(Missourinet) – The book has been closed on a quarter-century old murder case with the execution of the second killer involved.

Roderick Nunley, described by a former Kansas City policeman who investigated the murder of Ann Harrison in 1989, and who witnessed Nunley’s execution, says Nunley was an “evil man” who stabbed the 15-year old girl with a large knife, using such force that the blade went through her body.

Nunley’s partner, who raped the girl and stabbed her with a smaller knife, Michael Taylor, was executed last year. Nunley died quietly on a gurney in the execution chamber at the Bonne Terre Prison, hardly moving as five grams of pentobarbital ended his life.

Ann Harrison was snatched from a school bus stop about sixty feet from her home on the morning of March 22, 1989. Her body was found in the trunk of the stolen car used by Nunley and Taylor three days after she was put in the trunk and stabbed repeatedly.

The case broke open about three months later with a call to a police tips hotline.

A corrections department official who was an official witness to the execution says Nunley was violent throughout his time in prison and almost stabbed a unit supervisor to death at the Potosi prison, hoping the incident would delay progress on his death penalty case. The supervisor survived. Officials refused to file charges against Nunley so the capital punishment case could keep moving. He says Nunley was one of the few death row inmates who could not be allowed in the general prison population and was often kept in solitary confinement.

Nunley’s execution was delayed about three hours until all appeals were resolved. He was pronounced dead at 9:09 p.m. He had no final statement.

Two members of Ann Harrison’s family and two family friends witnessed his death. Nunley had no relatives, friends, or spiritual advisers with him when he died.

A Columbia, Mo., man and woman pleaded guilty in federal court Monday to their roles in a conspiracy to distribute heroin.

Alec Matthew Ell, 20, Angelica Melanie Polston, 20, both of Columbia, pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge Matt J. Withworth to the charge contained in an
April 2, 2015, federal indictment.

By pleading guilty, Ell admitted that he participated in a conspiracy to distribute 100 grams or more of heroin in Boone County, Mo., from July to October 2014.

Ell admitted that he sold a half-gram of heroin, packaged in four separate baggies, for $100 to an undercover police officer and a confidential informant on three separate occasions in July 2014. He also admitted that sold a quarter-gram of heroin, packaged in two separate baggies, for $50 to an undercover Jefferson City police detective in July 2014. Those transactions occurred in various parking lots in Columbia.

On another occasion in July 2014, Polston accompanied Ell, her boyfriend, and participated in the sale of a half-gram of heroin, packaged in four separate baggies, to the undercover Jefferson City police officer for $100. The transaction occurred near Hickman High School in Columbia.

On Oct. 18, 2014, a Columbia police detective and an officer were on patrol on 8th Street and spotted Ell and Polston. When the detective approached Ell and informed him that he had an active warrant for his arrest, Ell fled on foot into a nearby neighborhood. The officer caught up to him as he tried to jump a fence, and was able to force him off the fence and onto the ground, where he was arrested. During a search, the officer found a baggie of heroin in Ell’s front pants pocket. The heroin was packaged in to 16 separate baggies or “tenths.”

Under federal statutes, Ell and Polston are each subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in federal prison without parole, up to a sentence of 40 years in federal prison without parole, plus a fine up to $5 million. Sentencing hearings will be scheduled after the completion of presentence investigations by the United States Probation Office.

Jefferson City, Mo. – Attorney General Chris Koster today announced his office has filed suit against Florida-based MSB Consultants, Inc., and its president, Michael Bendett, for violations of Missouri’s No-Call law. The lawsuit alleges that MSB Consultants illegally made automated telephone calls, or “robo-calls,” to Missouri residents who were on the state’s No-Call list.

According to the suit, MSB Consultants called Missouri consumers with a recorded message, attempting to sell them health insurance. The Attorney General’s Office received 20 complaints about the company from consumers who are on the No-Call list and received these unwanted calls. The suit follows a recent Federal Communications Commission Order, supported by Koster, which allows phone companies to utilize call-blocking technologies to better protect their customers from robocalls and scams.

“My office will not tolerate businesses that ignore Missouri law and bombard consumers with unwanted calls,” Koster said. “I encourage consumers on the No-Call list to report unwanted robo-calls to my office.”

Koster reminds Missourians they can sign up for the Do-Not-Call hotline on his website at www.ago.mo.gov or by calling 866-662-2551. Consumers can report harassing solicitation at 1-866-buzzoff (1-866-289-9633).

Koster is asking the court to stop the company from making any further calls to Missourians on the No-Call list. He is also seeking penalties and the costs of the investigation and prosecution of the case.

(Missourinet) – Jeff Mizanskey has left a state prison after serving more than twenty years for marijuana charges. He was released Tuesday from the Jefferson City Correctional Center.

“I hope nobody will ever have to go through what I did. Its hell,” said Mizanskey.

He said the realization that he’s now a free man is sinking in.

“I’ve been through courts and thought that things would change and should’ve changed. Nothing has ever happened,” said Mizanskey. “I had a lot of high hopes through those times. I’ve taught myself not to keep those high hopes up. I’ve been keeping them all the way down. Really, everything is just hitting me right now.”

Mizanskey was the only man sentenced to life without parole for marijuana possession and distribution under a persistent offender sentencing law from the 1990s that has since been changed.

A petition with nearly 400,000 signatures was delivered to Governor Jay Nixon in April requesting clemency for Mizanskey and in May the Governor commuted his sentence, giving him his first chance at parole. Two weeks ago, the parole board granted his release.

JEFFERSON CITY – Gov. Jay Nixon has ordered that the flags of the United States and the State of Missouri at all state government buildings in Missouri be flown at half-staff on Friday, Sept. 4, in honor of Trooper James M. Bava, who served with Troop F of the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

Trooper Bava, age 25, died in the line of duty in Audrain County on Aug. 28 while serving the citizens of Missouri. He began his career with the Missouri State Highway Patrol in 2013.

Under Gov. Nixon’s order, U.S. and Missouri flags at state buildings across Missouri will fly at half-staff from sunrise until sunset on Friday, the day the funeral services for Trooper Bava will take place. The Governor on Friday (Aug. 28) ordered the U.S. and Missouri flags at all Highway Patrol facilities across the state lowered to half-staff to honor Trooper Bava. The flags at those facilities will remain at half-staff through Sept. 4.

(Missourinet) – A man who investigated the murder of a 15-year-old girl in Kansas City in 1989 says the second execution of one of her killers has taken too long in coming.

It’s been more than 26 years since Ann Harrison was abducted while waiting for her school bus, raped, fatally stabbed, and left in the trunk of a stolen car to die. Six months later a tip led authorities to Michael Taylor, and he led them to his accomplice, Roderick Nunley.

Nunley’s execution is scheduled to happen Tuesday night at the state prison in Bonne Terre. Retired Kansas City Police detective Pete Edlund’s squad investigated the case.

“They’re finally getting around to executing Roderick Nunley after they executed Michael Taylor last year,” said Edlund.
He thinks it’s taken too long for that sentence to be carried out.

“They admit they did it. The fact that we have to draw this out at ad infinitum for years and years and years is a real travesty of real justice,” said Edlund.

He said Harrison’s one of the cases he’ll never forget, in part because he knew her family. Her father and uncle were in law enforcement.

“He parents and her sister are the nicest, sweetest people you could ever hope to meet,” said Edlund. “They are so kind, so giving.”

Edlund said when Taylor and Nunley confessed to killing Harrison, they bragged about the crimes. Nunley, he said, was angry with Taylor, accusing him of taking too much credit.

“He resented the fact that Michael Taylor was taking credit for leading the two of them to commit this crime, versus, in reality, Roderick was the one,” said Edlund.

Nunley’s attorneys are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to halt his execution arguing that it would violate his constitutional rights and that he is entitled to sentencing by a jury. His conviction and sentencing were handed down by a judge.

If those and any other appeals are unsuccessful, and if Governor Jay Nixon (D) declines to grant clemency, Nunley will be executed by lethal injection between 6 p.m. Tuesday and 5:59 p.m. Wednesday.

(Missourinet) – Missouri high school seniors beat the national average in all subjects on this year’s ACT.

“We held very steady at 21.6 from about 2005 to 2013. This year, we had a 21.7,” said Sarah Potter with the Department of Education. “We are happy to see a slight uptick. It’s still higher than the national average of 21.”

Potter said 71% of Missouri senior meth the benchmark in English, 51% in reading, 44% in math, and 42% in science; the area in which they scored the most poorly.

She said English continues to be the strongest subject for Missouri’s seniors.

“That really falls in line with what we are seeing on other assessments,” said Potter.

The best score possible on the ACT is a 36. Potter says even though Missouri seniors beat the national average, there’s still work to be done to move that average closer to 36.

“College career readiness is one of the major things we are focused on here at the Department of Education and across the state,” said Potter. “We have an initiative called ‘The Top 10 by 20 Initiative’. We want to be a top 10 state for education by 2020.”

Potter says more than 49,000 seniors in Missouri took the exam this year, an increase of 2% from last year. She says juniors will get the chance next year to take the test.

JEFFERSON CITY – The Missouri Department of Transportation said Monday that just two-and-a-half years after the completion of the most intense bridge program in the state’s history, the number of critical-condition bridges in Missouri is growing again.

After the latest round of bridge inspections, the number of bridges in critical need of attention has risen to 641 – 50 more than a year ago. State Bridge Engineer Dennis Heckman says that trend is likely to continue.

“When we completed the Safe & Sound Bridge Improvement Program in 2012, we stemmed the tide for a while,” he said. “But we knew that the curve would start going up again. Safe & Sound made a dent, however it did not repair or replace all of the state’s bad bridges. Now with a shrinking construction budget, the number of bad bridges is on the rise again.”

Missouri has 10,376 bridges on state highways, including 209 that are more than 1,000-feet long. While the Safe & Sound program replaced or repaired more than 800 bridges over four years, 50 to 100 fall into the “critical condition” category each year. Critical condition bridges are the state’s worst and with continued deterioration are just one or two steps from being closed.

“To get ahead of the game, we should be replacing more than 100 bridges per year,” Heckman said. “Instead, our funding levels are only allowing us to replace about 30. In 10 years, we’ll have about 1,500 bridges on the critical condition list.”

MoDOT also has about 1,400 bridges that have posted weight limits. Many of those are already on the list of critical condition bridges and many others are on the path to being added to the list.

Heckman said, however, that “critical condition” doesn’t mean unsafe. “We aggressively inspect our bridges. When we discover a problem that is a safety issue, we close the bridge,” Heckman said.

A state law that took effect on Friday tells municipalities they can make less revenue from traffic tickets and fines than they were allowed under the Macks Creek law. The Missouri Municipal League calls the municipal court reform bill that is now law an “overreach.”

State lawmakers and the governor said cities were abusing the municipal court system and making too much revenue. They wanted lower limits on that revenue and new standards, reporting mandates, and enforcement options. Senate Bill 5 includes new standards and reporting requirements and lowers the cap to 12.5-percent in St. Louis County and to 20-percent in the rest of the state.

Deputy Director Richard Sheets says the tighter limits on revenue would hurt public safety, primarily in smaller cities in outstate Missouri.

“Cities weren’t using this money to operate their general operations. They were primarily using this money to help fund their police department and maybe their municipal court,” said Sheets. “Those cities that might have been too aggressive in their traffic control are very few.”

Sheets says the League isn’t sure how new reporting mandates and standards might mesh with municipal court reforms the state Supreme Court is preparing. It also has concerns about the new limit to fines of $300 and that cities can no longer issue warrants to whose who fail to appear for a traffic violation.

“The concern there is that will encourage violators to avoid prosecution and just not come back to court and not pay their fine,” said Sheets.

Sheets says the League and its attorneys are weighing its best options for litigation or future legislation regarding the new law.

(Missourinet) – This week marks ten years since Hurricane Katrina devastated portions of the gulf coast. Members of Missouri Task Force One were called in by the federal government and helped rescue victims, often by boat and often from homes. Approximately 80 members from Missouri helped with the hurricane efforts.

Task Force leader Doug Westhoff says he remembers the people who were helped.

“The heart of the people was probably one of the most notable things that sticks out in my mind. They were very appreciative of the efforts we were making and the efforts of the federal government,” said Westhoff. “It was a huge flood event that I don’t think anybody could anticipate. It was certainly a notable response that will probably never be replicated again in my career anyway.”

“Every time one of these events occur, there’s always an impact to humans. That’s always an emotional challenge for all of our responders,” said Westhoff.

Westhoff says the federal government was criticized for its response to the disaster, but he says that response was there early.

“Very few people knew that first responders had been moved in prior to the storm making landfall. That was never really reported,” said Westhoff. “It was very frustrating to us as first responders to be down there and engaging in activities sixteen hours a day and everything in the media that we were seeing had a negative connotation about the government’s response or lack thereof. We were down there beating our heads against the wall and working our rear ends off.”

At least 1,200 people died in Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent floods. The Hurricane was the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, including more than $100 billion in total property damage.