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THURSDAY • APRIL 10 • 2014
Disabled veteran a victim in bizarre theft
Education commissioner accepts job in Abu Dhabi
By Giles Bruce Twitter: @GilesBruce
Chris Sorrentino finished putting at the 10th green of the Alvamar members golf course one day in March when he turned around ... and his golf cart was missing. Not only the cart, but his golf clubs, his iPhone, his keys. “I was I was kind kind of of dumbdumbfoundfounded. ed,” said Sorrentino, I thought I who was was going golfing alone nuts.” that day. “I thought I — Chris Sorrentino was going nuts.” He looked down an embankment, thinking the cart may have rolled down it. Nothing. He asked a couple coming back from the clubhouse. Nothing. He stopped at a nearby home, notified the police and logged into Apple iCloud to locate his phone using the Find My Phone app. It was on the 13th fairway. But where were his clubs?
By Peter Hancock phancock@ljworld.com
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Please see THEFT, page 4A
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Nick Krug/Journal-World Photo
ON A RECENT OUTING AT ALVAMAR GOLF and Country Club, Lawrence resident Chris Sorrentino had a bag of clubs and his iPhone stolen when thieves drove off with his golf cart. Sorrentino later recovered his 6 iron, which he is pictured with, but says that his clubs, some of which he has had since high school, held sentimental value.
Topeka — Kansas Education Commissioner Diane DeBacker announced her resignation Wednesday to accept a job in the Middle East. DeBacker, 53, said she will become an adviser to the director general of the Abu Dhabi Education Council in the United Arab Emirates and will provide counsel to the Abu Dhabi education system. The resignation is effective May 14. Deputy Commissioner Brad Neuenswander will be interim commissioner. “I’m really leaving my DeBacker comfort zone,” DeBacker said, adding that she was born in St. Marys and has lived her entire life in eastern Kansas. The announcement came at the end of the State Board of Education’s monthly meeting in Topeka. Most of the agency’s roughly 200 employees gathered in the board room to hear the announcement. And when Board Chairwoman Jana Shaver, R-Independence, called the vote to accept DeBacker’s resignation, nearly all of the staff raised their hands to say no. DeBacker has led the State Department of Education since October 2009, when Please see EDUCATION, page 2A
Martin Miller bonds out of jail as he awaits retrial of 2004 murder case A man awaiting a retrial of a 2004 murder case bonded out of Douglas County Jail on Wednesday. Martin K. Miller, 55, had been held on a $250,000 bond since being transferred from Lansing on March 19. Miller’s murder conviction
was overturned on Feb. 14 based on an incorrect jury instruction. He had been sentenced in 2005 to 25 years to life in prison for the July 28, 2004, death of his wife, but the Kansas Supreme Court said that the written jury instruction that District Judge
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in her sleep because he had been having an affair with another woman and he wanted to collect $300,000 in life insurance. Miller is scheduled to return to court on May 1 to schedule a new trial date. During a March 27 court
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Paula Martin gave jurors had been in error. A Douglas County jury convicted Miller of first-degree murder for the July 28, 2004, death of Mary E. Miller, 46, at the family’s central Lawrence home. Prosecutors accused Miller of strangling his wife
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appearance, Miller’s attorney said Miller would arrange to live with his wife, Laura Cuthbertson, and her father at a home in Paola. Miller and Cuthbertson married while Miller was in prison in 2006. —By Stephen Montemayor
Bill clarification Kansas House Speaker Ray Merrick sought to clarify details of a bill dealing with tenure for K-12 teachers. Page 3A
Miller
Vol.156/No.99 32 pages