A Jefferson Parish judge on Tuesday (Aug. 7) ruled there was probable cause to hold Shantel Parria Wagner on the charge of second-degree murder for the shooting death of her husband, Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office Sgt. Troy Smith. 
 
 Magistrate Commissioner Paul Schneider also reduced Wagner's bond from $500,000 - his customary starting point for second-degree murder bonds - to $300,000. 
 
 Schneider ordered that should Wagner make bond, she must be fitted with a GPS-enabled ankle monitor and confined to home at all times except for medical appointments. 
 
 The ruling marked the end of an unusually long, two-day hearing in commissioner's court during which Sheriff's Office investigators said the physical evidence doesn't support Wagner's various stories to investigators that her husband committed suicide by a gunshot to the head. Prosecutors also accused Wagner admitting guilt. 
 
 "There is one witness who said (Wagner) said she shot her husband," Assistant District Attorney Kellie Rish said. "She confessed to shooting her husband. I want to make sure the court is very clear about what that witness said." 
 
 But Wagner's defense attorneys, Leo Palazzo and Wiley Beevers, said Wagner has always been consistent in her statement that Smith shot himself. Smith was suffering from PTSD, was depressed, had financial and relationship troubles and had threatened to kill himself just the day before in a text message, according to Palazzo. 
 
 And defense attorneys point out that the Sheriff's Office admits Wagner's DNA was not found on the gun used in the shooting. 
 
 "How do you shoot somebody without touching the gun?" Beevers asked after the hearing. 
 
 Smith, 44, an instructor at the Sheriff's Office training academy and a former member of the New Orleans Police Department, died June 24, one week after Wagner called 911 to report that he tried to commit suicide inside their Waggaman home on Father's Day. 
 
 Sheriff's Office detectives arrested Wagner on July 11, noting that forensic evidence and interviews led authorities to determine that Smith's injury wasn't self-inflicted. 
 
 Dr. Dana Trosclair, the forensic pathologist who conducted Smith's autopsy, took the stand Tuesday. But Trosclair and coroner's office attorney Chuck Credo told the court she could not yet provide an official opinion on whether Smith's death was a homicide or a suicide because the final autopsy report was not complete, according to court records. Toxicology samples are still being tested. 
 
 Palazzo, who employed Wagner as a paralegal at his Gretna law firm, did have Trosclair identify the location of Smith's entry wound, the "parietal scalp, right above the right ear," she said. The exit wound was on the "vertex" or top of the scalp. 
 
 Trosclair described the trajectory as right to left, slightly front to back and upward. 
 
 Chief Deputy Tim Scanlan, commander of the Sheriff's Office Crime Lab, also took the stand Tuesday. He testified that his technicians are in the preliminary stages of reconstructing the shooting. 
 
 Beevers pressed Scanlan with questions about bullet trajectory and whether he could he sure a hole found in the ceiling of the couple's home was made by a projectile fired at the time of Smith's shooting. 
 
 Scanlan conceded that Wagner's DNA was not found on the gun recovered at the shooting scene. But he also testified that the totality of evidence is inconsistent with Smith shooting himself. 
 
 Palazzo passionately argued that the state did not prove probable cause to hold Wagner on a murder charge. None of the evidence presented during the hearing prove Wagner shot her husband, he said. 
 
 In the end, Schneider agreed with Rish that Wagner's multiple inconsistent statements and the alleged confession to a witness rises to the level of probable cause. 
 
 Although Schneider lowered Wagner's bond, Palazzo said the family will not be able to meet the $300,000 amount and called her prosecution political. 
 
 "It is an absolute tragedy," he said. ||||| The wife of a Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office deputy has been arrested and booked with second-degree murder in his death. 
 
 Shantel Wagner, 35, of Waggaman, is accused of killing Sgt. Troy Smith, an instructor and hostage negotiator with the department, according to the Sheriff's Office. 
 
 UPDATE: Wife's arrest supports friends' skepticism that Sgt. Troy Smith took his own life 
 
 
 
 Wagner called 911 on Father's Day, June 17, around 11:25 p.m. and reported Smith had tried to commit suicide in the bedroom of their Camellia Lane home, according to Lt. Jason Rivarde, spokesman for the department. 
 
 Smith remained hospitalized for about a week before succumbing to his injuries. He was 44 years old. 
 
 But detectives determined through forensic evidence and interviews that Smith's injury wasn't self-inflicted, Rivarde said. Jefferson Parish Coroner Dr. Gerry Cvitanovich declined to comment about the case on Wednesday. 
 
 Detectives obtained a warrant for Wagner's arrest and took her into custody around 1 a.m. Wednesday at a home in the 4900 block of Jean Lafitte Boulevard in Lafitte, Rivarde said. 
 
 Smith and Wagner married on Nov. 16, 2016, according to court records. 
 
 Smith joined the New Orleans Police Department in 1995 and worked as a bomb technician and a member of the SWAT team. Smith joined JPSO in November 2013 as an instructor at the department's training academy, according to Rivarde. 
 
 NOPD Capt. Michael Glasser said those within NOPD who worked with Smith were "devastated" to hear of the shooting and subsequent death a few weeks ago, when they were unaware of the circumstances. 
 
 "Now that (murder allegations have) become evident, we're even more devastated," added Glasser, the president of the Police Association of New Orleans. 
 
 Smith's NOPD colleagues were sorry to see him leave the department, Glasser said, but happy he returned to law enforcement in the neighboring agency. 
 
 "Troy was extremely competent and extremely well thought of," Glasser said. 
 
 Smith had also worked as a civilian contractor with the Department of Defense and was a 1st Lieutenant in the Mississippi State Guard. 
 
 He was a member of the guard's 3rd Brigade and served as the group's Operations Training Officer, according to Lt. Russ Jones, spokesman for the Mississippi State Guard. 
 
 Smith was named Non-Commissioned Officer of the Year in 2017 for both the Guard and the State Guard Association of the United States. 
 
 "We saw in Lt. Smith the same level of dedication and loyalty he displayed with his police work. He was a good soldier," Jones said in a statement released Wednesday. 
 
 Stay with NOLA.com for more on this story. 
 
 Emily Lane contributed to this story. ||||| Wife of slain JPSO deputy to remain in custody; bond reduced to $300K 
 
 A woman accused of killing her husband, a Jefferson Parish sheriff's deputy, will remain in custody unless she can post bond. 
 
 Shantel Wagner, the wife of slain Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office Sgt. Troy Smith, returned to court Tuesday for another hearing in her case. 
 
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 Wagner maintains her late husband committed suicide, but investigators accuse her of murder in the shooting reported in June on Father's Day. 
 
 Breaking: Bond for Shantel Wagner is $500k, Judge REDUCES it to $300k with home incarceration and GPS monitoring. @wdsu — Travers Mackel (@TraversWDSU) August 7, 2018 
 
 WDSU reporter Travers Mackel said a judge found probable cause to hold Wagner until she's indicted or on trial. She was arrested on a second-degree murder charge. 
 
 Wagner's lawyer was able to reduce Wagner's bond from $500,000 to $300,000. She will be ordered to home incarceration and GPS monitoring if she posts bond, Mackel tweeted. 
 
 Tuesday's developments come after several new details came to light Monday, during the first day of the hearing. For the first time since his death in June, what was heard on a 911 call was released this week. 
 
 "My husband just shot himself in the head," Wagner told a 911 dispatcher. 
 
 
 
 DA: Every single statement that Shantel Wagner has made does not conform with the physical evidence. @wdsu — Travers Mackel (@TraversWDSU) August 7, 2018 
 
 Wagner can be heard sobbing on the tape. 
 
 
 
 Leo Palazzo, Wagner's lawyer, said his client is not a killer. But investigators said that's not true. They said Monday that Wagner changed her story 16 times and even claim she told a witness that she shot Smith. 
 
 
 
 Wagner remains jailed, and if convicted, faces a mandatory life sentence. 
 
 
 
 Keep up with local news, weather and current events with the WDSU app here. Sign up for our email newsletters to get breaking news right in your inbox. Click here to sign up! 
 
 
 
 AlertMe ||||| OSKALOOSA, Kan. (KSNT) — A Kansas man is free after spending 16 years behind bars for a murder his brother committed. 
 
 Floyd Bledsoe was serving a life sentence for killing his 14-year-old sister-in-law, Camille Arfmann. However, attorneys with the Project for Innocence and Post-Conviction Remedies at Kansas University released DNA evidence in late October showing semen found in Arfmann’s body likely belonged to Floyd’s brother, Tom Bledsoe. 
 
 Tom won’t serve any prison time after he was found dead from an apparent suicide inside his car in the parking lot of a Kansas Wal-Mart on November 9. Tom Bledsoe was found with a bag on his head and his left arm bandaged from what authorities say likely was a previous suicide attempt. Jefferson County captain of detectives Kirk Vernon does not believe Tom’s suicide was a coincidence. His rationale is supported by three suicide notes Tom left behind – one addressed to his wife, one to his parents, and one addressed to “whomever cares.” 
 
 “I killed Camille Arfmann on November 5, 1999,” Vernon read from one of Tom’s suicide note as he testified Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2015. 
 
 Camille stepped off a school bus in Oskaloosa, on Nov. 5, 1999, and was never seen alive again. She was reported missing, but three days later, she was found dead from four gunshots wounds, including one in the back of the head. 
 
 In another sentence from Tom’s suicide note, he wrote: “I had sex with her, and killed her.” DNA evidence released more than a month before Tuesday’s hearing had proven Tom Bledeoe’s semen was found inside Camille, but it also found DNA from Floyd, Tom and Floyd’s father on the girl’s sock. In his note, Tom suggested his father’s DNA got on the girl’s clothes because they had sex on his parents’ bed. 
 
 Tom went on to confess he “freaked” when he realized Arfmann was only 14. He then drove her out to a ditch not far from the house he lived in with his parents, and begged her not to tell. Then he panicked, grabbed his gun, and pushed her to the ground, hoping just to threaten her. “When the gun went off behind her head, it was (an) accident. I didn’t mean to kill her,” the note read. 
 
 Although Vernon said Arfmann had been shot four times, investigators found only three spent shell casings. Authorities found the fourth casing an inch below ground after Tom Bledsoe directed them to it in one of his suicide notes, complete with a diagram of its location. 
 
 One of the last things Tom included in the note was a final confession: “Floyd S. Bledsoe is innocent, man. Thomas E. Bledsoe is the guilty one.” 
 
 Wearing a flannel shirts and jeans, Floyd Bledsoe walked out of the Jefferson County Courthouse with no handcuffs and a posse of attorneys that helped him finally get justice. When asked of his plans now that he is a free man, he responded, “I’m ready to move beyond the last 16 (years). … I can’t do anything about the past. All I can do is change the future.” ||||| Two law enforcement officers accused of murder in the shooting of a 6-year-old boy last week were hit with million-dollar bail amounts, while an attorney for the child’s father said body camera video reportedly shows the man’s raised hands as the officers began firing at his SUV. 
 
 State Police have said at least 18 bullets were fired, injuring Chris Few and killing his son Jeremy David Mardis. An attorney for Few said Few presented no threat to deputy local marshals who approached the car on the night of Nov. 3. 
 
 “This was not a threatening situation for the police,” said Mark Jeansonne, the attorney. He had not seen the video but said it was described during a closed-door hearing to discuss bail for Derrick Stafford, 32, and Norris Greenhouse Jr., 23. 
 
 The Avoyelles Parish judge presiding over the case, William J. Bennett, issued a gag order shortly after Jeansonne made the comments, barring anyone associated with the case — including victims, potential witnesses and attorneys — from speaking with the media “directly or indirectly or through any third parties.” 
 
 Jeremy, an autistic first-grader at Lafargue Elementary School in the nearby Avoyelles Parish town of Effie, was quietly buried Monday in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in a small, private ceremony. 
 
 The boy’s final resting place is a graveyard near the De Soto National Forest. Funeral home staff said the family was still distraught over Jeremy’s death and would not speak to reporters Monday. 
 
 Few, who was shot multiple times, remains hospitalized in fair condition at Rapides Regional Medical Center in Alexandria and was unable to attend the funeral. Jeansonne, his attorney, said Few has not yet been told that his son was killed. 
 
 Hours earlier, Bennett, who sits on the 12th Judicial District Court bench, set bail for Stafford and Greenhouse at $1 million each. Avoyelles Parish Sheriff Doug Anderson, who announced the bail decision after the hearing, said the two officers had been held in seclusion away from other inmates at the Avoyelles Parish Jail. They have since been transferred to the Rapides Parish Detention Center. Neither had posted bail as of Monday evening. 
 
 State Police Superintendent Col. Mike Edmonson said that Stafford and Greenhouse had initially told State Police investigators in brief statements that they were trying to serve a warrant on Few when they began chasing him shortly before 9:30 p.m. Nov. 3, but that those claims didn’t bear out. 
 
 “There was no warrant,” Edmonson said. 
 
 A number of Marksville residents gathered outside the Avoyelles Parish Jail before the bail hearing, saying they saw the shooting death of Jeremy as indicative of ongoing problems with local law enforcement. 
 
 “Y’all just don’t know what the hell we go through around here,” said Ruby Ivory, of nearby Mansura, who described a number of run-ins with Marksville authorities. 
 
 Those concerns were echoed by John Lemoine, Marksville’s 63-year-old mayor, who said he’s struggled since he was first elected in 2010 to reform the city’s Police Department and dismiss troublesome officers but has been hampered by Civil Service Board rulings. 
 
 “We have citizens that deserve to be served and protected by the badge. Currently, that’s not always happening,” said Lemoine, a Marksville native and former School Board member who owns an auto shop and wrecker service in town. 
 
 Lemoine said his own issues with Stafford included an arrest in 2011 after Stafford testified in court that the mayor had threatened to physically harm another officer whom Lemoine was attempting to have dismissed following complaints. Lemoine said he never threatened the officer. 
 
 In a separate case, an Avoyelles Parish civil court jury in October 2014 found that Stafford had lied in a criminal proceeding and filed a false police report about the arrest of a man who’d complained about the officer not letting him pass through a crowded area to carry his ailing dog to receive medical care in 2012. Avoyelles Parish resident Patrick Jeansonne was arrested after Stafford heard over the police radio that someone called in a complaint about him, according to one of the man’s court filings. 
 
 The case is now on appeal in the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, said Jeansonne’s attorney Aaron Broussard. 
 
 At least five other pending civil suits name Stafford as a defendant, and two of those included Greenhouse as another defendant. 
 
 The suits include a 2012 lawsuit that alleges Stafford used a stun gun unprovoked and without warning while questioning a man. Another suit claims that Stafford used a stun gun on a handcuffed woman in the back of a police car while another accuses him of breaking a 15-year-old girl’s arm while wrestling her off a school bus. 
 
 Megan Dixon, Few’s fiancée, said this weekend that Few had a previous run-in with Greenhouse. A former high school classmate of Dixon, Greenhouse had started messaging her on Facebook and had come by the house Few and Dixon were sharing at the time. 
 
 “I told Chris and Chris confronted him about it and told him, ‘Next time you come to my house I’m going to hurt you,’ ” Dixon said. 
 
 Efforts to reach an attorney for Greenhouse were unsuccessful. 
 
 Avoyelles Parish District Attorney Charles Riddle III recused himself from the case early Monday morning. Norris Greenhouse Sr., the father of one of the accused officers, has been an assistant district attorney in the parish for 20 years and is currently the head of the office’s major crimes unit. 
 
 The Louisiana Attorney General’s Office will be prosecuting the case, said agency spokesman Aaron Sadler, who added no court date has been set. 
 
 “We will begin a detailed and thorough investigation, leaving no stone unturned,” attorney general James D. “Buddy” Caldwell said in a statement. “I can simply assure you that at the end of the process, justice will be served.” 
 
 The body camera footage of the shooting, captured by Sgt. Kenneth Parnell, an on-duty Marksville police officer who arrived just before Greenhouse and Stafford allegedly opened fire, was described by Edmonson at a news conference Friday as “the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen.” 
 
 Edmonson said Monday that only State Police investigators and the judge have seen the video. He declined to address Mark Jeansonne’s claim that Few’s hands were up and declined to discuss what exactly is depicted. 
 
 Marksville’s Police Department purchased body cameras “three or four months ago,” Lemoine said, after the city’s police commissioner, Clyde Benson, had raised concerns about controversial police shootings elsewhere in the country. 
 
 Still, Lemoine said he never anticipated that a deadly shooting would rock his small, rural municipality of about 5,700 residents. 
 
 “It’s sad for the whole community,” Lemoine said. “Nobody would’ve ever expected that to happen around here. It really hit home.” 
 
 Marksville Police Chief Elster Smith Jr. said that Stafford, a lieutenant and shift supervisor with the department, has been placed on unpaid administrative leave and that Greenhouse, a deputy Alexandria city marshal and a reserve officer in Marksville, hadn’t worked for his department in several months. 
 
 Lemoine said he anticipated the City Council taking action to dismiss both at its meeting on Thursday. 
 
 The two other officers involved in the incident — Parnell, who captured the event on his body camera, and Lt. Jason Brouillette — are on administrative leave with pay, Lemoine said. Neither of those officers are believed to have fired a shot during the confrontation, though Edmonson said State Police will be conducting ballistics tests on all four officers’ weapons to confirm that later this week. 
 
 Greenhouse, Stafford and Brouillette had been moonlighting with the Marksville City Marshal’s Office at the time of the shooting. The office — similar to a constable and overseen by Ward 2 Marshal Floyd Voinche Sr., a school bus driver who was recently re-elected to the position — normally serve subpoenas, warrants and other court documents. 
 
 Lemoine said Voinche bought a pair of used police cruisers about three months ago and began patrolling the city and issuing citations. The mayor questioned that decision and said that Voinche never consulted with the City Council or the Marksville Police Department before hiring assistants. Lemoine wrote to the state Attorney General’s Office in September asking for an opinion on whether the marshal has authority to patrol in the city limits. 
 
 “As long as I’ve been living in Marksville, his job has always been to do warrants and serve subpoenas,” Lemoine said. “I’ve never known a ward marshal to do what’s been done in this case.” 
 
 Voinche, who’d previously defended his office’s authority to patrol the city, could not be reached for comment Monday. 
 
 MORE COVERAGE
– Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office Sgt. Troy Smith is dead. The question is whether it was by his own hand or his wife's. A judge on Tuesday determined there was sufficient probable cause to hold Smith's wife, Shantel Parria Wagner, in connection with his June 24 death. The timeline in the case begins one week prior, on Father's Day, when Wagner called 911 saying her husband had shot himself in the head. Wagner is at times crying and near-hysterical in audio of the call posted by Fox 8. The Times-Picayune reports Smith was hospitalized until his death the following week. Wagner's lawyer says Smith, 44, suffered from depression and PTSD, was dealing with financial strain, and texted a suicide threat the day before he was shot. But investigators say the evidence suggests the fatal gunshot wound Smith suffered wasn't self-inflicted. The autopsy report hasn't been finished, however, so the pathologist who handled the autopsy wouldn't deem it a homicide or suicide on the stand, though the Advocate reports she did say Smith exhibited no gunpowder burns or abrasions. The head of the Sheriff's Office Crime Lab testified the "totality of evidence," as the Times-Picayune puts it, isn't in line with a suicide—though he also acknowledged Wagner's DNA was not present on the gun found at the scene. But the judge said inconsistencies in Wagner's story—WDSU reports prosecutors say she altered her story 16 times—and a witness who alleges Wagner copped to the murder amounted to probable cause. Her bond has been set at $300,000.