Investigators crack cold case murder of South Dakota woman
Associated Press     June 18, 2019
RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) â The murder of a pharmacist who was raped and strangled in her home in a South Dakota city more than half a century ago has been solved with the use of DNA technology and genealogy databases, police said.
Investigators believe Eugene Carroll Field killed 60-year-old Gwen Miller in 1968 when he was a 25-year-old living in Rapid City, Detective Wayne Keefe said at a news conference Monday. He said there was enough evidence to charge Field with first-degree murder, but that he died in 2009.
It is “a little surreal” to finally identify the killer after 51 years and up to 5,000 hours of work, Keefe said.
“Today, there’s a slight celebratory mood because the case has been solved,” Police Chief Karl Jegeris said. “But I assure you, the fact of how horrific this crime was wears heavy on each and every one of our hearts.”
Miller had no children and worked as a pharmacist at a Rapid City hospital. After she didn’t show up to work Feb. 29, 1968, two co-workers went to her house, where they found a broken window in the back, Keefe said. The coroner found she had been raped, suffered broken neck and rib bones, and died by strangulation.
Last year, Keefe sent a DNA profile of semen from the crime scene to forensic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick, who used public genealogy websites to identify Field’s brother. Keefe then searched for the family’s name in old phone directories to determine that the suspect had lived near the victim.
Field was a ticketing agent for Western Airlines at the Rapid City airport, which Miller frequented. Keefe also determined that Field had rented a room in the house next door to Miller for several months in 1963. The detective interviewed two women who had been married to Field. Both said he had abused them. He also contacted Field’s brother and only sibling, who provided a DNA sample that showed a 99.23 percent probability of being from a full sibling of the killer.
Field has no known connections to any other cold case and does not seem to have previously been a suspect in Miller’s death, Keefe said.
The Associated Press was not immediately able to locate Field’s survivors Tuesday, and police declined to provide contact information.
Kay Miller-Temple, of Grand Forks, North Dakota, said her great-aunt was a “very independent and confident” person, especially for a single woman in the mid-1900s. She said her family members, who came from across South Dakota and as far away as Arizona to attend the news conference, wanted their experience to give hope to other families with cold cases.
“The family of Gwen Vivian Miller offers you our gratitude and our appreciation,” she said through tears. “Thank you for giving us an answer.”
Potentially deadly valley fever is hitting California farmworkers hard, worrying researchers
Getting an accurate count of the number of people affected by valley fever is a challenge because the majority of those who are infected never know they have it.
By Twilight Greenaway, Civil Eats    June 17, 2019
This story was produced in partnership with Civil Eats, a nonprofit news organization focused on the American food system.
The fungus that causes valley fever thrives in dry, undisturbed soil. Years of climate change-fueled drought has led to a swift rise in the number of people diagnosed with it. Anuj Shrestha / for NBC News
LAMONT, Calif. â Victor Gutierrez contracted valley fever, an illness caused by a soil-borne fungus, and he thinks he got it in the summer of 2011 when he worked in the nectarine orchards of Californiaâs dry, dusty Central Valley.
âThe wind was really strong, and we were almost falling off our ladders,â Gutierrez said. âThe dust would rise up in the fields and we would get lost in [it].â
Then again, he might have contracted it during that yearâs grape harvest. âWe would walk out of the vineyard with our faces full of dirt. Only our eyes were visible,â Gutierrez said. When he showered at night, he could see the layer of soil washing off his body.
Ultimately, he doesnât know exactly when he contracted valley fever, a dangerous fungal disease. Gutierrez just knows that late that summer, he started experiencing flu-like symptoms â coughing, night sweats, exhaustion, and a strange feeling that he was burning up on the inside. The father of three ignored it and kept working for fear of losing his job. But when the illness got to the point where he was struggling to breathe, he went to see a doctor, who gave him a dose of antibiotics and told him to buy a humidifier.
The next day, Gutierrezâs lungs filled up with fluid and he felt so unwell that he went to a local clinic. This time, they tested him for valley fever, and it came back positive.
âThe nurse called me and told me to rush to the clinic because it was an emergency,â he said. Gutierrez, who was 33 at the time, had never heard of valley fever and was told he might only have six months to live.
While Gutierrez managed to beat those odds by taking the antifungal medication fluconazole for more than a year, he has seen valley fever kill many other people heâs known. Of the five people he recalls seeing diagnosed with the fungal infection on that day in 2011, he said heâs the only survivor.
Still, valley fever remains dormant in his body â and it could come back at any point. Gutierrez still struggles with regular pain in his lungs and when he gets a cold or flu, heâs in bed for weeks.
Years of climate change-fueled drought appear to have led to a swift rise in the number of people diagnosed with the illness across the Southwest.
Coccidioidomycosis or cocci (pronounced âcoxyâ), the fungus that causes valley fever, thrives in dry, undisturbed soil. It becomes airborne when that soil is disturbed â whether itâs by dirt bikes, construction crews, or farmers putting in new fruit or nut orchards. It can travel on the wind as far as 75 miles away. Years of climate change-fueled drought and a 240 percent increase in dust storms appear to have led to a swift rise in the number of people diagnosed with the illness across the Southwest.
In California, rates of new cases rose 10 percent between 2017 and 2018, according to the California Department of Public Health, at what will likely be a sizable cost to the state. The state budgeted $8 million for valley fever research in 2018, and about $3 million will go toward the expansion of the Valley Fever Institute at Kern Medical hospital. Three new laws address valley fever reporting, testing, and education in the state. In 2011, California spent approximately $2.2 billion in valley fever-related hospital expenses.
Misdiagnosis and the role of race
Getting an accurate count of the number of people affected by valley fever is a challenge because the majority of those who are infected never know they have it. However, new cases are especially concentrated in the San Joaquin Valley, home to the farms that produce two-thirds of the nationâs fruit and nuts and one third of its vegetables. The region is also home to the two cities with the worst particle pollution in the U.S. and most of the stateâs farmworkers.
In 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 14,364 cases of valley fever were reported nationally, but that âtens of thousands more illnesses likely occur and may be misdiagnosed because many patients are not tested for valley fever.â On average, there were approximately 200 deaths associated with the illness each year in the U.S. from 1999 to 2016.
Dr. Royce Johnson, director of the Valley Fever Institute and professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, said 60 percent of valley fever cases are misinterpreted as the flu and go undiagnosed. Johnson, who has been working with valley fever patients for more than 40 years, says the remaining 40 percent tend to experience symptoms that are similar to and often confused with a serious case of pneumonia. From there, a small percentage â around 1 percent of the total people infected â see the disease spread to other parts of the body, including the brain and the skin.
âPeople with relatively uncomplicated [respiratory valley fever] will usually think this is the worst illness they’ve ever had,â Johnson said, adding that the symptoms can get quite a lot worse in cases where it spreads. Patients are treated for between three and 12 months and then tracked for an additional two years to make sure the disease doesnât come back or spread.
âA lot of people don’t understand how manifold and complicated valley fever can be,â Johnson said.
The infection is not passed from person to person, but epidemiologists are still trying to determine what exactly puts people at risk, aside from simply being outside, said Stephen McCurdy, who serves as a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at the University of California, Davis, which created the California Center for Valley Fever in 2016.
Immune function is one key factor, putting pregnant women, some diabetics, people with HIV, the elderly, and those who are on immunosuppressant drugs or have had organ transplants at elevated risk. Race appears to be another factor, McCurdy said. âIt seems that darker-skinned people are more likely if they contract valley fever to get a more severe case of it. In the majority of cases, people knock it back themselves [like a typical flu]. People with darker skin seem to be less able to do that.â
Itâs not entirely clear just why that is. âI’m sure itâs related to whatever genetic resources those groups have compared to others,â he said.
According to a study by the California Health and Human Services Agency, African Americans and Hispanics in California are more likely to be hospitalized with valley fever than whites.
âA contributing factor to this finding may be the large populations of Hispanics living and working in the endemic region counties of California,â wrote the studyâs authors, who added that the connection between race and risk for the disease âis not well understood and may be attributable to variations in genetic susceptibility.â
Another challenge with gathering data, said Carol Sipan, a public health lecturer at the University of California, Merced, is the fact that, âmany [farmworkers] would go back to Mexico if they got really sick.â In Mexico, she added, valley fever is not a reportable disease.
Farmworkers in the crosshairs
Like many farmworkers who contract the illness, Gutierrez found the cost of the antifungal medication needed to treat valley fever astounding. At the height of the illness it cost $1,200 for two months of pills because he had to take two to three times as many as one would if they were treating a typical candida infection.
He didnât have insurance at the time and said his family often had to choose between food and his medication. He still isnât able to work regularly and his family mainly survives on the money his wife, Maria, makes in the fields.
âIt has changed my life a lot,â Gutierrez said. âWhen I used to work, I would always have money in the house â to eat, to buy my children clothes, for everything. But right now, I have debts.â
Isabel Arrollo-Toland knows both sides of this story intimately. She is the daughter of a former farmworker and directs a small nonprofit organization, El Quinto Sol de America, which trains farmworkers and other recent immigrants in civic engagement in a handful of unincorporated communities in Tulare County, an hour south of Fresno.
Arroyo-Toland was diagnosed with valley fever in 2007 and again in 2008 when it spread to her skin in the form of painful lesions â and both times she endured months of misdiagnosis. Then, in 2012, she was told that her kidneys were failing due to the impact of both valley fever and the medication she had relied on to treat it. Since then, sheâs had to undergo peritoneal dialysis in her home for 10 hours every night. Sheâs currently on the donor list for a kidney.
Arrollo-Toland makes it a point to advise workers to get tested for the illness at the first sign of a cold or flu. âSometimes I’ll be talking to a farmworker and theyâll say âOh, I have these symptoms …â And my first thing is, âYou should go get tested for valley fever.â”
She also points to the many challenges farmworkers face when it comes to staying healthy â from regular exposure to pesticides and dust clouds, to lack of fresh produce and clean water â a growing challenge for many residents of unincorporated areas.
âThe valley fever fungus might actually expand its territory with climate change.”
ANTJE LAUER, MICROBIAL ECOLOGIST
âIt’s really difficult to say you have to keep your immune system at 100 percent, because your environment doesn’t provide that for you,â Arrollo-Toland said. âSeeing the doctor for prevention is another issue because you have to go to the clinic, which is probably 30 minutes away âŚand always so full.â
In U.C. Davis professor McCurdyâs recent research, he found that those who reported having valley fever âlost about 20 work days of on average while they were sick.â McCurdy is currently working with other researchers on two studies involving farmworkers and valley fever, including one survey of almost 120 Latino workers at two migrant labor centers in Kern County.
Worsening conditions
The stakes are changing, in part because rainfall in the Southwest has become less common and less predictable. Very wet winters, like the one that just passed, followed by dry summers, have historically been particularly bad when it comes to the growth of cocci spores, said Antje Lauer, a microbial ecologist at California State University, Bakersfield. Lauer has received funding from NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense to study valley fever in soil.
âThe valley fever fungus might actually expand its territory with climate change,â said Lauer, pointing to the fact that cocci spores were found in Washington state in 2014.
Although farmworkers and others who work outside are in an especially vulnerable position, Lauer added that it only takes one exposure to make someone sick. Dust masks can be effective at limiting some exposure, but itâs not a real solution for those who work in the fields.
Manuela Ortega, a farmworker who contracted valley fever in 2006 â and whose brother died of the illness at age 39 â said that the stifling summer heat makes wearing a mask unrealistic. âEven though thereâs a lot of wind and dirt, people still work. In some cases, itâs good to wear masks, but in other cases, people just need to be sent home,â she said.
None of the farmworkers who were interviewed had been given masks or informational pamphlets on the job.
The California Farm Bureau Federation tracks health and safety issues affecting farmworkers, according to spokesman Dave Kranz. âWe support research that helps farmers and their employees avoid illness and injury, and work with health experts and farm advisers to make sure farmers and employees have the information they need to stay well and safe,â he added. âThat applies to valley fever and to any other illness that could affect farmers and farm employees.”
Two vaccines for valley fever are in the works, but itâs not clear how close they are to being tested on humans.
Two cocci vaccines are in the works â at the University of Texas and the University of Arizona â but itâs not clear how close they are to being tested on humans. Three members of Congress from the Southwest last month introduced a federal bill, the FORWARD Act, in an effort to increase public awareness of the disease while âpromoting the development of novel treatments and a vaccine.â
In the meantime, farmworkers and their allies continue to face immense challenges.
Mario Celaya, a physiciansâ assistant who was trained as a doctor in Mexico, has been seeing patients at the Vida Sana clinic in Lindsay, California, for 23 years. He has seen the rates of valley fever increase in recent years and now treats three to four people with the illness every week. The bulk of his patients are farmworkers and their families.
Celaya said a timely diagnosis can make a difference in whether a patient is severely affected by the illness. Because the blood test requires a two-week window before the results are accurate, however, he says false negatives are common.
âPatients need to be aware of that if they do not get better in two or three weeks, come back and be rechecked because it could be very bad,â he said.
âIf you have to tell them, âYou cannot work for two to three months,â it has an impact on their families because, sometimes they are the main source of income,â Celaya said. âIf these patients have to stop working, then the whole family is going to go through difficulties.â
Drone footage shows the massive scale of Sundayâs protests in Hong Kong, where organizers said nearly 2 million people took to the streets to march against a controversial extradition bill. https://cnn.it/2KYbxPt
Drone footage shows the massive scale of Sundayâs protests in Hong Kong, where organizers said nearly 2 million people took to the streets to march against a controversial extradition bill. https://cnn.it/2KYbxPt
AOC on Trump’s willingness to accept political ‘dirt’ on rivals: ‘The pressure to impeach grows’
Kadia Tubman     June 16, 2019
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images); President Donald Trump (Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
Days after President Trump asserted he would take damaging information on his political rivals from a foreign power, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “the pressure to impeach grows.â
âI think every day that passes, the pressure to impeach grows,” said Ocasio-Cortez Sunday in an interview on ABC News “This Week.” “I think that itâs justifiable, I think the evidence continues to come in and I believe that with the president now saying that he is willing to break the law to win reelection, that transcends partisanship, it transcends party lines, and this is now about the rule of law in the United States of America.”
The freshman Democrat called for an impeachment inquiry “to look at whatâs going on,” pointing to the Mueller report that covered “10 counts of obstruction of justice, four with rock-solid evidence,â Ocasio-Cortez said.
âWe have violations of the emoluments clause,â she said. âWe need to at least open an inquiry so that we can look at what is going on, and that is what opening an impeachment inquiry means.”
Trump in an interview last week with ABCâs George Stephanopoulos said he would accept âdirtâ on his political opponents from foreign governments without necessarily alerting the FBI.
“I think you might want to listen, there isn’t anything wrong with listening,” Trump said. “If somebody called from a country, Norway, [and said] âwe have information on your opponent’ â oh, I think I’d want to hear it.”
Despite the multiple efforts by Russians to influence the 2016 presidential election as detailed in throughout Mueller probe, the president said he didnât consider a foreign power handing over information to him to be interference in U.S. election process.
“It’s not an interference, they have information â I think I’d take it,” Trump said. “If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI â if I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research, ‘oh let’s call the FBI.’ The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it. When you go and talk, honestly, to congressman, they all do it, they always have, and that’s the way it is. It’s called oppo research.”
In a later interview with âFox & Friends,â Trump attempted to clarify what he meant to be saying was that he would âabsolutelyâ notify federal law enforcement if a foreign power presented his campaign with âincorrect or badly statedâ information about an opponent.
Still, he defended his willingness to receive information and doubted a foreign source would try to give him information.
âIf you donât hear what it is, you donât know what it is,â Trump said and added,
âI donât think anybody would present me with anything bad because they know how much I love this country.â
“The president gave us once again evidence that he does not know right from wrong,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, responding to Trumpâs original statements about accepting foreign information.
But she made clear that Trumpâs stunning admission would not be the âtriggerâ for launching an impeachment inquiry.
“What we want to do is have a methodical approach to the path that we are on, and this will be included in that,â Pelosi said.â But not any one issue is going to trigger, ‘Oh now, we’ll go to this,’ because it’s about investigating, it’s about litigating.”
âAs we go down this path to seek the truth for the American people and hold the president accountable, it has nothing to do with politics or any campaigns,â she said. âIt has everything to do with patriotism, not partisanship.â
Jim Carrey Says âGood Riddanceâ to Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Biblical Fashion
Daniel Kohn, The Wrap    June 14, 2019
You can count Jim Carrey as the latest person to tell soon-to-be-former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to not let the door hit her on the way out.
A frequent critic of Sanders, Carrey expressed his pleasure with Sandersâ departure and displeasure with her as a person in his latest artistic rendering.
âGood Riddance, Sarah Huckabee Sanders! Now the only one you have to lie to is Jesus,â Carrey captioned the art, which portrays a multi-chinned Sanders in an unflattering pose praying at Jesusâ crucifix with a circle behind her head. Check out Carreyâs latest artwork. pic.twitter.com/qeWYpNxrtF
This isnât the first time that Sanders has the subject of actor/artist Carreyâs art. Previously, he has depicted her as a Gorgon and has called her âmonstrous.â
On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced in a series of tweets that Sanders would be leaving his administration.
Sanders has been with the Trump White House for two and a half years and has served as White House press secretary since May 2017, taking over for Sean Spicer.
âAfter 3 1/2 years, our wonderful Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be leaving the White House at the end of the month and going home to the Great State of ArkansasâŚâ Trump wrote. ââŚShe is a very special person with extraordinary talents, who has done an incredible job! I hope she decides to run for Governor of Arkansas â she would be fantastic. Sarah, thank you for a job well done!â
Carrey isnât the only person who isnât sad to see Sanders go.
The hashtag #ByeFelicia was trending on Twitter after her departure was announced â a dismissive farewell originally uttered by Ice Cubeâs character in the comedy âFriday.â