Washington
Prosecutor says Travis Decker is dead but sheriff says DNA tests are pending
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Federal prosecutors have asked a judge to drop the arrest warrant for a former soldier wanted in the deaths of his three young daughters because the U.S. Marshals Service says the man is dead, but the sheriff’s office said their decision was premature because DNA test results are pending.
Authorities in Washington state found remains believed to belong to Travis Decker in a remote wooded area of central Washington last week, but investigators are still waiting for DNA results to confirm the man’s identity.
Still, in a court document filed Wednesday, U.S. Attorney S. Peter Serrano said the U.S. Marshals Service has advised prosecutors that Decker is dead.
The Chelan County Sheriff’s Office sent out a press release Wednesday afternoon saying they had just learned about Marshals Service’s filing, and said they’re not in a position to make a positive identification or confirmation of Mr. Decker’s status.
“We are currently awaiting DNA test results from the state Crime Lab, which are expected to be returned within the next few days,” the release says. “Once the DNA results are confirmed, the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office will hold a press conference to share findings and address any questions from the media and public.”
Law enforcement teams had searched for more than three months for Decker after the bodies of his daughters — 9-year-old Paityn Decker, 8-year-old Evelyn Decker and 5-year-old Olivia Decker — were found in June at a campground near Leavenworth.
The sheriff’s office said an autopsy determined they died from suffocation. They had been bound with zip ties and had plastic bags placed over their heads.
Decker, 32, had been with his daughters on a scheduled visit but failed to bring them back to his ex-wife, who a year ago said that his mental health issues had worsened and that he had become increasingly unstable.
He was often living out of his truck, she said in a petition seeking to restrict him from having overnight visits with their daughters until he found housing.
Decker was an infantryman in the U.S. Army from March 2013 to July 2021 and deployed to Afghanistan for four months in 2014. He had training in navigation, survival and other skills, authorities said, and once spent more than two months living in the backwoods off the grid.
New Mexico
Navajo man pleads guilty for illegal marijuana grow operations
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A Navajo man has pleaded guilty to 15 charges stemming from allegations that he ran illegal marijuana growing operations in New Mexico and on the Navajo Nation, smuggled pesticides into the U.S. and employed workers who were in the country illegally.
Federal prosecutors announced the plea agreement Tuesday, saying Dineh Benally admitted to leading what they described as a vast cultivation and distribution ring that spanned several years, exploited workers and polluted the San Juan River on tribal lands.
An indictment naming Benally, his father and a business partner was unsealed earlier this year after authorities raided farms in a rural area east of Albuquerque. The document said the enterprise involved the construction of more than 1,100 cannabis greenhouses, the solicitation of Chinese investors to bankroll the effort and the recruitment of Chinese workers to cultivate the crops.
Benally, 48, first made headlines when his operations in northwestern New Mexico were raided by federal authorities in 2020. The Navajo Department of Justice sued him, leading to a court order halting those operations.
A group of Chinese workers also sued Benally and his associates. The workers claimed they were lured to New Mexico and forced to work long hours trimming marijuana on the Navajo Nation, where growing the plant is illegal.
Federal authorities said about 260,000 marijuana plants and 60,000 pounds of processed marijuana were confiscated from the operation in northern New Mexico while the subsequent raid at farms near Estancia uncovered about 8,500 pounds (3,855 kilograms) of marijuana, $35,000 in cash, illegal pesticides, methamphetamine, firearms and a bulletproof vest.
Federal prosecutors said Benally faces a mandatory 15 years and up to life in prison when he’s sentenced.
New York
Woman accused of incapacitating 4 men with fentanyl-laced drugs, killing 3
A New York woman is accused of using fentanyl-laced drugs to incapacitate and then rob four men of cash, phones, sneakers and other belongings, killing three of the men in the process.
Tabitha Bundrick, 36, was indicted Wednesday on 11 counts of murder, robbery, burglary and assault charges. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg called her alleged actions “extremely calculated” and noted other recent cases in New York where people died after being drugged and robbed, including outside nightclubs.
“This type of callous behavior will not be tolerated in Manhattan,” he said during a news conference.
Bundrick, who pleaded not guilty on Wednesday, is accused of targeting men between 2023 and 2024. On April 20, 2023, prosecutors said she approached two men on the street in Washington Heights under the guise of selling them soap. Prosecutors said she then offered to have sex in exchange for money and led them to an empty apartment she broke into, offering them fentanyl-laced drugs she claimed were cocaine.
One of the men told police he woke up the next morning to find his friend, Mario Paullan, 42, dead beside him and their belongings missing. Prosecutors said the man had no memory of what had occurred.
Prosecutors said the second death occurred on Sept. 27, 2023, in Washington Heights when Bundrick met Miguel Navez, 39, and went back to his apartment where she allegedly provided him with fentanyl-laced drugs.
Navez’s brother found him dead three days later and his personal belongings missing.
Washington
Federal judge refuses to reinstate eight former inspectors general fired by administration
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge refused on Wednesday to reinstate eight former inspectors general who filed a lawsuit after the Trump administration fired them with no warning and little explanation.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said that while President Donald Trump likely violated the federal law governing the process for removing the non-partisan watchdogs from office, the firings didn’t cause enough irreparable harm to justify reinstating the watchdogs before the lawsuit is resolved.
The eight plaintiffs were among 17 inspectors general who were fired by Trump on Jan. 24. Each received identical two-sentence emails from the White House that attributed their removal to unspecified “changing priorities.” The mass firings targeted all but two of the cabinet agencies’ inspectors general.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys said the firings were unlawful because the administration didn’t give Congress the legally required 30-day notice or provide a “substantive, case-specific rationale” for removing them.
Government attorneys said the president can remove inspectors general “ without any showing of cause “ and doesn’t have to wait 30 days after providing notice to Congress.
The judge noted that even if the inspectors general were reinstated, Trump could simply give notice to Congress and have them removed from their positions 30 days later.
Inspectors general are responsible for rooting out waste and fraud in federal agencies. They are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Reyes said the inspectors general had provided “exceptional service as IGs, marked by decades of distinguished leadership across multiple administrations.”
“They deserved better from their government. They still do,” she wrote. “Unfortunately, this Court cannot provide Plaintiffs more.”
Reyes said the plaintiffs can be legally compensated later if they win their lawsuit, but in the meantime, their removals would stand.
The plaintiffs were inspectors general at the Small Business Administration and the departments of Defense, State, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Education and Labor. Their attorneys say work by inspectors general in 2023 alone saved more than $90 billion in taxpayer dollars.
Neither the White House nor the attorney representing the inspectors general immediately responded to requests for comment.
“Defendants’ actions, moreover, telegraph to the public that many of the largest federal agencies now lack the institutional mechanisms to detect and stop fraud and abuse (or at a minimum those mechanisms have been greatly weakened), which will likely engender wrongdoing that could harm the public,” plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote.
Justice Department lawyers said a federal law authorizes the president’s authority to remove inspectors general “at any time and with no preconditions.”
“The congressional notice provision is in a separate sentence from the removal authorization provision, with no grammatical connection between them,” they wrote.
During a March 27 hearing, Reyes said she genuinely didn’t know how she would rule on their requests for reinstatement. But she thanked the plaintiffs for “standing up and saying this is not acceptable.”
In Wednesday’s ruling, Reyes made it clear that she believes the firings violated the Inspector General Act. But she also questioned whether Congress has the right to limit the President’s power to remove inspectors general.
“This is a close call under the best of circumstances,” Reyes said. Case law shows Congress can give tenure protections to “inferior officers with narrowly defined duties,” but those protections do not extend to principal officers who wield significant power on their own.
“IGs do not fit cleanly into either category,” she wrote.
President Joe Biden, a Democrat, nominated Reyes to the bench. She has decided other cases challenging Trump’s executive orders, including one in which she blocked the Republican president’s administration from banning transgender people from military service.
During a third fatal incident, which occurred on Feb. 25, 2024, prosecutors said Bundrick followed Abrihan Fernandez, 34, to his apartment building where she allegedly provided him with fentanyl-laced drugs.
Prosecutors said she took several large bags from the apartment.
Prosecutors said Bundrick used Fernandez’s credit card multiple times, as well as stolen cellphones belonging to the other men.
An email was sent seeking comment to her city public defender.
Bundrick pleaded guilty in February to federal drug-related charges stemming from the same deaths and was sentenced on Aug. 6 to serve 156 months in prison.
Her lawyers said in a sentencing memo that Bundrick “is not a calculated killer, a cold-hearted manipulator, or someone who lacks a conscience,” but rather a victim of childhood sexual abuse who functions intellectually at a third-grade level.
They said Bundrick, a mother, is also is not a drug dealer and only used the drugs to get through the experience of having to prostitute herself.
“Ms. Bundrick undoubtedly made a poor decision when she shared her drugs with men who were just ‘looking for a good time.’ But she never intended to kill anyone,” the lawyers said in the memo. “Indeed, she used the same exact drugs alongside each of them.”
Federal prosecutors said in a separate sentencing memo that even though Bundrick “may not have specifically intended to kill her victims when she drugged them with fentanyl,” she knew the drug could kill them and she gave it to them anyway and continued to give it to more men.
Prosecutor says Travis Decker is dead but sheriff says DNA tests are pending
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Federal prosecutors have asked a judge to drop the arrest warrant for a former soldier wanted in the deaths of his three young daughters because the U.S. Marshals Service says the man is dead, but the sheriff’s office said their decision was premature because DNA test results are pending.
Authorities in Washington state found remains believed to belong to Travis Decker in a remote wooded area of central Washington last week, but investigators are still waiting for DNA results to confirm the man’s identity.
Still, in a court document filed Wednesday, U.S. Attorney S. Peter Serrano said the U.S. Marshals Service has advised prosecutors that Decker is dead.
The Chelan County Sheriff’s Office sent out a press release Wednesday afternoon saying they had just learned about Marshals Service’s filing, and said they’re not in a position to make a positive identification or confirmation of Mr. Decker’s status.
“We are currently awaiting DNA test results from the state Crime Lab, which are expected to be returned within the next few days,” the release says. “Once the DNA results are confirmed, the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office will hold a press conference to share findings and address any questions from the media and public.”
Law enforcement teams had searched for more than three months for Decker after the bodies of his daughters — 9-year-old Paityn Decker, 8-year-old Evelyn Decker and 5-year-old Olivia Decker — were found in June at a campground near Leavenworth.
The sheriff’s office said an autopsy determined they died from suffocation. They had been bound with zip ties and had plastic bags placed over their heads.
Decker, 32, had been with his daughters on a scheduled visit but failed to bring them back to his ex-wife, who a year ago said that his mental health issues had worsened and that he had become increasingly unstable.
He was often living out of his truck, she said in a petition seeking to restrict him from having overnight visits with their daughters until he found housing.
Decker was an infantryman in the U.S. Army from March 2013 to July 2021 and deployed to Afghanistan for four months in 2014. He had training in navigation, survival and other skills, authorities said, and once spent more than two months living in the backwoods off the grid.
New Mexico
Navajo man pleads guilty for illegal marijuana grow operations
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A Navajo man has pleaded guilty to 15 charges stemming from allegations that he ran illegal marijuana growing operations in New Mexico and on the Navajo Nation, smuggled pesticides into the U.S. and employed workers who were in the country illegally.
Federal prosecutors announced the plea agreement Tuesday, saying Dineh Benally admitted to leading what they described as a vast cultivation and distribution ring that spanned several years, exploited workers and polluted the San Juan River on tribal lands.
An indictment naming Benally, his father and a business partner was unsealed earlier this year after authorities raided farms in a rural area east of Albuquerque. The document said the enterprise involved the construction of more than 1,100 cannabis greenhouses, the solicitation of Chinese investors to bankroll the effort and the recruitment of Chinese workers to cultivate the crops.
Benally, 48, first made headlines when his operations in northwestern New Mexico were raided by federal authorities in 2020. The Navajo Department of Justice sued him, leading to a court order halting those operations.
A group of Chinese workers also sued Benally and his associates. The workers claimed they were lured to New Mexico and forced to work long hours trimming marijuana on the Navajo Nation, where growing the plant is illegal.
Federal authorities said about 260,000 marijuana plants and 60,000 pounds of processed marijuana were confiscated from the operation in northern New Mexico while the subsequent raid at farms near Estancia uncovered about 8,500 pounds (3,855 kilograms) of marijuana, $35,000 in cash, illegal pesticides, methamphetamine, firearms and a bulletproof vest.
Federal prosecutors said Benally faces a mandatory 15 years and up to life in prison when he’s sentenced.
New York
Woman accused of incapacitating 4 men with fentanyl-laced drugs, killing 3
A New York woman is accused of using fentanyl-laced drugs to incapacitate and then rob four men of cash, phones, sneakers and other belongings, killing three of the men in the process.
Tabitha Bundrick, 36, was indicted Wednesday on 11 counts of murder, robbery, burglary and assault charges. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg called her alleged actions “extremely calculated” and noted other recent cases in New York where people died after being drugged and robbed, including outside nightclubs.
“This type of callous behavior will not be tolerated in Manhattan,” he said during a news conference.
Bundrick, who pleaded not guilty on Wednesday, is accused of targeting men between 2023 and 2024. On April 20, 2023, prosecutors said she approached two men on the street in Washington Heights under the guise of selling them soap. Prosecutors said she then offered to have sex in exchange for money and led them to an empty apartment she broke into, offering them fentanyl-laced drugs she claimed were cocaine.
One of the men told police he woke up the next morning to find his friend, Mario Paullan, 42, dead beside him and their belongings missing. Prosecutors said the man had no memory of what had occurred.
Prosecutors said the second death occurred on Sept. 27, 2023, in Washington Heights when Bundrick met Miguel Navez, 39, and went back to his apartment where she allegedly provided him with fentanyl-laced drugs.
Navez’s brother found him dead three days later and his personal belongings missing.
Washington
Federal judge refuses to reinstate eight former inspectors general fired by administration
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge refused on Wednesday to reinstate eight former inspectors general who filed a lawsuit after the Trump administration fired them with no warning and little explanation.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said that while President Donald Trump likely violated the federal law governing the process for removing the non-partisan watchdogs from office, the firings didn’t cause enough irreparable harm to justify reinstating the watchdogs before the lawsuit is resolved.
The eight plaintiffs were among 17 inspectors general who were fired by Trump on Jan. 24. Each received identical two-sentence emails from the White House that attributed their removal to unspecified “changing priorities.” The mass firings targeted all but two of the cabinet agencies’ inspectors general.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys said the firings were unlawful because the administration didn’t give Congress the legally required 30-day notice or provide a “substantive, case-specific rationale” for removing them.
Government attorneys said the president can remove inspectors general “ without any showing of cause “ and doesn’t have to wait 30 days after providing notice to Congress.
The judge noted that even if the inspectors general were reinstated, Trump could simply give notice to Congress and have them removed from their positions 30 days later.
Inspectors general are responsible for rooting out waste and fraud in federal agencies. They are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Reyes said the inspectors general had provided “exceptional service as IGs, marked by decades of distinguished leadership across multiple administrations.”
“They deserved better from their government. They still do,” she wrote. “Unfortunately, this Court cannot provide Plaintiffs more.”
Reyes said the plaintiffs can be legally compensated later if they win their lawsuit, but in the meantime, their removals would stand.
The plaintiffs were inspectors general at the Small Business Administration and the departments of Defense, State, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Education and Labor. Their attorneys say work by inspectors general in 2023 alone saved more than $90 billion in taxpayer dollars.
Neither the White House nor the attorney representing the inspectors general immediately responded to requests for comment.
“Defendants’ actions, moreover, telegraph to the public that many of the largest federal agencies now lack the institutional mechanisms to detect and stop fraud and abuse (or at a minimum those mechanisms have been greatly weakened), which will likely engender wrongdoing that could harm the public,” plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote.
Justice Department lawyers said a federal law authorizes the president’s authority to remove inspectors general “at any time and with no preconditions.”
“The congressional notice provision is in a separate sentence from the removal authorization provision, with no grammatical connection between them,” they wrote.
During a March 27 hearing, Reyes said she genuinely didn’t know how she would rule on their requests for reinstatement. But she thanked the plaintiffs for “standing up and saying this is not acceptable.”
In Wednesday’s ruling, Reyes made it clear that she believes the firings violated the Inspector General Act. But she also questioned whether Congress has the right to limit the President’s power to remove inspectors general.
“This is a close call under the best of circumstances,” Reyes said. Case law shows Congress can give tenure protections to “inferior officers with narrowly defined duties,” but those protections do not extend to principal officers who wield significant power on their own.
“IGs do not fit cleanly into either category,” she wrote.
President Joe Biden, a Democrat, nominated Reyes to the bench. She has decided other cases challenging Trump’s executive orders, including one in which she blocked the Republican president’s administration from banning transgender people from military service.
During a third fatal incident, which occurred on Feb. 25, 2024, prosecutors said Bundrick followed Abrihan Fernandez, 34, to his apartment building where she allegedly provided him with fentanyl-laced drugs.
Prosecutors said she took several large bags from the apartment.
Prosecutors said Bundrick used Fernandez’s credit card multiple times, as well as stolen cellphones belonging to the other men.
An email was sent seeking comment to her city public defender.
Bundrick pleaded guilty in February to federal drug-related charges stemming from the same deaths and was sentenced on Aug. 6 to serve 156 months in prison.
Her lawyers said in a sentencing memo that Bundrick “is not a calculated killer, a cold-hearted manipulator, or someone who lacks a conscience,” but rather a victim of childhood sexual abuse who functions intellectually at a third-grade level.
They said Bundrick, a mother, is also is not a drug dealer and only used the drugs to get through the experience of having to prostitute herself.
“Ms. Bundrick undoubtedly made a poor decision when she shared her drugs with men who were just ‘looking for a good time.’ But she never intended to kill anyone,” the lawyers said in the memo. “Indeed, she used the same exact drugs alongside each of them.”
Federal prosecutors said in a separate sentencing memo that even though Bundrick “may not have specifically intended to kill her victims when she drugged them with fentanyl,” she knew the drug could kill them and she gave it to them anyway and continued to give it to more men.
