Monthly Archives: January 2009

Wichita woman wrote $200,000 in business checks to herself

Jan. 29, 200912:30 p.m.

Becky Vanderhoff-Huber was an office manager for Plains Petroleum when she started writing company checks to her self. For more than a year, she wrote checks in her own name, and by the time the company found out she’d stolen nearly $200,000.

This morning, Sedgwick County District Judge Mark Vining sentenced the 32-year-old mother of two to three years in prison and ordered her to repay $199,467.

Vanderhoff-Huber pleaded guilty in November to felony theft. Prosecutors say she didn’t try to hide what she was doing. She cut numerous company checks to herself, one for $9,146.08, from February 2006 to September 2007.

Investigators never learned where the money went, and prosecutors said Vanderhoff-Huber did not live an extravagant lifestyle.

At the time of her arrest, Vanderhoff-Huber said in a financial affidavit that she worked at Horizon Milling in Wichita making $2,400 a month.

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Judge files written order on Schneider evidence

Jan. 28, 20094:20 p.m.

As his ruling awaits appeal, U.S. Senior District Judge Monti Belot today issued a written order detailing his limitations of evidence in the case of a Haysville doctor as his wife.

Belot issued the written order after ruling from the bench on Monday that prosecutors could present evidence to the jury on only four of the 59 deaths they say are connected to the prescription practices of Stephen and Linda Schneider at their Haysville clinic.

The judge wrote that the value of providing evidence on all the deaths was “substantially outweighed by confusion of issues and the potential to mislead the jury. Moreover, the evidence of the large number of deaths will certainly cause delay and result in a needless presentation of cumulative evidence.”

The Schneiders’ lawyers have denied that any of the deaths are linked to the clinic bearing their name.

Prosecutors have said they will appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. It may take months for the judges in Denver to decide the issue, putting off the trial that had been scheduled to begin next week.

Belot also said the Schneiders’ defense is allowed to provide evidence that their clinic “was a legitimate operation and that they were treating patients accordingly.”

Prosecutors cannot use the terms “script doctor” or “pill mill,” which Belot ruled as “inflammatory rhetoric.” The defense also objected to the term “narcotics delivery system,” but the judge said the lawyers failed to show why that would be improper.

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Kansas judge says “cram down” mortgage bill will help troubled homeowners

Jan. 28, 20092:12 p.m.

The chief bankruptcy judge in Kansas says he and his colleagues are in the best position to help troubled homeowners, if they’re given the authority they need by a new bill going through Congress.

The bill, which Tuesday passed the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, would allow judges to reduce, or “cram down,” mortgages to meet market values for homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth.

“For 30 years bankruptcy judges have been denied the power to modify secured loans on primary residences,” said Judge Robert Nugent of Wichita. “But I think it makes sense. We have the power to do it with commercial debtors and we adjust the value of other assets all the time.”

Previous attempts to get judges the power to alter mortgages, which proponents said could help curb foreclosures, has faced fierce fights from the banking industry. But this time, lending giant Citigroup is supporting the measure.

Watch Kansas.com for more details on this story.

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Man gets 20 years for pimping teenage girl

Jan. 23, 20092:30 p.m.

Marlin Williams is off to prison for the next two decades, because he took a 15-year-old girl from Wichita to work the streets of Dallas as a prostitute.

Williams, 38, was sentenced to 246 months in prison last week, and courthouse sources say he continued to blame the teenage girl for his predicament.

Actually, it was state lawmakers, who passed a law against aggravated human trafficking, that gave prosecutors the power to charge adults who recruit or transport girls for illegal sexual activities. Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc Bennett, who directs the sex crimes trial unit, said before the law went into effect in 2007, there wasn’t a charge that would bring substantial prison time.

Williams was the first person in Sedgwick County charged under the 2007 law. A jury convicted him in September.

Judge Clark Owens based Williams’ hefty sentence last week on a criminal history that dated to the 1980s.

The girl testified that she was a runaway who ended up being taken in by a women whose name she didn’t know. There, the girl said she made $6,000 in about two weeks of performing sexual favors for customers along a stretch of Northwest Highway near I-35 in Dallas. She said she gave the money to Williams.

Williams remains in the Sedgwick County Jail, awaiting prison placement by the Kansas Department of Corrections.

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Prosecutors say mom had history of prostituting daughters

Jan. 23, 20091:30 p.m.

A 48-year-old Wichita woman is accused of prostituting her 5-year-old daughter, but prosecutors say it wasn’t the first time.

Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston is seeking a judge’s permission to introduce testimony from two of the woman’s grown daughters, who said she sold them for sex when they were between the ages of 8 and 14.

Judge Greg Waller will hear evidence this afternoon, under a law that allows information about prior bad acts if it serves to show a pattern of behavior relevant to the crime charged.

The woman is charged along with the man who prosecutors say paid for sex with the 5-year-old on several occasions . After the case of the girl came to light with state social services and police, the older daughters came forward and told what happened to them. According to court records, they’ve said their mother began selling them for sex “to put food on the table” while she worked as an exotic dancer in the early 1990s.

This morning, Waller denied a request by the couple’s defense to exclude news reporters from the trial, which is set for March.

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Trial begins of man charged with raping blind, mentally disabled woman

Jan. 21, 20097:19 p.m.

Updated: A jury found Adkins guilty of rape late Friday afternoon after deliberating most of the day.

Ricardo Adkins, 28, picked up an 18-year-old woman at a bus stop near 21st and Woodlawn on April 24. The woman, who is mentally disabled and legally blind, said he raped her. Adkins said they had consensual sex.

Assistant Sedgwick County District Attorney Justin Edwards outlined the state’s case in his opening statements to the jury earlier today:

Public defender Jama Mitchell gave Adkins’ version:

The trial is expected to last the rest of the week before Judge David Kaufman.

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Wichita school bus driver charged with fondling 6-year-old

Jan. 21, 20094:38 p.m.

A 73-year-old Wichita school bus driver has been charged with fondling a 6-year-old girl.

Billy J. Reynolds made his first appearance Tuesday morning to hear charges against him on four counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child. Prosecutors say he engaged in lewd touching of the girl from October until his arrest Jan. 6.

Susan Arensman, spokeswoman for Wichita Public Schools, said the girl’s parent reported the acts to the principal at Emerson Open Magnet Elementary, who called the Wichita-Sedgwick County Exploited and Missing Children’s Unit. Arensman said Reynolds, employed privately by Durham School Services, was fired the day after the district received the complaint. He had driven a bus for 16 years.

Reynolds’ preliminary hearing is tentatively set for Feb. 3.

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Wichita tennis coach will go to trial accused of sex with teen

Jan. 20, 20095:50 p.m.

Wichita tennis coach Barry Fields will face trial this spring, accused of having sex with a 15-year-old girl who attended his family’s academy.

Fields, 44, helps run BK Tennis Academy, which opened in 1992 and serves about 200 young tennis players each month. Today he pleaded not guilty to having sexual intercourse with one of the girls from the academy three times between May and July last year.

After Fields waived his preliminary hearing, Sedgwick County District Judge Ben Burgess ordered the case to proceed to trial, tentatively set for April 13. Fields is charged with three counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child, because the girl was older than 14 but younger than 16, which is the age of consent in Kansas.

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Former Haysville doctor will stay out of jail awaiting trial

Jan. 15, 20093:55 p.m.

A federal judge in Wichita ruled today that a former Haysville doctor will remain free awaiting trial next month on charges that he over-prescribed painkillers, resulting in the deaths of 59 patients.

U.S. District Judge Monti Belot denied a request by the prosecution to revoke Stephen Schneider’s bond.

Prosecutors had said Schneider didn’t meet conditions of his bond by not finding someone to safely keep the records held at the Schneider Medical Clinic. Schneider’s lawyer said they couldn’t agree with the prosecution on an appropriate person to keep the records. Nor could the Kansas Board of Healing Arts come to terms over the records. The board has filed suit asking a Shawnee County District Judge to appoint a custodian.

“It is the State Board of Healing Arts that is best positioned to ensure that Defendant’s responsibilities are fulfilled concerning the medical records and his duties to his former patients,” Belot wrote in his order.

Linda Schneider, the doctor’s wife and manager of the clinic, remains in jail awaiting trial Feb. 3, after judges ruled she was a potential flight risk. The couple face 34 federal charges and claims that they ran a “pill mill” and unlawfully prescribed painkillers and other narcotics, putting their patients in danger.

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Man accused of shooting Rosann Kapaun ruled competent to stand trial

Jan. 15, 200912:47 p.m.

Sedgwick County District Judge Ben Burgess this morning reinstated the case against Charles Cullum, who is accused of shooting Rosann Kapaun nearly two years ago.

Cullum’s case had been taken off the docket last spring for him to undergo a mental evaluation. Cullum returned to court this morning after being determined competent to understand the charges against him and assist in his defense.

Kapaun, 43, was the niece of the Rev. Emil Kapaun, the man for whom Kapaun Mount Carmel High School in Wichita is named. Police say she was abducted from her apartment in west Wichita on May 16, 2007. She was shot and killed the next day. Her body was found in the 1600 block of East 46th Street South.

In October, two co-defendants were sentenced for participating in the killings of Kapaun and Chad Clayton.

Clayton, 26, was shot during a robbery at a house in the 6700 block of West O’Neil, six days after Kapaun’s kidnapping. Steven Cornelius received a 24-year prison sentence and Eric Huerta is serving 31 years for second-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping and other charges.

Cullum’s trial is tentatively set for next month.

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