2009 presidential election and has become a prominent figure on Farsi-language satellite channels abroad that criticize Iran.
U.S. authorities are investigating whether Alinejad was the target of a second plot after the first one was disrupted.
Last summer, police arrested a man near her Brooklyn home with a loaded assault rifle and dozens of rounds of ammunition. Alinejad said a home security video had recorded the man outside her front door.
Bahadorifar will be sentenced April 7.
Iran has conducted a brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters who took to the streets in September after the death of a 22-year-old woman taken into custody by the morality police.
Indiana
Purdue student charged with killing roommate unfit for trial
LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) — A Purdue University student charged with murder in the stabbing death of his dormitory roommate is incompetent to stand trial, a judge ruled Thursday.
Tippecanoe Circuit Judge Sean Persin appointed two doctors to treat Ji Min Sha until he is found competent to understand the charges against him and assist in his defense.
Sha, a 22-year-old cybersecurity major from Seoul, South Korea, faces one count of murder in the October slaying of Varun Manish Chheda, 20, of Indianapolis. The two lived in McCutcheon Hall on Purdue’s West Lafayette campus, about 65 miles (104 kilometers) northwest of Indianapolis.
Prosecutors allege that Sha stabbed Chheda, a data science major, several times in the head and neck with a folding knife that officers found on the floor near the chair where Chheda’s body was discovered.
Persin ruled after reading a report prepared by defense-hired psychologist Dr. Sean Samuels, who interviewed Sha for five hours shortly after the slaying.
Court records indicate Sha told police he believes “he is extensively involved in international espionage and is a former CIA operative,” WLFI-TV reported.
Purdue Police Chief Lesley Wiete has said Sha called police early on Oct. 5 and told them his roommate was dead in their dorm room. Officers who arrested Sha found him wearing clothes with blood on them, prosecutors have said. An autopsy found that Chheda had died of “multiple sharp-force traumatic injuries.”
Iowa
Prosecutors say police chief lied to buy machine guns
A small town Iowa police chief has been indicted on federal charges that he abused his position to purchase more than two dozen machine guns.
Adair Police Chief Brad Wendt, 46, and Robert Williams, 46, were both charged with making false statements to the ATF about whether the police department wanted to buy the machine guns. Adair, a town of fewer than 800 people, is located 55 miles (88.51 kilometers) west of Des Moines
“Brad Wendt is charged with exploiting his position as chief of police to unlawfully obtain and sell guns for his own personal profit,” FBI Omaha Special Agent in Charge Eugene Kowel said in a statement Thursday.
Court documents say Wendt bought 10 machine guns for the police department and later sold several of them at a profit.
Prosecutors say he also acquired 13 other machine guns for his gun store by falsely stating to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives that the police department wanted a demonstration of each of them. Wendt also allegedly helped Williams buy 10 machine guns for his business that holds a federal firearms license by making similar statements.
The two men are also accused of holding public machine gun shooting events where people paid for the chance to shoot one of the fully automatic weapons.
Prosecutors said they believe Wendt and Williams were trying to stockpile the guns to sell later. They say that altogether Wendt tried to purchase or demonstrate 90 machine guns for the Adair Police Department since 2018.
Wendt’s attorney didn’t immediately respond to a message Thursday.
Williams’ attorney, Dean Stowers, said in a statement “It is unfortunate that the government brought these charges against Mr. Williams without sitting down to candidly review all the circumstances and the law.”
Stowers said the ATF approved all of Williams’ gun purchases based on Wendt’s letters, and he hadn’t resold any of them.
Adair City Attorney Clint Fichter said Wendt remains the police chief at this point because the city had no advance notice of the charges before they were announced Thursday.
Wendt could face up to 10 years in prison if he is convicted while Williams faces up to five years in prison.
Georgia
Indictment: Mom used drugs before killing toddler
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — The mother of a toddler found dead in a Georgia landfill has been charged with murder and other crimes in a 19-count indictment that alleges she used drugs before killing her son and dumping his body in a trash bin.
A Chatham County grand jury returned the indictment against Leilani Simon on Wednesday. She has been jailed since police arrested her Nov. 21, when investigators found her son’s remains after weeks spent combing through garbage at a landfill.
Simon called 911 the morning of Oct. 5 to report her 20-month-old son, Quinton Simon, was missing from his indoor playpen at their home outside Savannah. After police spent days searching the home and surrounding neighborhood, Chatham County Police Chief Jeff Hadley said that investigators believed the child was dead. He also named Simon as the sole suspect.
Police and FBI agents focused their investigation on the landfill two weeks after the boy was reported missing. They sifted through trash for more than a month before finding human bones, which DNA tests confirmed to be Quinton’s.
The indictment against Simon charges her with murder, concealing a death, and falsely reporting a crime in addition to 14 separate counts of lying to investigators, news outlets reported. Court records did not list an attorney for Simon and it was not immediately known if she had a lawyer who could speak on her behalf.
The night before her son’s death, according to the indictment, Simon met with a drug dealer and used an unspecified drug.
The indictment said Quinton died the morning of Oct. 5 after his mother assaulted him with an unknown object, causing the child “serious bodily injury.” The charges say she then dumped his body in a trash bin outside a mobile home park about 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) from her home. Simon later told investigators she had gone there to dispose of “normal household garbage.”
Chatham County Shalena Cook Jones declined to release further details during a news conference Wednesday, when she promised to get justice for the slain child.
“It’s a matter that calls our very humanity into question,” the prosecutor said. “These are the cases that keep us up at night.”
