OMAHA, NW (AP) – Moments after a Nebraska priest called 911 to report that a man was standing in his kitchen with a knife, a dispatcher on the line heard screaming and a struggle. A deputy arriving a few minutes later heard the priest shout, “Help me,” before he found the man lying near the kitchen, bleeding profusely, according to murder charges filed Tuesday.

Nebraska prosecutors charged Kierre L. Williams, 43, with first-degree murder, burglary and two weapons counts in the stabbing of the Rev. Stephen Gutgsell, a priest at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Fort Calhoun. Authorities said Gutgsell was attacked during a break-in at the church rectory, a crime that rocked the small town just north of Omaha.

An affidavit filed along with the charges details what deputies found when they arrived at the rectory, which is a home next to the church.

The documents did not detail any motive for the attack except to say the killing happened during a burglary. There is no mention of any prior connection between Williams and the 65-year-old priest.

After Gutgsell called 911 around 5 a.m. Sunday to report that a man was standing in his kitchen with a knife, the operator heard a struggle and screaming over the phone, according to the affidavit.

Washington County Deputy Brady Tucker said in the affidavit that the front door had been forced open when he arrived at the house. After he identified himself, he heard a man call out, “I’m here” from the direction of the kitchen and “Help me.” When the deputy asked who else was in the home the voice said “an intruder.”

Court documents say Gutgsell was bleeding profusely from wounds on his face, hands and back when he was found lying in his kitchen with Williams sprawled on top of him. Williams was perpendicular to Gutgsell, with his back on top of the priest’s chest.

The bloody knife used in the attack was found later in a bedroom next to a large pool of blood. Court documents did not explain how the struggle unfolded.

The rectory where Gutsgell lived is a one-story home with a two-car garage. It is newer but smaller than most of the homes in the neighborhood surrounding the church, which bears a cornerstone saying it was built in 1982.

The Washington County Sheriff’s Office said Williams is from Sioux City, Iowa, which is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) north of Fort Calhoun, a town of about 1,000 residents.

Tucker said in his affidavit that he learned Williams was a felon with multiple warrants. Public records show Williams has been convicted of crimes in multiple states, including a drug possession case in Texas and more than a dozen cases in Florida dating back to his teens. He was recently charged with misdemeanor assault in a July soup kitchen fight in Sioux City, Iowa. He was homeless at the time of the fight, court records show.

Williams does not have a lawyer yet in Nebraska and will make his initial court appearance Thursday. His public defender in the Iowa assault case said he did not know anything about the Nebraska case and hung up on an Associated Press reporter Tuesday.

Gutgsell’s stabbing is the second killing in Fort Calhoun this year, unnerving residents of the normally tranquil town. Both killings happened during break-ins where there was no clear connection between the intruders and the victims, making them all the more troubling.

“It shouldn’t happen in a small town like this,” bar owner Andy Faucher said Monday as people gathered a few blocks from where Gutgsell was stabbed. Faucher said the fact that this latest killing involved a priest only “intensifies the scariness of the situation.”

• Associated Press writer Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas, contributed to this report.

 

SPEARFISH, SD – The Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the deaths of two people.

On Sunday, December 10, the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office responded to a call for assistance at a rural residence in Southern Lawrence County.

First responders from Lead Deadwood Monument Health and the Lead Volunteer Fire Department discovered a 68-year-old female and a 78-year-old male, both pronounced deceased at the scene.

The identities of the individuals are being withheld pending notification to their families.

The Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office and the Lawrence County Coroner’s Office are actively investigating the causes of death.

This incident is currently under investigation.

 

PIERRE, SD – When legislators criticize Lt. Gov. Larry Rhoden for his heavy-handedness during South Dakota’s legislative session, they’re being literal: He raps the gavel so loudly that people jump from surprise.

When Rhoden slammed the gavel down to bring the Legislature to order last Tuesday ahead of Gov. Kristi Noem’s budget address, the gavel snapped in half, the head tumbling and thudding to the floor. The room erupted with laughter a half-second later as Rhoden sheepishly smiled, chuckled and banged the gavel again (just the head this time) before raising the broken handle for everyone to see.

It wasn’t the first time he’s broken a gavel.

“Two years in a row,” Rhoden said to the legislators gathered on the House floor. “There’s something about the House.”

Rhoden, who presides over the Senate during the annual wintertime legislative session, broke a gavel last year as well — a gavel he’d received from the governor when they were elected four years earlier, but hadn’t yet used. A piece of wood chipped off that gavel.

This year, House Speaker Hugh Bartels, R-Watertown, replaced the House speaker gavel with a new one crafted by a Lake Area Technical College alumnus. Rhoden said Bartels forbade him from using that gavel at the budget address.

“I’ve seen what you do to gavels. You’re not touching mine,” Bartels said, according to Rhoden.

The gavel that Rhoden broke last week was one he crafted himself in 2018 from a tall black walnut tree that stood in his family’s pasture. He grew up in its shadow, helping his mother in the garden and completing chores around the family farm and ranch. When the tree died, he cut it into lumber for wood crafting projects — a hobby he takes pride in, creating gifts for friends and family. Rhoden’s wife, Sandy, wrote a poem to accompany such gifts, explaining the importance of the tree to the Rhoden family.

“That wood holds the memory of my mother and my childhood, and that’s why I used it all these years,” Rhoden said.

The gavel’s accompanying “sound block” — which is used to accept the strike of the gavel and amplify its sound — is made out of the black walnut’s root ball.

Within days of returning to his western South Dakota ranch near Union Center after the budget address, Rhoden repaired the gavel with the “stereotypical rancher-type fix”: He glued it back together and wrapped it with baling wire.

He had no intentions of retiring the gavel like he had with the governor’s gift (which sits safely in its box, chipped piece of wood included). He said his handmade gavel and block serve as a reminder of the values he learned as a child, and a reminder to bring those values to the Capitol.

“The work ethic and values I learned growing up on that small family farm where everyone worked together as a unit is really in the fabric of what makes South Dakota such a great state,” Rhoden said.

That said, he’s going to be gentler with gavels in the future.

“I’m going to be a lot more cautious from this point forward when presiding over joint meetings of the House and Senate,” Rhoden laughed.

Rhoden and Bartels joked that Rhoden may need something sturdier — perhaps a metal gavel crafted from Lake Area Tech’s welding shop. Bartels told South Dakota Searchlight he’ll have his own gavel hidden in his office this legislative session so Rhoden can’t use it.

• Thanks to Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight