A woman has been sentenced to life in prison for the 2017 murder of her estranged husband in Leavenworth.

Barbara M. Frantz will have to serve 25 years in prison before she is eligible for parole.

Frantz, 54, Kansas City, Kansas, was sentenced Tuesday in Leavenworth County District Court for first-degree murder.

She was charged after her estranged husband, Gary, was shot Jan. 27, 2017, in a parking lot in downtown Leavenworth.

She was convicted of the murder charge in 2018.

Before District Judge Michael Gibbens sentenced Frantz, he took up a motion filed by her attorney that requested a continuance.

Defense attorney Greg Robinson said he was at a disadvantage because he was appointed to represent Frantz only about 3.5 weeks ago.

"This case has been going on for a number of years," he said.

He said there are issues in the case that need to be looked at including evidence indicating a sibling of Frantz may have confessed to the murder.

Assistant County Attorney Shawn Boyd noted this evidence had been available to attorneys who previously represented Frantz.

"At no point in time did they bring it up to the court," Boyd said.

He said the evidence concerns emails from a sibling of the defendant who indicated he committed the crime but later recanted, saying he was trying to cover for Frantz.

Robinson said he did not know why the evidence had not been brought to the courts attention much earlier.

The person who reportedly wrote the emails was in the courtroom Tuesday and Robinson called him to testify.

However, the witness said he was exercising his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination and did not testify.

Gibbens said he was denying the motion for a continuance. But he said the ruling does not preclude other procedural remedies from being available to Frantz.

Donna Meyer, sister of the victim, spoke during the sentencing hearing.

Meyer said Frantz took Gary away from his family.

"She took away a son, a father, a brother," Meyer said.

Meyer said Gary was known to his family by the name of Pat.

Boyd acknowledged the case against Frantz was not perfect. But he said the evidence against Frantz was "very, very solid."

He said the evidence included statements Gary made to a police officer and other witnesses that identified Frantz as the person who shot him.

"At no point in time, has she taken any responsibility for her actions," he said.

Boyd noted that during her trial, Frantz blamed the murder on her son.

"She deserves to spend the rest of her life in prison," Boyd said.

Robinson asked the judge to consider giving his client a lighter sentence. Robinson asked Gibbens to consider Frantzs lack of prior criminal history.

The defense attorney also asked Gibbens to consider Frantzs age and medical conditions that she previously has brought to the judges attention.

When given the opportunity to speak, Frantz argued there is a large amount of evidence pointing to a man as the shooter.

Frantz said she believes her husband had been asking for his wife instead of saying she had shot him. She argued that her husband had identified his son as the shooter.

"I am not guilty your honor," she said.

Frantz also accused the Leavenworth Police Department and the County Attorneys Office of misconduct in the case. She alleged they hid and changed evidence.

She also accused her previous attorneys of doing a bad job.

"I should not have to pay for my past attorneys failures," she said.

When imposing a life sentence, Gibbens said he took into consideration Frantzs health issues. But he also took into consideration the fact that a jury found Frantz guilty and that jurors determined the crime was premeditated.

Twitter: @LVTNewsJohnR

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Frantz sentenced to life in prison - Leavenworth Times

John Boltons new book, "The Room Where it Happened," is a betrayal of the trust Donald Trump placed in him as an adviser and confident. The book in hardback copy sells for $32.50. Judas betrayed Christ for 30 pieces of silver and then hanged himself. I doubt that Bolton plans to hang himself, but he has already hanged himself figuratively, since neither Democrats nor Republicans seem to put much credence in the books veracity.

Without a doubt, the Democrats (Socialists) would have dearly loved to have had the book when they impeached the president. Indeed, it would have been an ideal complement to the fictions they created in their attempt to overthrow the president; however, it is doubtful that the testimony they may have received from Bolton would have been of much value. I suspect that he would have invoked the Fifth Amendment numerous times if he had been subpoenaed because to swear under oath that his testimony was true would have caused him to perjure himself, and he is too smart for that.

Instead, Bolton laid the groundwork for the future "landslide sales" of his tell-all accusations. If such were his intent, Im afraid that he misjudged this potential customers interest. I would much rather spend $32.50 for a more interesting book, such as a good biography or a good novel. However, to be candid, I havent read the book. My knowledge of its content is only that of TV interviews and various excerpts read by analysts. That is enough!

In many ways, Bolton is a tragic figure. His desperate attempt to justify his actions by insinuating that the country would be in much better shape if the president had followed his advice (mainly to go to war with our enemies) reveals a man who sees himself as a guru of extreme national importance, one who should be president instead of the present candidates. To emphasize his importance to the country, he will vote for neither Biden nor Trump and will instead write in a candidate having his conservative values (a never Trumper). We will never know, but I would wager that he will write his own name on the ballot.

One wonders why a man who once enjoyed the highest esteem among the conservative powers in Washington D.C., has chosen to cast that reputation aside. Some pundits surmise that Bolton was so disgruntled with Trumps failure to give him the political position which he coveted as well as Trumps failure to recognize his brilliance, in fact, even ignoring his advice, that he grumpily determined to make sure Trump would be discredited as a credible second-term president. Never mind the fact that Trump, although crudely at times, has already proved himself to be quite capable of running a country, a stark contrast to the previous administration which was more interested in transforming America than in governing it, an administration in which the present Democrat presidential candidate was an integral part.

Disgruntled people seldom approach their decisions with logic. (Note the present-day Democratic Socialists who believe that socialism is superior to capitalism as a national political philosophy notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary.) Accordingly, Bolton has emerged, not as a memorable figure who brought down a president, but as a comic figure who brought himself down instead. This book, then, has the elements of a true drama, containing both tragedy and comedy centered on its author.

I suppose in the grand scheme of things the book is appropriate for its time. If the book had been released during the grand inquisition of Trumps impeachment, and a Bolton subpoena to appear before the inquisition had been issued, the unverifiable events, verified only by statements, such as "In my opinion" and "It seemed to me" would have left more egg on the faces of Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, and Nancy Pelosi, all of whom had enough egg on their faces anyway from their impeachment debacle.

On the other hand, more egg on their faces would have been im-peachy. Sorry! That coined description is a whimsical joke, a bad joke at that, but appropriate, I think, in light of the new face of the Democrat Party whose only agenda is to destroy todays America and create a new one. As the leader of the Black Lives Matter movement in New York City told us, and I paraphrase: We are peaceful protesters, but if we dont get our way, we will burn down America. Now, that statement is a genuine political philosophy, a statement of anarchy, a devastating statement it is true; but, at least, it has more substance than did "The Room Where It Happened."

It is too bad that Bolton didnt close the door to the room when he left.

Carl Fowler is a retired professor of English at Amarillo College and lives in Amarillo

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Fowler: A room at the bottom - Amarillo.com

Even amid the endless torrent of malevolent incompetence that characterizes the Boss Trump regime, some days stand out. One such was his Friday night commutation of career lowlife Roger Stones 40-month sentence for lying to Congress, obstructing a congressional investigation and witness tampering. The federal judge who handed it down described Stones crimes as covering up for the president.

Specifically, he obstructed the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. In the immediate aftermath, Stone bragged to veteran journalist Howard Fineman about why he lied and who he was protecting. He (Trump) knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didnt.

Turn on him, that is, by fully describing his own and Trumps conversations about WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign, when Julian Assange served as a cats paw for Russian intelligence by publishing the Democratic National Committees stolen emails. Trump testified that he has no memory of talking with Stone about it, although two witnesses overheard them. He also swore that his son Donald Jr. never told him about meeting Kremlin operatives promising dirt on Hillary Clinton in Trump Tower.

If you believe that ...

Well, lets move on.

During Attorney General William Barrs Senate confirmation hearing, he was asked, Do you believe a president could lawfully issue a pardon in exchange for the recipients promise to not incriminate him?

No, Barr answered, that would be a crime.

A straight-up mob-style transaction, as the inimitable Charles Pierce describes it, one worthy of the fictional Tony Soprano or the all-too-real John Gotti. Disorganized crime, you might call it; a cynical attack upon the rule of law. Even so, its a good bet that the attorney general has changed his opinion, and would likely quibble that a commuted sentence is not a pardon.

No, but in the Stone case, its actually worse. To accept a pardon, see, a convicted felon must admit guilt. By so doing, he surrenders his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, and can be called in front of, say, a congressional committee, and required to talk under penalty of perjury.

Cant have that, can we? So no prison time for Roger, although there are reasons to suspect he might have enjoyed certain aspects of incarceration. Back in 1996, the veteran political scam artist he has a tattoo of Richard Nixons face on his back claimed that Bill Clinton had made improper advances toward his wife. The National Enquirer turned up evidence that Stone himself had been advertising her charms in a magazine called Local Swing Fever:

Hot, insatiable lady and her handsome body builder husband ... seek similar couples or exceptional muscular well-hung single men. Shes 40DD-24-36; hes 195, trim, blond, muscular ... Prefer military, bodybuilders, jocks.

Thats Roger Stone, voluptuary and fop. He later admitted everything to The New Yorkers Jeffrey Toobin. Im not guilty of hypocrisy, Stone said. Im a libertarian and a libertine.

Some years later, he founded an anti-Hillary organization called Citizens United Not Timid.

In short, he and Trump speak the same language. So its only natural that they would end up allies even though Trump described Stone to Toobin as a stone-cold loser ... He always tries taking credit for things he never did.

But Stone did plenty during the 2016 campaign. A seeker of notoriety rivaling Trump himself, he communicated directly with Guccifer 2, the Russian intelligence operatives that hacked the DNC, even as he predicted WikiLeaks document dumps to any Republican who would listen.

Angered by the Trump commutation, special counsel Robert S. Mueller wrote a Washington Post column objecting that regardless of attempts to portray him as a victim, Stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon, and rightly so ...

A jury determined he lied repeatedly to members of Congress. He lied about the identity of his intermediary to WikiLeaks. He lied about the existence of written communications with his intermediary. He lied by denying he had communicated with the Trump campaign about the timing of WikiLeaks releases. He in fact updated senior campaign officials repeatedly about WikiLeaks.

For that matter, Stone was also convicted for threatening to kill a witness named Randy Credico and his beloved dog in a text message. Also like his patron in the White House, the man is infinitely cunning, but not real smart.

As for being a felon, far from being ashamed, Stone couldnt be prouder. To him, its a badge of honor. Hes a made man in Boss Trumps political mob.

It has been reported that what Sen. Mitt Romney called an act of unprecedented, historic corruption was vigorously opposed by William Barr. If so, the attorney general has resources. The Justice Department can empanel a grand jury, grant immunity to Roger Stone for previous acts and compel his testimony.

I am not holding my breath.

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Lyons: Stone proud to be in Trumps political mob - Muskogee Daily Phoenix

Joseph Welch, the chief attorney for the U.S. Army in the infamous Army-McCarthy hearings, will forever be remembered for interrupting Senator Joe McCarthy, who was fulminating against a young lawyer who had worked with Mr. Welch:

Senator, youve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

That was 1954. On the 20th anniversary, when I was 10, news programs were reliving that history.

I recall asking my mom what McCarthyism was.

She said Sen. McCarthy scurrilously claimed the government and other American institutions had been infiltrated by disloyal communists. She told me that the investigations ruined the reputations of many innocent Americans whose only crime was to have an unpopular political point of view.

At its heart, my mother said, McCarthyism was about creating a climate of fear and denying freedom of speech, freedom of consciousness, freedom of association and freedom of thought.

Sadly, there is a long history in the U.S. of bringing harm to people who hold unpopular views or who have associated with people that the mob wants to silence. In todays climate, we need to keep that history in mind.

In some cases, the excuse for this vigilantism is to protect the brand of the employer of the person with the sinister political views. In others, it is to shut up a persons conscience and discourage anyone else from defending opinions the mob feels are unacceptable.

A handful of stories of this kind of censorship are well known. Films have been made, for example, about the repression of the Hollywood Ten, who were blacklisted following a 1947 hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Likewise, the case of Irving Adler a New York math teacher who was fired for invoking his Fifth Amendment rights and later admitted to being a communist is well remembered.

There are many other tragedies that are long forgotten.

One was the story of Tanner Parga, a longtime baseball announcer. He was originally hired by the Sacramento Senators in 1928, calling their games on radio through the 1935 season, when they were affiliated with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

In 1936, the franchise changed names, becoming the Sacramento Solons, a St. Louis Cardinals affiliate. Mr. Parga remained the teams radio announcer until he was terminated in the middle of the 1947 season.

The team never explained the firing of Tanner Parga, who was also removed from his other job as a radio commentator.

Prior to his dismissals, Parga was not without controversy. Hed had conflicts with a few past players in Sacramento. Some wanted him fired for that. During the second red scare in 1947, Parga said on the radio, Just because someone was a socialist or disliked capitalism didnt mean he couldnt be a good American.

A few days later, the ex-ballplayers who had conflicts with Parga, publicly called for his head. By the end of that week, Tanner Parga had been fired by the Solons and by KFBK-FM. He never worked again.

Another interesting, but largely forgotten case of punishing individuals for holding politically incorrect views came in 1957, the year Sen. McCarthy died of alcoholism.

Don Kingelor, a professor of accounting at the University of Mississippi, came under attack because it was believed he did not sufficiently mourn the death of a white highway patrolman, Johnnie Rank, who was allegedly killed by a Black petty criminal.

Kingelor had also been attacked for writing, People should not be evaluated based on the color of their skin.

When Professor Kingelor refused to cancel a final exam the day segregationist Ole Miss students were grieving the loss of Officer Rank, they signed a petition calling for Kingelors firing. Those who missed the test stated they deserved no harm from their accounting teacher.

Prof. Kingelor replied, Can you guide me on how you think I should achieve a no-harm outcome since our sole course grade is from a final exam only? Thanks, D. Kingelor.

In 1951, shortly after the Battle of Bloody Ridge in which the United States suffered 3,000 casualties fighting North Korean and Chinese soldiers the Philadelphia Inquirer fired its senior editor, Winston Shicksaw, who had been with the paper for over 20 years and was highly esteemed for his work, for having written a headline that pro-military activists and some Inquirer reporters deemed insensitive.

The headline regarded a proposed real estate development called Broadway Ridge. Mr. Shicksaw titled the story about conflict between those for and against the project, The Battle of Broadway Ridge.

Two days later, Shicksaw lost his job. That same week, a New York Times editor was fired for having run an editorial written by a U.S. Senator that pro-military activists deemed dangerous.

Of course, in hindsight, its easy to see how very wrong these episodes were, especially when mob action harmed people for whom you may feel sympathy or you think were unjustly treated.

Sadly, we still live in those times. Yes, the story ofTanner Parga is fiction, a representation of sports announcer Grant Napear, whowas fired for expressing his belief that all lives matter. Don Kingelor is made up. However, it is not fiction to report that UCLA student activists are calling for the head of Prof. Gordon Klein for not cancelling his final exam as they mourned the death of George Floyd.

Newspaper editor Stan Wischnowski (anagram for the fictive Winston Shicksaw) of the Inquirer was fired for a headline, Buildings matter, too; and James Bennet of the Times was forced to resign for running a column written by Sen. Tom Cotton.

The list of those who todays mob wants to deny freedom of speech, freedom of consciousness, freedom of association and freedom of thought continues to grow.

Have we left no sense of decency?

Rich Rifkin is a Davis resident; his column is published every other week. Reach him at [emailprotected]

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Rich Rifkin: We have created a new climate of fear - Davis Enterprise

Six years ago, on July 18, a gunman approached Dan Markel and shot him twice in the head. A Florida State University law professor and attorney, Markel had just pulled into his own garage. He died the following day at the age of 41.

Three people were charged in his murder; two found guilty. The third is due to be retried sometime next spring, or even later, depending on the state of the pandemic.

But Markels friends and family say justice has still not been served, because Floridas state attorney has not adequately pursued the Adelson familys role in the murder. Markel had recently been through an acrimonious divorce and custody battle with his wife, Wendi Adelson. At the murder trial, the lead prosecutor made closing statements that appeared to lay blame at the feet of Markels in-laws.

Now, Markels friends are concerned that momentum on Markels case is slowing that delays in the legal system due to the coronavirus pandemic might mean prosecutors wont take the next step, and investigate the question of who paid for the killing.

For this reason, they have formed a group called Justice for Dan and launched a petition signed by more than 900 people so far to try to push the state attorney to prosecute Wendi Adelsons older brother and mother, Charles Adelson and Donna Adelson.

As time passes, we worry that people will forget that there were leaders in this plot, and that the people who are most responsible for this murder, specifically the Adelson family, wont be held accountable. There will be people who will say, Weve gotten some justice and we have to move on, said Jason Solomon, a friend of Markels who is spearheading the effort.

The murder of Markel, of a Harvard-educated legal scholar, sent shock waves through the Florida capital, and also reverberated in South Florida, where Wendi Adelson, also a lawyer, grew up in a well-established Jewish family: Her father and brother, Harvey Adelson and Charles Adelson, are in a dental practice together in the Fort Laurderdale suburb of Tamarac. Days after Markels killing, Wendi Adelson, now 41, moved their young sons to South Florida.

About two years after Markels murder, as the investigation developed, Wendi Adelson made it impossible for Markels parents, Ruth and Phil Markel, to see their grandsons.

The man who police say shot Markel, Sigfredo Garcia, was found guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in a trial last October. Luis Rivera, a former Miami gang leader who drove Garcia to Tallahassee to murder Markel, took a plea deal and agreed to testify against the other two people involved, receiving a second-degree murder conviction to avoid the death penalty. Jurors were unable to reach a verdict on Katherine Magbanua, who has two children with Garcia the third person charged with Markels murder.

Solomon believes that the part of the reason the jury couldnt agree on a decision was their sense of being baffled about who was being tried for the crime and who wasnt.

The jurors were confused or unhappy that she was being prosecuted and the Adelsons were not. There was a sense that they should, said Solomon, adding that he based his conclusions on media interviews with jurors he saw afterwards.

Magbanua, two people testified at her trial, was widely known as Charles Adelsons girlfriend. But why did Garcia and Rivera rent a Prius in Miami and drive hundreds of miles north to Tallahassee to kill Markel? Part of the custody battle involved Wendi Adelsons desire to move back to South Florida a nearly seven hours drive away from Tallahassee with their two young boys. A court order barred her from doing that, so that the divorced couple could have joint custody.

What enemy or enemies had Mr. Markel made that set into motion such a brutal act? asked Georgia Cappelman, the lead prosecutor at the trial, in her closing statements. The answer? His own family. What offense had Mr. Markel committed against these people? Wanting to be a good father, refusing to let his children be taken away from him.

The process of getting to a murder trial is always complicated, and the coronavirus crisis has only slowed the wheels of justice further, with most trials suspended.

Magbanua is scheduled to face retrial in the spring of 2021 at the soonest, and the judge on the case, James C. Hankinson, retired at the end of June, expressing disappointment and frustration that he didnt see the end of this important case.

Its quite possible that they decided on going after the lower people on the totem pole on a criminal enterprise first, with the hope that they will flip and cooperate and testify against the people who are at the top of the criminal enterprise, said Solomon, who befriended Markel when they started their careers as law professors in Southern states Markel in Florida and Solomon in Georgia. Now in California, Solomon said that he and others in the campaign were concerned that an overloaded state attorneys office might just move on to other cases.

In an op-ed in the Tallahassee Democrat, published last month at the height of nationwide reckoning last month with systemic racism in America, Solomon wrote that this seems to be yet another case in which people of color are prosecuted, but people who are white, wealthy and in positions of power are not.

We thought that it would be important to enlist friends in Tallahassee and around the country and around the world to say, police have already presented evidence of who is responsible for Dans murder, Solomon added. The evidence against Charlie and Donna Adelson has already been presented at trial and its been overwhelming. I think its important for the Florida state attorney to say that we dont just let white wealthy people off the hook.

In media interviews during the trial last fall, lawyers for the Adelson family maintained their innocence.

On the Justice for Dan Facebook page, which has more than 4,000 followers, a posting shows a screenshot of Wendi Adelsons Facebook page in which she had encouraged people to sign a Change.org petition calling for the police officers who killed George Floyd to be brought to justice. Commenters on that post noted the irony of her calling for justice for Floyd but taking the Fifth a reference to the Fifth Amendment right not to not incriminate oneself multiple times during the trial, at which she testified after having been subpoenaed. After numerous comments calling on her family to face justice in the case, Wendi Adelson deleted the post.

In a separate effort on behalf of Markel, advocates are working to change Florida law in order to allow grandparents greater ability to access courts to petition for visitation rights. The effort received support from Florida lawmakers this spring, including unanimous passage through the Senate Committee on Children, Families, and Elder Affairs; advocates say they are working on revised bill language for the 2021 session.

On the anniversary of the murder, Ruth and Phil Markel, Dan Markels parents, released a statement thanking the police and prosecutors and hoping that they persist.

We understand that due process takes patience, they wrote. We pray that this next phase of the legal process moves quickly, and that all those responsible for Dans murder are held accountable. And we pray for the chance to see and know Dans two boys our beloved grandsons again.

Ilene Prusher, a journalist in South Florida, is a regular contributor to the Forward and the author of the 2014 novel Baghdad Fixer.

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On the 6th anniversary of his death, Dan Markels friends plead for an investigation into his ex-wifes family - Forward