SANTA ANA, California (KCRG) – A John Doe homicide victim who was discovered 49 years ago in southern California has finally been identified. KCRG reports the victim was from eastern Iowa.  Authorities in California, say that on September 14th, 1974, a deceased teenage male was located near an off-road. Authorities at the time determined his death to be accidental, due to alcohol and diazepam intoxication in his system. They also determined he died 3 to 5 days before his body was found. At the time, officials were unable to establish his identity. Then, in 1980, Orange County, California, Homicide investigators noted that there were other young male deaths in 1978 due to alcohol and diazepam intoxication in that same area. The deaths were classified as homicides.

In 1983, Randy Steven Kraft, later known as the “Scorecard Killer” was arrested for murder after a highway patrol officer conducted a traffic stop on Kraft and located a deceased male in the front passenger seat. In the trunk of Kraft’s vehicle was a coded list believed to be upwards of 67 victims. John Doe was believed to be an early victim of his. Kraft was eventually convicted of 16 murders and sentenced to death. He is currently incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison.

In November 2022, Orange County investigators submitted tissue samples for John Doe to a private forensic biotechnology company to develop a DNA profile. In October 2023, after months of work building the genealogy database, investigators identified the possible grandparents of John Doe. After obtaining a DNA sample from a woman believed to be the mother of John Doe, investigators were able to positively identify John Doe as Michael Ray Schlicht, of Cedar Rapids, IA.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department says that family members have been notified and are in the process of having a headstone installed to mark his final resting place. Investigators are continuing to work on Michael’s case. Anyone with information related to this case is encouraged to contact Orange County Crime Stoppers at 1-855-TIP-OCCS or crimestoppers.org.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa State University’s Extension Department has grants available for organizations to use to grow vegetables for food banks. Katie Sorrell is the coordinator for the “Growing Together Iowa” grant program. “Communities either start a garden or they convert a previous community garden. And all of the produce grown at these gardens is donated to local food pantries, along with nutrition education materials,” she says. Sorrell says Grow Together was created after they got a grant to educate people on the SNAP program, which used to be known as food stamps.

“Back in 2016, we were brainstorming how can we combine this nutrition education grant we have along with the Master Gardener Program. And that’s where we dreamed up this growing together Iowa program” Sorrell says. “So it’s been going on, this will be our eighth year as we enter into 2024.” The funding from the U-S-D-A provide for grants of up to four-thousand dollars. “The county extension office staff work closely with Master Gardeners and with staff at the local food pantry, and usually they create a new garden, whether that’s with raised garden beds or an in-ground garden, specifically for that donation piece,” she explains. Sorrell says the food grown in the gardens is popular.

“When we asked food pantry clients, what would you most like to see in the food pantry? Like what foods would you most want to have? Fresh fruits and vegetables are almost always at the top of the list because all cultures use fresh fruits and vegetables. It’s not tied with a certain culture,” she says. Sorrell says having the fresh fruits and vegetables at the food pantries gives people a healthy option, and it frees up food dollars they can spend on other items. They had 33 Growing Together Iowa county projects in 2023. “And they donated to 100 pantries. And you won’t believe this, they donated 103-thousand pounds of fresh produce to local pantries,” Sorrell says.

December 18th is the deadline to sign up. You can find the application on the I-S-U Extension website.

(Radio Iowa) – The husband of a Sioux City woman convicted of voter fraud says he intends to complete his term on the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors. Jeremy Taylor’s term ends next year. His wife was convicted last week of illegally collecting votes in Sioux City’s Vietnamese community for her husband when he was running for office in 2020. Mathew Ung, chairman of the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors, is among those who’ve called on Taylor to resign.

“Three of us have made public comment on this matter,” Ung says, “which is as good as a proclamation at a board meeting.” During Tuesday’s Woodbury County Board of Supervisors meeting, Ung again questioned whether Taylor was unaware of his wife’s election-related activities. “It’s hard to imagine a world where what actions and steps that were taken by one were not known by the other and that is where there’s a lot of public heartburn,” Ung says. Taylor has agreed to step down from his role as vice chair of the county board.

“But I will work hard to continue to complete my term and then I will focus on my family, because this has been very hard on them,” Taylor said. Taylor and his wife are the parents of six children. Woodbury County Auditor Pat Gill is calling on the board to ask Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird to investigate both Jeremy and Kim Taylor’s activities during the primary and general elections in 2020.

Taylor, who is a Republican, has accused Gill, who is a Democrat, of trying to get him fired from his job in the Sioux City school district while he was deployed to Iraq. Taylor is an Iowa National Guard chaplain. Taylor did resign from the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors in early 2020 after the address listed on his voter registration was successfully challenged. Taylor lost a bid for congress in the June Primary that year, then was reelected to the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors in November of 2020.

(Radio Iowa) – Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy says the government should not grant carbon pipeline developers authority to seize land from Iowans who do not want the pipeline on their property.  “You have a lot of other Republicans that have been trained to behave like circus monkeys on this issue. You’re supposed to dance to the tune of certain puppet masters. I refuse to do that,” Ramaswamy says. “Eminent domain should not be an option for anything to do with a carbon dioxide pipeline because it is not necessary.”

On Friday in Des Moines, Ramaswamy will appear at an event with a group of carbon pipeline opponents called the Free Soil Coalition. “Eminent domain is legally inappropriate,” Ramaswamy says. “I believe it is illegal and unconstitutional and I would like for at least Republicans to have the spine to stand up and at least speak that obvious truth.” Ramaswamy says his competitors for the G-O-P presidential nomination should clearly state their views on the issue. He’s also challenging Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, who has endorsed rival Ron DeSantis, to say whether she’s on the side of eminent domain or not.

“Anybody who is implicitly or explicitly supporting the use of eminent domain for this carbon dioxide capture pipeline is on the wrong side of this issue,” Ramaswamy says. “I don’t care if they have an R after their name. I don’t care if they’re a governor you’re supposed to otherwise bow down to in the state of Iowa.” Ramaswamy says the issue exposes what he describes as the broken and corrupt state of the Republican Party establishment.  “And I’m frankly ashamed of a Republican Party that hasn’t had the spine to speak up about an issue that matters to this many constituents,” Ramaswamy says.

Ramaswamy says he’s met with influential Republican donor Bruce Rastetter, who owns Summit Carbon Solutions — the Iowa company seeking a state permit to construct and operate a pipeline to ship carbon out of ethanol plants to underground storage in North Dakota. Ramaswamy says pipeline backers are welcome to show up at Friday’s event to have a civil, open debate about the Summit and Wolf pipelines. Ramaswamy says the projects make no sense and the risks of running liquid carbon through an underground pipeline do not match the purported benefits.

(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa author who wrote the novel that was turned into a movie featuring Julia Roberts has died. Nancy Jane Price’s 1987 novel “Sleeping with the Enemy” was set in her hometown of Cedar Falls and turned into the film of the same name that and featured Roberts.

Price taught at U-N-I and “Sleeping with the Enemy” was her third novel along with dozens of others and hundreds of poems. Price was 98 and died November 20th. She had just completed her final novel, which is also set in Cedar Falls, and will be released next year.

(Radio Iowa) – Temperatures are going to warm up in Iowa as we hit midweek. National Weather Service meteorologist, Alexis Jimenez, says temperatures will be more normal. “With highs tomorrow in the low to mid 40s. And then kind of dropping off into the 40s, low 40s again on Thursday, with a passing system and with some rain to the far southeast,” she says. Those temperatures would melt the snow, and that helps keep things warmer.

“Certainly with snow on the ground it keeps our temperatures lower a little bit, but once we push above freezing, that snow melts off and that effect kind of goes away,” Jimenez says. Jimenez says there doesn’t appear to be any big cold stretches coming up for now. “We’ll just sort of just trend on those lower temperatures as we get into December and approach the winter months here. But thankfully, generally we’re going to be near average for the foreseeable future,” she says.

Jimenez works out of the Johnston office and says the monthly snow total for Des Moines is running a little ahead of average. “The normal value is right at two inches for the month and we’ve had two-point-six inches so far. So we’re right on par with what we would usually want to see. November is generally a pretty dry month is because it’s getting into that colder season,” Jimenez says.

She says we might get some more snow into late Saturday into Sunday, especially for northern Iowa.

(Radio Iowa) – The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa has filed a federal lawsuit that seeks to overturn parts of a new state law that forbids instruction about sexual orientation in elementary classrooms. It also requires schools to remove books with graphic sexual content and school administrators are to notify a parent when a student asks to be known by a different name or pronoun at school.

The lawsuit is filed on behalf of Iowa Safe Schools, a group that advocates for LGBTQ youth, and seven families with students in Iowa schools. Berry Stevens, a student in West Des Moines, spoke during an online news conference late this morning. “I am participating in this lawsuit because this law hurts all kinds of kids and it hurts many of my personal friends,” Stevens said. “We deserve to be able to express ourselves safely at school and we deserve to see ourselves in media, especially in books.”

Percy Batista-Pedro of Waterloo, the leader of his high school’s gay-straight alliance, called the law blatant discrimination. “I’m scared of being harassed if I wear pride apparel or if I talk about my identity in class,” the 16 year old said. “This fear, which is shared by many of my transgender friends, is why I have chosen to be a plaintiff in this case.”

Belinda Scarott, Percy’s mom, said the law is unnecessarily cruel. “This law only serves to make life more perilous for him and more terrifying for me,” Scarott said. “…I spend my days worrying about what potential damage the school day might do to my child’s physical or mental well-being.”

Thomas Story, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, contends the state law violates free speech and equal protection provisions in the U.S. Constitution. “This law is deeply confusing and schools have been at a loss on how to comply, even after consulting with their attorneys,” Story said. “This law has thrown the school year into chaos.”

Lambda Legal, which represented same-sex couples who successfully sued for the right to marry in Iowa, is also representing the students and parents who’ve filed this lawsuit.

“Protecting children from pornography and sexually explicit content shouldn’t be controversial,” Governor Kim Reynolds said in a written statement released early this afternoon. “…Books with graphic depictions of sex acts have absolutely no place in our schools.”

Atlantic, IA – Cass Health officials said Tuesday (Today), the newest DAISY Award winning nurse is Michelle Gelner, RN, BSN. Her nominator wrote, “I came to the emergency room at about 12:30 am and was seen immediately by the nurse. Her professional manner, knowledge, and care were exemplary. She stayed with me in every respect – her calm manner and kindness relieved my anxiety, which came as a result of convulsive coughing and inability to catch my breath. She accompanied me and helped me through a number of exams, including blood work and x-rays. I felt so cared for an I really appreciated it. She was focused, professional, patient and caring.”

Gelner commented, “It is an honor to be selected for the DAISY Award. I didn’t go into this career looking for gratitude and recognition. When I decided to leave the Army, I wanted a career that would positively impact people’s lives. I also wanted a career that was challenging, flexible, and had diverse opportunities. Nursing also allows you to build a family with your patients, coworkers, and community. I loved hearing that my patient felt at ease, cared for, and valued while in the Emergency Department. This award is not just for me, it is for the team effort to provide that best patient care possible.”

Since joining Cass Health in 2019, Gelner has lead the way in delivering high-quality clinical care and exceptional patient experiences in many departments – among them, OB, inpatient, emergency and as a house supervisor. Gelner recently took on a leadership role and is now the Director of Cardiac Rehab.

Chief Operating Officer Amanda Bireline presented the award to Gelner and said, “As expected, she is already shining as a leader – gaining the trust of her teams and the patients they serve. Michelle is level-headed, collaborative, steadfast and, more than many, understands the value of the human relationship,”

Nurses at Cass Health are honored twice annually with The DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurses.® The award is part of the DAISY Foundation’s mission to recognize the extraordinary, compassionate care nurses provide to patients and families every day. The DAISY Award committee at Cass Health thanks all nominators for their submissions. Each nurse who was nominated will be presented with a special pin and a copy of the nomination.

The DAISY Foundation is a not-for-profit organization, established in memory of J. Patrick Barnes, by members of his family. Patrick died at the age of 33 in late 1999 from complications of Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (ITP), a little known but not uncommon auto-immune disease. (DAISY is an acronym for Diseases Attacking the Immune System.) The care Patrick and his family received from nurses while he was ill inspired this unique means of thanking nurses for making a profound difference in the lives of their patients and patient families.

This is one initiative of The DAISY Foundation to express gratitude to the nursing profession. Additionally, DAISY offers J. Patrick Barnes Grants for Nursing Research and Evidence-Based Practice Projects, The DAISY Faculty Award to honor inspiring faculty members in schools and colleges of nursing, and The DAISY in Training Award for nursing students.

More information is available at http://DAISYfoundation.org. An online nomination form is available at https://www.casshealth.org/daisy.

Atlantic, IA – The December session of Cass Health’s Healthy U lunch-and-learn series will feature cardiologist Dr. John Henry. The session will be held on Tuesday, December 5 at noon in Conference Room 2 at Cass Health.

Space is limited! A free boxed lunch is provided for all attendees, so reservations are required. Call 712-243-7479 to reserve your seat. For more information about Healthy U, visit casshealth.org/healthyu.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – The Atlantic School Board will hold a regular, Annual meeting beginning at 5:30-p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 29th, in the High School Media Center (On YouTube, HERE). On their agenda is the Final Meeting of the Retiring board, and Organizational Meeting of the New Board. Those respective agenda’s are as follows: (Updated agenda as of 3:34-p.m. 11/28)

Final Meeting of the Retiring Board
1. Call to Order, Board President
2. Roll Call, Board Secretary
3. Approve agenda
4. Welcome Visitors/Communication from the Public
5. Unfinished Business
a. Approval of November 8, 2023 Board Minutes
b. Highlights from Iowa School Board Convention
c. Presentation of IASB Award(s)
d. Resignations and/or Recommendations to Hire
i. Resignation: Kelli Evans, High School Nurse
ii. Resignation: Tori Brummer, Freshman Volleyball Coach
iii. Resignation: Megan Andersen, Kitchen Staff
iv. Recommendation to Hire: Kelli Evans, Director of Health Services
v. Recommendation to Hire: Megan Andersen, Media Center Para
e. Modification consideration for Early Retirement Plan for Certified Staff
f. Consideration of Early Retirement for Non-Certified Staff
g. Review 2022-2023 fiscal year
h. Review of Election Results, Abstract of Votes
i. Recognition to Jenny Williams and Nick Hunt
6. Adjournment of Retiring Board

Organizational Meeting of the New Board
Board Secretary as President pro tem will preside over meeting until new board president is elected
1. Call to Order
2. Roll Call
3. Oath of Office to new Board Directors (Gini Jordan & Jodi Stowater-Goodrich)
4. Election of a President for the Board, Ask for nominations. Nominations do not need seconded
a. Administer Oath of Office to new Board President
5. Election of Vice President, President asks for nominations. Nominations do not need to be seconded
a. Oath of office to new Board Vice-President
6. Appoint Board Secretary and Treasurer
a. Oath of office to Board Secretary/Treasurer
7. Appoint Cass County Conference Board Representative
8. Determining dates, time and location for regular board meetings
9. Establish Official Publication
10. Designate Legal Counsel
11. Appoint signers for District checks
12. Resolution for District’s Depository Institution and maximum deposit amount
13. Adjournment of Organizational Meeting