Hunter
01/25/25
A district judge has denied a request to move the trial of a Marion man accused of bludgeoning four people to death over the summer.
The Gazette reports 6th Judicial District Judge Liz Dupuich said lawyers for 34-year-old Luke Truesdell failed to show pretrial publicity prevents him from having a fair and impartial trial in Linn County. She did say she was willing to consider calling a larger jury pool with individual questioning and questionnaires to assess the impartiality of potential jurors.
33-year-old Amanda Parker of Vinton and her boyfriend, 44-year-old Romondus Cooper of Cedar Rapids, were killed, along with 34-year-old Brent Brown and his girlfriend, 26-year old Keonna Ryan of Cedar Rapids. They were found with blunt force injuries in an outbuilding near Marion June 5th.
Brown was the only one of the victims who was still alive when Linn County sheriff’s deputies responded to the scene. He died from his injuries three days later.
Video surveillance allegedly captured images of Truesdell in the area of the outbuilding.
Truesdell provided “several motives” when authorities found him sitting outside near the outbuilding, including drug use and past trauma.
Trial is set for April 8. He remains in the Linn County Jail under a $4 million bail.