Hard Boiled News

True Crime and News of the Weird from around the Globe

Dad Killed in Senseless Bar Fight Over Dog’s Weight

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Scott Beary was shot when he told man he couldn’t believe his dog weighed 290 pounds

FLORISSANT, Missouri — A Missouri father of three was senselessly shot to death after a dumb argument at a bar over the weight of dog turned violent, police and witnesses said.

Scott Beary’s death dealt a double-blow to his family coming five days after they had buried a daughter who was born prematurely and died after just two weeks.

And so far, the gunman has been allowed to go free because the state’s “stand your ground” laws have complicated matters for prosecutors.

The deadly turn of events occured when Beary, 43, had stopped in Show Me’s Sports Bar and Grill in Florissant with a pal last Wednesday after getting off work, police said.

Beary, who was described by friends as “a big, lovable guy,” got into a conversation with some other patrons. The mood turned when one of the men boasted that he had a German shepard that weighed 290 pounds and Beary expressed disbelief, witnesses told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

“I know, it sounds ridiculous,” witness Carl Leavy said. “[Beary] said, ‘I’m 325 pounds, I can’t even fathom a dog as big as I am,’

The man insisted Beary go out to his car where the dog was to see for himself, but Beary then took a phone call and never left the bar, witnesses said.

The dog owner and his pal — who witnesses say pulled the gun — went outside and soon returned in an “agitated” mood. As the bartender sought to usher them out, Beary went to settle his tab and tried to calm things down by saying “no hard feelings.”

The gunman then called Beary a “fat fuck,” Leavy said. Beary turned back towards the man, who pulled out a gun and shot Beary in the chest. Another man, Ryan Jacobsmeyer, was also wounded.

Other patrons managed to disarm the gunman and held him until police arrived. The 54-year-old man was initially taken into custody, but was released on Friday. Prosecutors say they were unable to immediately charge him due to the state’s “stand-your-ground” laws. The investigation is ongoing, however, and charges may still be filed.

His name has not been released by police because he has not been charged.

Beary, who worked as a construction worker for a firm that did emergency repairs in disaster zones following hurricanes and tornadoes, leaves behind his wife and three teenage children.

Tanning Salon Kingpin Sentenced to 20 Years in Bizarre Kidnap

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Massage and tanning tycoon Todd Berman was sentenced to 20 years

ST. LOUIS — The former CEO and founder of a national chain of tanning salons and massage parlors was sentenced to 20 years in prison in a bizarre and terrifying kidnapping of a thief who stole his marijuana.

Todd Beckman, 53, admitted he directed his cohorts in November 2016 to bring the bound and gagged victim to his home where they held unloaded guns to his head and repeatedly pulled the trigger, before extracting a ransom from his parents.

Beckman ran Bam Brands, which operated franchises of Tan Co., MassageLuXe, Xist Fitness and LifeXist in 11 states. But he also running a large scale marijuana business, shipping 50- to 80-pound bundles of weed to his office in Missouri.

But Beckman took a violent turn after the victim broke into his home and stole 24 pounds of marijuana and $15,000 cash, authorities said.

A month later, Beckman dispatched brothers Caleb and Blake Laubinger to break into the victim’s home, bind him with zip ties and bring him to a basement where Beckman pistol-whipped the man and fired the unloaded gun at his head numerous times.

They then called the victim’s parents, demanding cash not to kill him. Two days later, the parents agreed to send $27,000 for their son’s release.

Beckman and the others were arrested soon after. He pleaded guilty last November to one felony count of conspiracy to commit kidnapping.

Drunk Charged in Choking Death After Mistaking Neighbor’s House For His Own

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Cops say Michael Augustine was blotto when he bumbled into his neighbor’s house

RAYTOWN, Missouri — A drunken Missouri man who accidentally stumbled into a neighbor’s house thinking it was his own, has been charged with strangling his neighbor to death after confusing him for an intruder.

Police in Raytown found Michael Augustine, 43, on top of 60-year-old Clifton King in the front yard of King’s house as they responded to a call for an intruder.

“That’s right. I f—ed him up!” Augustine told the officers as they checked for King’s pulse, the Kansas City Star reported.

Police say Augustine reeked of booze and was slurring his speech. He was charged with first-degree manslaughter

A neighbor told WDAF-TV that King was a military veteran.

“He served our country and that was not an honorable way to treat him,” the woman said. “I think that it’s sad. It’s sad! Someone had to give up their life because someone was so messed up they didn’t know it wasn’t their home.”

Involuntary manslaughter  carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a minimum sentence of three years.

 

Burned Bagel Triggers Major Airport Evacuation

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No one likes a burned bagel

ST. LOUIS — A burned bagel prompted the evacuation of hundreds of people from the airport in St. Louis into the frigid night after triggering off alarms across a terminal.

The overly toasted bagel sparked the evacuation of terminal 2 at St. Louis Lambert International Airport around 6 p.m. on Tuesday, forcing between 300 and 400 Southwest Airline passengers outside where temperatures had dipped to around 11 degrees.

The matter was quickly resolved anad the airport began rescreening people after about 30 minutes.

“For a while, I was convinced I wasn’t going to make the flight. We’re on the last flight to Boston, and I was convinced I wasn’t going to make the flight. But they turned it around very, very quickly, got everyone through security, and it turned out to be, at least for me, a non-issue,” passenger Claude Greer told KDSK-TV.

No Scrubs: Man Shoots at Woman Who Refused To Give Her Phone Number

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KANSAS CITY — Time to develop a thicker skin.

Cops are searching for a man who fired a gun at a woman who refused to give him her phone number after he started hassling her in the street.

The 22-year-old woman said she was walking to church in Kansas City Thursday afternoon, when two men pulled up next to her in car. One of the men started yelling at her, but she ignored him and called her mother on her cellphone instead.

“He was like, ‘Can I have your number?’ I said no and kept walking. So he kind of pulled up a little bit in front of me and then shot at the ground right next to me,” the woman told WDAF-TV.

The woman, whose name was withheld, said he then yelled at her in a nasty tone that she “better watch how she talks to people.”

No one was hurt, but the woman said she was quite shaken up.

“I know it’s going to take a while, but I hope it doesn’t stop me from living my life,” she said.

She told investigators that the car was a black Nissan or similar sedan model, with Chiefs flags flying windows on both sides of the car. No arrests have been made.

Former NBA Star Kermit Washington Pleads Guilty in Charity Scam

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Kermit Washington played five seasons with the Lakers including 1977, the year of the infamous punch

KANSAS CITY — Former NBA star Kermit Washington has pleaded guilty to pocketing close to $250,000 meant to help needy people in Africa as part of a broad charity scam.

Washington, 66, played 11 seasons in the NBA but is most famous for landing a roundhouse punch on Houston Rockets great Rudy Tomjanovich in a 1977 brawl that shattered his face and ended his playing career.

He admitted that he used money earmarked for his charity, Project Contact Africa, to pay for his own expenses and pleaded guilty to charges of identity theft and filing phony tax returns. He faces up to eight years in federal prison.

The case against Washington was closely connected to separate fraud investigations involving NFL Hall of Famer Ron Mix and a man who pleaded guilty to running one of the biggest software piracy cases ever prosecuted in the U.S.

Mix, 79, who became a worker’s compensation attorney after his playing days, was accused of funneling money into Washington’s charity as kickback payments for athlete clients the retired hoopster had steered his way. He pleaded guilty in 2016 to falsely claiming the payments as charitable donations on his tax return.

Washington also took money from Reza Davachi, 43, who pleaded guilty in 2015 to selling over $100 million in pirated software. He admitted using the Project Contact Africa Paypal account to process payments, avoiding hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees as the transactions were considered charitable donations.

A 6-foot-8 power forward, Washington  averaged 9.2 points and 8.3 rebounds per game during his career during which he mostly played for the Los Angeles Lakers but also had stints with the Celtics, the Clippers, the Trailblazers and the Warriors.

But he never lived down the infamy of delivering the 1977 on-court punch that ended Tomjanovich’s playing days.

Tomjanovich, 69, went on to coach the Houston Rockets for 13 seasons from 1991-2003, winning two championships.

 

 

‘I Blew Half His Face Off’ — Loudmouth Killer Boasts to Undercover Cop

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KANSAS CITY — It’s the kind of thing you probably don’t want to be blabbing about all over town.

A Kansas City drug dealer landed himself in major trouble when he admitted the details of a grisly slaying he committed a few days earlier to an undercover cop he was selling drugs to, prosecutors allege.

Orval Johnson, 24, was meeting with the officer for the fourth time to sell him cocaine in March and made the eye-popping confession when the cop noticed a gun hanging out of Johnson’s pants and asked what was going on.

“They tried to rob me out there the other day and shit,” Johnson allegedly said, according to an affidavit filed in federal court. “I had to kill that bastard, blew half his fucking face off.”

“He tried rob me and kill me and my bitch, I blew half his fuckin face off,” Johnson allegedly continued. He then told the cop that he had his girlfriend “play the rape thing,” meaning she’d shot the man in self defense because he tried to rape her.

A review of recent killings in the area quickly turned up the shooting death four days earlier of 30-year-old Ricky Boswell in which a woman told cops she shot him because he had tried to rape her. Turns out the woman was Johnson’s girlfriend.

After being taken in for questioning, Johnson admitted that he had met with Boswell to sell him cocaine, but that Boswell pulled out a gun to rob him. The two men scuffled, and Johnson said he told his girlfriend to give him his gun. She shot Boswell and when he then tried to attack her, Johnson admitted he shot him several times, killing him. He then wiped his DNA off the gun and concocted the rape story with his girlfriend to cover his tracks.

Johnson has been charged with distribution and possession with intent to distribute drugs, possession of a firearm during a drug trafficking crime and being a drug user in possession of a firearm. He has not been charged with Boswell’s killing.

 

At the time of his death, Boswell had only been out of jail for three months after serving four years in a murder case.

 

Missing Man’s Corpse Sat Unnoticed in Car for 8 Months at Airport Parking Lot

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Randy Potter allegedly sat dead in a busy parking lot since January

KANSAS CITY — A man who went missing eight months ago has been found dead inside a car parked at a lot at the Kansas City airport where he apparently shot himself in January and had sat unnoticed ever since.

Randy Potter’s family is outraged that his body hadn’t been discovered sooner as it sat in a busy parking lot for months. When he was found, his body was so decomposed investigators couldn’t immediately tell its gender or race, the Kansas City Star reported.

Police believe Potter committed suicide not long after he was last seen on Jan. 17 and his truck was found on the ground level of a short- and long-term lot. His relatives say they had approached airport authorities early on in their hunt for him and were told if his 2014 Dodge Ram pickup were in one of their lots, it would be found.

But it wasn’t until someone noticed a foul stench coming from the vehicle.

“How is it possible, in America?” said Potter’s wife, Carolina. “A truck sitting there for eight months? He could have been found a lot sooner if everybody had done their job.”

The family has hired a lawyer. Kansas City police say they are investigating what had gone wrong, although they noted that airport authorities had 25,000 parking spaces to check.

“How many thousands of people drove by the vehicle? How many people walked by?” Potter’s niece, Melissa Alderman told the paper. “It’s disgusting. And it’s infuriating. It’s a total disregard for human life.”

Day Care Operator Charged With Trying to Kidnap Infant to Put Up for Adoption

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JOPLIN, Missouri — It’s every parent’s worst nightmare.

A woman running a Missouri day care center has been charged with plotting to kidnap a 5-month-old baby in her care and give her to another family in Arkansas in an illegal adoption, authorities said.

Lasonya Poindexter, 30, ran the daycare out of her home with her younger sister and began taking care of Ashley and Christian Still’s daughter a few days a week in April, federal prosecutors said.

In June, Poindexter allegedly contacted a couple in Lincoln, Arkansas and began making arrangements for them to adopt the little girl she was caring for even though her parents had no intention of giving her up, prosecutors said.

Over the coming months, authorities say Poindexter made at least four 100-mile trips to Arkansas to bring the baby to meet the prospective new parents, who were unaware that she had no authority to do so. The duped couple went so far as to build a nursery in their home.

Lasonya Poindexter

Investigators say Poindexter told the couple that the baby had been the product of a rape and that the mother had left the child with Poindexter asking her to find it a home. She told them that the mother wanted a “closed adoption” and didn’t want to meet them.

But the couple eventually grew suspicious as Poindexter’s story about who would pay for the adoption changed and she repeatedly declined the couple’s offer to drive to Missouri to see the child.

The plot unraveled in July when the prospective mother spotted a photo of Ashley Stills with the baby through Poindexter’s daughter’s Facebook page. Further review of other photos revealed that Stills appeared to be the baby’s mother. When the woman messaged Stills, she discovered the baby had not been put up for adoption and the Stills contacted authorities.

When confronted by the prospective mother, Poindexter later told authorities that she considered offering them another child in her care.

She has been charged with attempted kidnapping.

Liberal Bumper Stickers Triggers Road Rage Gun Incident in the Ozarks

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Laura Umphenour’s car features these stickers

OZARK, Missouri — A conservative motorist was arrested after pulling a gun and waving it at the driver of a car bearing liberal bumper stickers, causing her to crash, police said.

Police in Ozark, Missouri say Edward Burns, 48, pulled up alongside Laura Umphenour’s car and flashed an “L” hand sign at her. When she then flipped him the bird, he responded by pulling a Smith & Wesson .380 handgun from his waistband and pointing it to her.

Umphenour said she was startled by the sight of the gun, and swerved, striking Burn’s vehicle and then slamming into the guardrail. When cops arrived, Burns at first denied pulling the gun, but then fessed up.

“I made a bad choice,” he told police, according to the Kansas City Star. He added he thought the woman’s bumper stickers were “stupid.,”

Edward Burns told cops he felt triggered by Umphenour’s bumper stickers

According to the police report, Burns said he is a conservative.

Umphenour’s car features bumper stickers such as “Hillary Clinton 2016,” “Right to work is a rip off,” “Resist,” “Coexist” and “Because of my faith I vote for Democrats.”

Burns was charged with felony unlawful use of a weapon and was released on $5,000 bond.