Articles Tagged: Murder

The trial for Logan Kimpton, accused of helping his roommate and another man kidnap, torture and strangle a Marion woman in 2024, has been reset.

A Linn County jury deliberated three hours before finding a Traer woman guilty of first-degree murder. The prosecution said she planned with her “lover“ — a much younger Shellsburg man — to kill her husband and start a new life with his $500,000 life insurance policy. She was the sole beneficiary.

Matthew Schleier will claim insanity at trial, and the prosecution will have an independent psychological evaluation performed in August and needs more time to prepare.

Karina Cooper, accused of fatally shooting her husband in 2021, testified the majority of her affair with Huston Danker was “online” and she didn’t think he was serious about killing her husband. After the murder, she said she didn’t tell police becuase she was scared of Danker.

Several friends testified Monday they witnessed a Traer woman, on trial for killing her husband, be verbally abusive to her husband. Some also said they knew she was having an affair with a Shellsburg man, who is accused of conspiring with her to kill her husband.

A forensic examiner testified Thursday about texts and Snapchats messages that indicate an affair between a Traer woman and her lover — and possibly implicate both of them in the fatal shooting of her husband in 2021.

The trial for a Traer woman, accused of fatally shooting her husband in the face in 2021, started Wednesday in Linn County. A prosecutor, in his opening, said Karina Cooper carried out a “deliberate and calculated” plan with her lover to kill her husband.

Mother of Brittany Hopkins, who was beaten to death by a Cedar Rapids man in February, said her daughter was a “bright and vibrant” woman, despite her mental and physical disabilities. She was loving mother to her three children and was looking forward to the birth of her son, who also died as a result of Hopkins’ murder.

During the search, police said they confirmed someone was in the woods and searched for hours, using a helicopter and officers on foot, until they found Boelter. He gave himself up to police, crawling out to officers in the woods before he was handcuffed and taken into custody in a field, authorities said.

The trial for a Cedar Rapids man accused of hiring two men to kill Chris Bagley will be delayed because a witness for the prosecution can’t testify in person next week because he’s under a chickenpox quarantine in federal prison. The judge denied a motion to have the witness testify by video.

The man facing a first-degree murder charge in connection with the 1983 death of Ronald Novak placed himself at the home where the death occurred, a criminal complaint released Saturday shows.

Ron Novak’s body was found beaten, shot, and frozen in an unheated storeroom of his rural Walker home on Christmas Eve, 1983. On Wednesday, nearly 42 years later, the Linn County Sheriff’s Office announced it has arrested an Oregon man they believe was Novak’s killer — or, one of them.

A Cedar Rapids man, who concealed the gun his stepson used to kill a DoorDash delivery driver in 2023, was given two years probation.

The mother of Myron Snyder Jr., 21, said her grief is “just as bad” as the night her son was fatally shot while making a DoorDash delivery on Oct. 5, 2023. She said “not everything happens for a reason” because this was a “senseless, horrific and life-changing crime.”

Family members of Kenyauta Vesey-Keith, who was murdered in 2023 by Denzel Wilson, gathered in a courtroom Friday with homemade signs to support Vesey-Keith’s mother and sister, who spoke during Wilson’s sentencing. Wilson was sentenced to life in prison.