Trish Mehaffey

Megan Hoffman testified Thursday about tracking her daughter’s phone the night Melody Hoffman was kidnapped, strangled and killed in February 2014. The information helped police piece together the crime.

Prosecutor, during his opening, says Dakota Van Patten and McKinley Louisma couldn’t have beaten, tortured and killed a 20-year-old Marion woman without the other.

The DNA tissue sample taken from a baby left in an Iowa City landfill in 1992 was so “degraded and contaminated” that traditional DNA testing couldn’t help investigators identify the infant or his mother. Advanced testing developed by a Texas lab in 2018 helped investigators identify the mother, who was arrested last week.

Darin Luneckas enjoys the challenge of helping an injured worker going up against a big insurance company that is refusing to pay for proper medical care and loss wages.

The City of Cedar Rapids’ code enforcement manager is charged with insurance fraud and forgery. He submitted false medicine prescriptions for a pet that the vet didn’t authorize.

The big brother of 16-year-old Michael McCune, who was targeted by four juveniles and fatally shot in 2023, said during a sentencing hearing Monday it’s not fair that he can only look at a gravestone, instead of seeing his brother’s smile that “lit up a room.”

A Linn County jury deliberated over two hours before convicting an 18-year-old of sexually abusing three children over the course of two years. The three girls, who are sisters, testified he threatened to kill them and another of their siblings if they disclosed the abuse.

A former Decorah man was convicted by a jury this week in the death of a 15-year-old girl, who was the daughter of his girlfriend. The girl went missing March 30, 2017 and was never seen again. Investigators determined she was dead but the body has never been found.

The Iowa Court of Appeals has upheld the 50-year second-degree murder sentence of Kazius Childress, who fatally shot Kavon Johnson, 22, of Cedar Rapids, in January 2022.

A Dubuque teen said her being held against her will and being repeatedly sexually assaulted by various men will “leave my memory and haunt me day and night.” Her statement was read during her abuser’s sentencing. Jarod Anderson was sentenced to life in prison for human trafficking a minor in 2024.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit upheld a district court ruling and found the lifetime restriction against forcible felons to possess guns, subject to a governor’s pardon, didn’t violate the Constitution and is consistent with national firearms regulations.

A Cedar Rapids man was convicted Tuesday for sexually abusing a teen 19 years ago. Sex abuse cases have no statute of limitations in Iowa. The woman, as a 30-year-old, reported the repeated abuse to police in 2022.

Cedar Rapids mother sentenced to 10 years in prison for injecting her toddler with unneeded insulin, making him sick. Doctors believed it was caused by medical child abuse, formerly known as Munchhausen syndrome by proxy.

A former Marion man, set to go to trial last month, pleaded to lesser charges in sexually abusing a child for over three years. His trial had been continued 11 times since 2021.

Two of the men convicted in the fatal stabbing of Chris Bagley in 2018 sat in a Linn County courtroom two weeks ago and spoke to Bagley’s heartbroken parents and siblings, who have been searching for answers about how — and why — their loved one was killed more than six years ago.