KANSAS CITY — Authorities searching for a woman after finding her husband’s corpse in a freezer have her in custody, according to a social media report from police in Joplin Missouri.

Barbara J. Watters, was taken into custody Thursday afternoon with the assistance from the US Marshals Service.

Authorities found the corpse in the freezer in a bedroom inside Wattters’ southwest Missouri home where it may have been stored for nearly a year.

Details on charges have not been released.

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KANSAS CITY (AP) — Authorities are searching for a woman after finding her husband’s corpse in a freezer in a bedroom inside her southwest Missouri home, where it may have been stored for nearly a year.

Barbara Watters, 67, of Joplin, was charged Wednesday with abandonment of a corpse, a felony that is punishable by up to four years in prison.

The grim discovery was made after a witness told police that Paul Barton’s body had been in Watters’ freezer since his death on Dec. 30, 2018, a police officer wrote in the probable cause affidavit.

The witness said Watters threatened to kill him if he notified police. Watters also threatened to kill police, fireman and emergency medical workers if they attempted to come into her house, the witness said, according to the affidavit.

Police said she has unspecified “mental disorders” and is known to carry firearms.

Police released a photo of Watters and the license plate number for the white sedan she may be driving in a Facebook post that asked the public for help finding her. Capt. Nick Jimenez declined to elaborate further on the search.

Jimenez said in an interview that officers got the tip about the body Monday while investigating an unrelated Nov. 5 fire that damaged a home in the neighborhood. Officers served a search warrant Tuesday and found the body just where the witness said it would be.

Jimenez declined to describe how the witness knows Watters, although the affidavit said he was at her house on Nov. 7 when officers attempted to contact the occupants. The witness said Watters stood at the door pointing a handgun at officers on the other side and refused to allow him to answer the door.

The affidavit doesn’t explain why officers were at the house that day, and Jimenez said he didn’t know whether it was related to the arson inquiry.

Police weren’t immediately able to provide a call history to the home. The Associated Press submitted a records request.

Meanwhile, an autopsy is planned to determine the cause of death and confirm the identity of the remains. While the criminal complaint says Watters “knowingly disposed of or left” Barton’s corpse at her home without notifying law enforcement, Jimenez said formal identification of the body is pending.

Watters had only minor past convictions for driving with an expired license and operating a vehicle on a highway without a valid license, according to online court records in Missouri.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Two Kansas sheriff’s department employees have been charged over an incident with a jailed inmate, but no details have been released.

The Wyandotte County prosecutor’s office announced Thursday that 47-year-old Sgt. David Toland and 34-year-old Deputy Marcus Johnson are charged with one misdemeanor count of mistreatment of a confined person. Toland also is charged with felony aggravated battery and Johnson with misdemeanor assault. The Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Office has placed both employees on administrative leave.

The prosecutor’s office didn’t immediately respond to an email asking whether the men have attorneys.

Toland also is a member of the Bonner Springs-Edwardsville school board. He told KCTV last month that about five jail staffers were involved in the September incident. He said he was working as a supervisor at the time and that the entire encounter was recorded on video. He said “what happened was right” but provided no other details.

Sheriff Don Ash also provided no specifics in a written statement but said it “does not reflect our organizational values.” The statement noted that an administrative investigation is ongoing

PAWNEE COUNTY– Law enforcement authorities are investigating a Kansas man on sex crime allegations.

On Thursday, Michael Patrick Stacey, 19, Larned, Kansas, appeared in custody in Pawnee County and was charged with rape and battery, according to Pawnee CountyAttorney Doug McNett.  The crimes involve a single incident alleged to have occurred in Pawnee County on October 25, 2019.  The Larned Police Department handled the investigation.

If convicted, under the Kansas Sentencing Guidelines Stacey faces a presumptive prison sentence between 147 months and 653 months in the custody of the Department of Corrections depending on his criminal history.

Stacey was arrested on November 12, 2019, without incident and is being held in the custody of the Pawnee County Sheriff in lieu of $100,000 bond, according to McNett.

POTTAWATOMIE COUNTY— One person died in a fire at a home in Pottawatomie County Sunday, according to the Kansas State Fire Marshal’s office.

Just after 10:30p.m., fire crews responded to the home at 13910 Antelope Run Road in rural Westmoreland. The home had totally collapsed prior to the arrival of fire crews and deputies from the sheriff’s department.

Fire crews found a victim dead in the home, according to the State Fire Marshal’s office.

A positive identification of the victim will not be made until it is confirmed by autopsy.

The Investigation Division of the Fire Marshal’s office has classified the cause of the fire as undetermined. Loss is estimated at $200,000. It is unknown if there were smoke detectors in the structure.

Companies have said deal will result in up to $300 million in expense reductions

NEW YORK (AP) — Two of the largest U.S. newspaper companies are set to combine after shareholders approved GateHouse Media’s $1.4 billion acquisition of Gannett.

New York-based New Media Investment Group, which owns GateHouse, announced in August its plan to buy USA Today owner Gannett.

Gatehouse owns Kansas newspapers in Hays, Hutchinson, Salina, Topeka, Garden City, Dodge City, McPherson, Newton and El Dorado, among others.

The combined company would have more than 260 daily papers in the U.S. along with more than 300 weeklies — one of every six papers in the country.

The companies said when announcing the merger the deal will cut up to $300 million in costs annually.

The deal creates the largest U.S newspaper company by far. Media expert Ken Doctor estimates the combined company will have a print circulation of 8.7 million, 7 million more than the new No. 2, McClatchy.

Local papers, faced with the complex and expensive process of building digital businesses to replace declining print ads and circulation, have been aggressively consolidating in recent years.

The combined company will take the Gannett name and keep its headquarters in Gannett’s current home of McLean, Virginia.

The deal is set to close on Tuesday.

By ROD ZOOK
Hutch Post

HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Mark Buckley always liked toys. He especially likes trains. It’s the centerpiece of his shop at the Toy Depot.

The store can take anyone back in time with board games, toys and — of course — trains.

“When I retired, I wanted to sell toys at antique malls and the flea market,” Buckley recalled. “And we had a friend who owned this building and they said we’d like to sell.”

What has transpired is a store that is truly unique. Old board games line one side of the store. There are thousands of Hot Wheels still in the packages, many types of Tonka trucks and O, N and HO scale trains and merchandise. Buckley said he had no trouble filling the store once it opened.

“All through my life, I enjoyed toys, but we were poor and couldn’t afford anything. So we got one toy a year,” Buckley said. “When I turned 30, I decided I was going to buy all of the toys I had as a child, then I wanted to buy all the toys my friends had and then I wanted to buy all the toys I always wanted.”

The store not only sells toys, but also buys toys and trains from those looking to sell. The clientele comes from all over the nation. One of his clients comes from New York. On the day of this interview, Buckley had customers from Liberal, Denver, Oklahoma City and Kansas City.

While the toy collection is second-to-none, it is the Lionel train collection that leaves the young and old amazed. They stare into the glass cases full of locomotives and cars. In the middle of the area, a train layout lets customers interact by pushing various buttons that operate it.

“I have a true passion for Lionel. I’ve loved it since I was four,” Buckley said. “I used to carry TV Guides . . . so I’d take my money and go to Jim’s Hardware and I would put a dollar a week down against a train car until I got it paid off.”

Buckley said his friends eventually started selling him their train sets and the collection continued to grow. It now numbers about 3,500 locomotives and cars.

Buckley says it’s the memories the store generates that makes it special, noting it’s a love of watching people enjoying what you’ve done. Most of the memories surround the board games. Nearly everything you can think of is in there.

“Parents or grandparents will come in and buy a board game. It’s got to be the right box, the right color. It has to be exactly what they remember in their youth,” Buckley stressed. “Then they take it and show it to their grandchildren. People say board games are dead, they’re far from it. We sell hundreds of them every year.”

The store is rare, there are just 14 like it in the world, according to Buckley. He says as much as he enjoys selling toys and trains, he likes the reaction he gets from those who visit.

“I do it because of the love. It’s so much fun to have people come in here and smile,” Buckley said. “It’s a different business because when people walk in the door, they’re happy. When they walk through the store, they’re happy, whether they buy something or not.”

By ROXANA HEGEMAN

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A scathing report following an independent investigation into the heatstroke death of a 19-year-old football player who collapsed after the first day of conditioning practice at a Kansas community college found “a striking lack of leadership.”

Braeden Bradforth, a 315-pound (140 kilogram) defensive lineman for the Garden City Community College, was found unconscious outside his dorm room after practice on Aug. 1, 2018. The New Jersey teenager died that night at a hospital.

No lawsuits have been filed in the case.

A serious lack of oversight set off a series of events that led to Bradforth’s death, according to the report by investigators, including sports medicine specialists Walters, Inc. School staff failed to assess athletes prior to the conditioning test and paid little attention to assessing Bradforth’s personal level of fitness, the report said.

In particular, coaching staff didn’t consider if he had properly acclimatized to working out in summer temperatures at a higher altitude.

“A cause of death was a poorly designed and administered conditioning test for an unconditioned, non-acclimatized student-athlete at an altitude with 9% less oxygen than he was accustomed to at his home” in Neptune, New Jersey, the report said.

The college was not sufficiently prepared to ensure safety at practice or to deal with exertional heat illness, the report said. No college athletic training or coaching staff member and no emergency medical service or hospital emergency department personnel identified or treated Bradforth’s escalating symptoms of the heat stroke that caused his death, it found.

A timeline included in the report detailed the 73 minutes that passed from the moment Bradforth left the stadium to his arrival at the hospital.

“An effective plan likely would have rescued him from what turned out to be his untimely death,” the report said. “The response time and significant delays between multiple opportunities for effective treatment were a cause of death.”

Teammates found Bradforth collapsed in an alley, according to emails obtained by The Associated Press through an open records request.

Assistant football coach Caleb Young told officials Bradforth was “making a stressful moan” when he arrived on the scene, but rather than immediately dial 911 he called the head coach Jeff Sims “for instruction to see how we wanted to handle the situation.”

Young wrote in one email to university officials that while he was on the phone with Sims, players were filling jugs and bottles from drinking fountains to pour water on Bradforth and attempt to make him drink.

The college hired the investigators to conduct an independent review of the case under pressure from Bradforth’s family and the New Jersey congressional delegation. The University of Maryland also hired Walters, Inc., after the heatstroke death of offensive lineman Jordan McNair after a workout last year.