Ohio
Divorce lawyer pleads not guilty in 2013 fatal stabbing of client
CLEVELAND (AP) — An Ohio divorce attorney accused of fatally stabbing a client more than a decade ago in a plot to delay her trial pleaded not guilty Wednesday to aggravated murder and kidnapping charges.
Bail was set at $2 million for Gregory J. Moore, 51, who is also charged with murder and conspiracy in the 2013 death of Aliza Sherman, who was stabbed more than 10 times. Her body was found on a downtown Cleveland sidewalk near where she was set to meet Moore to discuss her divorce the day before the trial was scheduled to begin.
Bail was set at the request of his defense lawyers, who argued Moore was not a flight risk.
Moore — who already has served jail time for lying to police during the investigation into Sherman’s death — was indicted earlier this month and was arrested by U.S. marshals in Texas, where he had been visiting his terminally ill father. He then waived extradition during a May 8 hearing and was returned to Ohio.
According to the indictment, Moore allegedly planned to kidnap Sherman as a delay tactic for her upcoming divorce trial. Court documents included messages between Moore and Sherman showing how he called her to the office, which was locked. She arrived and waited more than an hour before deciding to return to her car, according to the indictment.
“During this timeframe, an individual who was either Moore or an unknown co-conspirator approached Sherman … circled behind her, chased her … and then stabbed her over 10 times,” the indictment reads.
Moore swiped into the office later that evening and messaged Sherman to mislead investigators, according to the indictment.
Moore was not a stranger to authorities before the stabbing occurred.
In 2017, he pleaded guilty to falsification for statements he made to police about his whereabouts during Sherman’s killing. He also admitted to calling in bomb threats in 2012 as a way to delay trials. His law license was suspended in 2017 and he resigned it the following year. He served six months in jail.
At the time, he said that he regretted his past actions.
Sherman, 53, was a mother of four and has been remembered as a beloved fertility nurse. Rallies and vigils to honor her memory have been held on the anniversary of her death.
Maryland
Teenager to serve one year in prison after writing about school shootings
ROCKVILLE, Md. (AP) — A Maryland teenager will serve at least a year in prison after being found guilty of threatening mass violence, including in a written account of a character who plans a school shooting.
The teen was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison with all but one year suspended, along with five years of supervised probation upon release, according to the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office. During the probation period, the teen will have to come to court every two weeks, receive mental health treatment, avoid two school campuses and stay off the chatting app Discord.
The 19-year-old was arrested last year after investigators reviewed writings and other material, including internet searches and messages. The defendant was a high school student at the time.
The investigation began after a person contacted police in the Baltimore area, saying he met the teen in a psychiatric facility. The person alerted authorities to the teen’s writings, which were labeled a fictional account by their author, according to court records. But investigators wrote that they believed the document was based on the teen’s life, not entirely fictional.
The writings, which the teen called a memoir, spanned 129 pages and included an account of a character who plans a school shooting but ultimately is taken into law enforcement custody and then receives psychiatric treatment, according to police.
But the document opened with a disclaimer calling it a work of fiction, according to court papers.
Police later obtained a search warrant and uncovered “internet searches, drawings and documents related to threats of mass violence,” officials said. Some recent searches included queries about gun ranges, prison sentences and a long list of past school shootings, according to court documents.
Social media messages and posts by the teen also reference a desire to become famous by committing a school shooting, police wrote in charging documents.
Court records show the teen was hospitalized in December 2022 after threatening to “shoot up a school,” and the following month clinicians reported that the teen was talking about “suicide by cop.”
A judge found the teen guilty in January on one count of threatening to commit mass violence following a two-day bench trial.
Pennsylvania
Man who killed 3 relatives during a rampage last year gets life sentence
DOYLESTOWN, Pa. (AP) — A man who killed his stepmother, sister and the mother of his children during a rampage in suburban Philadelphia last year has been sentenced to three consecutive life terms.
Bucks County prosecutors had said they would seek the death penalty for Andre Gordon, 27, who pleaded guilty Wednesday to three counts of first-degree murder and other related counts. However, District Attorney Jennifer Schorn said she reconsidered that decision after receiving input from the victims’ families.
Authorities say it’s still not clear what sparked the March 2024 rampage that extended through two states. It began when Gordon carjacked a vehicle in Trenton, New Jersey and drove to Levittown in Falls Township, Pennsylvania, where he killed his stepmother and sister.
Gordon then drove to a second home in Levittown and killed the mother of his two young daughters while the children hid a short distance away. He also injured his children’s grandmother by bludgeoning her with a rifle.
Gordon then carjacked a second vehicle in Morrisville and returned to Trenton, authorities said. Police surrounded a home for hours in the belief that he was there, but Gordon apparently slipped out before a cordon went up. He was arrested, unarmed, when he was spotted walking down a street a few blocks away.
Besides the three life terms, Gordon was also sentenced Wednesday to an additional 156 1/2 to 313 years for burglary, robbery, and other crimes he committed on the day of the attack and subsequent attacks on corrections officers at the county jail.
New York
Judge denies bail to crypto investor charged with kidnapping and torturing man
NEW YORK (AP) — A grand jury has indicted a cryptocurrency investor who was charged with kidnapping and torturing a man for weeks in an upscale Manhattan townhouse in order to gain access to his Bitcoin.
John Woeltz, 37, has been jailed since his arrest Friday outside the luxury rental, where an Italian national told police he was severely beaten, drugged, shocked with electrical wires and dangled over a ledge by captors seeking the password to his digital assets.
Woeltz’s alleged accomplice, William Duplessie, surrendered to police Tuesday and is awaiting his own indictment.
At the hearing Thursday, an attorney for Woeltz requested his client be released on a $2 million bond, citing his lack of criminal record, philosophy degree and professional accomplishments.
“He’s been very successful in the technology world,” the attorney, Wayne Gosnell, told a Manhattan judge, adding that his client “has every intention to fight this case.”
The judge denied bail for Woeltz, who did not appear in court.
Gosnell also requested that Woeltz not be required to turn over firearms that he legally owns in Kentucky. And he disputed the prosecutor’s earlier claims that his client owned a private jet and helicopter.
Woeltz has described himself in interviews as a blockchain investor who spent time in Silicon Valley before returning to Kentucky’s burgeoning crypto-mining industry.
Authorities have said Woeltz and Duplessie, another cryptocurrency investor, knew the victim personally.
On May 6, they lured the man — whose name has not been released by officials — to a posh townhouse in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood, one of the city’s most expensive, by threatening to kill his family.
The man said he was then held captive for 17 days, as the two investors tormented him with electrical wires, forced him to smoke from a crack pipe and at one point dangled him from a staircase five stories high.
He eventually agreed to hand over his computer password Friday morning, then managed to flee the home as his captors went to retrieve the device. The victim made it onto the street, bloodied and shoeless, according to police.
A search of the townhouse turned up cocaine, a saw, chicken wire, body armor, night vision goggles, ammunition and polaroid photos of the victim with a gun pointed to his head, according to prosecutors.
California
Man’s 378-year sentence overturned after judge rules accuser may have made up charges
WOODLAND, Calif. (AP) — A Northern California man’s 378-year sentence for sexual assault has been overturned by a judge who said there was strong evidence that his adopted daughter made up the accusations to punish him and improve her prospects of remaining in the U.S.
Ajay Dev, 58, was released May 23 after 16 years in prison for 76 convictions of sexual assault on a minor and related charges, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Tuesday.
Superior Court Judge Janene Beronio scheduled a hearing for June 13 for Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig to decide whether to retry Dev. Prosecutors could also appeal the ruling. Reisig’s office declined to comment on the case Wednesday.
Jennifer Mouzis, who represented Ajay Dev in his appeal, filed the habeas corpus petition seeking to free him in 2018.
Dev, an immigrant from Nepal who worked as a water engineer, was visiting the South Asian nation with his wife in 1998 when they decided to adopt 15-year-old Sapna Dev, part of their extended family, and bring her to live with them in Davis, California.
In early 2004, Sapna Dev’s boyfriend broke up with her, and she accused Ajay Dev of causing the breakup, Beronio said in her ruling. Later she told police that Ajay Dev had had sex with her two or three times a week for three or four years until she moved out of his home, the judge said.
Four witnesses who had not been contacted by Dev’s trial lawyers testified at a recent hearing that Sapna Dev had told them that her accusations against him were lies or were motivated by her anger at him, the Chronicle reported.
One of the witnesses said Sapna Dev told him she made the accusations because she “was determined to return to the United States and needed to use the criminal charges to do that,” Beronio said.
It wasn’t clear if Sapna Dev had an attorney who could speak on her behalf, and efforts to contact her were not immediately successful.
Deputy District Attorney Adrienne Chin-Perez contended during a hearing last week that Ajay Dev continues to pose a flight risk and a danger to the community, the Davis Enterprise reported. She also read a statement from Sapna Dev, who wrote that she is “deeply afraid that Ajay will harm me.”
The judge’s decision “dismantles the DA’s case,” said Patricia Pursell, a member of advocacy group that has held demonstrations in support of Dev.
Mouzis said much of the prosecution’s evidence was based on racial and ethnic bias that would be illegal today under California’s Racial Justice Act, a 2021 law barring testimony that appeals to prejudice.
Divorce lawyer pleads not guilty in 2013 fatal stabbing of client
CLEVELAND (AP) — An Ohio divorce attorney accused of fatally stabbing a client more than a decade ago in a plot to delay her trial pleaded not guilty Wednesday to aggravated murder and kidnapping charges.
Bail was set at $2 million for Gregory J. Moore, 51, who is also charged with murder and conspiracy in the 2013 death of Aliza Sherman, who was stabbed more than 10 times. Her body was found on a downtown Cleveland sidewalk near where she was set to meet Moore to discuss her divorce the day before the trial was scheduled to begin.
Bail was set at the request of his defense lawyers, who argued Moore was not a flight risk.
Moore — who already has served jail time for lying to police during the investigation into Sherman’s death — was indicted earlier this month and was arrested by U.S. marshals in Texas, where he had been visiting his terminally ill father. He then waived extradition during a May 8 hearing and was returned to Ohio.
According to the indictment, Moore allegedly planned to kidnap Sherman as a delay tactic for her upcoming divorce trial. Court documents included messages between Moore and Sherman showing how he called her to the office, which was locked. She arrived and waited more than an hour before deciding to return to her car, according to the indictment.
“During this timeframe, an individual who was either Moore or an unknown co-conspirator approached Sherman … circled behind her, chased her … and then stabbed her over 10 times,” the indictment reads.
Moore swiped into the office later that evening and messaged Sherman to mislead investigators, according to the indictment.
Moore was not a stranger to authorities before the stabbing occurred.
In 2017, he pleaded guilty to falsification for statements he made to police about his whereabouts during Sherman’s killing. He also admitted to calling in bomb threats in 2012 as a way to delay trials. His law license was suspended in 2017 and he resigned it the following year. He served six months in jail.
At the time, he said that he regretted his past actions.
Sherman, 53, was a mother of four and has been remembered as a beloved fertility nurse. Rallies and vigils to honor her memory have been held on the anniversary of her death.
Maryland
Teenager to serve one year in prison after writing about school shootings
ROCKVILLE, Md. (AP) — A Maryland teenager will serve at least a year in prison after being found guilty of threatening mass violence, including in a written account of a character who plans a school shooting.
The teen was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison with all but one year suspended, along with five years of supervised probation upon release, according to the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office. During the probation period, the teen will have to come to court every two weeks, receive mental health treatment, avoid two school campuses and stay off the chatting app Discord.
The 19-year-old was arrested last year after investigators reviewed writings and other material, including internet searches and messages. The defendant was a high school student at the time.
The investigation began after a person contacted police in the Baltimore area, saying he met the teen in a psychiatric facility. The person alerted authorities to the teen’s writings, which were labeled a fictional account by their author, according to court records. But investigators wrote that they believed the document was based on the teen’s life, not entirely fictional.
The writings, which the teen called a memoir, spanned 129 pages and included an account of a character who plans a school shooting but ultimately is taken into law enforcement custody and then receives psychiatric treatment, according to police.
But the document opened with a disclaimer calling it a work of fiction, according to court papers.
Police later obtained a search warrant and uncovered “internet searches, drawings and documents related to threats of mass violence,” officials said. Some recent searches included queries about gun ranges, prison sentences and a long list of past school shootings, according to court documents.
Social media messages and posts by the teen also reference a desire to become famous by committing a school shooting, police wrote in charging documents.
Court records show the teen was hospitalized in December 2022 after threatening to “shoot up a school,” and the following month clinicians reported that the teen was talking about “suicide by cop.”
A judge found the teen guilty in January on one count of threatening to commit mass violence following a two-day bench trial.
Pennsylvania
Man who killed 3 relatives during a rampage last year gets life sentence
DOYLESTOWN, Pa. (AP) — A man who killed his stepmother, sister and the mother of his children during a rampage in suburban Philadelphia last year has been sentenced to three consecutive life terms.
Bucks County prosecutors had said they would seek the death penalty for Andre Gordon, 27, who pleaded guilty Wednesday to three counts of first-degree murder and other related counts. However, District Attorney Jennifer Schorn said she reconsidered that decision after receiving input from the victims’ families.
Authorities say it’s still not clear what sparked the March 2024 rampage that extended through two states. It began when Gordon carjacked a vehicle in Trenton, New Jersey and drove to Levittown in Falls Township, Pennsylvania, where he killed his stepmother and sister.
Gordon then drove to a second home in Levittown and killed the mother of his two young daughters while the children hid a short distance away. He also injured his children’s grandmother by bludgeoning her with a rifle.
Gordon then carjacked a second vehicle in Morrisville and returned to Trenton, authorities said. Police surrounded a home for hours in the belief that he was there, but Gordon apparently slipped out before a cordon went up. He was arrested, unarmed, when he was spotted walking down a street a few blocks away.
Besides the three life terms, Gordon was also sentenced Wednesday to an additional 156 1/2 to 313 years for burglary, robbery, and other crimes he committed on the day of the attack and subsequent attacks on corrections officers at the county jail.
New York
Judge denies bail to crypto investor charged with kidnapping and torturing man
NEW YORK (AP) — A grand jury has indicted a cryptocurrency investor who was charged with kidnapping and torturing a man for weeks in an upscale Manhattan townhouse in order to gain access to his Bitcoin.
John Woeltz, 37, has been jailed since his arrest Friday outside the luxury rental, where an Italian national told police he was severely beaten, drugged, shocked with electrical wires and dangled over a ledge by captors seeking the password to his digital assets.
Woeltz’s alleged accomplice, William Duplessie, surrendered to police Tuesday and is awaiting his own indictment.
At the hearing Thursday, an attorney for Woeltz requested his client be released on a $2 million bond, citing his lack of criminal record, philosophy degree and professional accomplishments.
“He’s been very successful in the technology world,” the attorney, Wayne Gosnell, told a Manhattan judge, adding that his client “has every intention to fight this case.”
The judge denied bail for Woeltz, who did not appear in court.
Gosnell also requested that Woeltz not be required to turn over firearms that he legally owns in Kentucky. And he disputed the prosecutor’s earlier claims that his client owned a private jet and helicopter.
Woeltz has described himself in interviews as a blockchain investor who spent time in Silicon Valley before returning to Kentucky’s burgeoning crypto-mining industry.
Authorities have said Woeltz and Duplessie, another cryptocurrency investor, knew the victim personally.
On May 6, they lured the man — whose name has not been released by officials — to a posh townhouse in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood, one of the city’s most expensive, by threatening to kill his family.
The man said he was then held captive for 17 days, as the two investors tormented him with electrical wires, forced him to smoke from a crack pipe and at one point dangled him from a staircase five stories high.
He eventually agreed to hand over his computer password Friday morning, then managed to flee the home as his captors went to retrieve the device. The victim made it onto the street, bloodied and shoeless, according to police.
A search of the townhouse turned up cocaine, a saw, chicken wire, body armor, night vision goggles, ammunition and polaroid photos of the victim with a gun pointed to his head, according to prosecutors.
California
Man’s 378-year sentence overturned after judge rules accuser may have made up charges
WOODLAND, Calif. (AP) — A Northern California man’s 378-year sentence for sexual assault has been overturned by a judge who said there was strong evidence that his adopted daughter made up the accusations to punish him and improve her prospects of remaining in the U.S.
Ajay Dev, 58, was released May 23 after 16 years in prison for 76 convictions of sexual assault on a minor and related charges, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Tuesday.
Superior Court Judge Janene Beronio scheduled a hearing for June 13 for Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig to decide whether to retry Dev. Prosecutors could also appeal the ruling. Reisig’s office declined to comment on the case Wednesday.
Jennifer Mouzis, who represented Ajay Dev in his appeal, filed the habeas corpus petition seeking to free him in 2018.
Dev, an immigrant from Nepal who worked as a water engineer, was visiting the South Asian nation with his wife in 1998 when they decided to adopt 15-year-old Sapna Dev, part of their extended family, and bring her to live with them in Davis, California.
In early 2004, Sapna Dev’s boyfriend broke up with her, and she accused Ajay Dev of causing the breakup, Beronio said in her ruling. Later she told police that Ajay Dev had had sex with her two or three times a week for three or four years until she moved out of his home, the judge said.
Four witnesses who had not been contacted by Dev’s trial lawyers testified at a recent hearing that Sapna Dev had told them that her accusations against him were lies or were motivated by her anger at him, the Chronicle reported.
One of the witnesses said Sapna Dev told him she made the accusations because she “was determined to return to the United States and needed to use the criminal charges to do that,” Beronio said.
It wasn’t clear if Sapna Dev had an attorney who could speak on her behalf, and efforts to contact her were not immediately successful.
Deputy District Attorney Adrienne Chin-Perez contended during a hearing last week that Ajay Dev continues to pose a flight risk and a danger to the community, the Davis Enterprise reported. She also read a statement from Sapna Dev, who wrote that she is “deeply afraid that Ajay will harm me.”
The judge’s decision “dismantles the DA’s case,” said Patricia Pursell, a member of advocacy group that has held demonstrations in support of Dev.
Mouzis said much of the prosecution’s evidence was based on racial and ethnic bias that would be illegal today under California’s Racial Justice Act, a 2021 law barring testimony that appeals to prejudice.
