Judge sets $1 million bail for Cedar Rapids man charged in 2007 cold case

CEDAR RAPIDS — A judge Thursday set bail at $1 million cash only for a Cedar Rapids man charged in a cold case murder from 2007.

Curtis Padgett, 42, was charged with first-degree murder during an initial appearance in Linn County District Court.

Sixth Judicial Associate District Judge Casey Jones said the high bail was based on the nature and circumstances of the accused crime.

Padgett, who had a protective vest he was holding or a blanket wrapped around him, appeared by video from the Linn County Jail.

He is accused of beating and fatally stabbing Dennis First, 64, his neighbor when the two lived in the Hawthorne Hills Apartment complex on May 11, 2007.

Cedar Rapids Police declined to say what led to the break in the cold case, but Padgett was initially arrested Monday and then charged Wednesday for first-degree harassment, an aggravated misdemeanor.

Padgett, who lived at Geneva Tower, is accused of contacting the assistant manager of the building and telling her he was going to burn down the building, according to a criminal complaint.

Police did say Padgett remains a person of interest in a missing persons case of 15-year-old Erin Pospisil. She was last seen leaving her home June 3, 2001. Padgett, a friend of Pospisil’s brother, told police he left their home at the same time as the teen and he agreed to give her ride to a friend’s house.

Padgett said the teen’s friend wasn’t home and Pospisil got into another vehicle, telling Padgett they would give her a ride. Police couldn’t find any witnesses to corroborate Padgett’s story, according to news reports. Pospisil hasn’t been seen since she left her house June 3, 2001.

According to the complaint in First’s murder, police, an office manager and a maintenance man responded May 11, 2007 to Hawthorne Hills Apartments, 2249 C St. SW, to conduct a welfare check on First. They found First lying on his back on a pullout sofa bed in his apartment. His face was covered in blood and he was dead.

According to an autopsy, he died from multiple blunt force injuries including a gaping cutting/stab wound that was more than three inches wide with ragged edges on the right side of his neck.

He also had “multiple large contusions” to his face, forehead and left ear, cuts above his upper lip, a broken nose and brain hemorrhaging, among other injuries, which showed he had been “severely beaten,” the complaint states.

Padgett, who was a known associate with First, admitted he was at the complex that night. A witness reported hearing the two of them “loudly” arguing the night before First was found dead, according to the complaint.

During the investigation, a partial boot print was found in blood in First’s apartment that matched boots recovered from Padgett’s apartment, the complaint states.

An oven mitt soiled in blood was also found. It contained both First's DNA and Padgett’s on the inside of the oven mitt, Linn County Attorney Nick Maybanks said in the complaint. Padgett’s fingerprint was also found on a knife sharpener in First’s apartment in a drawer that appeared to have blood on it.

In 2016, Padgett also reportedly approached another individual, unrelated to this incident, near a storage garage and made a comment that he killed someone nine years earlier, the complaint states.

This witness later indicated Padgett said the person he killed was someone he used to roll cigarettes for. Padgett had told investigators he used to roll cigarettes for First when they were acquaintances.

Padgett, after the murder, told The Gazette he sometimes rolled cigarettes for First and last saw him two nights before First was found dead.

"I was going to go knock on his door (Friday morning)," Padgett said in 2007. "When I came out, they were carrying him away in a body bag."

He also told a Gazette reporter that police took his fingerprints and a DNA sample. He said First was a “good friend” and he had nothing to do with his death.

Comments: (319) 398-8318; trish.mehaffey@thegazette.com