Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Crime Alert 04.20.23

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

College student plans attack at school. Bar fight turns deadly with one punch.  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. A St. Olaf College custodian notices delivery packages for high-capacity magazines in the trash at a dorm. He tips off Minnesota cops who find bullet magazines, explosives, hand-drawn maps, and a lock pick set in the room of student Waylon Kurtz. A search of his parents' home turns up guns, including an assault rifle. Crime Online's John Limley. Nancy, police also discovered notes on where to shoot a person to inflict the most damage

and how to kick down a door. Kurtz's map showed various paths through the student recreation center and text messages indicated he was planning an attack there. Kurt's also sent photos of packages of ammunition on campus with the caption, kids have got no idea what's in here. Kurt, 20, now facing conspiracy to commit assault, commit violence, and making terroristic threats. A fight between two men at a Florida bar turns into a brawl when their friends join in. Ross Johnson punches Dave and Larry in the side of the head. Larry drops to the ground unconscious.

And Johnson gets an Uber before cops arrive. Johnson, an amateur MMA fighter, had three years of professional fighting experience. The punch fractured Larry's skull and left a softball-sized swelling of blood behind his left ear. Johnson took the Uber back to the hotel where he was staying, but checked out of that room and into another hotel to try to avoid cops, who tracked the 23-year-old down anyway. David Larry dies from that punch.

Johnson, 23, now charged with manslaughter. More crime and justice news after this. Now with the latest crime and justice breaking news, Crime Online's John Limley. We begin in Alabama, where two teenagers have been arrested and charged with murder in connection with a shooting that killed four young people at a Sweet 16 birthday party. Here's Sydney Sumner with Crime Online. Tallapoosa County District Attorney Mike Seagrass said the pair, 17-year-old Tyreek McCullough and 16-year-old Travis McCullough, both of Tuskegee, would be tried as adults.

That's automatically required in Alabama for anyone 16 or older charged with murder. Sergeant Jeremy Burkett of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency wouldn't say where the two were being jailed or whether they were already in custody when they were charged late Tuesday. Authorities did not specify if they are related. Seagrass said prosecutors would ask a judge to hold them without bail. A bond hearing must be held by Friday under Alabama law. Online court records do not show any previous adult

charges in state court for either of the arrested teens. Saturday's violence shocked Dadeville, a sleepy town of around 3,200 people about 45 minutes north of Tuskegee. A man who police say killed four people in a home in rural Maine and then shot three others randomly on a busy interstate highway had been released four days earlier from prison. 34-year-old Joseph Eaton was released April 14th from the Maine Correctional Center in Wyndham, where he had been sentenced in March 2021, originally on a probation violation related to a previous crime.

Eaton had a criminal history with offenses serious enough to have prevented him from legally possessing a gun in Maine. The shootings in Maine began in the small town of Bowdoin, where four people were killed Tuesday. Then, police say a chaotic scene developed in which shots were fired at vehicles on an interstate highway over 20 miles away in the community of Yarmouth. Three people were shot there, and one remained in critical condition Wednesday. A man charged with killing a former girlfriend and her grandmother outside an Indiana factory in 2021 has pleaded guilty in a deal that takes a possible death penalty

off the table. Crime Online's Sydney Sumner has details. Gary Farrell II, who was 26 years old at the time, was accused of fatally shooting 21-year-old Promise Mays and 62-year-old Pamela Sled during a shift change at the NHK Seating of America in Frankfurt, 50 miles northwest of Indianapolis. The evidence included factory security video. According to a police affidavit filed earlier in the case, Farrell had tried to force Mays into the trunk of his car. Tuesday, Farrell pleaded guilty in Clinton County Court. Authorities say Farrell was arrested shortly after the shootings after crashing his car in a construction zone.

A Pennsylvania grand jury in recent months accused nine men with connections to the Jehovah's Witnesses of child sexual abuse in what some consider the nation's most comprehensive investigation yet into abuse within the faith. The sets of charges filed in October and February have fueled speculation the jury may make public more about what it has uncovered from a four-year investigation. A similar grand jury investigation into child sexual abuse by Catholic priests culminated in a lengthy 2018 report that concluded hundreds of priests had abused children in Pennsylvania over seven decades, and church officials had covered it up, and more recently a similar report was issued in Maryland. But documents made public so far include nothing about what critics have long

maintained has been a systemic cover-up and mishandling of child molestation within the Jehovah's Witnesses. Two Alabama women work to reduce their community's stray cat problem by feeding, trapping, and neutering feral cats. But they run into trouble when they're caught on private property despite warnings. Both Mary Austin, 61, and Beverly Roberts, 85, charged with criminal trespass and found guilty. The community protests, the women appeal, prosecutors have a change of heart and drop the case against the Cat Ladies. Our tax dollars well spent yet again. 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.