Clarendon woman gets five years for theft

A Clarendon woman will spend five years in the state prison after she stole tens of thousands of dollars from her employer over one and a half years.

Laura Hommel King pled guilty to the third degree felony of Aggregated Theft and agreed to let District Judge Stuart Messer determine her punishment. She faced jail time from two to ten years and a possible fine of up to $10,000.

District Attorney Luke Inman’s first witness during the punishment hearing was Johnny Floyd, owner of Floyd’s Automotive Supply and 287 Tire & Tube, who had employed King as a bookkeeper beginning in August 2010.

Floyd said he slowly notice cash missing and then notice more money missing as time went on. He eventually got a new bookkeeper and his former bookkeeper and they spent 30 days unraveling a pattern of theft that they believed totaled nearly $75,000. Of that amount, $51,902.81 was verified beyond a doubt.

Floyd said he confronted King about the missing money and said that she admitted she had taken it and promised to pay him back. He said he believed she probably started stealing from the time she went to work for him and continued until January 2012.

“I feel very sorry for her, and I told her that,” Floyd said. “I feel more sorry for her parents and her children, but I feel no remorse (for pursuing this) because this isn’t the first time she’s done something like this.”

Floyd said the thefts had made him physically sick, that he couldn’t eat or sleep, and that it had changed his plans for his business. He asked the court to give King the maximum sentence.

Donley County Sheriff Butch Blackburn was the state’s next witness, and he testified that his office had spent about 85 hours going over records with Mr. Floyd and his bookkeeper, looking at hundreds of documents detailing almost $75,000 in missing funds. Blackburn said he interviewed King after her arrest and that she had initialed each page of his report indicating that she admitted to taking the money.

“The amount of this theft – in Donley County – is mindboggling,” Blackburn said. “We usually see $1,500 to $2,000. A theft of this magnitude in this county in this economy deserves the maximum penalty.”

Taking the stand on her own behalf, King told defense attorney Matt Martindale that she first started taking the money to support her children, and she said that if she were to receive probation, she would make repaying Mr. Floyd her top priority.

King admitted she had gotten in trouble when she worked for the United States Post Office in 2005 and had spent 90 days in a federal prison camp and three years on probation following that incident. She said she could pay $700 per month to Mr. Floyd to make restitution.

In closing arguments, Inman said his office recommended a ten-year sentence based on the testimony given, and Martindale argued that prison time would serve no purpose since King would lose her job, lose her kids, and lose her ability to pay Mr. Floyd back.

Judge Messer told King she should have taken out a loan if she had needed money and shot down her attorney’s argument for probation.

“You say it [jail time] won’t work, but probation won’t work for you,” Messer said. “The federal government has tried that.”

Messer ordered King be taken into custody of the Donley County Sheriff’s Office, sentenced her to five years in prison, and ordered her to pay $51,000 in restitution. She has the right to appeal his sentence.