The state/region in brief

Ex-baseball coach to serve 10 years

TEXARKANA - A youth baseball coach received a 10-year prison sentence without parole Wednesday for transporting minors with the intent to engage in sexual activity.

Walter Richard Roberts, 62, must also serve three years of supervised release and pay $91,408.60 in restitution to the victims, U.S. District Judge Susan Hickey ruled. Roberts got the maximum penalty available under law at the time of the crime, said

Conner Eldridge, U.S.

attorney for the Western District of Arkansas.

Roberts was a youth baseball coach from 1986 to 1994. According to court records and testimony in court, during the mid-1980s and early 1990s, Roberts made several trips across state lines with children under the age of 12, in order to engage in sexual activity. During one instance, Roberts transported two victims from Arkansas to a business in Texarkana, Texas, where he had the minors get into the back of his van and then sexually abused them.

He transported one of these same minors again on a separate trip to Wright Patman Lake in Texas, telling the youth to get into the back of his van, where he proceeded to sexually molest the victim, according to court records and testimony. During the summer of 1988 or 1989, according to court documents and testimony, Roberts transported a third victim on a fishing trip to Beard’s Lake in Arkansas, sexually abusing the victim while driving on U.S. 71 from Texarkana.

During interviews with investigators, Roberts admitted to further sexual abuse of the minor victims. He stated that he continued to abuse one of the minors over a five-year period.

Roberts was originally indicted on Aug. 22. He pleaded guilty on Nov. 1.

  • ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Felled tree kills

Vilonia man, 87

VILONIA - A tree fell on an elderly man and killed him Wednesday while he was trying to cut it down, the Faulkner County coroner said.

Coroner Patrick Moore said he has ruled the death of Roy Rains, 87, of Vilonia an accident.

Rains was trying to cut down the dead tree, which had a trunk measuring more than 1 foot in diameter, when it collapsed on him in his yard about noon, Moore said.

Details of exactly what happened were unclear because Rains was alone when the accident occurred, but his wife found him when she went outside after hearing the tree fall, Moore said.

  • ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTESpa City landmark Majestic for sale

HOT SPRINGS - The closed Majestic Hotel in Hot Springs is up for sale.

The hotel, which closed in 2006 after serving customers for more than a century and through the bathhouse heyday, includes more than 5 acres at the intersection of Park and Central Avenues.

The original hotel was built in 1882 on the north end of the complex, where its spa and bathhouse are now. Other sections were added from the 1920s into the 1960s.

The Majestic was owned by Southwest Hotels Inc. and the adjacent Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa. It was later transferred to The Arc Arkansas.

Investor-developer Garrison Hassenflu has been involved with the property since 2011.

  • ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Police seek help in Wynne slaying

WYNNE - Police in Wynne are trying to find out who fatally stabbed a 33-yearold woman who was found lying behind a church.

Investigators said Sara Collins of Wynne was found along Poplar Street the evening of May 1, and the origin of the attack has remained a mystery.

Wynne police detective Mike Smith said Collins called 911 herself and that she died in an ambulance on the way to a hospital.

  • THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Stabbing death

ruled justifiable

MOUNTAIN HOME - A prosecutor said a man’s stabbing death in December in Baxter County was the result of justifiable homicide.

The killing in Midway occurred Dec. 5 when 20-yearold Roy Lee Hogans died of multiple stab wounds after a fight with his girlfriend’s father, 44-year-old Kenneth Carl Kitch of Yellville.

The men separated after one fight but fought a second time and Hogans produced a knife. Sheriff’s officials said Hogans received three stab wounds. Investigators interviewed a dozen witnesses, authorities said.

Kitch had been convicted on a drug charge before the fight and was waiting for prison space to become available. Sheriff John Montgomery said Kitch is now incarcerated.

  • THE ASSOCIATED PRESSDeath is ruled out for co-defendant

NEVADA, Mo. - The state will not seek the death penalty against a farmhand charged with killing a southwest Missouri woman in 2009, but prosecutors have not made a similar decision on the victim’s husband, who is also charged in her death.

The farmhand, 33-yearold Jeremy L. Maples, is charged with first-degree murder in the July 15, 2009, death of Belinda J. Beisly, 47, who died from gunshot wounds at her home north of Deerfield.

Maples was a farmhand for rancher Bob T. Beisly II at the time of the homicide.

The Beislys were getting divorced when she was killed.

Maples waived his right to a preliminary hearing Wednesday in Vernon County Circuit Court. Belinda Beisly’s ex-husband, who is also charged with first-degree murder, waived his preliminary hearing May 10.

Tim Anderson, an assistant attorney general, said after Wednesday’s hearing that no decision about the death penalty had been made for Bob Beisly.

A probable-cause affidavit filed with the court alleges that Maples told investigators that he and Beisly had discussed killing Belinda Beisly several times, and that Beisly offered him $10,000 to do it, The Joplin Globe reported.

  • THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 10 on 05/24/2013

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