Authorities have charged a former county prison guard with bribery as part of a ring they say delivered drugs to inmates. For months April M. Hogsett, 26, of Doe Hill, used her position at the Augusta County Correctional Center to work as a liaison between prisoners and an outside drug source, according to court records. Three months after arresting Hogsett on charges she delivered marijuana to an inmate, authorities this week charged her with bribery. Inmates Anthony Roach and Charles Daniel Koberstein Jr., both 33, also have been charged with bribery.

The license of a Staunton physician accused of having sexual relations with patients, verbally abusing a 5-year-old, smoking marijuana and other misconduct was suspended yesterday for three years. The Virginia Board of Medicine approved the suspension in a 6-0 vote. The action averted a hearing on Dr. Charles K. Weisman, who offered to accept the penalty provided that he did not have to admit or deny the allegations.

The license of a Staunton physician accused of having sexual relations with patients, verbally abusing a 5-year-old, smoking marijuana and other misconduct was suspended yesterday for three years. The Virginia Board of Medicine approved the suspension in a 6-0 vote. The action averted a hearing on Dr. Charles K. Weisman, who offered to accept the penalty provided that he did not have to admit or deny the allegations made against him.

Groundbreaking on a new Western State Hospital in Staunton is one step closer after a vote by the Industrial Development Authority to go ahead with a land purchase and transfer. The new hospital will rise on land adjacent to its current campus as outlined in an agreement that combines state and city money and includes a property exchange between the state and the IDA.

All 690 workers at the state mental-health hospital in Staunton have been warned of potential layoffs as a result of Virginia’s budget squeeze. Employees at Western State Hospital received a memo from the facility’s director, Dr. Jack Barber, advising that during previous rounds of state cuts, administrators had slashed spending “without laying off anyone who did not apply to go. This is our aim with this round as well.“

The state board of medicine on Tuesday suspended the license of a Staunton physician entangled in accusations of sexual battery, drug use and verbal abuse of patients, including a 5-year-old boy. Charles K. Weisman, 45, engaged in sexual contact with patients and former employees, smoked marijuana in his office, falsified records, wrote questionable prescriptions and encouraged employees to lie to police when investigations closed in, according to the Virginia Board of Medicine.

See live glassblowing daily at Sunspots Studios, 202 S. Lewis St., in historic downtown Staunton. Watch artists transform hot glass into colorful vases, ornaments, paperweights and more. Sunspots features art glass and copper designs for home and garden made in its studios, as well as jewelry, handbags and accessories by American artists. It also carries Pandora jewelry.

Virginia State Police called Staunton detectives’ cold-case investigation of the 1967 High’s Ice Cream murders “thorough and responsible,“ ending a four-month probe into a mystery that appears bound to linger. Because of the “significant lapse of time” since the murders, concerns about lead investigator Davie Bocock’s handling of the case could not be resolved, state police said in a news release Tuesday. Bocock died in 2006.

STAUNTON—Her dark hair pulled back in a white scrunchie, tissues in her cuffed hands, Nettie Lee Salisbury pleaded guilty this week to killing her roommate with a single stab to the heart. As at previous hearings, nearly a dozen supporters came to court for Salisbury, 44, who acknowledged them by smiling and winking before tears overcame her. Salisbury briefly could not stand but arose Tuesday to plead guilty to the second-degree murder of her boyfriend, Kevin L. Bryant, 45.

Staunton police have determined that a handgun once in the possession of the lead detective in the 1967 High’s Ice Cream double murder was not the weapon used to kill the two clerks. The .25-caliber handgun, turned in to the Staunton Police Department on Jan. 23 by a Staunton resident, tested negative, Staunton authorities said yesterday.

Paul Ryan, who stands 6-foot-8 in his stocking feet, towers over most other Virginia artists. Four decades ago, when he first settled into his cabin nestled in the stately pines along Lake Michigan, he was on his way to becoming a giant among campers, too.

As police officer Davie Bocock cruised by the High’s Ice Cream store in the tiny Terry Court shopping center that Tuesday night of April 11, 1967, Staunton’s most sensational crime was going down. Constance Hevener, 19, and sister-in-law Carolyn Perry, 20, were dying in the store’s cramped back room, each shot once in the head at very close range with a .25-caliber handgun. One lay on her stomach, the other on her side with her hand in a mop bucket. Blood was everywhere.

Among Lee Ann Novak’s six children, her 16-year-old daughter stands out. In her first year of high school in Virginia Beach, she scored 1,200 on her PSATs. She has been lauded for her virtuosity on the violin and piano and has carried an A average. But on a May night two years ago, Novak shivered with fear when she found her daughter standing at the bedroom door wearing only a T-shirt, holding a broom stick and muttering incoherently.

In Marion, in the heart of rural Virginia, serving psychiatric needs is not easy. The unemployment rate is generally among the highest in the state, there’s no public transportation, and private psychiatric hospitals are scarce. The nearest one is in Salem. The state’s Southwestern Virginia Mental Health Institute in Marion serves the huge area—a little more than 500,000 people—with its 172 beds for adults, geriatric patients and adolescent psychiatric patients.

The woman who said she fatally shot two young store clerks more than 40 years ago—and got away with the murders—said on her deathbed that the lead investigator always knew she was the killer, authorities revealed at a news conference yesterday. Sharron Diane Crawford Smith told investigators the details of the double homicide in a series of interviews as she lay dying of kidney and heart failure. She said lead Staunton police investigator Davie Bocock helped her bury a .25-caliber handgun used in the murders.