Date: 5/22/2009 4:18 PM
WAUSAU, Wis. (AP) — A jury has begun deliberating in the trial of a mother who prayed instead of seeking medical help for her dying daughter.
Marathon County District Attorney Jill Falstad said Friday in her closing argument that 41-year-old Leilani Neumann let her 11-year-old daughter Madeline die of untreated diabetes as a test of faith.
Neumann has been charged with second-degree reckless homicide in Madeline’s March 2008 death at the family’s rural Weston home.
Defense attorney Gene Linehan says the Neumanns are good Christians who tried to save their daughter and didn’t know she was that ill.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
Witness says Wis. mother thought illness was sin
Date: 5/19/2009 11:39 PM
ROBERT IMRIE
Associated Press Writer
WAUSAU, Wis. (AP) — A mother accused of rejecting medical treatment and relying on prayer as her 11-year-old daughter died of untreated diabetes believed people got sick because they sinned, a former friend said Tuesday at the woman’s homicide trial.
Althea Wormgoor and her husband described praying with Leilani Neumann and her family in Madeline Neumann’s last hours, a scene that turned to chaos and tearful pleas to heaven when the girl stopped breathing.
Leilani Neumann also attributed sickness to demons, Wormgoor testified. She said that when one of her sons got sick, Neumann thought his vomiting was to rid his body of demons.
“That was a little much,” Wormgoor testified.
Neumann, 41, has been charged with second-degree reckless homicide in Madeline’s March 23, 2008, death at the family’s rural Weston home.
Prosecutors contend a reasonable parent would have known something was gravely wrong with Madeline, who had become so weak she couldn’t walk or talk. They say Neumann recklessly killed her daughter by praying instead of rushing her to a doctor.
The mother has said the family believes in the Bible, which says healing comes from God. The defense has said Neumann and her husband, who is awaiting trial, didn’t know how sick their daughter was until it was too late.
Wormgoor told the jury that Neumann didn’t believe in doctors or medicine.
“Basically, you pray and do nothing but pray,” she said. Wormgoor added, however, that Neumann once asked her for an aspirin to treat a headache.
Wormgoor, who has four children, testified that her family moved from California to Wisconsin in January 2008 to start a second coffee business with the Neumanns and participate in their weekly Bible studies. The Neumanns also had lived in California, and the families had known each other for years.
But Wormgoor said that by March 2008, she and her husband had realized they disagreed with the Neumanns about the business and faith healing.
Wormgoor said she would not have let one of her daughters get as sick as Madeline without getting medical help.
Wormgoor said she and her family went to the Neumanns’ home the day Madeline died. Leilani Neumann had urged them to come, saying Madeline was on the floor, not talking, eating or drinking, she said.
The Wormgoors prayed with the Neumanns. Leilani Neumann raised her hands in the air, calling her daughter’s illness a test of faith and a chance for God to show his power, Wormgoor said.
“‘Oh Lord, you can heal diabetes. You can heal cancer,'” Wormgoor said Neumann prayed. “‘I am praying that God is going to bring her back from this and make her 10 times better.'”
After about five minutes of prayer, Leilani Neumann indicated her daughter appeared better than the previous night, her breathing stronger, Wormgoor said.
Suddenly, Madeline’s mouth “twitched,” she said.
“To me, it looked like she was gasping for air,” Wormgoor said. “It was a twitch that scared me. You are telling me, is she getting better? But right then I am not seeing it. I panicked.”
Wormgoor rushed to call 911, but her husband got to a phone first and made the call.
Randall Wormgoor testified that he had urged Neumann’s husband, Dale, to take Madeline to a hospital.
“I said, ‘Dale, if that was my daughter, I would be taking her to a doctor,” Randall Wormgoor said. “He said at some point, ‘Don’t you think it has crossed my mind.'”
Randall Wormgoor said he tried to reason with Dale Neumann, saying God worked through doctors just as the Neumanns worked through their coffee business to try to do their ministry. But then chaos broke out as word spread that Madeline was not breathing.
As the girl was being rushed to an ambulance, the mother remarked that all she needed was fluids, attendant Jason Russ testified.
Dr. Ivan Sador, a diabetes expert at Marshfield Clinic who examined medical records and police reports, said Madeline would have had high blood sugar levels for two months and organ damage three or four days before she died.
“Absolutely noticeable” symptoms of serious trouble became evident 24 hours before she died, and the girl became “very, very uncomfortable,” the doctor said.
Still, Madeline’s life could have been saved “very late into the day of her death” with the proper treatment, the doctor said.
If convicted, Leilani Neumann faces up to 25 years in prison. Dale Neumann also has been charged with second-degree reckless homicide. His trial is set for July.
Testimony in Leilani Neumann’s trial was to resume Wednesday.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
ROBERT IMRIE
Associated Press Writer
WAUSAU, Wis. (AP) — A mother accused of rejecting medical treatment and relying on prayer as her 11-year-old daughter died of untreated diabetes believed people got sick because they sinned, a former friend said Tuesday at the woman’s homicide trial.
Althea Wormgoor and her husband described praying with Leilani Neumann and her family in Madeline Neumann’s last hours, a scene that turned to chaos and tearful pleas to heaven when the girl stopped breathing.
Leilani Neumann also attributed sickness to demons, Wormgoor testified. She said that when one of her sons got sick, Neumann thought his vomiting was to rid his body of demons.
“That was a little much,” Wormgoor testified.
Neumann, 41, has been charged with second-degree reckless homicide in Madeline’s March 23, 2008, death at the family’s rural Weston home.
Prosecutors contend a reasonable parent would have known something was gravely wrong with Madeline, who had become so weak she couldn’t walk or talk. They say Neumann recklessly killed her daughter by praying instead of rushing her to a doctor.
The mother has said the family believes in the Bible, which says healing comes from God. The defense has said Neumann and her husband, who is awaiting trial, didn’t know how sick their daughter was until it was too late.
Wormgoor told the jury that Neumann didn’t believe in doctors or medicine.
“Basically, you pray and do nothing but pray,” she said. Wormgoor added, however, that Neumann once asked her for an aspirin to treat a headache.
Wormgoor, who has four children, testified that her family moved from California to Wisconsin in January 2008 to start a second coffee business with the Neumanns and participate in their weekly Bible studies. The Neumanns also had lived in California, and the families had known each other for years.
But Wormgoor said that by March 2008, she and her husband had realized they disagreed with the Neumanns about the business and faith healing.
Wormgoor said she would not have let one of her daughters get as sick as Madeline without getting medical help.
Wormgoor said she and her family went to the Neumanns’ home the day Madeline died. Leilani Neumann had urged them to come, saying Madeline was on the floor, not talking, eating or drinking, she said.
The Wormgoors prayed with the Neumanns. Leilani Neumann raised her hands in the air, calling her daughter’s illness a test of faith and a chance for God to show his power, Wormgoor said.
“‘Oh Lord, you can heal diabetes. You can heal cancer,'” Wormgoor said Neumann prayed. “‘I am praying that God is going to bring her back from this and make her 10 times better.'”
After about five minutes of prayer, Leilani Neumann indicated her daughter appeared better than the previous night, her breathing stronger, Wormgoor said.
Suddenly, Madeline’s mouth “twitched,” she said.
“To me, it looked like she was gasping for air,” Wormgoor said. “It was a twitch that scared me. You are telling me, is she getting better? But right then I am not seeing it. I panicked.”
Wormgoor rushed to call 911, but her husband got to a phone first and made the call.
Randall Wormgoor testified that he had urged Neumann’s husband, Dale, to take Madeline to a hospital.
“I said, ‘Dale, if that was my daughter, I would be taking her to a doctor,” Randall Wormgoor said. “He said at some point, ‘Don’t you think it has crossed my mind.'”
Randall Wormgoor said he tried to reason with Dale Neumann, saying God worked through doctors just as the Neumanns worked through their coffee business to try to do their ministry. But then chaos broke out as word spread that Madeline was not breathing.
As the girl was being rushed to an ambulance, the mother remarked that all she needed was fluids, attendant Jason Russ testified.
Dr. Ivan Sador, a diabetes expert at Marshfield Clinic who examined medical records and police reports, said Madeline would have had high blood sugar levels for two months and organ damage three or four days before she died.
“Absolutely noticeable” symptoms of serious trouble became evident 24 hours before she died, and the girl became “very, very uncomfortable,” the doctor said.
Still, Madeline’s life could have been saved “very late into the day of her death” with the proper treatment, the doctor said.
If convicted, Leilani Neumann faces up to 25 years in prison. Dale Neumann also has been charged with second-degree reckless homicide. His trial is set for July.
Testimony in Leilani Neumann’s trial was to resume Wednesday.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
Husband of slain Wis. woman vindicated, angry
Date: 3/27/2009
TODD RICHMOND
Associated Press Writer
BEAVER DAM, Wis. (AP) — Lane McIntyre’s world stopped in March 1980.
McIntyre, then 23, came home from his third-shift job to the one-bedroom apartment in Columbus he shared with his 18-year-old wife, Marilyn. He’d saved her from an abusive foster father and married her when she was 17.
“I’ve never felt that strong of love since. It was pure,” he said Thursday. “Marilyn was a living angel.”
But his angel was dead. A knife stuck out of her chest. Her skull had been fractured. Her neck was bruised from being strangled. A coroner later reported “evidence of traumatic sexual contact.”
Their 3-month-old son, Christopher, lay sleeping, untouched, in his crib. Lane McIntyre managed to call his mother, who called police. As five officers pushed past him into the apartment, he remembered, “my brain didn’t want to believe what I was seeing.”
Since that day, McIntyre watched his life crumble. Two more marriages dissolved. His son, now 29, doesn’t speak to him. Through it all, the murder hung over him like a shadow.
“You’re darn right I’m angry,” he said.
On Tuesday, detectives acting on new DNA evidence arrested McIntyre’s longtime friend Curtis Forbes in connection with Marilyn McIntyre’s death.
Forbes, 51, of Randolph, remains in the Columbia County Jail. District Attorney Jane Kohlwey said charges could come on Monday but that she hasn’t decided what specific counts to file.
Authorities typically can hold a person for only 48 hours without an initial court appearance, but Kohlwey said a judge has granted the jail permission to hold Forbes beyond that.
Kohlwey said Thursday that Forbes hadn’t retained a lawyer yet. The Baraboo public defender’s office, which handles Columbia County cases, said Forbes hadn’t asked for representation. Public defender Mark Gumz said he hasn’t been allowed to see Forbes.
For Lane McIntyre, now 52, the arrest has generated a mix of vindication and anger. He now lives in Beaver Dam, a city of 15,000 about 40 miles northeast of Madison and a dozen miles from Columbus, where Marilyn McIntyre was killed.
Sitting on the porch of his apartment Thursday, he recounted meeting Marilyn when she was 16.
He said she had bounced from foster home to foster home, but she still cared about other people. He remembered collecting donations for UNICEF with her one Halloween and how she wouldn’t let him stop, even when he grew tired.
He said he helped her flee from an abusive foster father, and that was when she decided to marry him.
He’s known Forbes since grade school. They were mortal enemies, he said, always getting into fights until they finally became friends in high school.
But Forbes abused his girlfriend, McIntyre said, and the girlfriend turned to Marilyn McIntyre for help.
The girlfriend left Forbes a week before the killing, he said. He theorized that Forbes stopped at the McIntyre apartment looking for the girlfriend. According to court documents, Lane McIntyre told investigators the day after the murder that Forbes should be their prime suspect.
But the investigation went nowhere. Meanwhile, Lane McIntyre said, people talked about him, wondered if he did it.
His son told the Wisconsin State Journal in 2008 that stories about his father being involved in his mother’s death were a big factor in their estrangement. No phone listing for Christopher McIntyre could be found Thursday.
In 2007, the state crime lab matched DNA from the McIntyre apartment to hair samples Forbes gave police in 1980. The body was exhumed in March 2008 for collection of more evidence.
This past February detectives interviewed an informant, unnamed so far in court documents, who said he witnessed a conversation between Forbes and Forbes’ son around 2002. Forbes began talking about how he took a wife’s friend home from a bar and she didn’t breathe anymore that night.
Now Lane McIntyre, bitter and angry, is looking for payback from those who thought he killed his wife. He wants to write a book about the murder and “the way people are in a small town.”
He chose to stay in Wisconsin because an innocent man doesn’t run, he said. If the book sells, though, he hopes to retire someplace far away.
“I want to go where nobody knows me, where I don’t have to defend myself, and live the rest of my days in peace,” he said. “I have a right to be happy. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
TODD RICHMOND
Associated Press Writer
BEAVER DAM, Wis. (AP) — Lane McIntyre’s world stopped in March 1980.
McIntyre, then 23, came home from his third-shift job to the one-bedroom apartment in Columbus he shared with his 18-year-old wife, Marilyn. He’d saved her from an abusive foster father and married her when she was 17.
“I’ve never felt that strong of love since. It was pure,” he said Thursday. “Marilyn was a living angel.”
But his angel was dead. A knife stuck out of her chest. Her skull had been fractured. Her neck was bruised from being strangled. A coroner later reported “evidence of traumatic sexual contact.”
Their 3-month-old son, Christopher, lay sleeping, untouched, in his crib. Lane McIntyre managed to call his mother, who called police. As five officers pushed past him into the apartment, he remembered, “my brain didn’t want to believe what I was seeing.”
Since that day, McIntyre watched his life crumble. Two more marriages dissolved. His son, now 29, doesn’t speak to him. Through it all, the murder hung over him like a shadow.
“You’re darn right I’m angry,” he said.
On Tuesday, detectives acting on new DNA evidence arrested McIntyre’s longtime friend Curtis Forbes in connection with Marilyn McIntyre’s death.
Forbes, 51, of Randolph, remains in the Columbia County Jail. District Attorney Jane Kohlwey said charges could come on Monday but that she hasn’t decided what specific counts to file.
Authorities typically can hold a person for only 48 hours without an initial court appearance, but Kohlwey said a judge has granted the jail permission to hold Forbes beyond that.
Kohlwey said Thursday that Forbes hadn’t retained a lawyer yet. The Baraboo public defender’s office, which handles Columbia County cases, said Forbes hadn’t asked for representation. Public defender Mark Gumz said he hasn’t been allowed to see Forbes.
For Lane McIntyre, now 52, the arrest has generated a mix of vindication and anger. He now lives in Beaver Dam, a city of 15,000 about 40 miles northeast of Madison and a dozen miles from Columbus, where Marilyn McIntyre was killed.
Sitting on the porch of his apartment Thursday, he recounted meeting Marilyn when she was 16.
He said she had bounced from foster home to foster home, but she still cared about other people. He remembered collecting donations for UNICEF with her one Halloween and how she wouldn’t let him stop, even when he grew tired.
He said he helped her flee from an abusive foster father, and that was when she decided to marry him.
He’s known Forbes since grade school. They were mortal enemies, he said, always getting into fights until they finally became friends in high school.
But Forbes abused his girlfriend, McIntyre said, and the girlfriend turned to Marilyn McIntyre for help.
The girlfriend left Forbes a week before the killing, he said. He theorized that Forbes stopped at the McIntyre apartment looking for the girlfriend. According to court documents, Lane McIntyre told investigators the day after the murder that Forbes should be their prime suspect.
But the investigation went nowhere. Meanwhile, Lane McIntyre said, people talked about him, wondered if he did it.
His son told the Wisconsin State Journal in 2008 that stories about his father being involved in his mother’s death were a big factor in their estrangement. No phone listing for Christopher McIntyre could be found Thursday.
In 2007, the state crime lab matched DNA from the McIntyre apartment to hair samples Forbes gave police in 1980. The body was exhumed in March 2008 for collection of more evidence.
This past February detectives interviewed an informant, unnamed so far in court documents, who said he witnessed a conversation between Forbes and Forbes’ son around 2002. Forbes began talking about how he took a wife’s friend home from a bar and she didn’t breathe anymore that night.
Now Lane McIntyre, bitter and angry, is looking for payback from those who thought he killed his wife. He wants to write a book about the murder and “the way people are in a small town.”
He chose to stay in Wisconsin because an innocent man doesn’t run, he said. If the book sells, though, he hopes to retire someplace far away.
“I want to go where nobody knows me, where I don’t have to defend myself, and live the rest of my days in peace,” he said. “I have a right to be happy. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
2 charged in death of Virgin Islands law clerk
Date: 10/29/2008 5:23 PM
By JUDI SHIMEL
Associated Press Writer
CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands (AP) _ A missing lawyer who had recently moved to the U.S. Virgin Islands and became a judge’s clerk was found slain Wednesday along a dirt path in St. Thomas following an apparent robbery. Two people were charged in his death.
Authorities recovered the body of Gabriel Lerner, a clerk for a Superior Court judge in the U.S. island territory, in the rural western part of the island, a day after he was reported missing and four days after he was last seen, Police Commissioner James McCall said.
“We accomplished a lot in a short period of time,” McCall told reporters. “Unfortunately, it didn’t end the way we wanted it to.”
The police spotted Lerner’s car Tuesday afternoon and started a chase that ended when the car crashed into a police cruiser. The suspects fled into the nearby forest but were captured two hours later by Superior Court marshals, police said.
The two suspects — Devon Frett, 22, and a 17-year-old whose name was not released — were being held on charges that included murder, robbery and kidnapping. They were held without bail.
Lerner, 27, a native of the Milwaukee area, was working as a clerk for Superior Court Judge Brenda Hollar. He was last seen alive on Saturday.
Family members said Lerner, a Georgetown University Law School graduate, moved to the St. Thomas in January to take a job with a law firm before becoming a clerk and was sworn into the territory’s bar last week.
“He was offered a job down there … and thought how can you pass up an opportunity to work down in paradise, instead of cold Wisconsin,” said his sister, Arielle Lerner of Milwaukee. “We were all very jealous.”
The family planned to bury him in St. Thomas, she said.
_______
Associated Press writer Carrie Antlfinger contributed to this report from Milwaukee.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
By JUDI SHIMEL
Associated Press Writer
CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands (AP) _ A missing lawyer who had recently moved to the U.S. Virgin Islands and became a judge’s clerk was found slain Wednesday along a dirt path in St. Thomas following an apparent robbery. Two people were charged in his death.
Authorities recovered the body of Gabriel Lerner, a clerk for a Superior Court judge in the U.S. island territory, in the rural western part of the island, a day after he was reported missing and four days after he was last seen, Police Commissioner James McCall said.
“We accomplished a lot in a short period of time,” McCall told reporters. “Unfortunately, it didn’t end the way we wanted it to.”
The police spotted Lerner’s car Tuesday afternoon and started a chase that ended when the car crashed into a police cruiser. The suspects fled into the nearby forest but were captured two hours later by Superior Court marshals, police said.
The two suspects — Devon Frett, 22, and a 17-year-old whose name was not released — were being held on charges that included murder, robbery and kidnapping. They were held without bail.
Lerner, 27, a native of the Milwaukee area, was working as a clerk for Superior Court Judge Brenda Hollar. He was last seen alive on Saturday.
Family members said Lerner, a Georgetown University Law School graduate, moved to the St. Thomas in January to take a job with a law firm before becoming a clerk and was sworn into the territory’s bar last week.
“He was offered a job down there … and thought how can you pass up an opportunity to work down in paradise, instead of cold Wisconsin,” said his sister, Arielle Lerner of Milwaukee. “We were all very jealous.”
The family planned to bury him in St. Thomas, she said.
_______
Associated Press writer Carrie Antlfinger contributed to this report from Milwaukee.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Wis. shooting victims sue law enforcement leaders
Date: 10/13/2008 7:36 PM
CRANDON, Wis. (AP) _ The parents of four young people killed by a sheriff’s deputy and the lone survivor of his shooting spree last year claim in a lawsuit that the gunman’s law-enforcement superiors were negligent in supervising him and giving him access to weapons.
The lawsuit filed in Forest County Circuit Court also claims authorities knew Deputy Tyler Peterson, 20, had a history of violence, yet gave him too much decision-making responsibility.
Peterson was also a part-time Crandon policeman, and the lawsuit names Crandon Police Chief John Dennee, Forest County Sheriff Keith Van Cleve and their insurance companies as defendants.
Peterson killed his one-time girlfriend Jordanne Murray and five other people during a party at her home in Crandon on Oct. 7, 2007. Authorities have said Peterson was angered by the idea that Murray was dating someone else.
After breaking down the door, Peterson fired at least 30 shots from an AR-15 assault rifle he was issued as a member of the Forest County Sheriff’s SWAT team. Peterson shot and killed himself hours later after police efforts to get him to surrender failed.
He killed Murray, 18; Bradley Schultz, 20; Lindsey Stahl, 14; Aaron Smith, 20; Lianna Thomas, 18; and Katrina McCorkle, 18. Charlie Neitzel, 21, was shot three times but survived by playing dead.
The parents of Schultz, Stahl, Thomas and McCorkle joined Neitzel in the lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, Dennee and Van Cleve had been warned that Peterson was a “violent person and a danger,” and they knew that Peterson had abused Murray.
None of the complaints against Peterson were investigated, the lawsuit said, adding that the sheriff and police chief failed to protect the public from the dangers posed by Peterson.
Van Cleve and the city attorney for Crandon did not immediately return telephone messages Monday. The sheriff’s dispatcher who answered a call for the Crandon Police Department said Dennee was not in his office Monday afternoon.
The city of Crandon and Forest County earlier denied the families’ claims seeking more than $5 million in damages. Those decisions opened the door for the civil lawsuit.
The two insurance companies named as defendants in the lawsuit are the League of Wisconsin Municipality Mutual Insurance and Wisconsin County Mutual Insurance Corp.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
CRANDON, Wis. (AP) _ The parents of four young people killed by a sheriff’s deputy and the lone survivor of his shooting spree last year claim in a lawsuit that the gunman’s law-enforcement superiors were negligent in supervising him and giving him access to weapons.
The lawsuit filed in Forest County Circuit Court also claims authorities knew Deputy Tyler Peterson, 20, had a history of violence, yet gave him too much decision-making responsibility.
Peterson was also a part-time Crandon policeman, and the lawsuit names Crandon Police Chief John Dennee, Forest County Sheriff Keith Van Cleve and their insurance companies as defendants.
Peterson killed his one-time girlfriend Jordanne Murray and five other people during a party at her home in Crandon on Oct. 7, 2007. Authorities have said Peterson was angered by the idea that Murray was dating someone else.
After breaking down the door, Peterson fired at least 30 shots from an AR-15 assault rifle he was issued as a member of the Forest County Sheriff’s SWAT team. Peterson shot and killed himself hours later after police efforts to get him to surrender failed.
He killed Murray, 18; Bradley Schultz, 20; Lindsey Stahl, 14; Aaron Smith, 20; Lianna Thomas, 18; and Katrina McCorkle, 18. Charlie Neitzel, 21, was shot three times but survived by playing dead.
The parents of Schultz, Stahl, Thomas and McCorkle joined Neitzel in the lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, Dennee and Van Cleve had been warned that Peterson was a “violent person and a danger,” and they knew that Peterson had abused Murray.
None of the complaints against Peterson were investigated, the lawsuit said, adding that the sheriff and police chief failed to protect the public from the dangers posed by Peterson.
Van Cleve and the city attorney for Crandon did not immediately return telephone messages Monday. The sheriff’s dispatcher who answered a call for the Crandon Police Department said Dennee was not in his office Monday afternoon.
The city of Crandon and Forest County earlier denied the families’ claims seeking more than $5 million in damages. Those decisions opened the door for the civil lawsuit.
The two insurance companies named as defendants in the lawsuit are the League of Wisconsin Municipality Mutual Insurance and Wisconsin County Mutual Insurance Corp.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.