An East Cobb man charged with raping a woman at her home in the Johnson Ferry Road area in February has been indicted.
Kendal Guerin Chaves, 34, of Lerose Court, was indicted by a Cobb grand jury last week on one count of aggravated sodomy, one count of aggravated assault, one count of first degree burglary and one count of battery.
He was charged by Cobb Police on Feb. 10, two days after a woman living on Colony Drive, off Little Willeo Road, said a man knocked on a window in the morning and attacked her after she answered the door.
According to the indictment, Chaves gained unlawful entry into the home, committed anal rape against the victim, choked her and caused bruises to her neck, face and arms.
Chaves was booked into the Cobb County Adult Detention Center without bond, according to jail records.
He also was charged with DUI, a misdemeanor, at the same time. Chaves pleaded guilty in late January to a cocaine possession charge and had been sentenced to three years’ probation, according to court records.
The court records further show that his probation was revoked due to the DUI charge, and on March 26, Chaves was resentenced to serve two years.
According to Cobb jail records, Chaves was released to the custody of the Georgia Department of Corrections on April 11.
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Larry Joel Epstein, charged in the March 6 shootings of two electrical contractors working at his East Cobb home, remains in the Cobb County Adult Detention Center without bond after a probable cause hearing on Tuesday.
Epstein, 69, was arrested after a heavy police presence stemming from the shootings on Wellington Lane, off Johnson Ferry Road.
The other worker, Gordon Montcalm, 37, of Buchanan, Ga., was taken to WellStar Kennestone Hospital after being shot five times and is facing a long recovery, according to family members.
Epstein was charged with one count of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault and two counts of aggravated battery. He has been held at the jail without bond since his arrest, according to Cobb Sheriff’s Office records.
Cobb Police have not indicated a motive for the shootings.
According to Cobb Magistrate Court records, Epstein’s court-appointed attorneys did not pursue a bond request.
Kim Isaza, public information officer for the Cobb District Attorney’s Office, said the next step is to present the case to a grand jury, ideally within a 90-day period.
The quiet neighborhood street in the Kensington subdivision was blocked off by police, including SWAT units and the Cobb Police mobile command unit, after a resident called 911 to report an active shooter.
Other neighbors were asked to stay inside after the shootings, which took place around 2:30 p.m., and as the contractors were wrapping up their work day at Epstein’s home. Police said Epstein was peacefully taken into custody shortly after 3 p.m.
East Cobb News does not publish photographs of crime suspects before their cases have gone through the legal system, and then only if they are convicted or plead guilty and are sentenced.
On Monday, Bonnie Irlyn Epstein, Epstein’s wife since 1971, filed for divorce in Cobb Superior Court, saying the marriage “is irretrievably broken.”
Court documents indicate that Bonnie Epstein separated from her husband on March 7, the day after the shootings, and that her divorce complaint was to be served to him at the jail.
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
A Cartersville man who was convicted of abducting a woman from her workplace on Roswell Road in Marietta last year was given a 20-year prison sentence by a Cobb judge on Thursday.
Antoine Latroy Williams, 40, must serve at least 18 years behind bars, according to the Cobb District Attorney’s office, with the remainder on probation.
The sentence was handed down by Cobb Superior Court Judge Stephen Schuster after Williams was convicted of kidnapping, sexual battery, and three counts of simple battery on Wednesday.
According to prosecutors, Williams met the woman, who is in her early 20s, on Feb. 25, 2018 and offered her a job. The following day he went to her place of business on Roswell Road in the city of Marietta five times and waited for her in the parking lot.
She drove away and he followed her, and a short time later she pulled over to the side of the road, according to prosecutors, who said Williams then forced the woman into his car.
The DA’s office said Williams drove her around Cobb County in his car before traveling to Cartersville and threatened to hurt her if she tried to escape. He also put his hand on her thigh, grabbed her hair, and slapped her hand, prosecutors said.
They also said Willliams threatened to hurt her if she tried to escape, and he groped her on the thigh, pulled her hair and struck her hand.
After Williams stopped at a QuickTrip in Cartersville, prosecutors said the woman managed to escape.
At the trial, prosecutors alleged that Williams has a history of violence toward women. A woman testified that he sexually assaulted her in Los Angeles in 2011.
“Every shiny object you dangled in front of this girl: a Mercedes, cash, a phone and a job was just to lure her into your control. I don’t see these as tokens of your affection, you were grooming her, pure and simple,” Schuster said at the sentencing. “I see you as nothing more than a predator.”
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
A Cobb Superior Court Judge sentenced a Lyft driver to 35 years in prison Tuesday for raping a female passenger near her apartment in Cobb County in late 2016.
The Cobb District Attorney’s office said Jerome Antonio Booze, 40, of Decatur, was convicted by a Cobb Superior Court jury on Monday. Kim Isaza, a spokeswoman for the DA’s office, said the sentence was handed down by Judge Ann Harris.
Booze was charged in January 2917 after driving a female college student from a night of drinking at a bar in Atlanta to her Vinings apartment on Dec. 10, 2016. According to testimony at the trial, the woman’s friends called for a Lyft around 4 a.m. because she had become intoxicated and they didn’t want her driving home. They had been celebrating a friend’s 21st birthday.
According to prosecutors, the woman said she had flashbacks the next morning of having sex with someone, but said she had no memory of the Lyft ride or of getting home. She told her parents she had been raped and went to Grady Memorial Hospital for medical treatment before filing charges with Atlanta Police, who transferred the case to Cobb Police.
The attack occurred in the back seat of Booze’s car near her apartment building, according to prosecutors. Booze was indicted in February 2017.
Prosecutors said Booze initially told Cobb Police that he denied he had sex with the woman, then later said he did have sex with her but said she initiated it and that he didn’t know she was intoxicated.
During the trial, Booze testified that the woman held down his arm and climbed on him and reiterated that he didn’t know she was drunk.
That didn’t convince the jury, which convicted him on the sole charge of felony rape, Isaza said. Harris told Booze before sentencing that trial evidence showed the woman was incapable of giving consent.
“This predator exploited a position of trust and targeted a vulnerable, intoxicated female. This verdict demonstrates that those who prey on women who do not have the capacity to consent will be held accountable,” said Courtney Veal, Cobb assistant district attorney.
After his release from prison, Booze will serve the rest of his life on probation as a registered sex offender, Isaza said.
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
An Atlanta child psychologist who worked out of an office in East Cobb has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to molestation and exploitation charges, including posting a photo online of a girl he victimized in Cobb County in 2017.
The Cobb District Attorney’s Office on Friday said that Jonathan Gersh, 38, pleaded guilty to six counts of child molestation and four counts of sexual exploitation of children.
Cobb Superior Court Judge Stephen Schuster ordered Gersh to serve 20 years in prison and 20 more on probation, according to the Cobb DA’s office.
Prosecutors said the acts took place at the victim’s home at an unincorporated Marietta address. She was eight years old at the time.
Gersh was associated with Intown Psychological Associates, which had several offices in metro Atlanta, including one at 1744 Roswell Road in East Cobb.
A woman psychologist who had been dating Gersh told the court she had been “manipulated” into a relationship with him so he could have access to her daughter, and she called him a “selfish, perverted, manipulative sociopath,” according to the DA’s office.
Gersh was arrested Feb. 14, 2018, after Cobb authorities were alerted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which had gotten a tip from Australian law enforcement of an IP address which contained graphic images of child pornography, according to prosecutors.
The DA’s office said Cobb Police got a search warrant on Gersh’s mobile phone, and found more photos of what was termed “child erotica,” including images of children in bathing suits in public places.
“He is an opportunist. He is a child molester. And, he’s an exploiter of children in the worst way,” Cobb Deputy Chief Assistant District Attorney Chuck Boring said.
“These pictures are not baseball cards to be traded. This is pure and simple sex trafficking,” Schuster said in court.
Gersh, who has been in the Cobb County Adult Detention Center since his arrest, will be given sex offender status following his release from prison, the Cobb DA’s office said.
“Aside from this conduct, he’s led an exemplary life,” Gersh’s attorney, Richard Grossman, told the court.
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
A former Kell High School teacher who pleaded guilty last week to sexually assaulting a student on campus will serve five years in prison.
That’s the sentence that was handed down to Spencer Herron by Cobb Superior Court Judge Robert Flournoy, who also gave the former video production instructor 15 years on probation.
Court records show that Herron, 49, who was arrested on June 1, 2018, pleaded guilty last Friday to five counts of sexual assault on a student on the Kell campus.
They involved multiple sexual encounters with a female student that started in 2016, and continued through the 2017-18 school year, according to his indictment in August.
According to his sentencing document, Herron was given sex offender status by Flournoy. As a first-time offender, Herron could have his criminal record cleared if he meets the terms of his probation.
After his release from prison, he is not allowed to have any contact with minors, take up a residence with minors or contact with the victim. He also must abide by other restrictions while on probation.
Herron was a teacher at Kell for 16 years and was the school’s teacher of the year in 2016. In what turned out to be his final year as a teacher, Herron was a member of the Cobb County School District’s Superintendent’s Teacher Advisory Council.
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
An East Cobb man initially suspected of human trafficking in a 2016 search of a home on Little Willeo Road has been sentenced on multiple drug convictions, according to the Cobb District Attorney’s Office.
Solomon Santana Noellin, 42, was convicted on Thursday by a Cobb Superior Court jury of possession of methamphetamines with intent to distribute, possession of methadone with intent to distribute, and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, as well as possession of cocaine and Alprazolam, according to DA spokeswoman Kim Isaza.
She said Noellin was given a 30-year sentence by Superior Court Judge Joyette Holmes, with eight years to serve and the rest on probation.
According to Cobb prosecutors, law enforcement executed a search warrant at a rented home on Little Willeo Road in East Cobb on Aug. 9, 2016, based on allegations that sex trafficking activities were taking place there.
When they entered the home, police found cocaine, methamphetamines and other controlled substances and executed a second search warrant, Isaza said.
She said that agents from the Marietta-Cobb-Smyrna Organized Crime Unit confiscated 61 grams of a mixture containing methamphetamines; three grams of cocaine; 49 methadone pills; more than 350 grams of marijuana; and one bar of Alprazolam at the Little Willeo Road home.
Isaza said two women who were at the scene during the first search warrant denied they were there for trafficking purposes.
According to Cobb Sheriff’s Office records, Noellin’s home address is listed as being on Canton Road.
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Cobb District Attorney Vic Reynolds said Friday his office has filed a lawsuit to force a Windy Hill Road motel to address sex trafficking and drug activity on its premises or be subject to forfeiting its property.
A release by the DA’s office said the “public nuisance” measure was being applied to The Masters Inn, 2682 Windy Hill Road, located near the Windy Hill Hospital, the junction of Interstate 75 and SunTrust Park.
UPDATED, Wed., Jan. 9, 11:55 a.m.: The AJC is reporting the motel has closed temporarily for renovations, and that the owner has reached an agreement with the DA’s office to address the crime issues.
ORIGINAL STORY CONTINUES:
Authorities say the motel has been a haven for drug and sex trafficking and was the scene of a deadly shooting in 2015. In late 2017 Cobb Police arrested a man there on felony drug charges and discovered he had been holding a female against her well and using her for sex trafficking, according to the release.
The DA’s office said it was approached earlier last year by a lawyers’ group, Civil Lawyers Against World Sex Slavery, and along with Cobb Police compiled data on hotels in the county with high levels of arrests, especially for drugs, prostitution and trafficking.
According to the lawsuit, filed in Cobb Superior Court, The Masters Inn was known to police as “notorious hotbed of criminal activity that has been the subject of countless investigations.”
The release said The Masters Inn ownership must take the following steps:
contact and cooperate with police about suspected criminal activity;
require valid photo identification of all guests;
maintain complete guest rosters and a list of those previously arrested there;
require staff training to recognize and prevent human trafficking;
hire a licensed and armed security guard;
install outdoor lighting, video surveillance and fencing;
ban loitering.
According to the release, the first of several compliance hearings will be held before Cobb Superior Court Judge Kimberly Childs on March 14.
The DA’s office said the suit is believed to be one of the first in Georgia aimed at curbing sex trafficking activity.
The announcement of the lawsuit comes at the end of a week of public events in the state about sex trafficking. Georgia is regarded as one of the busiest states in the nation for sex trafficking, and January is National Sex Trafficking Awareness Month.
Among those taking part were Attorney General Chris Carr and Governor-elect Brian Kemp. The faith-based group Street Grace also has been leading the charge.
The upcoming session of the Georgia General Assembly is expected to include sex trafficking legislation, and efforts are underway to crack down on sex trafficking ahead of the Super Bowl, which takes place in Atlanta in early February.
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
An 18-year-old motorcyclist died in March after crashing into a landscaping truck on Johnson Ferry Road. (ECN file).
Two 18-year-olds from East Cobb were tragically killed in Johnson Ferry Road accidents in 2018.
Alexander Seidnitzer, who worked at Zeal Kitchen & Bar and was planning to attend culinary school, was heading southbound on Johnson Ferry near Bishop Lake Road on the morning of March 26 when he slammed into a landscaping truck that was pulling out of a subdivision.
After being rushed to WellStar Kennestone Hospital, Seidnitzer was pronounced dead. No charges were filed in the accident.
On the July 4 weekend, a recent graduate of Pope High School was traveling in a vehicle further up on Johnson Ferry when she rolled down a window and began yelling and screaming before falling out and hitting the road.
Alyssa Prindle, who was planning to attend Georgia Southern University, never left intensive care at Kennestone and died of her injuries on July 25.
The driver of the SUV, 17-year-old Abigail Cook, also of East Cobb, was arrested and charged with vehicular homicide, DUI and other charges. In November, she was indicted by a Cobb grand jury.
Other major public safety stories for 2018 in East Cobb include the August conviction of a man for the murder of Jerry Moore, who was found stabbed to death in his home off Holly Springs Road in January 2014.
Johnathan Allen Wheeler worked at a Woodstock bakery that Moore financed and that was run by Ross Byrne, who was Moore’s roommate. Byrne was charged with homicide two weeks after Wheeler was sentenced to two consecutive life terms.
Former Pope volunteer wrestling coach Ron Gorman received long sentences for sexually abusing young athletes, both in East Cobb and in Pennsylvania, where he coached previously.
A former Kell High School teacher of the year is facing charges of sexually assaulting a student from 2016 and 2018.
Robert New, a former officer at Cobb Police Precinct 4 in East Cobb, was arrested for aggravated assault of a woman, solicitation of a minor girl, possession of computer pornography and other charges. He resigned shortly after that in June.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
A Canadian man who had flown to Atlanta to have sex with a Cobb teenage girl last year has been sentenced by a federal judge.
Yves Joseph Legault, 54, from Toronto, will serve 16 years in prison for a variety of sexual exploitation charges that include his attempt to meet a 13-year-old Cobb County girl last year. He also will be on supervised release for life and will be deported to Canada upon his release from prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta.
Legault pleaded guilty in September to several charges, including coercing and enticing the production of child sexual exploitation images over the Internet. Federal prosecutors said he preyed on victims in Georgia and Mississippi at the same time.
He was arrested last August at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport after getting off a plane for what federal prosecutors was a trip to have sex with the Marietta girl, whom he met via Omegle, an anonymous online text and video chat tool.
During Legault’s trial, prosecutors said Legault and the girl moved their chats to Google Hangouts, where he asked her to perform sex acts for him on a live video stream. Later, he arranged to travel to Georgia to meet her for in-person sex acts.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said the girl’s mother alerted the FBI after her daughter received a package from Canada, and after intercepting messages between Legault and the girl.
While Legault was facing charges in Georgia, prosecutors also said he had engaged in similar behavior with an eight-year-old girl in Pascagoula, Miss. He was charged there with one count of coercing and enticing the production of child pornography, and also pleaded guilty to that charge in federal court in Atlanta.
“Predators like Legault are always lurking on line, and a threat to our children. Hopefully his sentencing will serve as a warning to all parents to monitor what their children are doing on the internet and on their cell phones,” said Chris Hacker, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Atlanta, said in a statement.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said both the Georgia and Mississippi cases are part of the U.S. Justice Department’s Project Safe Childhood initiative to protect children from online exploitation and abuse.
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
A man whom prosecutors alleged ignored his infant daughter’s serious medical emergency at their Delk Road-area apartment last year was found guilty of second-degree murder on Tuesday.
The Cobb District Attorney’s office said Sidrick Raymone Melancon Sr., 32, was convicted by a Cobb Superior Court jury of all the charges against him, including murder in the second degree, cruelty to children in the second degree, and two counts of influencing a witness.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 21, and could get up to 50 years in prison.
He was charged after dropping off his daughter to an urgent care location on Aug. 5, 2017 after she was unresponsive and purplish, then leaving the scene with another person to run errands and go to a liquor store, according to prosecutors.
They said at the trial that Melancon delivered the girl’s body “like a sack of potatoes” and that doctors found Laura Higgenbotham, who was 10 months old, suffering from massive bleeding on her brain. She also had bleeding in the eye, some neck trauma and leg fractures, according to testimony presented at the trial.
The child was rushed to WellStar Kennestone Hospital, then airlifted to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta before doctors declared her brain dead and removed her from life support, according to prosecutors.
The girl’s mother, Sadai Higgenbotham, 27, texted Melancon the morning of Aug. 5 from her Collingwood Drive apartment that she was unable to wake the child, the Cobb DA’s office said. Sadai Higgenbotham is awaiting trial and also is facing murder and other charges in connection with her daughter’s death.
Melancon was arrested on Aug. 8 and has remained in the Cobb County Adult Detention Center without bond since then.
Also living at the apartment was Melancon’s long-time girlfriend and three children he fathered with her. The woman had threatened to call the Department of Family and Children’s Services for what prosecutors said was Sadai Higgenbotham’s treatment of her daughter.
At his trial, Melancon testified he did not know Laura Higgenbotham was his child at the time of her death. Prosecutors said that investigators reviewed text messages between Melancon and Sadai Higgenbotham and his girlfriend, and alleged that he had asked both of them to lie to police.
According to one of the messages presented at the trial, Melancon said: “I didn’t do anything to that baby, but I didn’t do anything for that baby. So . . . that’s on me.”
Said Cobb assistant district attorney Drew Healy, who tried the case: “This man saw, heard, and was told about everything happening to this defenseless child. Despite all of these warnings, the defendant ignored them, and shut down the opportunities for this child’s life to be saved.”
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Ron Gorman, who served as a volunteer coach with the Pope wrestling teams, pleaded guilty in Cobb Superior Court on Tuesday to two counts of child molestation.
Gorman, 53, was given a 25-year sentence by Judge Gregory Poole, with 20 to serve without parole, according to the Cobb District Attorney’s Office.
Gorman was to have gone on trial after being charged with abusing a 14-year-old boy in Cobb County in 2010, according to prosecutors, who said the victim disclosed the abuse last year to authorities in Monroe County, Pa.
That’s where Gorman had been sentenced to 20-40 years in February for sexually assaulting boys there, including the boy prosecutors said was also victimized in Cobb.
According to the Cobb DA’s office, Gorman was extradited to Cobb to face the charges here and will be returned to Pennsylvania, where he will serve his sentences concurrently.
“This is a prime example of how child predators can work their way into positions of trust and authority, and then turn that trust into a weapon against children,” said Chuck Boring, Cobb deputy chief assistant district attorney and head of the Cobb DA’s special victims unit.
Gorman moved to Cobb in 2009 and was a volunteer with Pope Junior Wrestling, which feeds into the highly successful Pope High School program, where he also was a parent volunteer. He also was a coach at Life College in Marietta.
Gorman was arrested at his East Cobb home in March 2017 and eventually was charged by Pennsylvania authorities with a total of 513 counts, including child rape and statutory sexual assault.
His accusers in Pennsylvania claimed Gorman subjected them to frequent and continuous assaults, sometimes on a weekly basis, for several years, including in Georgia.
News reports last March and earlier this year quoted a Cobb woman who became concerned about Gorman in 2011. That’s when she saw a crude, sexually themed Facebook message sent by him to her son, then 12, and a member of the Pope junior wrestling program.
She said she was told by then-Pope principal Rick Beaulieu not to go to law enforcement. Gorman was suspended from any involvement with Pope wrestling for a year, but it was six years later that he was charged.
Boring said in court Tuesday that there are no other charges that Gorman is facing in Cobb. In Pennsylvania, prosecutors heard allegations that Gorman abused minors dating back to the 1980s, but the statue of limitations had run out.
“Hopefully this conclusion gives his victims some sort of closure and justice, whether they have reported his abuse or not,” Boring said.
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Alyssa Prindle never left ICU after falling out of a moving car on Johnson Ferry Road July 5.
An East Cobb teen charged with the death of another teen who fell out of a moving car over the July 4 holiday has been indicted by a Cobb grand jury.
Abigail Cook, 17, is facing charges of vehicular homicide, having a false identification and underage possession of alcohol.
The indictments were handed Nov. 1, according to online documents filed with the Cobb District Attorney’s Office.
Cook, whose home address is listed as Wood Thrush Way, was charged shortly after Alyssa Prindle, 18, a recent graduate of Pope High School, was seriously injured in the incident and taken to WellStar Kennestone Hospital.
Cobb Police said Prindle was a backseat passenger in an SUV driven by Cook that was heading north on Johnson Ferry Road near Sewell Mill Road around 2 a.m. on July 5.
According to police, Prindle rolled down a window of a silver 2001 Hyundai Santa Fe and began hanging out of the vehicle while it was in motion, yelling and screaming before she fell out.
Prindle, who was to have been a freshman at Georgia Southern University this fall, was in intensive care at Kennestone until she died on July 27.
The charges against Cook, who bonded out of jail shortly after her arrest, were upgraded to include vehicular homicide. She was indicted by the grand jury for violating her class D drivers license hour restrictions.
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
The Cobb District Attorney’s Office said Friday that 23 people have been sentenced to long prison terms for a range of gang-related criminal offenses in the county in 2015 and 2016.
In a release, DA’s office spokeswoman Kim Isaza said that members of Get Money Squared, Wildlyfe and 2200, three criminal street gangs with roots in Cobb, pleaded guilty to drive-by shootings, drug offenses, thefts, car break-ins, assault, street-gang terrorism, criminal trespass, disrupting a public school and firearms violations.
One of the crimes tied to the defendants included a car break-in on Manning Road in the East Cobb area in January 2016.
Another case tied to the crime spree, according to prosecutors, was a drug sale at Windy Hill Road and Circle 75 Parkway in May 2016.
Isaza said Cobb Superior Court Judge Reuben Green handed down sentences ranging from 10 years to 20 years.
She said many of them were given first-offender status, which means that if they complete their custody and probation periods without further incidents, their records will be sealed.
Isaza said the defendants are between 20-27 years old and come from Cobb, Woodstock, Lawrenceville, Atlanta, and Dothan, Ala. The last of the defendants was sentenced last month, she added, and all of them pleaded guilty to racketeering.
Investigating the case were the Cobb Police Anti-Gang Enforcement Unit, Smyrna Police, Marietta Police and Cobb County School District Police.
“Members and associates of these gangs admitted that they sold drugs, broke into dozens of cars to commit thefts and committed acts of violence against people outside the gangs, all to increase their status within the criminal organization and further the gangs’ violent reputations,” said Cobb Senior Assistant District Attorney Jaret Usher, who prosecuted the case, in a statement.
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
A woman who went on a crime spree that included the death of a pedestrian near Bells Ferry Road two years ago has been sentenced to prison.
The Cobb District Attorney’s Office said Tuesday that Kristie Renee Nesby, 45, of Fresno, Texas, has been sentenced to 55 years in prison, with 20 to serve and the rest on parole.
She pleaded guilty but mentally ill last week to several felony charges, including killing Luci Turner, 71, who was struck by a car driven by Nesby.
Prosecutors said that incident came at the end what the DA’s office called a “bizarre” string of crimes by Nesby in May 2016.
Nesby, who was to go on trial next week, pleaded guilty but mentally ill to 10 charges, including homicide by vehicle, armed robbery, hijacking a motor vehicle, hit and run, aggravated assault, and possessing a firearm during the commission of a felony.
Around 5 a.m. on May 11, 2016, they said Nesby robbed the owner of a Smyrna cleaning business, then hit another vehicle while speeding on Interstate 575. Prosecutors said Nesby fled the scene, drove the wrong way on an exit ramp and hit another car.
Shortly after 6 a.m., the DA’s office said Nesby was driving on Cobb Parkway near Bells Ferry Road when her car left the road and went on a sidewalk, hitting Turner, who was walking to her job at a nearby Burger King.
Turner, who had been a teacher and a volunteer at MUST Ministries, died of her injuries at WellStar Kennestone Hospital.
After that incident, prosecutors said Nesby hijacked a car driven by a female motorist on Bells Ferry Road and fled toward Interstate 75. She then hijacked a second car and robbed a woman of her cell phone, according to the DA’s office.
Prosecutors said that while driving to Atlanta Nesby called 911 and said she would take a hostage and kill the hostage and herself if police didn’t chase her with blue lights and stop her.
She crashed into several vehicles in Atlanta and tried to hijack another car before being arrested there, according to prosecutors, who said police found her in possession of two handguns.
Prosecutors said Nesby contended that among other things, a fast food employee put something in a soft drink she had ordered that caused her to hallucinate and commit the crimes.
The Cobb DA’s office enlisted the help of mental health experts who evaluated Nesby, and that prosecutors and Nesby’s attorney asked the court to find her mentally ill.
Cobb Superior Court Judge Stephen Schuster accepted Nesby’s plea before issuing the sentence, the Cobb DA’s office said.
Nesby, who has been in the Cobb County jail since her arrest, will receive credit for time served, according to the Cobb DA’s office, which said she also will receive mental health treatment in prison.
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
A man found guilty last week of raping a 4-year-old girl at his Delk Road apartment was given two life sentences plus 120 years.
Frederick Wade Sherwood, 48, was convicted Friday by a Cobb Superior Court jury of all charges, including rape, aggravated sodomy and child molestation, according to the Cobb District Attorney’s Office.
The sentence was handed down by Cobb Superior Court Judge Grant Brantley.
Prosecutors said the attacks occurred between 2014 and 2015 in Sherwood’s Delk Road apartment (according to Cobb Sheriff’s Office, his home address is listed as 2650 Delk Road, the Stratford Ridge Apartments).
Prosecutors said the girl was four years old when the assaults began, and she disclosed the abuse to family members in early 2016.
During the trial, according to the DA’s office, she clutched a stuffed animal on the witness stand, saying she initially told no one about the abuse because she feared Sherwood would be mad at her.
A male witness testified during the trial to having been sexually abused by Sherwood years before in another city.
“Any time a small child has to face their abuser in court is particularly difficult,” Cobb assistant district attorney Katie Gropper, who prosecuted the case, said in a statement.
“We are always hopeful that the judicial process is an empowering step towards healing. While we can’t undo the harm the Defendant caused to this child, the jury’s verdict will help bring a sense of justice and closure and ensure that Mr. Sherwood can never harm another child in our community.”
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
A few weeks after he was sentenced to federal prison for exchanging opioid prescriptions for sexual favors, the former Cobb Medical Examiner has been sentenced on drug-related charges in Cobb County.
Joe Burton, 73, was sentenced to eight years in prison on Wednesday by Cobb Chief Magistrate Court Judge Joyette Holmes. In July, he pleaded guilty to several counts of racketeering, fraud in obtaining controlled substances, and violations of Georgia’s controlled substances act.
“No one is above the law,” Cobb assistant district attorney Jason Saliba said in a statement. “We prosecute anyone who distributes narcotics in Cobb County.”
Burton was given an eight-year federal prison sentence on Aug. 29. According to the Cobb District Attorney’s Office, Burton will serve his sentences concurrently.
The Cobb medical examiner from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, Burton pleaded guilty in federal court in May to being part of a conspiracy to illegally distribute opioid painkillers in exchange for sexual favors.
He was one of several people indicted in February by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta. According to his federal indictment, Burton issued more than 1,100 opioid prescriptions over a two-year period beginning in July 2015, amounting to more than 108,000 individual doses, including over 66,000 oxycodone pills.
Federal prosecutors said Burton prescribed opioids such as oxycodone, hydrocodone and methadone without conducting a medical examination of patients or even meeting with them at all.
The street value of the oxycodone pills alone, prosecutors estimated, was more than $2 million.
Three female co-defendants in the federal case had sex with Burton in exchange for receiving the drugs for themselves and for others, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
According to Cobb District Attorney’s office information, Spencer Wayne Herron, 48, was indicted in the past week on five counts of sexual assault of a student.
Herron, who had been a video teacher at Kell for 16 years, was named the school’s teacher of the year two years ago.
Arrest warrants indicate Herron has been accused of having sex multiple times with a student on campus from early 2016 through the 2017-18 school year.
Herron was taken to the Cobb County Adult Detention Center on June 1, and remains there on a $50,000 bond, according to Cobb Sheriff’s Office records.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Atlanta attorney Dale Schwartz, a key figure in Leo Frank’s posthumous pardon in 1986, holds up a photo of the 1915 lynching near what is now Frey’s Gin Road. (East Cobb News photos and video by Wendy Parker)
The Leo Frank memorial that stood near the site of the infamous lynching in Marietta 103 years ago this month has been relocated and on Thursday morning was rededicated.
Across the street from that venue on Roswell Road, representatives of the Cobb and metro Atlanta Jewish community and others gathered to honor the memory of Frank, regarded as the only Jewish lynching victim in American history.
Squeezed between the new Northwest Corridor Express Lanes on Interstate 75 and a taco eatery, the marker is located in a “parklet” created by the Georgia Department of Transportation.
The small slice of greenspace, with soft soil underneath reflecting its very recent planting, also has become the new focal point for continuing efforts to fully and formally clear Frank of the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan, a girl from Marietta, in 1913.
“Leo Frank is innocent,” said Rabbi Steven Lebow of Temple Kol Emeth in East Cobb, a leader in pushing for a full exoneration of Frank.
“Your presence here today is one more step toward full exoneration.”
The dignitaries included Marietta City Council member Joseph Goldstein and State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick of East Cobb, as well as representatives of the Georgia Historical Society, the Cobb SCLC and various Jewish organizations.
Frank was a supervisor at the National Pencil Company in downtown Atlanta in 1913 when Phagan, a worker there, was found murdered in a basement. Frank was put on trial, convicted and sentenced to death and later imprisoned in Milledgeville.
When his sentence was commuted to life, a mob from Marietta traveled to the jail. The mob, which allegedly included prominent local citizens, law enforcement and elected officials, kidnapped Frank. They brought him back to Marietta and on Aug. 17, 1915, hanged him from an oak tree near what is now Frey’s Gin Road.
The trial and lynching earned national headlines, inflaming anti-Semitic tensions in America and helping revive the Ku Klux Klan, but also giving birth to the Anti-Defamation League.
In more recent years, the Frank case has inspired several films and books as Jewish leaders worked for a pardon. That effort was sparked by a 1982 admission by Alonzo Mann, a pencil factory worker, that Frank was wrongly convicted.
After a silence of nearly 70 years, Mann said he saw Jim Conley, a factory custodian, carrying Mary Phagan’s body the day she died. Mann also said was told by Conley he would be killed if he told anyone about what he saw.
At Frank’s trial, Conley was the main witness for the prosecution against Frank. The state of Georgia granted Frank a pardon in 1986, but only on the grounds that he did not receive a fair trial.
“We’re still trying to get a new trial that would, in effect, exonerate him,” said Dale Schwartz, an Atlanta attorney who also has led the charge for a pardon.
The Leo Frank saga was national front-page news for more than two years, from his trial and imprisonment to his lynching.
He retold the story of the pardon effort in detail, as well as his own Jewish family being attacked by the Klan for hiring black workers at a clothing store in Winder during the Jim Crow era.
The Leo Frank memorial was originally dedicated in 2008 by the Georgia Historical Society, the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation and Temple Kol Emeth.
It had to be moved four years ago to make way for an entrance ramp to the Express Lanes, which are scheduled to open by the end of the summer. The marker was kept in storage during that time by Georgia DOT.
Jerry Klinger, founder and president of the Jewish American Society, said the new site is the perfect venue for what he said is “an important story.”
Rabbi Steven Lebow of East Cobb’s Temple Kol Emeth.
“We have an opportunity to transform the meaning of this location beyond Leo Frank,” he said.
Klinger noted nearly a century’s worth of anti-lynching legislation that has never been passed, as well as a bipartisan bill recently introduced in the U.S. Senate.
He said his organization will soon locate a black granite anti-lynching marker on the site, also in honor of Frank, and has placed a floral arrangement near Phagan’s gravesite at the Marietta City Cemetery.
“We chose to remember the first victim but also chose to remember all the victims in the United States who have suffered the horrors of lynching,” Klinger said.
The Southeast regional office of the Anti-Defamation League in Atlanta also planted a crepe myrtle tree and invited guests to shovel dirt around it to honor the dead.
Shelley Rose, the ADL deputy regional director, said Georgia is only one of five states that does not have a hate-crimes law, and said it’s important to press for such legislation here.
Rabbi Daniel Dorsch of Congregation Etz Chaim in East Cobb offered a benediction he dubbed “A Really Horrible Thing,” based on what a supermarket clerk told him in reference to the Frank case, not long after he moved to the community two years ago.
The rededication, Dorsch said, can help “to inspire us to go out and create a world where there will be no more horrible things.”
The new Leo Frank memorial site is located between Huarache Veloz Mexican Taqueria, 1157 Roswell Road, and Interstate 75.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
A Stockbridge man convicted for an East Cobb murder more than four years ago was sentenced to two consecutive life terms without parole on Monday.
Cobb Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark issued the sentence to Johnathan Allan Wheeler Monday afternoon, not long after he was found guilty of malice murder by a jury.
Wheeler, now 35, was on trial last week for the murder of Jerry L. Moore, who was found stabbed 32 times at his home on Gracewood Drive, off Holly Springs Road, on Jan. 25, 2014.
Wheeler also was convicted of felony murder, aggravated assault, armed robbery and first-degree burglary, according to the Cobb District Attorney’s Office.
Cobb prosecutors said during the trial that Wheeler worked at a Woodstock bakery run by Moore’s roommate, Ross Byrne. Moore, who was 46 at the time of his death, was a half-owner in the business but wanted to get out, according to assistant Cobb District Attorney Jesse Evans.
Evans said during the trial that Byrne had been a business mentor to Wheeler and had moved out of Moore’s home a few weeks before the murder. After the stabbings, Evans said, Wheeler went to Byrne’s residence.
Wheeler’s cousin testified during the trial that he confessed to the murder. Cynthia Wheeler agreed to testify against Wheeler after being sentenced in 2016 for helping him clean up the home after the crime and stealing household items there.
The Cobb DA also said that Wheeler confessed to the murders to his brother and stepfather, both of whom testified at the trial.
“This was a relentless, sustained, malicious attack by a cold-blooded killer,” Evans told jurors in his closing statements while showing them pictures at the crime scene, according to the DA’s office. “The defendant pursued, out of greed and out of malice. No human being should ever have this inflicted on them.”
Wheeler served nearly a decade in prison for robbery and assault in Cobb and Cherokee counties, and was released in 2010.
Over the last two years, Wheeler had written frequently from the Cobb County Adult Detention Center to the court in pleas for a speedy trial, according to documents filed with the Cobb Superior Court Clerk’s office.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
