Articles Tagged: Murder

A prosecutor says the fatal shooting of Tommy Curry in 2021 is about revenge -- “a dish best served cold.” Renard Winfield Jr., 32, of Gary, Ind., is accused of posing as a woman on a dating app to lure Curry, of Iowa City, to his death.

A Linn County jury, deliberating for less than two hours Thursday, convicted a Hiawatha man in the February kidnapping, torturing and stranglulation death of 20-year-old Melody Hoffman of Marion.

The autopsy of Melody Hoffman, 20, of Marion, showed blunt force injuries all over her body, along with five stab wounds and numerous cutting marks on her back. A medical examiner also said Hoffman may have been pregnant at the time of her strangulation or recently had a miscarriage, which could be a possible motive for the Hiawatha man on trial for kidnapping and murder.

McKinley Louisma, in a police interview, said his co-conspirator held a gun to his head and started beating a Marion woman and then strangled her.

McKinley Louisma’s phone also shows messages exchanged with victim

Marion police investigators testify about traffic camers and cell tower locations used to track Hiawath man and his co-conspirator accused of kidnapping and killing Marion woman on in February.

The mother of a 20-year-old Marion woman who was kidnapped and killed on Feb. 17 testified Tuesday she always tracked her daughter’s phone and other electronics because Melody Hoffman had an intellectual disability that made it more difficult for her to understand social situations because she was trusting of everybody.

The murder trial for McKinley Louisma, accused of kidnapping and killing Melody Hoffman, 20, of Marion, started Monday in Linn County. The prosecutor told the jury her slaying was “depraved and dehumanizing.”

A Marion father strangled to death his 5 year-old son after staying up most of the night contemplating how he would kill him. One way was using knives, which police found during a search of the home.

First responders were called to a Marion address at 6 a.m. Tuesday for a report of an unresponsive child.

The heartbroken mother of Kavon Johnson on Friday asked a judge to sentence her son’s killer to 50 years in prison and run the sentence consecutively to his other 50 year sentence for killing another man the day before on Jan. 27, 2022.

The murder trial for a Cedar Rapids man accused of fatally shooting a DoorDash driver last October has been reset to Dec. 10 in Linn County District Court. The shooter’s brother also was shot during the incident.

A Marion woman who was kidnapped, stabbed and strangled to death in February was pregnant or had been recently pregnant before her death, according to information revealed during a Friday pretrial hearing in Linn County District Court. The lawyer for one of the men accused in that slaying asked a judge to keep that information out of trial.

The Iowa Supreme Court denied appeal for one Fairfield teen who killed their Spanish teacher in 2021 and asked the court to toss out the 35-year mandatory minimum of his life sentence.

The Chicago Police Department said in a news release that Chicago officers, along with U.S. Marshals, arrested the teenager Monday in Cedar Rapids on a murder warrant.