Articles Tagged: Murder

A Cedar Rapids man was sentenced Monday to 50 years in prison on a charge of second-degree murder after he fatally assaulted his 71-year-old mother in 2020.

Shellsburg man accused of helping Traer woman kill her husband in 2021 asked a judge Thursday to lower his $1 million bail because it’s unreasonable. Prosecutor wants it hiked up to $5 million because he believes Danker has access to “large sum of cash.”

Linn County Attorney Nick Maybanks says prosecutors will file about 25 percent fewer felonies in fiscal year 2024, which is the first time violent crimes have declined since post-pandemic spikes. He noted the office also successfully prosecuted eight homicides in the first four months of the year.

A Marion woman, crying throughout her victim impact statement Friday in Linn County District Court, says she still waits for her 17-year-old son to come home even though she knows he was fatally shot May 10, 2023. Her only son, she said, should be graduating from high school this Sunday.

Samantha Bevans showed no visible reaction when she heard the jury’s verdict, convicting her of first-degree murder for suffocating her stepmom, Jodie Bevans, in July 2022. She faces a life sentence without parole.

Samantha Bevans, accused of suffocating her stepmom in 2022, took the stand Thursday in her defense and denied taking part in the killing of Jodie Bevans, 58, of Palo. She blamed the slaying on her boyfriend, who was convicted of first-degree murder last year. But a rebuttal witness said Bevans demonstrated how she put the pillow over her stepmother’s face and used her foot to apply pressure.

The teen daughter of Samantha Bevans, who is accused of suffocating her stepmother with a pillow in 2022, testified Wednesday that Samantha called her the day of the killing to find out if the stepmother was with the family camping or if she’d stayed home.

The stepdaughter of a woman who was found suffocated in her bed in 2022 told investigators her boyfriend did it and she couldn’t stop him. He was convicted last year.

A Cedar Rapids man sentenced Friday to up to 50 years in prison for fatally shooting Jorge Maldonaldo-Vazquez on Feb. 15, 2023, in Cedar Rapids. Maldonaldo-Vazquez was trying to sleep and, after telling his roommate and her friend to be quiet, the friend -- Brannon Johnson, 22, of Cedar Rapids -- fatally shot him.

A judge convicted a Cedar Rapids man of first-degree murder Monday for fatally beating and stabbing his friend, Dennis First, in 2007. The bench trial was last month in Linn County.

A Shellsburg man confessed to helping a Traer woman kill her husband in 2021. He was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder, about month after the victim’s wife was charged.

A Palo woman accused of killing her stepmom in 2022 is on track to start May 13 in Benton County District Court. She is accused of suffocating her stepmom while her boyfriend choked her.

A judge on Friday delayed the sentencing for Duval Walker Jr., convicted of first-degree murder in March, so his lawyers can talk to a woman who says she witnessed the March 17, 2023, fatal shooting in a Marion bar but had not been interviewed by police. A prosecutor, who resisted the delay, said they had talked to the woman and she identifies Walker as the shooter.

Trials are reset for two men charged with kidnapping and killing Melody Hoffman, 20, of Marion, on Feb. 17. Dakota Van Patten, 18, of Cedar Rapids, will be tried Aug. 26, and McKinley Louisma, 23, of Hiawatha, will be tried tentatively Nov. 4, in Linn County District Court.

The Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed the murder conviction of Reginald Little, who was involved in the April 20, 2020, robbery and fatal shooting of Kejuan Winters, 21, of Iowa City. Little is serving life in prison without parole.