Colorado
Woman was killed after reporting stalking by ex. Police say her husband did it
DENVER (AP) — In the late fall of 2023, Kristil Krug got a text purporting to be from an old boyfriend and asking if she would like to “hook up” while he was in town. She didn’t respond.
Other messages followed, often angry and obscene, including one referring to her “loser husband” and others that indicated she was being watched.
A few weeks after the initial text, she was found fatally stabbed and beaten in her suburban Denver home.
Prosecutors say the man who actually sent the messages and then killed Krug was her husband.
Daniel Krug, 44, is charged with first-degree murder, stalking and criminal impersonation in his wife’s death in Broomfield.
His lawyers, Joseph Morales and Phillip Andrew Geigle, did not respond to a call seeking comment.
Krug was arrested Dec. 16, 2023, two days after his wife was found on the floor of their garage by a police officer. While at his job with the state health department, he had asked police to do a welfare check, saying she failed to respond to his text messages.
Three of the home’s surveillance cameras, which Kristil Krug’s mother said she installed because of the recent stalking, were not recording when she was found, according to the arrest affidavit. The one in the garage was covered with tape.
Video from cameras at neighboring homes did not show any unknown person entering the home in the hours leading up to her being found, the document said.
Kristil Krug had contacted police about the messages, which she thought came from the former boyfriend. After she was killed, police traced the IP address for the texts to Daniel Krug’s workplace, according to the affidavit.
At the time of the killing, the ex-boyfriend was an eight-hour drive away in Utah, where he was living, the affidavit said. He is not a suspect.
Krug’s mother told police that her daughter’s relationship with her husband was not good, and that she wanted to get divorced and seek full custody of their three children.
Krug, had a degree in biochemical engineering and a fulfilling career in technology and innovation, as well as a passion for the performing arts and modern dance, according to her obituary.
Idaho
Prosecution adds former U.S. attorney to quadruple murder case
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Idaho’s recently departed U.S. attorney has joined the prosecution team in the case against Bryan Kohberger, the man charged in the killings of four University of Idaho students in 2022.
Joshua Hurwit will be a special deputy prosecuting attorney for the state in the murder trial scheduled for August, court documents filed this week show. Latah County Prosecuting Attorney Bill Thompson is leading the prosecution team.
Hurwit was a former President Joe Biden-nominated U.S. attorney for the District of Idaho from June 2022 until February. Hurwit joined the office in 2012 as an assistant U.S. attorney. He stepped down in February before the White House dismissed more than 50 U.S. attorneys and deputies.
Kohberger, 30, is charged with four counts of murder in the deaths of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, students who were killed in the early morning of Nov. 13, 2022, at a rental home near their campus in Moscow, Idaho.
Autopsies showed the four were all likely asleep when they were attacked, some had defensive wounds, and each was stabbed multiple times.
Kohberger, who was a criminal justice graduate student at Washington State University, was arrested in Pennsylvania weeks later. Investigators said they matched his DNA to genetic material recovered from a knife sheath found at the crime scene.
A judge previously entered a not-guilty plea on Kohberger’s behalf. Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty if he is convicted.
A hearing is set for April 9 to consider pretrial motions, including arguments over whether an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis would preclude Kohberger from being eligible for the death penalty if convicted, and over whether jurors should hear audio of a 911 call hours after the killings, as the callers realized one of their roommates wasn’t waking up.
Kohberger’s trial is scheduled to begin Aug. 11 and expected to last more than three months.
New York
Man charged after authorities say he botched a butt implant procedure in his home
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City man has been charged with performing medical procedures without a license after a patient was left near death during a botched butt-implant removal procedure in his home, prosecutors and law enforcement officials said Thursday.
Felipe Hoyos-Foronda injected the 31-year-old woman with the local anesthetic lidocaine, causing her to go into cardiac arrest on March 28, according to a criminal complaint.
The woman was taken from Hoyos-Foronda’s Queens home to a hospital, where a doctor said she is not expected to survive, the filing said.
The victim, who has not been named, “has no brain activity” and shows evidence of lidocaine toxicity, the doctor said.
Hoyos-Foronda, 38, was apprehended at JFK International Airport attempting to board a flight, authorities said.
Prosecutors said he was arraigned Sunday on charges of assault and unauthorized practice of a profession and was held without bail.
His lawyer didn’t respond to email and phone messages seeking comment Thursday.
Hoyos-Foronda promoted a range of cosmetic procedures on his TikTok account, where he also sometimes identified himself as a doctor.
One recent post touts his prices for Botox, lip fillers and body sculpting. Another post shows him using a machine on a woman that he claims, in text written in Spanish, as a “safe and painless method” to shape one’s glutes, or butt muscles. Other posts suggest he also offered his services in Miami.
Earlier this year, a Manhattan aesthetician was charged with injecting customers with counterfeit Botox at his medical spa after some of them complained that it made them sick.
In 2018, a Manhattan man posing as a doctor was sentenced to up to 12 years in jail after pleading guilty in the death of a woman during a botched silicone butt-implant procedure.
In 2015, a former madam who performed illegal “body sculpting” in the Philadelphia area was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison after the death of a dancer whose heart stopped after nearly half a gallon of silicone was injected into her buttocks.
Washington
Federal judge rules action against NEA unnecessary after it backed off bans on gender ideology
A federal judge on Thursday denied a motion to stop the National Endowment for the Arts from barring funds to artists whose projects promote gender ideology, saying the agency no longer was doing it.
Four arts groups sued the NEA last month, seeking a preliminary injunction over what they said were violations of the First Amendment, the Administrative Procedure Act and the Fifth Amendment. The requirements were initially added to grant application forms, following an executive order from President Donald Trump.
U.S. District Judge William Smith acknowledged that plaintiffs “demonstrated a likelihood of success that a ban on gender ideology would be a violation of the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act.” But because the NEA had rescinded the requirement about a week after the lawsuit was filed, Smith said an “injunction is not in the public interest at this time.”
“Granting a preliminary injunction in these circumstances would impose significant hardship on the NEA with little practical benefit to Plaintiffs,” Smith wrote.
“If the Court enjoins the NEA from imposing an eligibility bar at this juncture, it will in effect short circuit the ongoing administrative review process set to conclude in a matter of days,” he continued. “This would rob the NEA of the opportunity to make its own considered decision about whether to implement the EO at all.”
The government argued against the injunction, since grantees do not have to certify they are complying with the executive order from Trump and since the NEA no longer is applying the order in grant-making decisions. It also said it is in the midst of an administrative proceeding to determine if it will implement the executive order and, if so, how.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued on behalf of the arts groups, acknowledged that the NEA no longer requires artists to promise that their projects aren’t promoting gender ideology. But it says the NEA still has criteria that refuses funding to projects that appear to promote this concept. It also expressed concerns that the NEA could eventually reinstate the ban.
Trump’s executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” calls for denying federal money to any programs that “promote gender ideology.”
One of the groups, Rhode Island Latino Arts, was planning to apply for funding to support a production of “Faust,” for which it considered casting a nonbinary actor, or a storytelling program which in the past has included discussions of LGBTQ topics.
“We shouldn’t need to negotiate for the right to support and uplift all artists — including transgender and nonbinary artists,” Marta V. Martinez, executive director of Rhode Island Latino Arts, said Thursday.
“This order fails to bring us the clarity we need to apply for funds for projects that allow Latinx artists, especially those who are queer, trans, or nonbinary, to show up as their whole selves without fear of erasure of censorship.”
Another group, the New York-based National Queer Theater, wants to apply for funding for the Criminal Queerness Festival, a theater festival featuring work from playwrights from countries where promoting LGBTQ activities is prohibited or dangerous.
New Jersey
The number of lawsuits alleging abuse at child treatment centers reaches 150
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — The number of lawsuits alleging sexual assaults and other abuse at state-run child treatment centers in New Jersey has risen to more than 100 after two more were filed this week.
Two suits involving 16 people were presented Thursday in Superior Court in Monmouth and Somerset counties by victims whose names have been withheld. They are seeking damages stemming from alleged abuse at the former Arthur Brisbane Treatment Center and the Training School at Skillman, both of which have been shuttered for decades.
The suits are the latest of dozens of claims filed against the state in the past year. Attorneys for the firm Levy Konigsberg say the total number of suits has now reached 150. The majority of the earlier cases revolve around open facilities, including the New Jersey Training School, which the governor has said would be closed.
The Associated Press left email messages seeking comment with the New Jersey attorney general’s office, which is responsible for defending the state when it’s named in lawsuits.
New Jersey overhauled its civil statute of limitations on childhood sex abuse claims in 2019.
The new law allows child victims to sue until they turn 55 or within seven years of their first realization that the abuse caused them harm. The previous statute of limitations was age 20 or two years after first realizing the abuse caused harm.
Woman was killed after reporting stalking by ex. Police say her husband did it
DENVER (AP) — In the late fall of 2023, Kristil Krug got a text purporting to be from an old boyfriend and asking if she would like to “hook up” while he was in town. She didn’t respond.
Other messages followed, often angry and obscene, including one referring to her “loser husband” and others that indicated she was being watched.
A few weeks after the initial text, she was found fatally stabbed and beaten in her suburban Denver home.
Prosecutors say the man who actually sent the messages and then killed Krug was her husband.
Daniel Krug, 44, is charged with first-degree murder, stalking and criminal impersonation in his wife’s death in Broomfield.
His lawyers, Joseph Morales and Phillip Andrew Geigle, did not respond to a call seeking comment.
Krug was arrested Dec. 16, 2023, two days after his wife was found on the floor of their garage by a police officer. While at his job with the state health department, he had asked police to do a welfare check, saying she failed to respond to his text messages.
Three of the home’s surveillance cameras, which Kristil Krug’s mother said she installed because of the recent stalking, were not recording when she was found, according to the arrest affidavit. The one in the garage was covered with tape.
Video from cameras at neighboring homes did not show any unknown person entering the home in the hours leading up to her being found, the document said.
Kristil Krug had contacted police about the messages, which she thought came from the former boyfriend. After she was killed, police traced the IP address for the texts to Daniel Krug’s workplace, according to the affidavit.
At the time of the killing, the ex-boyfriend was an eight-hour drive away in Utah, where he was living, the affidavit said. He is not a suspect.
Krug’s mother told police that her daughter’s relationship with her husband was not good, and that she wanted to get divorced and seek full custody of their three children.
Krug, had a degree in biochemical engineering and a fulfilling career in technology and innovation, as well as a passion for the performing arts and modern dance, according to her obituary.
Idaho
Prosecution adds former U.S. attorney to quadruple murder case
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Idaho’s recently departed U.S. attorney has joined the prosecution team in the case against Bryan Kohberger, the man charged in the killings of four University of Idaho students in 2022.
Joshua Hurwit will be a special deputy prosecuting attorney for the state in the murder trial scheduled for August, court documents filed this week show. Latah County Prosecuting Attorney Bill Thompson is leading the prosecution team.
Hurwit was a former President Joe Biden-nominated U.S. attorney for the District of Idaho from June 2022 until February. Hurwit joined the office in 2012 as an assistant U.S. attorney. He stepped down in February before the White House dismissed more than 50 U.S. attorneys and deputies.
Kohberger, 30, is charged with four counts of murder in the deaths of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, students who were killed in the early morning of Nov. 13, 2022, at a rental home near their campus in Moscow, Idaho.
Autopsies showed the four were all likely asleep when they were attacked, some had defensive wounds, and each was stabbed multiple times.
Kohberger, who was a criminal justice graduate student at Washington State University, was arrested in Pennsylvania weeks later. Investigators said they matched his DNA to genetic material recovered from a knife sheath found at the crime scene.
A judge previously entered a not-guilty plea on Kohberger’s behalf. Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty if he is convicted.
A hearing is set for April 9 to consider pretrial motions, including arguments over whether an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis would preclude Kohberger from being eligible for the death penalty if convicted, and over whether jurors should hear audio of a 911 call hours after the killings, as the callers realized one of their roommates wasn’t waking up.
Kohberger’s trial is scheduled to begin Aug. 11 and expected to last more than three months.
New York
Man charged after authorities say he botched a butt implant procedure in his home
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City man has been charged with performing medical procedures without a license after a patient was left near death during a botched butt-implant removal procedure in his home, prosecutors and law enforcement officials said Thursday.
Felipe Hoyos-Foronda injected the 31-year-old woman with the local anesthetic lidocaine, causing her to go into cardiac arrest on March 28, according to a criminal complaint.
The woman was taken from Hoyos-Foronda’s Queens home to a hospital, where a doctor said she is not expected to survive, the filing said.
The victim, who has not been named, “has no brain activity” and shows evidence of lidocaine toxicity, the doctor said.
Hoyos-Foronda, 38, was apprehended at JFK International Airport attempting to board a flight, authorities said.
Prosecutors said he was arraigned Sunday on charges of assault and unauthorized practice of a profession and was held without bail.
His lawyer didn’t respond to email and phone messages seeking comment Thursday.
Hoyos-Foronda promoted a range of cosmetic procedures on his TikTok account, where he also sometimes identified himself as a doctor.
One recent post touts his prices for Botox, lip fillers and body sculpting. Another post shows him using a machine on a woman that he claims, in text written in Spanish, as a “safe and painless method” to shape one’s glutes, or butt muscles. Other posts suggest he also offered his services in Miami.
Earlier this year, a Manhattan aesthetician was charged with injecting customers with counterfeit Botox at his medical spa after some of them complained that it made them sick.
In 2018, a Manhattan man posing as a doctor was sentenced to up to 12 years in jail after pleading guilty in the death of a woman during a botched silicone butt-implant procedure.
In 2015, a former madam who performed illegal “body sculpting” in the Philadelphia area was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison after the death of a dancer whose heart stopped after nearly half a gallon of silicone was injected into her buttocks.
Washington
Federal judge rules action against NEA unnecessary after it backed off bans on gender ideology
A federal judge on Thursday denied a motion to stop the National Endowment for the Arts from barring funds to artists whose projects promote gender ideology, saying the agency no longer was doing it.
Four arts groups sued the NEA last month, seeking a preliminary injunction over what they said were violations of the First Amendment, the Administrative Procedure Act and the Fifth Amendment. The requirements were initially added to grant application forms, following an executive order from President Donald Trump.
U.S. District Judge William Smith acknowledged that plaintiffs “demonstrated a likelihood of success that a ban on gender ideology would be a violation of the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act.” But because the NEA had rescinded the requirement about a week after the lawsuit was filed, Smith said an “injunction is not in the public interest at this time.”
“Granting a preliminary injunction in these circumstances would impose significant hardship on the NEA with little practical benefit to Plaintiffs,” Smith wrote.
“If the Court enjoins the NEA from imposing an eligibility bar at this juncture, it will in effect short circuit the ongoing administrative review process set to conclude in a matter of days,” he continued. “This would rob the NEA of the opportunity to make its own considered decision about whether to implement the EO at all.”
The government argued against the injunction, since grantees do not have to certify they are complying with the executive order from Trump and since the NEA no longer is applying the order in grant-making decisions. It also said it is in the midst of an administrative proceeding to determine if it will implement the executive order and, if so, how.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued on behalf of the arts groups, acknowledged that the NEA no longer requires artists to promise that their projects aren’t promoting gender ideology. But it says the NEA still has criteria that refuses funding to projects that appear to promote this concept. It also expressed concerns that the NEA could eventually reinstate the ban.
Trump’s executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” calls for denying federal money to any programs that “promote gender ideology.”
One of the groups, Rhode Island Latino Arts, was planning to apply for funding to support a production of “Faust,” for which it considered casting a nonbinary actor, or a storytelling program which in the past has included discussions of LGBTQ topics.
“We shouldn’t need to negotiate for the right to support and uplift all artists — including transgender and nonbinary artists,” Marta V. Martinez, executive director of Rhode Island Latino Arts, said Thursday.
“This order fails to bring us the clarity we need to apply for funds for projects that allow Latinx artists, especially those who are queer, trans, or nonbinary, to show up as their whole selves without fear of erasure of censorship.”
Another group, the New York-based National Queer Theater, wants to apply for funding for the Criminal Queerness Festival, a theater festival featuring work from playwrights from countries where promoting LGBTQ activities is prohibited or dangerous.
New Jersey
The number of lawsuits alleging abuse at child treatment centers reaches 150
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — The number of lawsuits alleging sexual assaults and other abuse at state-run child treatment centers in New Jersey has risen to more than 100 after two more were filed this week.
Two suits involving 16 people were presented Thursday in Superior Court in Monmouth and Somerset counties by victims whose names have been withheld. They are seeking damages stemming from alleged abuse at the former Arthur Brisbane Treatment Center and the Training School at Skillman, both of which have been shuttered for decades.
The suits are the latest of dozens of claims filed against the state in the past year. Attorneys for the firm Levy Konigsberg say the total number of suits has now reached 150. The majority of the earlier cases revolve around open facilities, including the New Jersey Training School, which the governor has said would be closed.
The Associated Press left email messages seeking comment with the New Jersey attorney general’s office, which is responsible for defending the state when it’s named in lawsuits.
New Jersey overhauled its civil statute of limitations on childhood sex abuse claims in 2019.
The new law allows child victims to sue until they turn 55 or within seven years of their first realization that the abuse caused them harm. The previous statute of limitations was age 20 or two years after first realizing the abuse caused harm.
