Trish Mehaffey

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.

Police found drugs, money and a firearm in his car during a traffic stop in 2024.

Ali Younes, accused of robbing and assaulting a woman in 2022 on the University of Iowa campus, initially told police a man he couldn’t identify assaulted the woman. He only came upon the woman after she was unconscious, he said, and stole her diamond earrings.

An Iowa City woman who was assaulted and robbed on the UI campus in 2022, testified during the first day of her attacker’s bench trial in Johnson County. She sensed someone was following her and when he started strangling her, she feared for her life.

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.

A Cedar Rapids man who was distributing fentanyl was sentenced to 4 years in federal prison. Officers recovered 227 pills containing the drug during a traffic stop.

A Dubuque County man was sentenced to 9 years in federal prison for distributing child porn. He was nabbed after sending three videos to an undercover law enforcement officer.

U.S. marshals from the southern and northern districts of Iowa and the central district of Illinois teamed up in May and with law enforcement agencies and the Iowa Department of Corrections to conduct a five-week fugitive operation, which resulted in 52 arrests.

A Marion woman was sentenced to more than a year in federal prison for falsely claiming her residence had damage from the derecho, and receiving small business loan funds for a business that did not exist.

An Iowa City man, who was previously convicted for enticing a minor, was sentenced to 10 years for enticing minors and sexually abusing one girl under the age of 13. The judge ran the recent sentence consecutively to his previous five-year sentence.

The case of the abduction of Jodi Huisentruit, a 27-year-old Mason City news anchor in 1995, remains unsolved 30 years later, but her family, friends and co-workers are still hopeful that police investigators will uncover what happened to her.