A man charged with killing two people one night last spring has been found guity in the first case. Michael Gunther told the court he’d killed Michael Zawodny of Anthon, Iowa, a co-worker at a traveling carnival, because he was becoming involved with the manager. Witnesses told the jury they saw Gunther fire the fatal shots. Investigators looking into that slaying went to the manager’s trailer, an RV parked at the Bluffs Run Casino in Council Bluffs, and found the body of Sally Kennedy there. Gunther said during the investigation that he’d strangled her first, then gone to the carnival, set up at a housing unit near Offut Air Force Base in Bellevue, to kill Zawodny. Nebraska has the death penalty but though Gunther also told the court he wanted to be sentenced to death, the case did not include aggravating circumstances that would lead to that, and his sentence for the first-degree murder conviction will be life in prison. Next, the Pottawatamie County attorney says he’ll be tried in Council Bluffs for Kennedy’s killing.
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