Court Digest

Indiana
Man allegedly tried to hire cellmate to kill 14
BRAZIL, Ind. (AP) — A man who pleaded guilty to attacking a 13-year-old girl who was attending an Indiana University violin camp has been charged with conspiracy to commit murder for allegedly trying to hire his jail cellmate to kill the victim’s parents and a dozen other people.

Dongwook Ko, 19, allegedly provided a hit list and a map to the 39-year-old man who was his cellmate at the Clay County Detention Center in Brazil, Indiana, The Herald-Times reported, citing court records filed Friday along with conspiracy to commit murder charge.

Ko, of Bloomington, believed his cellmate was a gang member who would arrange the torture and killings of 14 people connected to his conviction in the 2019 attack on the girl, court records state.

Ko appeared Monday morning in a Clay County court for an initial hearing. A message seeking comment on the allegations was left Monday by The Associated Press for one of Ko’s attorneys.

The victim’s parents, defense witnesses, two prosecutors and a journalist who covered the case were among the targeted individuals on a list the cellmate provided to police, according to a probable cause affidavit.

The cellmate told police Ko offered to pay $20,000 for the torture and killing of the people on the list and that he would arrange to post the man’s $2,500 bail so he could get released and carry out the killings with help from the man’s uncle.

The cellmate agreed to wear a recording device while talking with Ko about carrying out the plan and investigators allowed the man to use an iPad to call his uncle to arrange the killings, but the person on the other end of the call was actually a sheriff’s department detective, the affidavit states.

Ko reportedly told the detective on the call to start with the girl’s father, whose name was at the top of the list, and then work his way through the others in order. He provided details, indicating that some victims were to be tortured, according to the affidavit.

Ko pleaded guilty this year to criminal confinement while armed with a deadly weapon for attacking the girl with a pocketknife in July 2019 as she was playing her violin alone in a Merrill Hall practice room during IU’s Summer String Academy. Authorities said Ko knew the victim from the previous summer’s violin camp.

A Monroe County judge last month sentenced Ko to eight years of home detention, followed by two years of probation and ordered him to get psychological treatment. But just days later, immigration agents picked up Ko, a South Korean resident, at his mother’s Bloomington home and took him into custody.

Because he had been convicted of a felony, Ko’s temporary U.S. residency visa was revoked and he was ordered deported to South Korea. Ko will remain in Indiana to face the murder conspiracy charge.

California
Woman charged with stealing $300K from retailers
COSTA MESA, Calif. (AP) — A woman has been charged with grand theft for allegedly stealing more than $300,000 in merchandise from retail stores in California.

Ekaterina Zharkova, 38, was arrested last month after an investigator with the California Highway Patrol’s Organized Retail Theft task force saw her stealing from a Nordstrom Rack in Costa Mesa. When members of the task force searched her apartment, they found more than $328,000 worth of stolen merchandise, the Orange County District Attorney’s office said in a statement.

Investigators believe she attempted to sell stolen merchandise through a luxury online consignment store.

Zharkova was charged with four felony counts of grand theft, one felony count of receiving stolen property, and seven misdemeanor counts of petty theft. She faces up to nine years in prison if convicted on all counts.
It’s not known whether she has an attorney who can speak on her behalf.

The charge comes amid a  rash of large-scale thefts in California in which groups of individuals brazenly rush into stores and take goods in plain sight.

“Shoplifting and other retail theft is out of control across California as a result of reckless laws that have made the risk far less than the potential reward,” District Attorney Todd Spitzer said. “These are not victimless crimes and if you engage in these kinds of outrageous theft schemes we’re going to arrest you, we’re going to prosecute you, and we’re putting you behind bars.”

In September, Zharkova pleaded not guilty to a separate felony grand theft charge and misdemeanor charge of possession of burglary tools, according to court records.

She also pleaded not guilty in a felony grand theft case in Los Angeles filed in August, the Orange County Register reported.

Nevada
Ex-firefighter gets prison term for wife’s overdose death
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A former North Las Vegas firefighter has been sentenced to prison for the overdose death of his wife.

A judge on Friday sentenced Christopher Candito to 16 to 40 months in prison on his October guilty plea to involuntary man­slaughter in the 2020 death of Tiffany Slatsky, 25.

Investigators said Slatsky was found unresponsive at the couple’s Henderson apartment on Feb. 23, 2020, following a party at a Las Vegas hotel with several other firefighters.

Candito, 34, told the judge he wished he “had been a better man.”

“I didn’t give Tiffany the morphine, but it was there because of me,” Candito said.

Police said Candito didn’t take his wife to a nearby hospital while she was experiencing overdose symptoms. He instead drove her to a North Las Vegas fire station where he administered an overdose antidote and then he took her home, police said.

Slatsky was unconscious when Candito later woke up, and he attempted CPR and called 911, police said.

“Too little, too late,” said prosecutor Eckley Keach, saying that Candito should have known better.

An autopsy found Slatsky had multiple drugs in her system and attributed her death to morphine.

New Jersey
2 teens charged in shooting that killed 2, injured 2
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Two teenagers were arrested on charges stemming from a shooting in September in New Jersey’s capital that left two people dead and two wounded, authorities said.

A 17-year-old male from Trenton and a 16-year-old male from Hamilton were each charged with murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, aggravated assault, and theft by receiving stolen property and firearms, the Mercer County prosecutor said.

On Sept. 25, police found Shemiah Davis, 15, and Candice Ruff, 19, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. Davis died that day and Ruff died on Oct. 4.

Two other victims were driven to a hospital by a private vehicle.

At the time, Mayor W. Reed Gusciora and acting Police Director Steve Wilson called the shooting “senseless.”

The 17-year-old was arrested on Dec. 1 in Trenton and the 16-year-old was arrested Dec. 8 in McDonough, Georgia, by members of the U.S. Marshals Service Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force, the prosecutor said. He is being held pending an extradition hearing.

Their names have not been released because they are juveniles.

Georgia
Man indicted in cocaine poisoning death of wife
MACON, Ga. (AP) — A former Georgia school administrator has been indicted on a murder charge after investigators accused him of poisoning his ailing wife with a cocaine overdose in 2019.

News outlets report indictments issued Tuesday charge Edward Judie Jr. of Macon with felony murder and violating state drug laws. A previously unnamed woman, Aliyah Danielle Walker, was indicted on the same charges.

Joyce Fox Judie, 60, was found dead in November 2019 at the couple’s home in northwest Macon. Ed Judie, 67, told deputies at the time he and his wife had been drinking and he thought she had fallen asleep.

An autopsy found that Joyce Judie had “many times the lethal dose” of cocaine in her body when she died. Investigators said they determined that Ed Judie had bought cocaine that night. They said Ed Judie changed his story multiple times during interviews.

A lawyer for Judie has denied that he is guilty. A court clerk said Friday that no lawyer is listed for Walker.

Local news outlets report Joyce Judie was being treated for dementia. Ed Judie spent two months in jail, in part because prosecutors said believed he was a threat to flee after he was recorded while in jail asking someone to secure his passport and hide insurance proceeds from his wife’s death.

Ed Judie was later released on $200,000 bail. He was deputy superintendent of student affairs in Bibb County from 2011 to 2015.

Ohio
6 years and counting: Ex-treasure hunter still stuck in jail
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A former deep-sea treasure hunter is preparing to mark his sixth year in jail for refusing to disclose the whereabouts of 500 missing coins made from gold found in an historic shipwreck.

Research scientist Tommy Thompson has been  held in contempt of court since Dec. 15, 2015, for that refusal. He is also incurring a daily fine of $1,000.

Thompson’s case dates to his discovery of the S.S. Central America, known as the Ship of Gold, in 1988. The gold rush-era ship sank in a hurricane off South Carolina in 1857 with thousands of pounds of gold aboard, contributing to an economic panic.

Despite an investors lawsuit and a federal court order, Thompson, 69, still won’t cooperate with authorities trying to find those coins, according to court records, federal prosecutors and the judge who found Thompson in contempt.

Thompson says he’s already said everything he knows about the coins. Thompson pleaded guilty in April 2015  for his failure to appear for a 2012 hearing and was sentenced to two years in prison and a $250,000 fine. But Thompson’s criminal sentence has been delayed until the issue of the gold coins is resolved.

Federal law generally limits jail time for contempt of court to 18 months. But a federal appeals court in 2019 rejected Thompson’s argument that that law applies to him, saying his refusal violates conditions of a plea agreement.

After technology problems cancelled Thompson’s latest virtual hearing last week, federal Judge Algenon Marbley scheduled a new hearing for Jan. 7.


Oregon
Man sentenced for fatally shooting childhood friend
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A Portland man who said he was just “fooling around” when he put a gun to his childhood friend’s chin and fired the weapon has been sentenced to nearly seven years in prison.

The Oregonian reports 33-year-old Tyler Wayne Pierce was sentenced Friday for the June 19, 2019, death of 30-year-old Justin Stewart. Pierce pleaded guilty in November to second-degree manslaughter with a firearm.

Prosecutors say the men were walking home from bar-hopping when Pierce pulled the handgun from his waistband and shot Stewart. Pierce, who did not have a concealed weapons permit, said he didn’t realize there was a bullet in the chamber but he knew there were bullets in the magazine.

“The harm I have caused is unintentional, but the hurt is very real. ... I wish I could take Justin’s place,” Pierce said during his sentencing hearing.

As part of the plea agreement, he wrote an apology letter to Stewart’s parents.