He had sex with her on Mother’s Day and after her best friend’s birthday. She was 14 years old. He was her father. Did he deserve a harsher sentence because of that relationship? No judge can decide that. Only a jury can. Prosecutor Marc Bennett asked a jurors to do that because a father had betrayed his child’s trust.
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Thursday’s update: Gloria Ibarra was arraigned this morning and pleaded not guilty. Judge Ben Burgess tentatively set her trial for March 9.
Gloria Ibarra told police she stabbed Kevin Hadley in an argument over $35.
This morning, after hearing Wichita homicide detective Tim Relph recount his conversation with Ibarra, Sedgwick County District Judge Joseph Bribiesca granted a prosecutor’s request to change the charges against her from second-degree murder to first-degree premeditated murder.
Ibarra, 45, told Relph she went to Hadley’s house last Oct. 24 in the 1600 block of North Hydraulic to spend the night. She said he was supposed to have $35 to buy drugs, but he only had $5.
The couple did a shot of cocaine, Ibarra told Relph, then began to argue over the money.
Ibarra told Relph:
Hadley pulled the knife and stabbed her in the leg. But she grabbed the knife after he dropped it. She plunged it into his chest.
“You’re going to kill me,” Hadley yelled.
Ibarra chased Hadley into the kitchen, where he threw something at her. Hadley then ran into the bedroom and barricaded it with a heater.
When police arrived at about 3 a.m. Oct. 25, they found Hadley at a neighbor’s house, clutching his chest with three knife wounds. The 49-year-old died of his wounds later.
Ibarra called 911 about 30 minutes later from her home across town in the 1900 block of West Dora.
Relph said when he reading his rights to Ibarra, she interrupted him.
“Is he OK?” she asked.
“No,” Relph said.
“Is he dead?” she asked.
When Relph told her Hadley was, she fell out of her chair, crying.
Officer Bradley Harris said he followed a blood trail from the neighbor’s house, where he found Hadley, to a window outside the bedroom. When he entered Hadley’s home, he found the bedroom door partially opened and blocked by a heater. There were drops of blood in other parts of the apartment but pools and a blood-soaked T-shirt in the bedroom.
Deputy District Attorney Kevin O’Connor said that the evidence added up to Hadley being stabbed in the bedroom, not the living room. That means Ibarra would have had to push through the barrier made by the heater and into the bedroom to stab Hadley.
“That shows premeditation,” O’Connor said.
O’Connor said Hadley broke the window in the bedroom to get to the neighbor’s house, trying to escape his assailant.
“There’s no evidence that this took place in the bedroom, or that it was even an intentional killing,” Ibarra’s public defender, Mark Rudy, argued.
Because it was a preliminary hearing, Bribiesca said he had to view the evidence in a light most favorable to the state in finding probable cause the crime was committed.
Bribiesca also acknowledged while it appeared Ibarra might have an argument for self-defense, that would be a decision left up to a jury.
Because O’Connor needed time to prepare the new charges, Ibarra is set to be arraigned as early as today.
Update: The charges against the Floyds were dismissed.
Chad and Shannon Floyd have something to be thankful for next week: They won’t face murder charges.
The husband and wife are set to meet with a judge in Johnson City on Monday to sign a final order of dismissal in a murder case against them that’s dragged on for three years, through two trials that both ended without a verdict.
No one has ever found the body of Michael Golub, 27. Golub was a former boyfriend of Shannon Floyd and they were involved in a custody dispute over their son when Golub disappeared on May 20, 2005. The Floyds said he never showed up to get the boy that night. His pickup was found six days later on a county road in northwest Grant County.
Prosecutors Richard Guinn and Barry Disney for the Kansas Attorney General’s Office claimed Chad and Shannon Floyd shot Golub when he came to pick up his son. Prosecutors said the custody battle was interfering with plans for the Floyds to move to Montana. The couple purchased a gun that same day, and investigators found Golub’s blood had dripped between the planks on the Floyd’s front porch. Prosecutors said Chad Floyd had told a friend he’d pay Golub $50,000 to drop the case and said he wished Golub would disappear.
Lawyers Dan Monnat and Kurt Kerns of Wichita argued for the defense that there were people near the Floyds’ house that night who would have heard the gunshots — but didn’t — and that a different friend of theirs showed up unexpectedly when the killing was supposedly taking place.
They also suggested that Golub’s role as an informant in a local drug case led to his disappearance.
Adding to the rural courtroom drama: The Floyds are an affluent family that owns a chain of banks in the western part of Kansas and in eastern Colorado.
Under the terms of the dismissal, the state can file the charges again if prosecutors discover evidence that “materially strengthens” their case.
UPDATED: The Office of the Court Trustee provided additional details and about the amnesty payment plans.
More than 1,000 parents who could face jail for not paying their child support get a break next month, when Sedgwick County District Court offers amnesty to those who want to catch up.
Amnesty payment plans will be offered to parents who have active bench warrants or are not in compliance with their orders, if they show up, in person, between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. Oct. 14 at Atwater Neighborhood City Hall, 2755 E. 19th St.
Court Trustee Joy Kay Williams, whose office oversees some 15,000 domestic cases, said people can call her office at 316-660-5833 to find out how much they owe. As part of the amnesty plan, parents will be asked to make a one-time fee of roughly 1.5 times their regular monthly child support payments. That will go to help pay their back support. Then they will get a personalized payment plan to help them catch up.
Parents with outstanding bench warrants will have them cleared. All parents will receive a copy of their payment plans.
But you must show up Oct. 14 at Atwater.