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The weekend slaying of an 85-year-old woman in Buhler and recent attacks on other senior citizens prompted Reno County authorities on Tuesday to issue a warning and establish a task force to investigate the crimes.

The attacks have occurred in retirement homes and private homes around the county since early April, Reno County District Attorney Keith Schroeder said.

"At this point, we're unsure of the time frame and the exact number of cases," Schroeder said. "We're still trying to find out what's tied together."

Pearl Arthaud was found dead Sunday morning in her residence at the Buhler Sunshine Meadows Retirement Community, an assisted-living complex. An autopsy on Monday confirmed she had been slain, Schroeder said.

The task force, which numbers about 20 law enforcement officials, includes representatives of the Buhler, South Hutchinson and Hutchinson police departments, Reno County Sheriff's Office, Kansas Bureau of Investigation and the Reno County District Attorney's Office.

Three inmates at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility were charged Monday with capital murder in the death of another inmate last October.

Jason Strand, Kendrick Shears and Charvell Robinson, all 22, were charged in Reno County District Court in the death of 28-year-old David Warren Jr. last October.

"To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that capital murder charges have been filed against an inmate for a homicide that was committed inside the correctional facility," said Bill Miskell, a spokesman for the Kansas Department of Corrections.

Warren was vomiting and unresponsive when he was found in a shower area at the prison at about 1 p.m. on Oct. 27, Reno County District Attorney Keith Schroeder said in a prepared statement.

He had blood on his face that appeared to be coming from a small cut on the inside corner of his eye. He was taken to Hutchinson Hospital and then transferred to Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, where he was placed on life support. He died the next day.

Everett Gentry drove his new car to a Butler County field on June 9, 2006, and dug a grave. Gentry, now 19, told a jury Monday how he helped kill 14-year-old Chelsea Brooks. His story has changed since Gentry first told it nearly two years ago.

Prosecutors say Gentry now takes more responsibility for helping kill his best friend's pregnant girlfriend.

Lawyers defending Ted Burnett against capital murder say Gentry can't keep his story straight because it's not true.

One part of Gentry's story hasn't changed: that he planned the killing with his friend Elgin Ray Robinson Jr., and the two of them hired Burnett to finish the job.

As Gentry testified Monday:

Barack Obama stepped to the brink of victory in the Democratic presidential race Tuesday night, defeating Hillary Clinton in the Oregon primary and moving within 100 delegates of the total he needs to claim the prize at the party convention this summer.

"You have put us within reach of the Democratic nomination," he told cheering supporters in Iowa, the overwhelmingly white state that launched him, a black, first-term senator from Illinois, on his improbable path to victory last January.

Obama lavished praise on Clinton, his rival in a race unlike any other, and accused Republican John McCain of a campaign run by lobbyists.

"You are Democrats who are tired of being divided, Republicans who no longer recognize the party that runs Washington, independents who are hungry for change," he said, speaking to a crowd on the grounds of the Iowa Capitol in Des Moines as well as to the millions around the country who will elect the nation's 44th president in November.

Clinton countered with a lopsided win in Kentucky, a victory with scant political value in a race moving inexorably in Obama's direction.

It appears you'll only need to bring yourself to the polls to vote in Kansas elections.

On Monday, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius vetoed House Bill 2019, which would have required photo identification to cast a ballot.

The bill was one of the more hotly contested measures in the recent legislative session.

Its supporters, mostly Republicans, had claimed an ID requirement is needed to keep ineligible voters, primarily illegal immigrants, from voting.

Opponents, mostly Democrats, argued there is no evidence of voting fraud and called the bill a thinly veiled attempt to suppress turnout among minorities and the elderly, groups that traditionally skew Democratic.