Deputies with the Union County Sheriff’s Office, Thursday afternoon, arrested 31-year old Jackie Lee Marler, of Creston. Marler was taken into custody at the Union County Courthouse on a Union County warrant for violation of a no contact/protective order.  Marler was being held in the Union County Jail without bond, pending an appearance before a judge.

A task force meets for the first time today (Friday 2 PM) to study Iowa’s old and complicated alcohol laws which some say need to be revamped. Garrett Burchett (bur-CHET), of LeClaire, will represent a dozen “micro-distilleries” on the panel. Burchett runs a vodka distillery near Davenport that opened six years ago and now, his Mississippi River Distilling attracts nearly 60-thousand people a year.

“Those people come to see the mechanics of it, they come to see how it’s made, and at the end of the day, we believe they want to sit down and have a drink,” Burchett says. “We want to do that responsibly and within the laws, within those rules, no different than any other bar or restaurant but at the same time, we want that opportunity no different than breweries and wineries.”

The LeClaire distillery is growing, selling vodka, gin and whiskey to customers in 26 states and three foreign countries. Unfortunately for Burchett, Iowa code requires small distilleries to stop producing liquor once they reach a certain limit. “At some point, we will exceed that production limit,” he says. “This company will be so successful that we’ll have to close our doors to the folks of Iowa and Illinois. We’ll have to close our front door. There’s not a brewery in the state of Iowa that has a production limit. No one walked into a brewery and said, ‘Hey, no matter how successful you are, eventually, we’re going to have to put a stop to that.'”

In addition to the production limit, Burchett says another problem is the company is only allowed to sell two bottles of liquor per day to a customer and they can’t sell any by the glass. Also, free samples are limited to two ounces per person per day. The Iowa Alcohol Policy Task Force is expected to make recommendations to the next legislature. The group’s co-chairs are the directors of the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division and Economic Development Authority. The other members represent Iowa’s beer, wine and liquor industries.

(Radio Iowa)

An investigation into the sexual assault and exploitation of 10 prepubescent girls has resulted in the conviction of a southern Iowa man. The U-S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa reports a judge on Thursday sentenced 31-year old Timothy Ryan Zollman, of Van Wert, to 120-years in federal prison, followed by a lifetime of supervised release. Zollman was earlier convicted on two counts of child pornography production, which included the videotaping of the sexual assaults.

Timothy Ryan Zollman

U-S Attorney Kevin VanderSchel said Zollman was a “Dangerous predator,” who “Was brought to justice because one of his victims, a young girl, was brave enough to report his criminal actions.”

The case was investigated by the FBI, U-S Dept. of Homeland Security, U-S Marshals Service, the Iowa DCI’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, the Decatur, Ringgold and Polk County Sheriff’s Offices, Creston Police Dept., Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and the South Dakota Dept. of Criminal Investigation. The case was prosecuted by the U-S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa, as part of the U-S Dept. of Justice’s “Project Safe Child” initiative.

Any person having knowledge of a child being sexually assaulted, is encouraged to call the Iowa Sexual Abuse Hotline, at 1-800-284-7821.