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Berg grade levels are action item for NCSD board By Jason W. Brooks Newton Daily News If one of the action items at Monday night’s Newton Community School District board meeting results in a positive vote, it will mean a reconfiguration of some type for all the district’s elementary schools. A consideration of re-structuring of the Berg Complex into a fifth- through eighth-grade campus is listed as an action-only item on the agenda for Monday’s meeting, as opposed to a discussion item. That means a motion must be made by a board member to either re-designate Berg or to table the motion. The meeting is set for 6:30 p.m. in the Emerson Hough building’s conference room. The complex has housed grades 7-8 on the east side and kindergarten through the third grade on the west side since the start of the 2010-11 school year. That’s when Emerson Hough closed as an elementary school, largely for financial reasons, and that school was re-designated to re-open as an “educational facility” at a recent board meeting. The district also purchased the former Hy-Vee building, where it plans to soon move administration offices, the Basics & Beyond program and the Area Education Agencies office. That would free up the Hough building to join Thomas Jefferson, Woodrow Wilson and Aurora Heights as regular elementary schools — which would all house kindergarten through the fourth grade only, if Berg is restructured
Dennis Magee/Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier Former neighbor of the Copper Dollar Ranch and acquaintance of victim Steven Fisher, Rita Ham, testifies Thursday about the morning Fisher and 17-year-old Melisa Gregory were found murdered. Ham’s father, Bill Plumb, owned the land rented to CDR owner Hal Snedeker.
SCHOOL | 3A
State attempts to prove both killer, Supino ambidextrous CDR neighbor gets emotional on stand By Mike Mendenhall Newton Daily News WATERLOO — Jasper County prosecutors continued their attempt to provide a solid link between the killer of Steven Fisher and Melisa Gregory at the former Copper Dollar Ranch in 1983 and defendant Theresa “Terri” Supino. Testimony Wednesday from retired DCI crime scene investigator/ photographer Jeri Daughrtey-Eaton theorizes the CDR killer to be either left-handed or ambidextrous,
and Thursday Jasper County Jailer Lisa Vos said under oath Supino listed herself as ambidextrous when booked in 2014. Although the defense attempted to put holes in Daugherty-Eaton’s theory, the state did present jurors with a possible similarity Supino could share with the killer. The 54-year-old is accused in the March 3, 1983 murders of her estranged husband, 20-year-old Fisher, and his girlfriend, 17-yearold Gregory, at the CDR northwest of Newton.
Jurors heard testimony Thursday from former CDR neighbor Rita Ham. She was woken by ranch employee Jeff Illingworth in a panic the morning of March 3. Illingworth — now deceased — had just discovered the bodies of his friend, Fisher, and Gregory. Ham testified that Fisher would allow her young son to ride horses at the ranch from time to time, and she become emotional on the stand while recalling Illingworth’s news of the brutal deaths. “He was crying, and I said ‘What’s wrong?’ And he said ‘Stevie and Sissy are dead,’” Ham said.
File Photo An action is on Monday night’s Newton Community School District board meeting agenda to re-structure the Berg School Complex into a fifth- through eighthgrade campus. This would allow the district to reconfigure its kindergarten through fourth-grade campuses.
SUPINO | 3A
Tobacco compliance Ideal start for new Sheriff’s Deputy Engle checks cite one By Jamee A. Pierson the Iowa Law Enforcement Newton Daily News
By Jamee A. Pierson Newton Daily News Tobacco compliance checks were conducted by the Newton Police Department in conjunction with the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division’s Iowa Pledge Program on 21 retail establishments in Newton. One citation of providing tobacco to a minor was issued at Hy-Vee to Karen Crook, 67. “We were fortunate that only one person sold, but our goal is to have no sales, and we’ve had that before,” Police Chief Jeff Hoebelheinrich said. The department has been working with the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division for 12 years, conducting check through out the year. It is required to make contact with every business in town that sells tobacco. Prior to the checks, the department publishes in the newspaper and on the Internet that it is coming up. An underage person is brought to the establishment, supplied with money and is told to ask for cigarettes. They are given a script to use while speaking at the business. “If the clerk asks them how old they are, they are suppose to be truthful,” Hoebelheinrich said. “We expect all businesses to run the ID, they should not take their word for it.” Only one person was cited and any further action to that person is the responsibility of the employer.
Ryan Engle grew up in Jasper County and had an interest in the law. It wasn’t until he did a ride-along with local law enforcement that his interest peaked. Now he is one of the new deputies to start at the Jasper County Sheriff ’s Office. “My first interest was with the state patrol. Then I did a ride-along with all of the different agencies, the police department and the sheriff ’s department and came to like the way the sheriff ’s department runs things,” Engle said. Engle graduated from Baxter in 2007 then went on to Indian Hills Community College graduating with an AA and AAS in criminal justice. He continued his education at Buena Vista University, where he received his
Jamee A. Pierson/Daily News Sheriff’s Deputy Ryan Engle knew he wanted to end up at the sheriff’s office but was able to start his career there as well.
bachelors in criminal justice in 2013. Before joining the force, Engle worked as a reserve deputy, which
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is a volunteer based program in the sheriff ’s office. To become a reserve, he trained on certain sections of
Academy. “You get all of the training you need, (you’re) basically set to do the majority of what a regular deputy does except it is on a volunteer basis,” Engle said. “The reserve experience and the training made the process a lot more smooth just because of that exposure and some in site into the training and what all it would entail. There was certainly a benefit to doing the reserves and even college.” In the reserves, a two-man program, where a deputy is always with another full-time deputy or another reserve. When it came time to apply for the deputy position, Engle filled out his application like every other applicant, getting no preferential treatment from being in the reserves. He had to complete a physical and written test and was viewed
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