Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Crime Alert 03.01.24

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

21-year-old tries to enroll at a high school after meeting teen online.   For more crime and justice news go to crimeonline.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Alert, I'm Nancy Grace. Breaking crime news now. Kevin Flick excited to meet a 17-year-old high school girl he's been talking to online. So the 21-year-old Tennessee man hops a plane to Michigan and tries to enroll as a student at Mason County Central High. School employees are not fooled. Luckily, they call police. Nancy Flick flies from Tennessee to Grand Rapids, then travels around 100 miles north to get to the school. School officials became suspicious when Flick told them he flew from Tennessee, but did not have an ID. When police show up, Flick gives officers fake names and ages,

but they eventually determine his real name and age. Flick, now charged with possessing child sex abusive material, contributing to the delinquents of a minor, and giving false info to a cop. More crime and justice news after this. Now with the latest crime and justice breaking news, Crime Online's John Limley. A Texas inmate who had long maintained that his conviction more than 20 years ago was founded on fabricated testimony and questionable evidence has been put to death for shooting two people, one of whom was his cousin. We turn to Sidney Sumner with Crime Online for details. After being given a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, for the November 2000 shooting deaths of his 27-year-old cousin, James Muscata, and his 22-year-old girlfriend, Amy Kitchen, Ivan Cantu was declared dead a short time later. During his last moments in the execution chamber, the 52-year-old prisoner repeatedly declared his innocence.

The prosecution claimed that Cantu killed Kitchen and Muscata, two drug dealers, while attempting to take cash, marijuana, and cocaine from his cousin's North Dallas residence. Convicted in 2001, the prisoner had long maintained that his relative was slain by a rival drug dealer in a money dispute. Police discovered a key to the victim's house and bloody trousers with the victim's DNA in Cantu's apartment. At his ex-girlfriend's house, police discovered Cantu's gun. Cantu's fingerprints were discovered on the gun's magazine, while Mosqueda's blood was discovered on the weapon's barrel. Matthew Geller, a trial attorney for Cantu, stated in an affidavit from 2005 that Cantu told him, quote, quote, he had indeed killed Mosqueda for ripping him off

on a drug deal, and that Kitchen was slain because she was a witness. The primary witness for the prosecution was Amy Botcher, Cantu's ex-girlfriend. After Mosqueda and Kitchen were killed, Cantu took Botcher back to the crime scene, this according to her testimony. Botcher died in 2021. Cantu's lawyer, Gina Bunn, however, claimed that Botcher made numerous false claims during testimony. Overseas now, as the trial of a man being investigated in connection with the disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann is now underway in Germany, and his attorney has announced that the man will not be answering to unrelated allegations of sexual offenses. The 47-year-old German, identified by news outlets as Christian Bruecker, is on trial at the Northern German State Court in Braunschweig on three charges of rape and two counts of sexual abuse of children.

It's alleged that between 2000 and 2017, he committed the crimes in Portugal. In the German legal system, there are no formal pleas and defendants are not required to answer to the allegations. After entering a guilty plea, a man has received a life sentence in prison for the sexual assaults of four women, three of whom were former members of the same national black sorority. Crimes that occurred in their Metro Dallas homes. Once again, Crime Online, Sidney Sumner. 52-year-old Jeffrey Lemmer Wheat entered his plea in Collin County District Court. According to our friends with the TV station WFAA, the sentencing was issued by judges from four different counties through video conferencing.

The assaults took place in the counties of Dallas, Denton, Collin, and Tarrant. Wheat was given two life terms, one for a Tarrant County burglary with intent to commit another felony and the others from Collin County. We're now learning from prosecutors and court documents that he was also sentenced to 30 years in prison for an aggravated sexual assault charge from Dallas County and 20 years for a sexual assault charge from Denton County. WFAA is reporting that Wheat's sentences are to be served concurrently. Technology limitations during the 2003 investigation resulted in the case being suspended. However, prosecutors in Tarrant County say that years later, DNA testing connected the

case to three others from 2011. Collin County prosecutors stated that after that, detectives worked for two years with genetic genealogy labs and performed genealogical research in an effort to find a person of interest the prosecution said that all of the victims in the 2011 cases were members of the sorority Delta Sigma Theta Collin County prosecutors also said that Plano police discovered that wheat's employment with a credit card processing company used by the sorority gave him access to personal information about the victims. Thanks, John. The disappearance of Christine Marie Easton haunts investigators over half a century.

Christine, 19, vanishes January 1971 after a trip to the car wash. Her 69 Ford Maverick found abandoned, locked with her purse inside. Investigators release an AIDS progressed photo in 1999. It pulls no leads at all. But in 2019, a breakthrough. A witness reports seeing two men abduct Christine and drive off in a white van. Still, no suspects named. There's a $50,000 reward for info leading to the conviction of those responsible for Christine Marie Easton's disappearance. If you have info on Christine, please contact Hayward, California, PD, 510-293-7176. For the latest crime and justice news, go to CrimeOnline.com. With this crime alert, I'm Nancy Grace.

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