Gazette Daily News Briefing, November 28

The Gazette Daily News Podcast

This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette Digital News Desk, and I’m here with your update for November 28, 2023.

According to the National Weather Service it will become increasingly cloudy during the day on Tuesday in the Cedar Rapids area. It looks like Tuesday may be the coldest day of the week, with a high of 28 degrees and a wind chill of -10 degrees. On Tuesday evening it will be partly cloudy, with a low of 24 degrees.

A Cedar Rapids man, who is accused of trying to kill his wife by stabbing her multiple times in 2020, wants a judge to toss out his confession because of an “existing mental health diagnosis and being in a psychotic state.”

Anthony M. Depolis, 34, in a motion, also said he hadn’t been taking his prescribed medications for an extended time and had used illegal drugs when police interviewed him.

During the interview, he admitted to stabbing his wife, Diana L. Depolis, 37 at the time, with a knife on July 6, 2020, and that he purchased it in anticipation of using it against her, according to court documents.

According to the defense motion, Depolis didn’t voluntarily, knowingly, nor intelligently waive his Miranda rights due to his mental condition at the time.

The Linn County Attorney’s Office is resisting the motion that would remove his confession from consideration.

In a recorded video interrogation Depolis discussed “at length” that he had planned for years to kill his wife, and enlisted the help of a “third party” to cover up the murder and dispose of the body. He said he only regretted not actually killing her.

A judge set a hearing on the motion to suppress Jan. 5 in Linn County District Court. His trial set for this month will be reset.

In 2021, Depolis was found incompetent to stand trial and court proceedings in the case had been suspended for more than a year until he was restored and found competent in September 2022.

Depolis, during evaluations, was suspected of faking his mental health condition to avoid or delay his trial.

After 93 years in business at various locations in Cedar Rapids, Ginsberg Jewelers will soon close. During those decades, it’s been a family-owned business and a mainstay in the city’s retail community.

Steve Ginsberg, 63, is the fourth generation — and the last — to run the family business.

“All of my (three) sons are not interested in coming into the business,” he told the Gazette, adding he’d never pushed them to do so, just as his parents never pushed him or his siblings.

Bringing family members into a business against their will, he said, “would only bring resentment. Why would you want that? So I don't fault them at all.”

Besides not having willing successors to the business, Ginsberg said several factors led to the decision to close the store.

He said the overhead is too expensive compared to the sales that they are bringing in. He is also unwilling to go further into debt to keep the business afloat, especially when lenders are not the willing partners they once were.