STEVEN HAUSLER • Hays Daily News A cattle truck travels south Monday on U.S. Highway 283 south of WaKeeney. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has decided not to go through with a mandatory animal identification program that would have tracked movement of cattle.
More charges filed in Portis murder
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By MIKE CORN
Authorities have charged a second man in connection with the 2008 brutal slaying of a Portis resident, the Kansas Attorney General's office announced Monday.
Delbert McBroom, 39, Salina, has been charged with first-degree murder in connection with the March 25, 2008, death of Jeffery Scott Noel.
He is scheduled to make his first appearance on the charges at 1:30 p.m. March 11 in Osborne County District Court.
Last year, Kenneth Eugene Wilson was sentenced to 50 years in prison for Noel's death. He was convicted after a two-week trial in the Osborne County Courthouse.
Noel was killed at his Portis residence.
McBroom is being housed in the Norton Correctional Facility after being sentenced in November in Gove County in connection with the March 12, 2008, burglary of a residence. He was also sentenced on a misdemeanor charge of theft.
McBroom would have been eligible for parole next year in connection with the Gove County cases.
In 1991, he had been sentenced in Saline County on charges of aggravated arson and attempted first-degree murder. He had been released from prison in 2002 on those charges, spending time in Sedgwick, Harvey and Lincoln counties.
The filing of the charges was hailed by Portis resident Darrel Wolters, even though he expressed concern that Noel's wife, Carol, will be forced to relive the incident all over again.
She was the one who discovered her husband's body, and testified at the Wilson trial last year.
"I'm sure she'd want justice, too," Wolters said. "I was really glad to hear they had been working on it."
As an alternative to the first-degree murder charge, the Kansas Attorney General's office filed a charge of felony murder, the act of killing someone during the commission of a felony, aggravated burglary.
McBroom also was charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, aggravated burglary of Noel's residence, conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary, the burglary of a residence near Downs and conspiracy to commit burglary.
While Wolters admits the new charge will reopen old wounds, he said it's the right thing to do.
"If that was my family, I would want everyone involved to be held responsible for it," he said. "So I think it's a good thing in that respect."
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