ERIE — A rural Kansas prosecutor pressured about 50 women to send him nude photos, shared secret police information about potential targets of drug busts and advised a client to break into a house, according to local law enforcement and court records.
The Kansas Attorney General’s Office is responsible for deciding whether to file criminal charges against Neosho County Attorney Linus Thuston and has known about the prosecutor’s alleged crimes for more than a year.
Thuston admitted in court to soliciting nude photos from a woman he viewed as an off-the-books confidential informant but denied giving her a “hot list” of people and places under police surveillance. He didn’t respond to an interview request for this story, and when confronted in person in March he declined to answer questions about seeking nude photos from women in exchange for legal services through his private practice.
Kansas Reflector learned of Thuston’s alleged crimes by asking a judge to unseal court records, attending a preliminary hearing in an opioid drug case in which Thuston testified about his relationship with the confidential informant, and through an interview with Neosho County Sheriff Greg Taylor about his investigation of Thuston.
County officials long have been frustrated with Thuston for his willingness to negotiate high-dollar diversions and generous plea deals for violent crimes, including child rape cases, as well as what they say are conflicts of interest between his public and private legal work.
“I have no doubt that if it was me, I would be in prison, or at least not allowed to do my job anymore,” Taylor said.
Danedri Herbert, a spokeswoman for the AG’s office, didn’t answer questions for this story.
In addition to serving as the county attorney, an elected part-time position, Thuston represents clients in civil cases, such as divorce, through his private practice. He also works as a defense attorney in neighboring counties.
Taylor, the sheriff, said his office was investigating a crime in 2022 when a woman complained that Thuston had asked her for nude photos in order to continue providing legal services to her. She sent the photos because she felt like she had no other choice, even though she didn’t want to, the sheriff said.
The sheriff’s office opened an investigation into sexual extortion and obtained a warrant for Thuston’s social media messages. With the assistance of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, Taylor said, authorities identified about 50 women who were Thuston’s private practice clients and had complied with his requests for nude photos. Thuston also had prosecuted about a third of those women, Taylor said.
In one of the cases, Taylor said, Thuston had used a county credit card to pay a woman who gave him nude photos. In another case, he “pretty much tells a lady to break into a house,” Taylor said.
“When she says she doesn’t know how, he recommends another client to do it for her,” Taylor said.
Thuston’s advice to the client involves a conflict of interest because the house is in Neosho County, where Thuston “decides whether burglary will get charged,” the sheriff said.
Video from an Oct. 25, 2022, county commission meeting shows Taylor confronting Thuston about his requests for nude photos. Their brief conversation takes place in an empty room while commissioners meet elsewhere in executive session.
“Have you ever traded sexual favors or nude pictures for representing clients?” Taylor asks.
“No, never,” Thuston said.
Taylor shows him a piece of paper that isn’t clearly visible on the video.
“So when you’re asking her for nude images, that’s not for representation?” Taylor said.
The two argue about whether the request happened while Thuston was still representing the woman. Thuston says a payment to a client with county funds was “an accident.”
In an interview, the sheriff said staff from the AG’s office personally reviewed the material in late 2022, a few weeks before Attorney General Kris Kobach took office. The sheriff said he last heard from the AG’s office in April 2023.
“I’d like to feel good about the job that we’re doing,” Taylor said. “If we send over a case and it’s dismissed or whatever, and it’s an honest prosecutor that looked at it and said, you know, there’s no probable cause — fine, no problem. But if it’s because he’s got a prior relationship with somebody that’s been giving him nude images, I think that’s wrong. I also think it’s odd that somebody that’s done this stuff and has been above the law is the one deciding whether or not people get charged.”
New allegations surfaced in the opioid drug case. Thuston is not a defendant, but police discovered Facebook messages about Thuston from a woman who had sent him nude photos.
“Linus tells me everything cause he wants me,” the woman wrote in a message to her brother, who faces felony drug charges in the case.
The woman’s Facebook messages, as well as police interviews and testimony from other witnesses, provide evidence that Thuston told the woman about two houses that were under “constant watch” by Chanute police, another house that was “hotter than hell,” the name of a “nark” who was talking to police and to avoid “handoffs” at the grocery store.
During a July 1 preliminary hearing in Neosho County District Court, where a special prosecutor and retired judge were appointed to handle the drug case, Chanute police detective Lucas Hendrickson testified that police stopped talking to Thuston after they learned about the leak of the “hot list.” Officers were directed not to talk to Thuston and to report any contact with him, Hendrickson said.
Thuston, who testified for an hour, said he frequently meets privately with off-the-books confidential informants, sometimes at his home or in other discreet places around down, in an effort to help capture drug dealers. He doesn’t tell police how he gets the information, he said, and he struggled to identify an example where the information led to an arrest or conviction.
In this case, according to an affidavit that was made public after Kansas Reflector filed a motion to unseal it, the woman contacted Thuston via Facebook Messenger on July 26, 2023, to ask if his wife was home. Thuston said she would be home in 90 minutes and asked to meet in the parking lot by the softball field at the community college. The same night, the woman told her brother she could get information from Thuston by distracting him.
Thuston testified that he only provided public information to her, but he couldn’t remember the details of the conversation.
“So I’m not exactly certain if I laid out crumbs to see what I would draw out,” Thuston said. “I don’t remember if I did that or not.”
He admitted to asking the woman, several years earlier, to send him nude photos via Facebook Messenger conversations.
Olathe-based defense attorney Sarah Hill, a former Johnson County prosecutor, questioned Thuston about his relationship with the woman.
“Would you agree with me — that’s probably a poor decision to try to cultivate an informant that you requested naked pictures from?” she asked.
Thuston’s response: “Have I ever made a request for pictures from somebody? Yes, I have. In this instance, I hadn’t done that for a significant period of time.”
The 21-page affidavit shows Thuston initiated several conversations with the woman via Facebook Messenger. In response to an October 2020 message, she asked, “What were you wanting to happen?”
“Just to say hey,” Thuston wrote.
“You sure you didn’t want more?” she asked.
“Lol to see them maybe,” Thuston wrote.
Retired District Judge Merlin Wheeler ordered redactions of “salacious photos” in the affidavit. The document shows black boxes over several images the woman sent to Thuston that night.
A month later, Thuston sent her an image that is redacted in the affidavit — testimony indicated he was wearing only a towel around his waist — and a message: “You could pull this off.”
In April 2021, he sent her three more redacted photos, and she reciprocated.
Sheriff’s Lt. Trevor Seibel concluded in the affidavit that Thuston had “an intimate relationship” with the woman and had provided her “confidential information.”
Seibel testified that the sheriff’s office had “sent charges off” to the Kansas Attorney General’s Office based on the evidence that Thuston had aided and abetted drug crimes, and that it was up to the AG’s office to decide whether to file charges.
Thuston testified that he hired an attorney and was interviewed by the KBI in 2022.
During a brief exchange in March, as he walked from the courtroom in Erie to his car outside, Kansas Reflector asked Thuston whether he had solicited nude photos from his clients.
“You guys have already done a good enough of a hit job on me once before,” Thuston said. “I’m not going to waste my time with that.”
“The AG has the ability to do what the AG is going to do,” he added.
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.
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