missouri | My Crime Library

78 Yr Old Bonnie Gooch Charged With Bank Robberies

Bonnie Gooch is a seventy eight year old woman from Missouri who has been charged with attempting to rob a bank

According to police reports Bonnie Gooch would walk into the Goppert Financial Bank in Pleasant Hill Missouri and handed the teller a note asking for $13,000 in small bills and would sign off the note by saying ‘Thank you, sorry I didn’t mean to scare you’.

Bonnie Gooch would make it to her vehicle and start driving away before she was pulled over by police and placed under arrest. The arresting officer noted cash spread around the car and that Gooch smelled of alcohol

Now this is not the first time that Bonnie Gooch has been arrested for robbing a bank as she has two prior convictions from 1977 and 2020. The last of which she was put on probation

Bonnie Gooch News

A 78-year-old woman has been arrested and charged with theft after police caught her fleeing from a Missouri bank with cash scattered on her car’s floorboard on Wednesday.

Bonnie Gooch has two prior convictions for bank robbery, and her recent arrest suggests that the third time isn’t always the charm. She is being held on a US$25,000 bond after she was charged with one count of stealing or attempting to steal from a financial institution.

Gooch allegedly walked up to the counter of the Goppert Financial Bank in Pleasant Hill, wearing plastic gloves, black sunglasses and a face mask, and passed the bank teller a note that read, “I need 13,000 small bills.”

“Thank you sorry I didn’t mean to scare you,” the robbery note added, according to court documents filed in Cass County.

Surveillance video also captured her banging on the counter, asking the teller to hurry, Cass County prosecutors said. Gooch allegedly told the teller not to count the money and “just give it to her.”

After she was given the money, the bank robber was seen fleeing the scene in a Buick Enclave that still had its handicap registration number on display, the Kansas City Star reported.

When local officers eventually caught up with Gooch, about three kilometres down the road, they reported she smelled strongly of alcohol and had cash strewn around the floor of her car.

“It’s just sad,” Pleasant Hill police Chief Tommy Wright said, adding that the suspect had no diagnosed ailments.

Bonnie Gooch was first convicted of bank robbery in 1977, when she held up a California bank. She didn’t try to rob another financial institution for many decades until 2020, when she attempted to rob a bank in a suburb of Kansas City. Her probation in the second heist ended in November 2021.

Police were tipped off to Gooch’s 2020 heist by her son, who called them to say his mother was “off her rocker.”

Gooch’s son told police that she was angry, had a BB gun and black wig, and was saying she was going to rob a bank. About 30 minutes later, officers responded to a robbery at a Bank of the West branch.

There, a teller told police that a short, older woman wearing a wig entered the bank and handed her a blank birthday card with a note that read, “this is a robbery.” Not long after the holdup, police located Gooch’s car and she was arrested without incident, the Kansas City Star reported.

Wright told the paper on Friday that the department is looking to see if any underlying health factors may have contributed to Gooch’s third bank heist attempt, calling the situation, and the suspect’s age, “unusual.”

He told the Kansas City Star that officers were surprised when they tracked down Gooch’s vehicle after the robbery.

“When officers first approached her, they were kind of confused…. It’s a little old lady who steps out,” he said. “We weren’t sure initially that we had the right person.”

Gooch’s arraignment is set to take place on May 25.

78-year-old woman arrested after attempting 3rd bank heist

Angela West and Shamira Buford Murder 5 Yr Old Girl

Angela West and Shamira Buford are two women from Missouri who have been charged with the murder of a five year old girl. According to police reports a child would tell his teacher that his sister was unconscious and unresponsive at their home. The teacher would call police and when they went to the residence another of the five year old sibling would tell officers that her sister was dead.

The five year old girl was allegedly hogtied and gagged with a sock to prevent her from stealing food. Two women in the home. Angela West and Shamira Buford would be arrested and have been charged with second-degree murder, first-degree involuntary manslaughter, abuse or neglect of a child – resulting in death and first-degree endangering the welfare of a child in connection with the little girl’s death

The other children in the home were taken from the residence and put into care with emergency services

Angela West and Shamira Buford More News

Two women in Waynesville have been charged and arrested after a 5-year-old girl was found dead Tuesday.

Shamira Buford, 36, and Angela West, 40, were both charged with second-degree murder, first-degree involuntary manslaughter, abuse or neglect of a child – resulting in death and first-degree endangering the welfare of a child. Both are being held at the Pulaski County Jail without bond, according to the prosecutor’s Facebook page.

A Waynesville Schools school resource officer contacted the Waynesville Police Department after a student told him he found his 5-year-old sister on the floor with a sock in her mouth, according to the probable cause statement. The SRO told police the student had tried to conduct CPR, the statement says.

A Waynesville police officer went to the home in the 700 block of Washington Street and made contact with someone who said a child was found dead. That person allegedly told police, “she choked,” according to the statement.

Police entered the home and made contact with Buford and West, who were asleep in a bedroom. Buford left the room and found the child, lifeless under a blanket in the living room. The coroner was called in.

An officer noticed “significant” marks on her wrists, ankles and neck, as well as a gray sock with blood on it next to the body. It was also “saturated with an unknown substance,” according to the statement. Fibers were allegedly found in the girl’s mouth and nylon rope was found in the home.

An official from the Children’s Division went to the Waynesville Sixth Grade Center and talked with a sibling. He said his step mother woke him up that morning, he brushed his teeth and then started speaking to his sister.

“And then I saw my little sister over there tied up,” the probable cause statement says.

The student said the girl gets up in the middle of the night and “steals” and said “we have to tie her up to the futon.”

Another sibling said she, Angela West and Shamira Buford had been tying the girl to the bed for the past three months. She stated when she woke up Tuesday morning, the girl’s lips were purple, she wasn’t moving and had no pulse. One person allegedly performed CPR before another took over. She said she didn’t call 911 because she didn’t know how to tell her mom the girl died.

That person allegedly told police, “She (the girl) has a sticky fingers problem so the solution my parents came up with was to tie her arms behind back and tie her to the bed.”

She said Angela West came up with the idea, the statement says.

“I had to tie her up because Angie has back problems,” she said in the probable cause statement.

Police asked if she was explicitly told to tie her up that night.

“No, I just know that every night I’m supposed to tie her up,” she said in the statement. She said Angela West instructed her to “hogtie” the girl, which including tying a short rope to the bar of the futon and around her neck. Just the girl’s head was the only body part that was on the bed when police found her.

At the Waynesville Police Department, West allegedly told police the girl had been getting tied up around her waist. She allegedly said that she and Buford resorted to tying up the girl because she had allegedly been taking food at night. West also claimed it had been at least a week since she tied up the girl, according to the probable cause statement.

Buford allegedly told police that she told “them” to stop tying the girl’s neck when she noticed marks on her neck.

Angela West claimed they put a sock in the girl’s mouth because she was loud at night.

“I made a smart ass comment about it one night and just went from there,” West allegedly told police, according to the statement.

“We got tired of telling her to be quiet,” the probable cause statement says Buford said.

Angela West also claimed she taught one of the siblings how to tie knots.

“She used one of the knots I taught her but never told her to tie her neck,” the statement says.

West allegedly told police, “I thought she was OK because she could breathe through her nose.”

Two Pulaski County women charged with murder of 5-year-old girl

Deshawn Thomas Executes Homeless Man In St Louis

Deshawn Thomas is a man from St. Louis Missouri who is seen on video executing a homeless man. According to police reports Deshawn Thomas would walk up behind the victim, David Saldana, and fatally shoot him in the head.

The two men had an altercation earlier that saw David Saldana being shot in the back allegedly by Deshawn Thomas. As David Saldana was sitting on the curb following the first time being shot Deshawn Thomas would struggle with his gun before walking up behind Saldana and firing the fatal shot.

The brazen murder was caught on videotape which is currently circulating and seen by a number of witnesses. St. Louis police were able to arrest Deshawn Thomas and he currently being charged with murder. The murder has a lot of people questioning if St. Louis is out of control.

Deshawn Thomas More News

Police have arrested 23-year-old Deshawn Thomas in connection to a shooting downtown on Monday. A shocking video, allegedly of the shooting, was posted to Twitter Monday night before being removed.

The video seems to show a shooting that occurred in broad daylight at the 700 block of North Tucker Boulevard.

The police said that they received a call for a shooting shortly after 10:10 a.m. on Monday relative to a man in his 40s who was shot in the head. Police said the victim argued with the alleged shooter at a nearby Shell station before the shooting. The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.

Video of the shooting was posted by an account called “Ponzi Slayer,” @ponziSTL, who professes to be a U.S. Marine and a gun enthusiast who gives a thumbs down to “Biden/democrats.”

His video was then shared by KMOX reporter Kevin Killeen, and subsequently reshared by former KMOV reporter Chris Nagus, before it was taken down by Twitter

Ponzi Slayer then reposted the video on Twitter, as well as sharing a link to a version that was still live on Facebook as of press time.

“Twitter took down this video I posted yesterday so I’ll post it again,” he wrote. “Doesn’t show the murder on camera so stop censoring it. Btw 10 am today #kimgardner supporters are gathering downtown. Meanwhile a young girl lays with her legs amputated and crushed pelvis 1 mile away in the hospital from a thug Kim and her cronies let back on the street when he should been in jail. Show Kims pals this ???? from yesterday.”

Ponzi Slayer wrote on Twitter that the people recording the video heard a gunshot and, after calling police, began filming what was happening on the sidewalk. The video shows two men, one seated on the curb and the other standing near him, while the person filming talks about having heard a gun shot. The standing man is struggling to reload his weapon. The seated man either doesn’t notice or seems unconcerned.

After about 30 seconds, the man with the gun abruptly holds his arm out, puts the gun to the seated man’s head and fires.

“Oh my god. He just fucking killed him,” says the individual filming the incident.

The terrifying video matches the details in an SLMPD incident report, and Crab’s Landing, which is visible in the video, is at 701 North Tucker Boulevard. According to the incident report, after the shooting, the suspect fled on foot and was observed entering the library on Olive Street, where the suspect was taken into custody without incident.

Arrest Made in Downtown Slaying that Was Allegedly Captured on Video | St. Louis Metro News | St. Louis | St. Louis Riverfront Times

Leonard Taylor Execution Scheduled For Tonight

The State of Missouri is getting ready to execute Leonard Taylor tonight , February 7 2023. According to court documents Leonard Taylor was responsible for the murders of his live in girlfriend Angela Rowe and her three children. After the four murders Leonard Taylor would flee to California where he was later arrested. Leonard Taylor would be convicted and sentenced to death for the murders. However Leonard Taylor has always insisted on his innocence and has claimed that he was already in California visiting his daughter when the four murders took place. According to Missouri law the State has a 24 hour period to execute Leonard Taylor starting at 6pm tonight.

Leonard Taylor was executed on February 7 2023 by lethal injection

Leonard Taylor Execution More News

Gov. Mike Parson confirmed the state will carry out the execution of 58-year-old Leonard Taylor on Tuesday.

A letter from NAACP President Derrick Johnson sent to the governor questioned the evidence used to convict Taylor and asked Parson to spare his life.

“The state of Missouri has the life of a man on its hands,” Johnson said. “On behalf of the NAACP, I am asking you to stop the execution of Mr. Taylor.”

Taylor was sentenced to death by lethal injection after being found guilty in a 2004 quadruple homicide in St. Louis. According to prosecutors, Taylor fatally shot his girlfriend Angela Rowe and her three children. He then fled to California.

Taylor insists he was in California to visit a daughter at the time of the murders and has maintained his innocence throughout his 15-year incarceration.

Parson responded with a press release affirming that Taylor will be executed.

The governor said Taylor’s conviction to death has been upheld by several different courts. The statement shares that Parson acknowledges Taylors claim to innocence, but fails to overshadow the “gruesome facts” of the homicides. He states Taylor’s sentence is about justice.

“The State of Missouri will carry out Taylor’s sentences according to the Court’s order and deliver justice for the four innocent lives he stole,” Parson said.

If Parson stays true to his statements, Taylor would be the third execution by the state of Missouri in the past three months.

Missouri currently ranks fifth in number of executions by a state since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

There are currently more than 30 religious and civil rights groups also against the execution of Taylor. They wrote to prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell requesting him to reconsider his decision to ask a state judge for another hearing. They say Bell has “a clear opportunity to free an innocent Black man”.

Bell made the decision on Jan. 30 that “the facts are not there to support a credible case of innocence.”

Taylor is set be executed via lethal injection within a 24-hour period beginning at 6 p.m. Tuesday.

https://www.komu.com/news/state/missouri-set-to-execute-leonard-taylor-despite-pushback/article_ef77d90a-a6d3-11ed-ba4d-a37f76ae735b.html

Leonard Taylor Execution

Leonard “Raheem” Taylor, who was convicted in a 2004 quadruple murder but maintained his innocence, died by lethal injection Tuesday night at a prison in eastern Missouri. Taylor, 58, was executed at the state prison in Bonne Terre. Karen Pojmann, of the Missouri Department of Corrections, said the lethal drug pentobarbital was administered to Taylor at 6:07 p.m. He was pronounced dead roughly nine minutes later at 6:16 p.m

In his final written statement, Leonard Taylor said Muslims don’t die but live on “eternally in the hearts” of family and friends. “Death is not your enemy, it is your destiny,” he wrote in part of the statement. “Look forward to meeting it. Peace!”

Leonard Taylor has long maintained that he was in California when his girlfriend, Angela Rowe, and her three children — Alexus Conley, 10, AcQreya Conley, 6, and Tyrese Conley, 5 — were killed. All were found dead in their suburban St. Louis home on Dec. 3, 2004. Initially, investigators said the victims had been killed no more than a few days before they were discovered. But at trial, St. Louis County medical examiner Phillip Burch changed the estimated time of death to a two or three-week window based in part on the cool temperature in the house. Lawyers for Taylor have argued that there is evidence Rowe and her children were still alive at the time Taylor was in California. A forensic pathologist hired by the defense also issued a finding on Jan. 25 challenging the conclusions on their time of death.

Among those who witnessed Taylor’s execution on Tuesday were nine of the victims’ family members. Gerjuan Rowe, older sister to Angela Rowe, said she believed “justice was served” by the state. In a statement, the Midwest Innocence Project said Leonard Taylor was unjustly “killed by the very system that should have protected him.” “Since the moment of his arrest, Mr. Taylor proclaimed his innocence, loudly and for all who would hear. Yet no one — not the police, not the prosecutor, not the attorneys charged with defending him — seriously investigated that claim of innocence,” the group wrote.

In recent weeks, attorneys for Leonard Taylor highlighted new information in an effort to halt his execution. Groups such as the Innocence Project and Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty also threw their support behind Taylor. Gov. Mike Parson denied his clemency request on Monday, saying Taylor “brutally murdered” the victims.

“The evidence shows Leonard Taylor committed these atrocities and a jury found him guilty,” Parson said. “Despite his self-serving claim of innocence, the facts of his guilt in this gruesome quadruple homicide remain.” In the days leading up to the execution, two petitions before the Missouri Supreme Court were denied. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. In a docket entry, the high court rejected a stay of execution. Taylor’s lawyers also asked the Missouri Supreme Court to direct a prison warden to let his spiritual advisor be with him in the execution chamber.

Megan Crane, co-director of the MacArthur Justice Center’s Missouri office in St. Louis, said Taylor was “wrongfully executed” despite a “credible claim of innocence” that was not heard or evaluated by any court of law. She also noted the state carried out the death sentence as there was an open legal claim that his religious rights were violated by the state. “This is an undeniable and irreversible injustice,” Crane said. “But, in the words of Raheem, he will ‘live eternally in the hearts of family and friends.’” Protesters gathered across the state to express opposition to capital punishment. Demonstrations were organized in St. Louis, Columbia, Kansas City, Jefferson City, Columbia and Bonne Terre.

“I’m a Christian by faith, and I just don’t think that killing is the right thing,” said Jared Sloan, 67, an Independence minister, who carried a sign on Tuesday that read: “Thou shalt not kill.” “It’s immoral for the state of Missouri to take on itself the right to execute and kill people.” Susie Roling, a social worker and director of operations at Journey to New Life, a prison re-entry program based in Kansas City, said there is no evidence that demonstrates the death penalty is a deterrent against crime. “The worst of the worst in our country are not put to death,” Roling said. “It’s oftentimes the poorest of the poor.” Furonda Brasfield, an Arkansas attorney and director of leadership with the Eighth Amendment Project, which seeks to end the death penalty, said Taylor’s case represents “a travesty of justice.” She pointed to the case of Ladell Lee, an Arkansas man executed in 2017, among the cases where states have pressed on with carrying out a death sentence despite standing claims of innocence. “These types of things happen all the time. And these states have got to slow down. They have to be less bloodthirsty and just stop and fully explore these claims of innocence,” Brasfield said. In the past 10 weeks, Missouri has executed three people. Amber McLaughlin died Jan. 3, and Kevin Johnson died Nov. 29. All three were convicted in St. Louis County, which has the sixth highest number of executions in the U.S., at 20. It trails four counties in Texas and one in Oklahoma, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C. Parson has now denied clemency to two people who claimed they were innocent and consequently that they were wrongly sentenced to die. The first was Walter Barton, who was tried five times for the killing of a woman in Ozark. The Innocence Project, the Midwest Innocence Project and the MacArthur Justice Center urged Parson to appoint a board to investigate Barton’s innocence claims, which included dubious blood splatter evidence and an incentivized jailhouse informant. Barton was executed in May 2020.

https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article272195683.html

School Nurse Candice Elizabeth Johnson Charged With Sexual Assault

Candice Elizabeth Johnson was a school nurse in Kennett Missouri until she was fired for sexually assaulting a student. According to police reports the principal at Kennett High School learned that the school nurse and a student were engaged in sexual activity. Police would interview Candice Elizabeth Johnson and the student as well as other witnesses. Candice Elizabeth Johnson and the student according to reports had sex 12 times over the previous months. Candice Elizabeth Johnson would be charged with second-degree statutory rape and sexual contact with a student.

Candice Elizabeth Johnson More News

A 26-year-old Kennett woman is behind bars after police found she had been having a sexual relationship with a student at her place of work.

Candice Elizabeth Johnson was arrested on Wednesday, Feb. 1, and she faces two counts of second-degree statutory rape and two counts of sexual contact with a student.

According to a probable cause affidavit, on Monday, Jan. 30, the Kennett Police Department received information that Johnson, who was a nurse for the Kennett High School, had been having a relationship with the student.

Officers spoke with the victim, who said the relationship had been going on since Oct. 2022. They explained they and Johnson had 12 sexual encounters and explicit photos had been exchanged.

The victim added several of the encounters happened in Johnson’s office, police said.

The affidavit explained the victim did not officially confess to the relationship when questioned by the principal and assistant principal because “he did not want to get Johnson into any trouble”.

On Feb. 1, an officer spoke with the victim’s mother, who said the victim told her that they and Johnson spoke about “having a future together” and had hung out with each other.

Johnson was set with a $40,000 bond and is required not to have contact with children under 17.

https://www.kait8.com/2023/02/02/school-nurse-arrested-having-sex-with-student/