Former Neosho County District Attorney indicted

TOPEKA — Former Neosho County District Attorney Linus Tuston, who was imprisoned for crimes earlier this year now faces six counts of perjury and witness intimidation.

Special prosecutor Brenden Bell filed the charges Monday in Neosho County District Court. The complaint accuses Tuston of lying during testimony in July when Tuston was a witness in an opioid drug case that Bell also prosecuted.

Shocking evidence in that case centered on evidence that Tuston, as the county’s chief prosecutor, passed information about police investigations to an undercover confidential informant who sent him nude photos.

Tuston has avoided repercussions from the Kansas Attorney General’s Office or the Kansas Board on Bar Discipline as local law enforcement and county officials for years provided evidence of financial and criminal abuses.

The sheriff’s office found that Tuston, through a social media account, convinced about 50 women to send him nude images in exchange for services through his private law practice. Among them were the women he also prosecuted as district attorney.

Sheriff’s officials filed reports obtained by the Kansas Reflector that accused Tuston of using confidential information for personal gain, intimidating a witness or victim, disseminating a criminal history, theft by deception, failure to report victimization and other crimes. These crimes were registered between 2018 and 2023.

During the same period, county commissioners complained that Tuston failed to document how he used money collected from diversion agreements, which have skyrocketed since Tuston took office in 2012. Current and former sheriffs feared that justice was being sold because Tuston traded high values. dollar diversion payments for generous plea deals involving violent crimes, including child rape.

In 2022, the disciplinary board decided not to discipline Tuston for the conflict of interest ethics violation after reviewing letters of support from the community, including one from county health director Theresa Starr. Tuston admitted in a taped interview with the Kansas Reflector that he wrote the letter to Starr, and she said Tuston threatened her to agree to it.

In April of this year, the Office of the Disciplinary Administrator issued an “informal warning” to Tuston for telling Starr that she “owed” him oral sex.

Tuston was still the district attorney in July when he was called to testify at a preliminary hearing in the opioid drug case. Police discovered a Facebook message from a woman who said Tuston was “telling me everything because he wants me.” She passed on information from Tuston to her brother, who was charged in a drug case, about houses that were under police surveillance and the name of a “narco” who was talking to the police.

During hours of combative testimony, Tuston defended his practice of regularly meeting with non-public confidential informants, sometimes in homes or other secret locations, as he did with the woman in the case. He also admitted that he received nude photos from her.

At the end of his testimony, the special prosecutor asked Tuston: “Do you know that lying to an investigator, a law enforcement officer about a serious crime is itself a crime?”

Tuston’s response: “It could be.”

The Kansas Reflector asked the court to release the indictment to shed light on evidence supporting the six felony charges Tuston now faces — four counts of perjury and two counts of witness intimidation.

The special counsel’s case is separate from the Kansas Attorney General’s Office investigations that led to the two felony convictions.