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|JUNE 15, 2016|VOLUME 127| ISSUE 24
www.thegraphic-advocate.com
Batz bests Norine by 9 votes for Auditor nomination; Legore tops Republican field for Supervisor
NEWS Core, former teacher, killed in Guthrie County crash Former Lake City teacher, coach and athletic director Robert Core died in a single vehicle crash Friday afternoon. Page 2
NEWS Council recommends tweaks to Lake City police body camera policies Council tries to iron out the details for Lake City police officers to wear body cameras. Page 2
NEWS IUB allows Dakota Access to begin construction After a split vote, the Iowa Utilities Board gave the green light to begin construction for the oil pipeline. Page 8
NEIGHBORS CAASA has new Calhoun County advocate Jenny Ahlers is the new Calhoun County Sexual Assualt Advocate for CAASA. Page 10
SPORTS Titan baseball team now 8-6 overall Page 11
2016
IN THIS WEEK’S ISSUE Worship/Obits ..........page 5 Classifieds ................page 6 Legals ...................page 8 - 9 Sports ...................... page 11
By Erin Sommers Graphic-Advocate Editor
Calhoun County Sheriff Bill Davis shows a jury the gun allegedly used to shoot and kill Dale Potter Nov. 10 in Pomeroy. Freddy Crisp, of Pomeroy, is on trial this week for the shooting. Davis testified Tuesday afternoon. GRAPHIC-ADVOCATE PHOTO/ERIN SOMMERS
Freddy Crisp, who faces a firstdegree murder charge, testifies Thursday morning at the Calhoun County courthouse. GRAPHICA D V O C AT E PHOTO/ERIN SOMMERS
GUILTY
Jury finds Crisp guilty of first-degree murder By Erin Sommers Graphic-Advocate Editor Freddy Crisp barely moved when the jury who had heard the evidence against him brought in their verdict – guilty of first-degree murder. Crisp will face the possibility of life in prison without parole when he is sentenced July 22. It took jurors just more than an hour to find Crisp guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting death of
Dale Potter Nov. 10 in Pomeroy. Prosecutors urged the jury to make the finding, but jurors had the option to convict Crisp, 49, on lesser charges, ranging from second-degree murder down to assault. Judge Kurt Stoebe polled the jury panel; all 12 said they voted for the verdict. Crisp showed little emotion upon hearing the verdict. His family members quietly cried as they waited outside of the courtroom to speak with him one last time before he was tak-
en from the courthouse to Webster County, where he will be held pending sentencing. Calhoun County Attorney Tina Meth Farrington and Assistant Attorney General Susan Krisko explained to jurors why the crime fit the definition of first-degree murder – a premeditated, willful act. “He wants you think he’s justified,” Meth Farrington said. “The evidence is there – if you load your gun with a hollow point bullet (to eliminate a threat quickly), you in-
tend to kill them.” Her comment referred to a statement Crisp made to an Iowa Department of Public Safety Division of Criminal Investigation agent, in which Crisp said he always put one hollow point bullet in his handgun’s magazine. The bullet was always the last round in, to make it the first to be fired. Hollow point bullets typically cause more damage upon impact, as they mushroom and fragment once hitting a target.
See Guilty Page 10
Experts provide jurors brief instruction on evidence analysis By Erin Sommers Graphic-Advocate Editor Jurors hearing the case presented to prove the first-degree murder charge against Freddy Crisp last week were given a brief introduction to some of the finer points – and challenges – of evidence analysis. The first lesson in the case came when Calhoun County Sheriff Bill Davis displayed Crisp’s .40-caliber handgun for jurors to see Tuesday afternoon. The gray gun had taken on a pinkish hue, the result of tests run to check the gun for fingerprints. Davis’ testimony on the subject led to that of another witness, Dennis Kern, who works in the Iowa Department of Public Safety’s Division of Criminal Investigation’s firearms lab. Kern explained that his laboratory finds fingerprints on less than 10 percent of guns they test. “It’s the norm not to find fingerprints,” Kern said. Though investigators seized more than 20 guns from Crisp’s home, they focused testing efforts on the two handguns first – the Glock .40-calilber belonging to the victim, Dale Potter, and Crisp’s FNH .40-caliber gun. Both men had their guns with them, comparing them
throughout the afternoon and evening, witnesses testified, and both had them holstered in the truck before the fatal shooting. Kern said he found Potter’s fingerprint on his Glock, but no prints on Crisp’s gun. “If the hands were extremely dry, there’s no moisture to transfer,” Kern said. The same is true of very wet hands, which also typically do not leave any fingerprints, and on dirty surfaces, where it is difficult to find prints. Holstering a gun can wipe away fingerprint residue, Kern said. His lab quit processing ammunition in search of fingerprints, because well less than 1 percent of bullet casings had a print that could be retrieved. “It was such a low yield, it was a waste of laboratory time,” Kern said. Wednesday morning, DCI Criminalist Victor Murillo took the stand to talk about ballistics – comparing the bullet fragments removed from Potter’s skull and the cartridge found on the seat of the truck in which Potter died with bullets and cartridges fired from both men’s guns. Murillo explained why the bullet that killed Potter had “mushroomed” upon entering Potter’s skull – the bullet was a hollow-point round, which is designed to get bigger and cause more damage upon impact.
June 7
June 8
During opening statements, attorney Jason Carlstrom offered the first details into the defense case – that Dale Potter had claimed he would rape Freddy Crisp’s daughters, and that the only way for Crisp to stop him was to kill him. Crisp told investigators Potter made the comments while they men were discussing democracy. Crisp’s neighbor, Karen Juilfs, testified first, describing how she saw Crisp and Potter, whom she did not know, off and on from about 3 p.m. Nov. 9 until about 12:30 a.m. Nov. 10. About 15 minutes later, Juilfs heard a loud noise that she described sounding like a chair being thrown at a wall. She heard repeated, similar sounds a few minutes later. She said she looked out of her house at about 1 a.m., after she heard Crisp say, “Oh God, no, no, no,” and saw Crisp out of the truck and Potter slumped over inside. She later learned Potter was dead. The time she said she saw Potter was nearly an hour before Crisp called 911.
Jurors heard from Crisp for the first time Wednesday, when prosecutors played a recording of his call to 911. “Can you get someone here,” a Crisp asked the Calhoun County dispatcher he reached at about 2 a.m. that day. “He’s laying in the truck dead. I need an ambulance. I just shot my best friend.” Crisp’s voice shook and he sounded dazed as he talked with the dispatcher. He also seemed to have trouble understanding the dispatcher’s questions about the nature of Potter’s injuries.
Looking at the bullet under a microscope and comparing it with bullets fired from Crisp’s gun, Murillo said he saw a wide groove on the bullet, the result of rif ling within the barrel of the gun that discharged it. The Glock uses a different type of rifling and could not create that groove. Murillo said that while Crisp’s FNH gun could have made the groove, he couldn’t definitively prove the bullet came from that gun. “There is a lot of impact damage,” Murillo said of the fired bullet. “It’s not unusual to be inconclusive” when comparing bullets in these types of cases. But, he said, the cartridge found in the truck was definitely fired by Crisp’s gun. Criminalist Brenda Crosby testified Wednesday about the DNA tests she ran on several swabs from the two handguns. As the other experts had testified, Crosby explained that while DNA is often present on surfaces, it won’t always be found. Potter’s DNA was found on his own gun, as well as Crisp’s. Defense attorney Joseph McCarville, when questioning Crosby, called up a photo of Potter’s body lying slumped in the pickup truck where he died, a pool of blood and brain matter on the seat. Couldn’t those fluids have been the source of the DNA, McCarville
asked Crosby. She agreed that that was possible. The last expert to testify in the case was Associate Medical Examiner Jonathan Thompson, who works in the Iowa Office of the State Medical Examiner. He explained how he came to conclude that Potter’s cause of death was gunshot wound and the manner of death was homicide, a medical term that meant death at the hands of another person and that did not necessarily indicate murder, which is a legal term. In examining Pot ter’s body, Thompson was able to provide some details about the seconds before Potter’s death. Looking at the gunshot wound behind Potter’s ear, “this was determined to be a contact fire ring entrance wound,” Thompson said. “When you fire a gun, you have soot and flame. There’s also gas that comes out, which causes tearing of the wound margins.” The contact would have come from the gun muzzle being placed against Potter’s skin, Thompson said. Thompson also testified that Potter had a blood alcohol content level of 0.196, more than twice the legal limit for someone to drive. Thompson found marijuana in Potter’s system as well.
See Election Page 2
Children are seen playing in the Lake City pool last summer. Calcium deposits broke a valve in the pool’s heater earlier this month, causing the pool to close for a few days. The Lake City Council addressed the situation at their meeting June 6. GRAPHICADVOCATE FILE PHOTO
Lake City Pool hits new snag By Erin Sommers Graphic-Advocate Editor
June 9 Bernice Crisp took the stand as the first witness for the defense. She said she saw her husband and Potter talking outside as late as 11:40 p.m., after which she fell asleep. When he woke her a few hours later, Bernice Crisp said her husband asked for help, and said he had shot Crisp. Krisko presented Bernice Crisp with her statements from a deposition a few weeks ago, in which she said her husband had first told her he
Robin Batz of Lytton appears to have won nine votes more than her co-worker and fellow Auditor candidate Karen Norine for the Republican nomination for the post in Tuesday’s Primary Election, according to results posted by the Iowa Secretary of State. Batz received 400 votes, or 50.9 percent of the ballots cast, for the Republican nomination for the county auditor job. Norine received 391, or 49.4 percent. No Democrats declared to run in the race, meaning Batz will run unopposed during the November General Election. Current Auditor Judy Howrey is resigning after several decades in office. The results are not considered to be official until the Board of Supervisors canvasses them at their next meeting, which was set for Tuesday. In the other contested Calhoun County race, Rockwell City native Carl Legore, who returned to the area last year after retiring from the military, bested Richard Finley by just four votes, coming in 16 votes ahead of Tom Maulsby to be the Republican nominee for Supervisor in District 3. Legore received 142 votes, or 34.8 percent. Finley received 139 votes, or 34.1 percent, while Maulsby received 126 votes, or 30.9 percent.
Calhoun County Deputy Scott Anderson, left, leads Freddy Crisp out of the courtroom Friday afternoon, after a jury found Crisp guilty of first-degree murder. Crisp was charged with murder in the death of Dale Potter Nov. 10 in Pomeroy. GRAPHIC-ADVOCATE PHOTO/ERIN SOMMERS
had shot Potter. Bernice Crisp disputed that order of events. She also disputed telling Calhoun Count Sheriff Bill Davis that her husband and Potter had been fighting.
Krisko called Davis back to the stand as the prosecution’s only rebuttal witness, who confirmed that Bernice Potter had talked about the fighting on Nov. 9.
Calcium deposits in the water heater closed the Lake City pool earlier this month, but the pool manager says water quality levels are now correctly adjusted to avoid a repeat of the problem. Matt Hungate spoke with the Lake City Council June 6 about the closures and the problems stemming from the city’s hard water. He likened the situation to the calcium deposits city residents find inside of their coffee pots when using city tap water that hasn’t been run through a softener – the water leaves no deposits when cold, but when heated, calcium is removed from the water and adheres to surfaces. The deposits broke a valve within the heater.
See Pool Page 3