ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A woman beat and tortured at least some of her 15 children and forced them to watch as she brutally killed their pets, authorities said in New Mexico, the latest place where the woman and her husband have been the subject of complaints.

Martha Crouch and her husband Timothy of Aztec, New Mexico, were arrested Monday following interviews with a number of their adult and young children living in different states, according to court records. It was not immediately clear if all the allegations made by the children had been verified by authorities.

State officials say documents also point to prior complaints involving the couple in Missouri, Alaska, Kansas and Montana.

Martha Crouch, 53, was charged with child abuse and extreme cruelty to animals. Timothy Crouch, 57, is facing an obstruction charge. The couple has yet to be assigned public defenders. They are due in court Wednesday.

The San Juan County sheriff’s office began an investigation following the arrest of one the couple’s adult children on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon. Detectives say they uncovered false allegations that two sons beat another brother to death and kidnapped a sister, but heard other claims of abuse, torture and extreme animal cruelty.

One teen daughter told authorities of physical and emotional abuse that had gotten so bad that two of her older siblings took her from New Mexico to Arizona to keep her safe, according to court documents. The teen said after one of their dogs had puppies, the mother “took the puppies and put them into a giant pot and boiled them, making all the kids watch,” the documents said.

The girl told investigators the mother also fed a kitten poison.

She said she was hit by her mother with a plastic cooking spatula for questioning why she wasn’t allowed to go to school. Another, whose age also wasn’t disclosed, said she got pregnant at 14 and her mother beat her until she had a miscarriage.

Another daughter told authorities she was kept in a “fat chain” for three years while the family lived in Alaska because her mother thought she was overweight.

A son told detectives he was “beaten, shot, stabbed and run over by his parents” and “had BBs still inside his arm from when the mother shot him with a shotgun.”

He said New Mexico child welfare investigators recently came to the house to look into allegations of educational neglect but the mother loaded up the three younger children in a car and took them to the Navajo Dam to avoid them being spotted.

The children told detectives the family had lived in a number of places over the years and every time authorities questioned the parents’ activities, they fled to a new place, according to court documents.

Deanna Taylor, an investigator with the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department, said she received hundreds of pages of reports from other social service agencies in several other states, including Alaska, Kansas, Missouri and Montana. It is not clear what types of allegations were made against the couple in those states and whether any action was taken against them.

Court records show Timothy Crouch pleaded no contest to a theft charge in 1999 in Alaska. A forgery charge in Alaska also was dismissed that year.

Court records show the family had at least one other recent encounter with authorities. San Juan County officials cited Timothy Crouch in May with illegally burning trash.

Court records also show that county authorities’ initial investigation into an assault by an adult son at the family’s home on May 30 came after several brothers said they had been arguing over food.

The son, a 31-year-old also named Timothy Crouch, was accused of pointing a gun at three of his brothers saying he would shoot them. One of the three said the fight started because he was allergic to beef and could not eat hot dogs, an affidavit for an arrest warrant said.

A sister told a deputy there were guns located “throughout the house.”

Authorities also reported finding the body of a dog buried in the backyard that was shot as a punishment to the children.

 

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The funeral for a Missouri police officer killed in the line of duty will be Monday in St. Louis.

North County Police Cooperative Officer Michael Langsdorf was shot to death Sunday while answering a call about a bad check at a market in the St. Louis County town of Wellston. Langsdorf was a 40-year-old father of two. He was a longtime St. Louis city officer who had been with the police cooperative for just three months.

Visitation will be from noon to 6 p.m. Sunday at Hoffmeister Colonial Mortuary in St. Louis. The funeral is at 10 a.m. Monday at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, followed by burial at Resurrection Cemetery.

Prosecutors charged 26-year-old Bonette Kymbrelle Meeks with first-degree murder and three other crimes. Meeks is jailed without bond.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A Missouri death row inmate who has received last-minute reprieves twice before over concerns about a rare medical condition is now scheduled to die in October.

The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday set an Oct. 1 execution date for Russell Bucklew, who was convicted in the 1996 shooting death of a man who was living with Bucklew’s former girlfriend.

Bucklew narrowly escaped execution in 2014 and again in 2018. Each time, the U.S. Supreme Court intervened moments before Bucklew was scheduled to be put to death.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in April that the state could move ahead with the execution. The court’s five conservative justices rejected Bucklew’s argument that subjecting him to lethal injection would violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that Bucklew’s claim “isn’t supported by either the law or the evidence.”

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in a dissenting opinion that his colleagues acknowledged that the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibits states from executing prisoners by “horrid modes of torture” such as burning at the stake.

“But the majority’s decision permits a state to execute a prisoner who suffers from a medical condition that would render his execution no less painful,” Breyer wrote.

Bucklew’s attorney, Cheryl Pilate, did not immediately respond to phone and email messages seeking comment. She has said previously that Bucklew’s condition, in addition to the tumors, causes weakened and malformed blood vessels and vein problems.

Missouri uses an injection of the drug pentobarbital for executions. Bucklew had proposed that the state execute him by having him breathe pure nitrogen gas through a mask. Missouri officials said no state has ever carried out an execution as Bucklew suggested.

Bucklew, now 51, was convicted of killing Michael Sanders. After entering a trailer where Sanders and Bucklew’s former girlfriend lived with their children, Bucklew fatally shot Sanders and later raped his former girlfriend. Bucklew was arrested after a car chase and shootout with police.

The execution would be the first in Missouri since Mark Christeson was put to death in January 2017. None of the 20 inmates executed since Missouri began using pentobarbital in 2013 have shown obvious signs of pain or suffering.

KANSAS CITY (AP) — Authorities have apprehended a fired worker who is accused of threatening a shooting in Kansas City’s massive subterranean network of businesses housed in old limestone mines.

UPDATE: Suspect has been taken in custody at another location. The lockdown at the Subtropolis is lifted.

— Kansas City Police (@kcpolice) June 25, 2019

Police said Tuesday in a tweet that they found the worker in Kansas City, Kansas, and lifted the lockdown at Hunt Midwest SubTropolis in Kansas City, Missouri. No other details were immediately released about the capture, including the worker’s name.

Police said earlier that security spotted the worker entering the cave system after he said he would “shoot the place up.” Numerous federal, state and local agencies helped search while workers were told to stay inside their locked offices.

Many of the businesses in the cave system specialize in storage or warehousing because they are protected from extreme weather and boast stable, year-round temperatures and humidity.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A man was convicted Tuesday in a shooting that killed three people in a popular downtown area of the Kansas college town.

Anthony Roberts Jr., 22, of Topeka, was found guilty of two counts of first-degree felony murder, one count of second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder.

Deputy District Attorney David Melton said Roberts opened fire in October 2017 after he and his friends confronted a group of other Topeka men with whom they had “bad blood” as crowds were leaving bars, concerts and other events on the main downtown Lawrence street.

But Roberts’ attorneys argued that he acted in self-defense and was legally openly carrying a gun with an extended magazine before the shooting.

“Anthony and his friends are being pummeled, and Anthony’s about to be next,” said Joshua Seiden, one of two defense attorneys representing Roberts. “Anthony saw guns being drawn, he had no time to think, and he reacted. Anthony drew his gun, a 9-millimeter Glock. To protect his friends and to protect himself, Anthony fired that Glock.”

The gunfire killed 22-year-old Leah Brown, of Shawnee; 20-year-old Colwin Lynn Henderson, of Topeka; and 24-year-old Tre’Mel Dupree Dean-Rayton, of Topeka. Two others were wounded but survived. Brown was the only victim who knew no one else involved.

But Douglas County District Attorney Charles Branson urged jurors not to excuse Roberts’ action as self-defense. He said forensic testing showed all 15 9mm shell casings left behind in the area were fired by Roberts’ Glock 26.

“There was no self-defense in this case,” he said. “There simply was murder.”

A second defendant was convicted previously of attempted voluntary manslaughter, and a third of misdemeanor battery.

Sentencing is set for Aug. 1. The maximum sentence is life imprisonment.

SALINE COUNTY – Law enforcement authorities continue their investigation surround the murder of a Saline County woman.

On June 25, 2016, 57-year-old Lori Heimer was found deceased in her home in rural Saline County.

According to a media release from the KBI, investigators from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) and the Saline County Sheriff’s Office have followed hundreds of leads in an effort to hold Heimer’s attacker accountable. On the anniversary of her murder, the investigation is active and ongoing, but the case remains unsolved.

 

At the time of her death, Heimer operated Lori’s Poodle Patch, a dog breeding business, from her home in Assaria, Kan. Authorities continue to seek information from anyone who had contact with Heimer through this dog business, in the month of June 2016.

Anyone with information about the death of Lori Heimer is urged to contact 1-800-KS-CRIME. Callers may remain anonymous.

MANHATTAN — A new risk assessment model for the transmission of Ebola accurately predicted its spread into the Republic of Uganda, according to the Kansas State University researchers who developed it.

According to a media release from KSU, Caterina Scoglio, professor, and Mahbubul Riad, doctoral student, both in the Mike Wiegers Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Carl R. Ice College of Engineering at Kansas State University; Musa Sekamatte and Issa Makumbi at Uganda Ministry of Health; and Felix Ocom with the World Health Organization in Uganda, published “Risk assessment of Ebola virus disease spreading in Uganda using a multilayer temporal network” in bioRxiv on May 23.

The paper describes a new model to better predict how diseases like Ebola spread. The model combines data of people’s constant contacts — such as family members and co-workers — with their temporary contacts — such as people in a market or encountered during travel. According to Scoglio, the model should be used as a risk assessment tool to prepare and distribute resources, but it also has been accurate thus far regarding the movement of Ebola from the Democratic Republic of Congo into Uganda.

“This is very a new type of model,” Scoglio said. “Since we consider movement data in addition to constant contacts, we saw that not only are the districts directly bordering Congo at risk but that the districts on the path to some important Ugandan destinations also are at risk.”

In 2018, Scoglio and her collaborators worked with Ugandan officials to collect movement data to model disease progression and find areas most at risk. According to the model, the Kasese district was the highest risk area for an infected person to enter the country. The researchers used the model to create a 150-day simulation of possible disease progression in Uganda and produced a map of 23 Ugandan districts at risk.

The specific scenario used in the simulation is similar to actual events so far. According to the Uganda Health Ministry’s June 18 release, there are three confirmed cases of Ebola in travelers to Uganda — all from one family that entered the country at the Kasese district border.

“The risk assessment maps can be used to allocate and distribute limited resources,” Scoglio said. “Uganda has about 4,000 doses of the new Ebola vaccine. They are vaccinating health workers, communicating about how to prevent spreading diseases, and advising people to limit travel in high-risk areas. We have much respect and admiration for how Uganda has organized the preparedness and now the response.”

The researchers used the simulation of Ebola in Uganda to test their model because there is a lot of traffic coming into the country from the Democratic Republic of Congo for health care, trading and refuge. Ebola is highly contagious through physical contact with an infected person and their bodily fluids.

Scoglio said that even though the real events in Uganda have aligned with the simulated model, the scenario should only be used to mitigate the risk.

“One very important point for the public to understand is the concept of risk and probability with these maps,” Scoglio said. “It should not be interpreted that these red regions will be affected because that will cause panic in the population, but rather these are a guide for allocation of limited resources in regions that could be potentially affected if no mitigations are implemented.”

This model may open a new era in infectious disease management, Scoglio said. She gives credit to Aram Vajdi, doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering at Kansas State University, for developing the framework for the theoretical model based on a multilayer temporal network and the Gillespie algorithm. Scoglio also praised Riad, who applied the data collected from Uganda and how Ebola was transmitted to create the risk assessment.

According to Scoglio, network models used for highly infectious disease risk assessment must be able to anticipate changes in human-to-human contacts — unlike many other models, which are based mainly on constant contacts and constant movement flows. Using these models can help increase the effectiveness of preventive measures by targeting the most critical regions and can help decrease the risk of Ebola and other infectious diseases from spreading.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A former state legislative aide has been sentenced to five years in prison for soliciting sex from someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl.

Twenty-five-year-old Carter Clinton Ballman was sentenced Friday for attempted receipt of child pornography. He will serve five years on federal supervision after his release.

The Columbia Daily Tribune reports Ballmann was arrested as part of a Boone County child predator sting. He responded to a cell phone message posted by an undercover investigator posing as a teenager.

Investigators also uncovered various Columbia Middle School hours and honor rolls during the time Ballman was communicating with the decoy.

He was arrested April 17 at the Missouri Capitol.

Ballman was a legislative assistant to Rep. Mark Matthiesen, a Republican from Maryland Heights. Ballmann was fired shortly after his arrest.