Trish Mehaffey

Daughter says she slowly lost her father who was a “brilliant” doctor and pilot to a “cruel disease” — Alzheimer’s, which “robs people of their dignity” and every they loved doing in life. Her father died in May.

A local developer is accused of stealing home improvement materials from Menards in Marion. The incident was captured on the store’s surveillance video.

A former therapist at the Iowa State Training School had sexually explicit phone calls with a teen assigned to her and they talked about having sex while he was on a home visit from the school, records show.

The second Fairfield teen, Jeremy Goodale, convicted for killing a high school Spanish teacher in 2021, was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole after 25 years. Willard Miller was sentenced to a 35-year mandatory minimum in August in Nohema Graber’s slaying. The judge said he thought Goodale was genuinely remorseful, unlike Miller.

The first day of a two-day sentencing for Jeremy Goodale, 18, who killed a Fairfield High Spanish teacher in 2021, revealed more details of her brutal beating with a baseball bat. Goodale told police hit struck her five times with the bat, after Willard Miller, 18, hit her three times.

Chief state medical examiner testified 71-year-old woman’s head and facial injuries were consistent with blunt force trauma - being beaten by her son in 2020. She died from a pulmonary embolism, which ultimately resulted from the assault.

A judge sentenced a Cedar Rapids man to 102 years in prison for sexually abusing two children. The girls were abused from the time they were each 10-years-old -- one for over the course of six years. The prosecutor called them brave for breaking their “silence” and speaking out. He hopes their story would encourage others.

Doctors testified that Elsie Deason, who died less than a month later after being assaulted by her son, had bleeding in different areas of her brain and her condition was higher risk because she had been on blood thinners. Her son, George Deason, is on trial this week for fatally assaulting her in 2020.

A 15-year-old was waived in adult court for attempting to kill a 17-year-old when a fight broke out during a basketball game in August. The 15-year-old fired 11 times at the other teen, striking him 4 times.

A Cedar Rapids woman said she found her mother hiding under a bed comforter after being severely beaten by her son. The daughter said her mother’s eyes were swollen shut, clumps of her hair were missing and she had bruising all over.

A Cedar Rapids man pleaded to throwing and slamming his infant onto the floor because the 19-day-old wouldn’t stop crying in 2021. He faces up to 50 years in prison and must serve 30 to 70 percent before being eligible for parole.

Emily Leonard’s family says no amount of prison would be enough for the man who fatally beat their loved one with a metal rod, causing her death in April 2022. A Linn County jury found Arthur Flowers, 62, charged with first-degree murder, guilty of voluntary manslaughter. Flowers on Friday was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

A Cedar Rapids man, who was convicted this week for drug trafficking, had a source in California who would send packages of meth through the mail. Investigators intercepted 46 packages, which had a total weight of over 700 pounds of the drug.

A Tama woman who nearly drained her nephew’s trust fund, which included his Meskwaki Settlement per capita pay and Social Security benefits, was sentenced Thursday to more than 2 years in federal prison and ordered to pay more than $380,000 in restitution. She spent the money on diamond jewelry and purebred dogs.

Judges in two Eastern Iowa counties have ordered a North Liberty man, charged in sexual assault cases in Johnson and Black Hawk counties, undergo a competency evaluation.