Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Crime Alert 02.22.24

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

Funeral home owners use service funds for personal expenses, leave bodies to rot. Wendy's employee jacks a customer's car, then hits them with it!  For more crime and justice news go to crimeonline.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Crime Alert, I'm Nancy Grace. Breaking crime news now. Nearly 200 bodies left to decompose in a maggot-infested storage facility by funeral home owners in Penrose, Colorado. John and Carrie Halford take cremation and burial money from families of the deceased

to use as their own personal piggy bank. Nancy, the couple purchased two cars worth more than $120,000. The money stolen from families of the deceased is reportedly at least twice the cremation cost for the bodies found. Prosecutors say text messages from John to Carrie indicate he was worried about consequences as early as four years ago. One reads, my only focus is keeping us out of jail. John and Carrie Hofford each charged with 190 counts of abuse of corpse, five counts theft, four counts money laundering, and over 50 counts forgery. A Wendy's customer gets

more than a burger and fries with the order. A drive-thru customer argues with the Wendy's employee, Leon Johnson. Johnson walks out of the store and starts punching the customer while he's in the car. The driver grabs a hammer and gets out to scare off the employee. Leon Johnson then jumps into the customer's car and drives away. Moments later, he returns and hits the customer with his own car, then grabs the hammer and beats the customer. Police arrive. Johnson bites two of them while he's being arrested. Leon Johnson, former Wendy's employee, now facing multiple charges including first-degree assault. More crime and justice news after this. Now with the latest crime and justice breaking news, Crime Online's John Limley.

According to a story published by Russia's official news agency TASS, the mother of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has filed a lawsuit in the Arctic city of Sokolhar, challenging the authorities' refusal to release her son's body. With the latest, here's Sydney Sumner with Crime Online. The Russian news story quotes court authorities as saying that a hearing behind closed doors has now been set for March 4th. Since her son's death on February 16th in a penal colony in the far north of Russia, Lyudmila Navalnaya has been attempting to recover his remains. Navalny's team says that she has been unable to find the location where

his body is being housed. This week, Navalnaya made a request to Russian President Vladimir Putin to allow her to retrieve her son's body and bury him with dignity. Members of Navalny's team have indicated that Russian officials have stated that the cause of Navalny's death is still unknown and have refused to release his body for the next two weeks while a preliminary inquest is ongoing. They say that the Russian government is trying to conceal evidence by stalling. Yulia Navalny, the widow of the opposition leader, published a video in which she accused Putin of killing her husband and asserting that the government's reluctance to reveal his body was part of a cover-up. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the allegations of a cover-up, telling reporters that, quote, these are absolutely unfounded,

insolent accusations about the head of the Russian state. Navalny's death has deprived the Russian opposition of its best-known and inspiring politician less than a month before an election that is all but certain to give Putin another six years in power. Many Russians had seen Navalny as a rare hope for political change amid Putin's unrelenting crackdown on the opposition. Since Navalny's death, about 400 people have been arrested across Russia as they tried to pay tribute to him with flowers and candles, this according to OVD Info, a group that monitors political arrests. President Joe Biden has established a federal rule and issued an executive order to strengthen the defense of U.S. ports against potential cyber attacks. Once again, Crime Online, Sydney Sumner. The administration is laying out a set of national cybersecurity regulations that port operators in this country must abide by. These directives are similar to national

safety regulations that aim to avoid harm to people and infrastructure. According to White House Deputy National Security Advisor Ann Neuberger, ports across the country contribute $5.4 trillion to the economy and employ almost 31 million people, but they are also susceptible to ransomware and other cyberattacks. The purpose of the uniform set of requirements is to aid in preventing that. The new regulations are a part of the federal government's effort to update the security measures for vital infrastructure such as ports, pipelines, and power grids, which are increasingly managed and controlled online, frequently from a distance.

There currently is no national standard that specifies how operators must defend themselves against prospective cyber attacks. Thanks, John. Joshua Ian Larkin, 38, leaves his mom's home in Kirbyville, Texas, to go hunting at a friend's private property in Cole, Texas. The next day, that friend calls Larkin's mom to ask where is Joshua, since his car is parked outside, but Joshua's not there. Joshua Larkin, not seen or heard from since November 2022.

He's six feet tall, brown hair, green eyes. He's got a tattoo of his last name Larkin, L-A-R-K-I-N on his back. If you have info on Joshua Ian Larkin, please contact Newton County, Texas Sheriffs 409-379-3636. For the latest crime and justice news, go to crimeonline.com. With this crime alert, I'm Nancy Grace. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.