Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Top Stories July 15th

Waupun Man Accused of Murdering Wife

7/15/09 - A Waupun man is in custody on charges of First Degree Intentional Homicide in connection with the murder of his wife. Police Chief Dale Herringa says 44-year-old Larry Randall Henry turned himself into authorities Monday night just before 6:30pm. When authorities arrived at the couple’s home at 503 ½ West Main Street, they found the body of 42-year-old Tammy Henry. Herringa says the time of the murder was relatively close to the time that the murder was reported. The murder investigation is ongoing and is being conducted by the Waupun Police Department. Formal charges are expected in the next couple days.

Family of Murder Victim In Shock

7/15/09 - The father of murder victim Tammy Henry says his daughter and her husband were high school sweethearts that were still madly in love with each other. Jeff Sanford spoke to reporters following a press conference yesterday. He says his daughter met “Randy” when she was 16-years-old and the two were inseparable. Sanford says he was shocked when he learned the news of his daughter’s death around 3am yesterday morning. Sanford says the pair moved around the country a lot before settling in Waupun, where Larry Henry found employment at a cheese company.

Forbes to Stand Trial

7/15/09 - Curtis Forbes will stand trial for the murder of an 18-year-old woman in 1980. After two days of testimony, Columbia County Judge Alan White ordered the 51-year-old Forbes to face a jury on charges of killing Marilyn McIntyre. White said the court must rule in the favor of the prosecution when two equally plausible stories exist. Among those testifying over the two day preliminary hearing was the victim’s husband Lane McIntyre, who said when he found his wife his mind didn't want to accept what he was seeing, and he thought it was a joke that just wasn’t funny. McIntyre was beaten, stabbed, strangled and sexually assaulted. The 51-year-old Forbes, who was a close l friend of the family, was initially a person of interest but he fled the state shortly after the murder. The case had gone cold for several years but was reopened in late 2007.

Three Charged With Murder in Fond du Lac County

7/15/09 - Prosecutors in Fond du Lac said a man strangled his girlfriend, and got his mother and a friend to help burn her body and dump the ashes in Lake Winnebago. 36-year-old Brandon Mueller, his 53-year-old mother Nancy Pinno, and 48-year-old Donald Worth are all in jail. Pinno is being held on a quarter-million dollar bond, and Worth is under a 150-thousand-dollar bond. Both are charged with assisting a felon, mutilating a corpse, and obstructing an officer. Charges against Mueller were expected later this week. Authorities said Mueller and 29-year-old Renee Redmer of Waukesha were dating less than a month before their relationship got rocky. Her family reported Redmer missing January 13th after she had disappeared eight days earlier. Authorities said Mueller strangled her and hid the body in a cooler. And after Worth apparently told others what happened, officials said Mueller decided he had to dispose of Redmer’s body. Prosecutors said Mueller and Worth burned the body for up to 14 hours, and then dropped the ashes on a then-frozen lake. Investigators said they later found bone fragments and a burn barrel on Worth’s property. Redman had pleaded innocent to possessing cocaine on the day she disappeared.

Bond Sent for Waukesha Man Accused of Murder

7/15/09 - Bond is set at one-and-a-half million dollars for a Waukesha County man accused of wrapping two men in chains, and letting them sink-and-drown in a lake. 35-year-old Chad Lurvey of the town of Ottawa made his first court appearance yesterday on two counts of first-degree intentional homicide. Authorities said Andrew Long and Brian Lazarro – both 26 – confronted Lurvey in a drug dispute. Lurvey told officers the men walked away. But investigators said they found evidence that Lurvey wrapped the two in chains, and then tossed them in the bottom of a private lake where they drowned. A John Doe proceeding took place in 2003, and authorities analyzed other evidence in the case last year. A judge will decide July 24th if the evidence is enough to order a trial for Lurvey.

Military Flare Caused Fire at Patrick Cudahy

7/15/09 - The mayor of Cudahy says he’s furious that someone started the fire that ravaged the Patrick Cudahy meat plant – even if it was an accident. Officials said yesterday that a military flare exploded before landing on the plant’s roof July fifth. It was fired east of the plant. And it started a fire that took three days to put out – caused well over 50-million dollars in damage – put 18-hundred people out of work for at least a week – and threatened an ammonia tank, forcing residents to be evacuated for 13 hours. Mayor Ryan McCue said he hoped the person responsible would do the right thing and come forward. Fire Chief Dan Mayer said it appeared to be carelessness. And he says the blaze is a perfect example of why most fireworks are illegal. There’s a 16-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to those responsible.

DC Board Approves Truck Purchase

7/15/09 - The Dodge County Highway Department convinced the Board of Supervisors last night to allow them to purchase three dump trucks a year early in an effort to save money. The approval didn’t come without a lengthy debate but Highway Commissioner Brian Field says adding to their fleet this year would save $34,000 as new emissions standards next year would increase the price of the trucks. The money to pay for the trucks will come from a surplus of $352,000 from the department’s 2008 budget. Supervisor Jeff Schmidt was against the purchase saying the extra money should be put back into road projects but Field says spending the money now will free up more money in the 2010 budget to work on the county’s road. The total cost of the trucks will be around $313,000 and the main use will be for snow and ice removal.

Officials Say Report Used Dated Information

7/15/09 - Dodge County officials say a report slamming its website was based on dated information. The Sunshine Review gave the county a D-minus for a lack of available information on its website, including the absence of meeting minutes and agendas. But County Clerk Karen Gibson says all of that information has been available for close to eight-months. Gibson says when County Administrator Jim Mielke was hired last summer he asked departments to make an effort to improve the information available on the website. Gibson thinks that while all the departments have made progress she admits there is still more than can be done.

Oshkosh Corporation Hiring

7/15/09 - The Oshkosh Corporation now says it will hire 300-to-500 Wisconsinites to build the newest model of off-road military vehicles for ground forces in Afghanistan. Oshkosh won an Army contract last month that totals almost one-point-one billion dollars. Oshkosh held job fairs on Sunday and Monday that attracted hundreds of people from as far away as Milwaukee. Besides the new Oshkosh workers, the firm says it will also recall 550-to-650 people who were laid off at its J-L-G subsidiary in McConnellsburg Pennsylvania. The first shipments of the new military vehicles are scheduled for this month. The contract calls for just over 22-hundred vehicles.

Government Health Care Passes One Million Customers

7/15/09 - For the first time, the number of Wisconsinites who get their health care from state government has passed the one-million mark. And that number will grow by 11-hundred today, when Badger-Care-Plus starts covering low-income adults without children. Those people were enrolled in a program called Core, which serves chronically un-insured low-income adults. Almost 25-thousand other childless adults had applied for the Core program – and that could mean a rush of sign-ups for the new Badger-Care-Plus provisions. State officials expect about 40-thousand childless adults to enroll. Attorney Bobby Peterson of A-B-C for Health in Madison says those who think they’re eligible better act quickly – because there’s a chance the state could limit new enrollments to 40-thousand, given the state’s budget crunch. But state Health Services Secretary Karen Timberlake says her agency will avoid caps – and it might resort to giving fewer benefits if the sign-ups are bigger than anticipated. Badger-Care-Plus now serves about 670-thousand people. That’s almost 10-percent more than at the start of the year. The recession is blamed for the big increase.

Supreme Court Sides With John Deere

7/15/09 - The Wisconsin Supreme Court says John Deere is not liable after one of its riding lawnmowers severed the feet of a two-year-old boy. Michael Horst was mowing his yard in 2004 in Washington County when he put the mower in reverse, and it ran into his son Jonathan. He now wears prosthetics on both his legs. The family asked for a new trial for its lawsuit, which claimed that Deere-and-Company should not have let the mower to work in reverse. Justice Michael Gableman called it horrible accident – but he said it was caused by quote, “the negligent use of the lawn mower, and negligent supervision of the boy by his parents.” On a 4-to-2 vote, the court said that bystanders like the youngster do not have greater protections from dangerous products than other consumers. Justices Ann Walsh Bradley and Shirley Abrahamson ruled in favor of a new trial. Justice Annette Ziegler was the presiding judge in Washington County when the case was at the circuit court level – and she did not take part in today’s ruling.

State Ed Officials Downplay Performance Gap

7/15/09 - State education officials say the performance gap between black-and-white students is not as big as what Washington reported yesterday (Tue) – but the situation is still disheartening. The U-S Education Department said Wisconsin’s fourth-and-eighth grade African-Americans had the lowest reading scores in the nation, and one of the lowest math scores. But white students in the same grades scored close to the national average. The government said Wisconsin’s racial gap is one of the nation’s worst. That’s been true for a number of years. But Patrick Gasper of the Department of Public Instruction said this spring’s state test results showed that the racial gap narrowed by five-and-a-half percent for math. And he said Washington reported data from two years before.

Business Loans Up

7/15/09 - Business loans which are guaranteed by the federal government have gone up in Wisconsin for the fourth straight month. The Small Business Administration said lenders issued just over 50-million-dollars in guaranteed loans in the Badger State in June. That’s up from 38-million dollars. It’s also 25-percent higher than the same month a year ago. This year’s increases coincided with the federal economic stimulus package, which increased government guarantees in order to spur new business loans. The Wisconsin Business Development Finance Corporation was the state’s top S-B-A-lender, as it loaned out seven-point-two million dollars in June. The non-profit agency provides financing for long-range assets like factory expansions and real estate purchases. Banks and credit unions also increased their loans. Those S-B-A-packages totaled 43-million dollars in June, up from 28-million the month before.

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