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#Post#: 373--------------------------------------------------
~ Dustin Honken, 17Jul20, (FedIA) ~
By: BuzzC Date: July 28, 2019, 7:44 am
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Murder in Iowa--
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Angela Johnson could have been the first woman executed by the
federal government since December 1953 if the sentence handed
down by jurors in her capital murder trial had held up on
appeal. Instead she avoided the fate of Ethel Rosenberg after a
federal judge declared that Johnson’s defense attorneys muffed
the penalty phase of her trial. Her sentence was reduced to
life.
Johnson was convicted in U.S. District Court in 2005 for her
role in helping nerdy but deadly drug kingpin Dustin Honken
murder three adults and two children in an attempt to fend off a
federal drug probe in 1993. The jury recommended that she pay
for her crimes with her life.
In 2004 Honken himself became the first person sentenced to
death by Iowa jurors in 41 years.
Honken was a community college chemistry whiz who began
manufacturing methamphetamine with his brother and a childhood
friend in 1992. He sold several pounds of the deadly stimulant
to two Iowa men, Terry DeGues and Greg Nicholson.
His drug dealing career didn’t last very long and Honken was
arrested by federal authorities in March 1993. Over the spring
and summer of that year, Honken and his attorney negotiated with
the feds and Honken learned that Nicholson was cooperating with
the government. Honken agreed to plead guilty to federal drug
charges in July 1993.
However, the week before Honken was scheduled to appear in court
for his plea, Nicholson disappeared along with his 32-year-old
girlfriend Lori Duncan and her two daughters, Kandi, 10, and
Amber, 6. Honken subsequently backed out of his guilty plea and
with little evidence, the government was forced to drop its
case.
In November 1993, DeGues also dropped off the face of the earth.
Although that case against Honken collapsed, he was nabbed again
in 1996 and a year later pleaded guilty to meth dealing and got
a 27-year prison sentence.
If he had been able to keep his mouth shut, Dustin Honken would
have gotten away with murder. But behind bars, face is
everything and Honken, a wussy little doormat of a con, had to
talk tough to stay alive.
His first mistake was telling enough of the truth to other cons
who immediately put it to their own use. Honken’s second
screw-up was involving Angela Johnson in the killings.
Armed with Honken’s jailhouse confessions, authorities arrested
Johnson on conspiracy and murder charges and put her in the
Benton County, Iowa jail where she met Robert McNeese.
McNeese was on his way to prison to serve a life sentence for
heroin delivery when Johnson began confiding in him that she was
connected to multiple homicides. She wanted to kill one friend
who had implicated her in the murders of the Duncans, DeGues and
Nicholson, and was afraid that Dustin Honken was looking to
eliminate her, as well.
On the stand at Johnson’s trial, McNeese admitted that he saw an
opportunity to help himself by making believe he could help
Johnson find someone else to take the fall for the crime.
“I told her I had been in prison a long time,” he said. “I knew
a lot of people. I told her she would have to describe how the
crimes were committed, what the people were wearing when they
were killed and where the bodies were located.”
Johnson bit and provided all of the information McNeese wanted,
including a map which led police to recover the bodies of
Honken’s five victims.
When she learned she had been double-crossed, Johnson attempted
suicide.
Eventually, Honken and Johnson would be put on trial and the
truth about how their victims died would come out.
“I killed my rats,” Honken told federal prisoner Fred Tokars,
who is serving life for murdering his wife.
Honken used Johnson to get to the victims. On July 25, 1993, she
showed up at Duncan’s home posing as a cosmetics saleswoman who
was lost. She let Johnson into her home and Honken followed,
brandishing a handgun.
Tokars testified at Honken’s trial in 2004 that Johnson herded
the Duncans into a bedroom while Honken forced Nicholson, who
had worn a wire as a cooperating witness, to videotape a
statement exonerating him.
The group was then tortured, bound, gagged and shot in the back
of the head. Tokars testified that Honken told him in 1998 that
Kandi and Amber Duncan saw their mother and Nicholson murdered.
They were rats being raised by rats, Honken said.
A tape played at Honken’s trial, recorded by a cooperating
inmate witness, reveals Honken enjoyed killing. “It’s like
getting high,” he said.
The corpses were driven to a field southwest of Mason City and
dumped in shallow graves.
Months later, Angela Johnson lured DeGeus to his death. Johnson
called her former lover and asked him to meet her on Nov. 4,
1993, the last time he was seen. He was beaten to death with a
baseball bat and shot several times.
During the penalty phase of Johnson’s trial, Lori Duncan’s
brother recalled that his father blamed himself for his
granddaughters’ deaths. The girls had wanted to stay overnight
with him on July 25, 1993, but it was inconvenient for him at
the time.
The man is haunted by the belief that “if he had watched the
girls that night, they’d still be with us now,” his son said.
8)
#Post#: 438--------------------------------------------------
Re: ~ Dustin Honken, 17Jul20, (FedIA) ~
By: BuzzC Date: July 17, 2020, 1:59 am
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Iowa Drug Kingpin Who Killed 5 Set for Execution Friday--
A convicted killer from Iowa whose five victims included two
young girls is scheduled Friday to become the third federal
inmate to be executed this week, following a 17-year pause in
federal executions.
Friday, July 17, 2020
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — A meth kingpin from Iowa who killed
five people, including two young girls, is scheduled Friday to
become the third federal inmate to be executed this week,
following a 17-year pause in federal executions.
Dustin Honken, 52, was sentenced to death for killing government
informants and children in his effort to thwart his drug
trafficking prosecution in 1993.
Honken is set to die by a lethal injection of the powerful
sedative pentobarbital at the federal prison in Terre Haute,
Indiana, where he’s been on death row since 2005. His lawyers
are making last-minute pleas for a reprieve, but their chances
of success seem remote after the Supreme Court reversed
lower-court orders that sought to block the executions of two
other men this week.
Daniel Lewis Lee was executed Tuesday morning and Wesley Ira
Purkey was put to death two days later, each after hours of
legal wrangling that the high court ended with 5-4 votes to
allow the executions to take place.
Lee was convicted of murdering an Arkansas family in a 1990s
plot to build a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest. He
maintained his innocence to the end, saying just before he died,
"I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I’m not a murderer.
You’re killing an innocent man.”
Purkey was executed for kidnapping and killing a 16-year-old
girl, Jennifer Long, in Kansas City, Missouri, before
dismembering, burning and dumping her body in a septic pond. In
his final words, the inmate expressed regret for killing Long
and said: "This sanitized murder really does not serve no
purpose whatsoever. Thank you.”
A federal judge had ordered an eleventh-hour delay in both
executions, citing the prospect that the inmates would suffer
severe pain from the execution drug. The judge also would have
allowed Purkey's lawyers to pursue claims that he was suffering
from dementia and was unable to understand why he was being
executed.
The Supreme Court removed those obstacles, noting Tuesday that
Texas and other states have used pentobarbital “without
incident” in more than 100 executions. The court didn't comment
in rejecting the delay relating to claims of Purkey's dementia.
Honken's execution would be the 10th carried out in the U.S. in
2020, including three in Texas, which executes more inmates than
any other state. Last year, 22 prisoners were executed, the
fifth straight year that fewer than 30 people were put to death
in the U.S. — far lower than the 65 executions that were carried
out in 2003, the last time an federal inmate was executed.
Honken grew up in Iowa, but moved with a friend to Arizona to
try to get rich by cooking meth, which he learned to do after
studying chemistry in college. They distributed their product
through two dealers based in Iowa.
One of those dealers was Greg Nicholson, who began cooperating
with investigators in 1993 after coming under suspicion. Honken
was arrested and indicted for conspiring to manufacture meth
after Nicholson secretly recorded Honken and testified before a
grand jury.
Honken informed the court that he would plead guilty. But days
before his July 1993 plea hearing, he and his girlfriend, Angela
Johnson, went searching for Nicholson.
They found him at the home where he lived with his girlfriend,
Lori Duncan, and her daughters, 10-year-old Kandi and 6-year-old
Amber. The four were kidnapped, shot to death and buried, but
their bodies weren't found for seven years. Honken also killed
his other dealer, 32-year-old Terry DeGeus, whose body was found
a few miles away from Honken's other victims.
Honken was convicted of the Iowa killings in 2004 in a trial
that featured extraordinary security measures, including an
anonymous jury. Honken was bolted to the floor of the courtroom
and wore a stun belt under his clothing to prevent escape
attempts.
The jury recommended a death sentence and U.S. District Judge
Mark Bennett, who said he generally opposes the death penalty,
agreed.
“I am not going to lose any sleep if he is executed,” said
Bennett, who has since retired from the bench. “Normally I
would, but the evidence was so overwhelming.”
8)
#Post#: 439--------------------------------------------------
Re: ~ Dustin Honken, 17Jul20, (FedIA) ~
By: BuzzC Date: July 17, 2020, 8:15 pm
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Iowa meth kingpin is the 3rd scum-sucker executed by U.S.
government this week--
Friday, July 17, 2020
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — The U.S. government on Friday put to
death an Iowa chemistry student-turned-meth kingpin convicted of
killing five people, capping a week in which the Trump
administration restored federal executions after a 17-year
hiatus.
Dustin Honken, 52, who prosecutors said killed key witnesses to
stop them from testifying in his drugs case, received a lethal
injection at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute,
Indiana. Two others were also put to death during the week after
a hiatus of nearly 20 years.
Honken, who had been on death row since 2005, was pronounced
dead at 4:36 p.m. The inmate — known for his verbosity at
hearings and for a rambling statement declaring his innocence at
sentencing — spoke only briefly, neither addressing victims’
family members nor saying he was sorry. His last words were,
“Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for me.”
A Catholic priest, Honken's spiritual adviser, stood near him
inside the death chamber. Honken spoke on his back, strapped to
a gurney under a pale-green sheet. He didn't look toward
witnesses behind a glass barrier, keeping his eyes firmly fixed
on the ceiling.
In a statement, Justice Department spokesperson Kerri Kupec said
“just punishment has been carried out.”
“Nearly three decades after Honken coldly ended the lives of
five people ... all in an effort to protect himself and his
criminal enterprise, he has finally faced justice,” Kupec said.
After officials began administering the lethal injection, Honken
began blinking his eyes, his fingers twitching and his lips
quivering. After several minutes his breathing became more
labored. He turned increasingly ashen as blood drained from his
face and hands. His fingers gradually stopped twitching, and his
breathing became shallower until it stopped.
Honken was pronounced dead after 30 minutes — longer than the
other two executions. An official with a stethoscope walked into
the small death chamber, put his fingers on Honken’s neck to
check for a pulse, listened for a heartbeat, then exited.
Seconds later, officials announced the time of death.
While out on bond in his drugs case in July 1993, Honken and his
girlfriend Angela Johnson kidnapped Lori Duncan and her two
daughters from their Mason City, Iowa, home, then killed and
buried them in a wooded area nearby. Ten-year-old Kandi and
6-year-old Amber were still in their swimsuits on the hot summer
day when they were shot execution-style in the back of the head.
8)
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