Lancaster County investigation into stolen semis of frozen beef turns up alleged crime ring based in Miami

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An investigation into the theft of several semi-trailers and loads of frozen beef in the Lincoln and Grand Island areas has uncovered an alleged crime ring based in Miami that targeted packing plants in six states.

Lancaster County Sheriff's Capt. Michael Peschong said the initial investigation involved an estimated $1 million loss here.

According to a WalletHub study of the 182 largest cities in the US, these are the safest and least safe cities in the country. Researchers analyzed data in three categories: home and community safety, natural disaster risk and financial safety. Safest Cities: 1. Columbia, Md. 2. Nashua, NH 3. Laredo, Texas 4. Portland, Maine 5. Warwick, RI. 6. Yonkers, NY 7. Gilbert, Ariz. 8. Burlington, Vt. 9. Raleigh, NC 10. Lewiston, Maine. Least Safe Cities: 1. St. Louis 2. Fort Lauderdale, Fla. 3. San Bernardino, Calif. 4. Detroit 5. Baton Rouge, La. 6. Memphis, Tenn. 7. Oklahoma City 8. Oakland, Calif 9. Jackson, Miss. 10. Chattanooga, Tenn.

A semi loaded with more than $232,000 worth of beef had been stolen in Grand Island on June 26 and found empty in Emerald, a small town west of Lincoln, according to court records.

The next day, a semi without a trailer was stolen in Emerald and found later southeast of Lincoln, along with a trailer reported stolen from Grand Island loaded with $157,000 of beef.

Peschong said, in working with Homeland Security Investigation in Omaha, officials now believe the same people involved in the thefts were responsible for 45 others — an estimated $9 million loss — since June 2021 in Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota and Wisconsin.

Peschong said the sheriff's office, Homeland Security in Omaha and the Florida Highway Patrol, with help from a Homeland Security task force in Miami, identified and arrested three people and recovered three semis with stolen merchandise valued at $550,000.

The three — Yoslany Leyva Del Sol, 38; Ledier Machin Andino, 37; and Delvis L. Fuentes, 39 — were arrested for transportation of stolen goods and money laundering.

They face charges in federal court in Florida.

In the criminal complaint, Robert Palombo Jr., a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations in Miami, said a search of records of devices connected to specific cellular communication towers conducted by the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office on June 30 for the location and time of the thefts led them to Fuentes, who has a commercial driver's license and lives in Miami Gardens, Florida.

Fuentes’ cellphone records led them to Del Sol and Andino, who had been in Nebraska at the time of the thefts, Palombo said.

"On or about Sept. 16, 2022, law enforcement observed, through real-time GPS tracking, a semi-tractor registered to Del Sol traveling on Interstate 80 in Lincoln, Nebraska. Within a few seconds, law enforcement observed two other semi-tractors with trailers following the semi-tractor registered to Del Sol," the agent said.

One of the semi-trailers was registered to a friend of Fuentes.

Palombo said officials obtained warrants for the three men's phones, which included real-time data, and learned they had left Miami on Oct. 10. They were tracked to Columbia, Tennessee, then Oct. 13 in Des Moines, Iowa, where officials put GPS trackers on the semis driven by Fuentes and Andino.

The Homeland Security agent said the three were seen casing semi-tractor yards there and in Sioux City, Iowa, looking for products to steal.

By Oct. 14, they were tracked to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where investigators suspect them in the theft of a trailer with 19 pallets of ham, and to the theft of two semis and three pallet jacks stolen the next day in Worthington, Minnesota.

Palombo said two semis and two trailers were stolen from JBS, each with 22 pallets of pork, estimated to be worth $150,000.

On Oct. 20, Florida Highway Patrol troopers saw all three tractor-trailers on I-75 East in the Weston area. They stopped Fuentes’ semi, then detained Del Sol and Andino in a parking lot nearby.

Peschong said the investigation is ongoing.

A new employee of the Adult Book and Cinema Store disappeared overnight April 18, 1974, along with 51 bondage-themed adult magazines, a calculator and $30. A cord leading to an extension from a pay phone had been cut and the shop door left unlocked.

Two and a half days later, a man went to feed cattle on a vacant farm he owned east of Hallam and found her bullet-riddled body.

Patricia Carol Webb was nude under the hay, except for a quilted jacket, one of 143 extra-large jackets distributed by a feed mill and given to customers or sold to employees. Webb, 24, had a piece of tape over her mouth.

Thirty-eight years later, her death remains one of Lincoln's greatest murder mysteries.

"This case has been investigated, reinvestigated, reinvestigated. A lot of effort put into it," said Lincoln Police Sgt. Larry Barksdale, who was tasked with the investigation since the early 1990s. Barksdale retired in 2012, but the case remains open.

Together, Lincoln police, the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office, Nebraska State Patrol and FBI logged nearly 15,000 man hours during the first year alone. They even consulted clairvoyants.

Tina McMenamin, an 18-year-old UNL freshman, was stabbed and sexually assaulted in her apartment on July 25, 1995.

Gregory Gabel, a mentally ill Lincoln man, was arrested in the homicide and has always been the prime suspect, an investigator said, even after pivotal DNA evidence failed to link him to the crime scene. Gabel has a computerlike memory for numbers and facts and a history of following women at businesses and public events, retired investigator Rich Doetker said in 2005.

McMenamin was killed in the minutes before she was due at work at Godfather's Pizza at 5:30 p.m. that night in 1995. Roommate Sarah Bognich found her friend in a pool of blood that night.

"The apartment was ransacked. I walked past the bedroom a couple of times before noticing her on the floor. My life changed after that. I tried to go back (to college), and I couldn't ever finish."

A single hair clutched in McMenamin's hand led police to Gabel. It matched his DNA, a one-in-1,049 chance. Circumstantial evidence also linked Gabel to the apartment building. And a man matching Gabel's description was seen fleeing the crime scene, Amberwood Apartments, 4600 Briarpark Drive.

That night, Gabel was a block away at a Sonic Drive-In. He was there every Tuesday night, cleaning up in exchange for food. And Gabel had earlier convictions for third-degree sexual assault and public indecency. Police arrested him a year after the crime.

But two years later, when a different DNA test proved the hair was not Gabel's, he was released. That hair, however, didn't necessarily belong to the killer, Doetker said. The investigator also has suspicions about the validity of the second DNA test, conducted in a Pennsylvania lab.

"There were questions that came up: Was it the right hair? The same hair?" he said.

Murder charges were dropped against Gabel with the hope that additional evidence would be found to re-arrest him, Doetker said. If the case went to trial and Gabel was found innocent, Doetker added, he could not be retried if new evidence came to light.

Mary Hepburn-O'Shea, who has worked in the mental health field in Lincoln for decades and has known Gabel for many of those years, said in 2005 that the man lost two years in jail for something he didn't do.

Hepburn-O'Shea runs downtown O.U.R. Homes, the city's largest provider for developmentally disabled people that also houses people with mental illnesses. Gabel lives and works there. "He's a weird kid," she said. "He's not ever a violent kid."

Then-Assistant Police Chief Jim Peschong, speaking in 2005, added that you can't try a case on personal beliefs and supposition. Peschong said he personally believes there is a suspect in the crime, but he declined naming anyone.

A 30-year-old Iraqi refugee with a new bride and a new home was slain in 2001 in the city where he came to begin a new life. Ali Saleh Al-Saidi's body was found in June 2001 in Salt Creek, east of the North 70th Street bridge near the Abbott Sports Complex. Then-Police Chief Tom Casady said Al-Saidi suffered "significant traumatic injuries."

Friends and family members said that Al-Saidi moved to Lincoln from Dallas a few months earlier. He had lived five years in Texas and was in a Saudi Arabian refugee camp before his arrival in the United States.

Casady called Al-Saidi a "Gulf War era" refugee and said he had recently married an 18-year-old Lincoln resident and fellow Iraqi exile.

Al-Saidi wed Azher Alghazawi on June 16. She spoke about the husband and friend she lost. "He's a good man," she said. "I love him very much." A welder by trade, Al-Saidi also loved to fix cars. He enjoyed making people laugh with funny faces.

Azher said her husband left their South 18th Street apartment to find an apartment key around 10:45 p.m. the day before his body was found. It was the last time she saw him alive. Just hours earlier, said Saleh Al-Daraji, a longtime friend of Al-Saidi's, he had helped Al-Saidi move some belongings from his old D Street apartment.

Authorities did not know whether the slaying took place near Salt Creek or whether the body was moved. Police found Al-Saidi's 1991 Chevrolet Caprice parked beside a curb at the corner of 21st and Dudley streets, then-Capt. Allen Soukup said.

In September 2001, a Lincoln couple who had been earlier interviewed by police about the slaying were arrested while trying to flee the country, authorities said.

Rabeha Kadhim Zaher Al-Atbi and her husband, Asaad Al-Asady, tried to board a flight to Syria from O'Hare International Airport, Lincoln Police Investigator Kathy Phillips said. "I'm not going to label them suspects," Lincoln Police Capt. Gary Engel said.

According to the affidavit signed by Phillips seeking the arrest of Al-Atbi as an accessory to a felony, she lied to police during a July 5 interview about Al-Saidi's whereabouts on the night of his slaying and about having had an affair with him. She later admitted to police she had had an affair with Al-Saidi, according to the affidavit.

The arrest affidavit goes on to describe how interviews with Iraqis in Lincoln have led police to believe Al-Saidi's death was a "crime of honor" and that Al-Saidi was killed for having brought shame or dishonor to his or another Iraqi family.

Gina Bos disappeared near Duggan's Pub in downtown Lincoln on Oct. 17, 2000, at the end of open mic night. She put her guitar in her trunk and then vanished.

The cold case is classified as a missing persons case, although it's highly unlikely Bos, 40 when she disappeared, is alive. Koziol declined to detail the leads the department has chased, citing the open investigation.

Bos was a middle child in a large, close-knit family; she was waiting for a Habitat for Humanity house and had begun a new job when she vanished.

Bos’ sister, Jannel Rap, became the family's spokeswoman early in the search. She started the Squeaky Wheel Tour, traveling the country performing and bringing attention to Gina and others who are missing in the cities she visited. She also started 411 GINA, a website with a hotline for tips about her sister's whereabouts.

Said Koziol: "Someone knows what happened to her. Hopefully one day they will finally find it in their soul to come forward."

Law enforcement hoped someone would remember seeing the dated minivan Ann Marie Kelley was driving when she disappeared. Neither has ever been found.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7237 or [email protected].

On Twitter @LJSpilger

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Public safety reporter

Lori Pilger is a Norfolk native and University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate who has been a public safety reporter for the Journal Star since 2005.

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