February 22, 2012
Body Found in 1975 Identified
A nude woman's body found floating in a Texas river 37 years ago has finally been identified by Houston forensic experts. The body has been identified Gloria Faye Stringer, a 22-year-old mother who disappeared shortly after moving to Texas City in 1975. The identification has prompted an investigation into the death of the former Tennessee woman. Read more...
5 Dead in Shooting at Health Spa
Five people were killed in an apparent murder-suicide at a Norcross, Ga., health spa, northeast of Atlanta, local police said. On arrival at the scene, officers found four people dead, Norcross police captain Brian Harr told Reuters. A fifth victim was pronounced dead at a local hospital. Harr said they believe the shooter was among the dead. Read more...
Jury to Get George Huguely Case
Jurors in former University of Virginia lacrosse player George Huguely V's murder trial will begin deliberations to decide the 24-year-old's fate and two legal experts have told ABCNews.com that it is possible that Huguely could be free by the end of the week. Huguely faces six charges, including first-degree murder, in the death of former girlfriend Yeardley Love. He pleaded not guilty to all of the charges. Read more...
Man Guilty of Abducting, Raping Ex-Neighbor
A Texas man who abducted his former neighbor and tortured the woman while holding her captive for nearly two weeks has been convicted convicted. Jeffrey Allan Maxwell, 59, faces up to life in prison after being found guilty of aggravated kidnapping and two counts of aggravated sexual assault. Jurors, who took less than an hour to convict Maxwell, will hear more evidence during the trial's punishment phase. Read more...
Teen Who Admitted Raping 5-Year-Old Sentenced
A 13-year-old boy who admitted raping a 5-year-old girl at a McDonald's play area in southwest Ohio has been sentenced to an inpatient treatment facility for at least six months. The Hamilton County Juvenile Court administrator says the boy must successfully complete treatment before his release from the secured centre. The judge also placed the teen on probation. The boy last month entered the juvenile equivalent of a guilty plea to the rape charge in Cincinnati. Read more...
Lindsay Lohan's Probation Nears End
Lindsay Lohan's probation should end next month, clearing the way for the actress to revive her acting career possibly playing Elizabeth Taylor in a made-for-TV movie. Lohan appears in court Wednesday for a judge to check her progress, but she's gotten glowing probation reports for the last two months. Lohan's "on the home stretch" to completing her 480 hours of community service -- most of it cleaning up at the Los Angeles County morgue -- on schedule next month, her publicist Steve Honig said. Read more...
February 21, 2012
Remains Found of Girl Missing Since 1999
The skeletal remains of a 14-year-old Ohio runaway girl have been found underneath the home of the man who was a suspect in her disappearance. The remains have been positively identified as Nicholle Coppler, who vanished in 1999 and was last seen at the home of Glen Fryer. Fryer reportedly committed suicide in 2002 after he was convicted of raping another girl. Read more...
Former Glock CEO to Stand Trial
Allegations of racketeering, gun theft and embezzlement from one of the nation's largest firearms distributors will all be aired in court, when the former general counsel for Glock Inc. stands trial in Cobb County, Georgia. Paul Jannuzzo, 55, could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted of the theft and racketeering charges for which he was indicted in 2009. Read more...
Parents Arrested After Teen Dies of Malnutrition
The parents of a 13-year-old Summerville boy were arrested Sunday after the coroner determined the boy died of malnutrition and neglect. Police were called to 1925 Bacons Bridge Road Feb. 10, according to Summerville Police Capt. Jon Rogers. The boy, whom officials have not publicly identified, was dead. An autopsy showed that he died of malnourishment and neglect, Rogers said. Read more...
Woman Charged With DWI Going 100 MPH
A Leicester woman was charged with felony death by motor vehicle and driving while impaired after city police determined she exceeded 100 mph before a fatal wreck last month. The charges against Sarah Elizabeth Morris, 27, stem from a Jan. 16 accident in which her passenger, 30-year-old Michelle Crabtree, died at the scene of the single-vehicle wreck. Police say Morris was driving in excess of 100 mph in her 2011 Hyundai while on Interstate 240 east. When she entered the curve of the off ramp, she was unable to maintain the roadway at that speed, according to police. Read more...
Former Western Michigan Star Arrested for DUI
A former basketball standout at Country Day and Western Michigan was arrested early Sunday morning on suspicion of DUI in Bellevue, Neb. Carrie Moore, who led the country in scoring in 2007 with the Broncos, is an assistant coach with Creighton. According to multiple media reports, including KETV-TV in Omaha, Neb., Moore was found asleep behind the wheel of her car in a McDonald's drive thru around 2:50 a.m. Read more...
February 20, 2012
Elizabeth Smart Marries at Hawaii Temple
Elizabeth Smart, the young woman from Utah who was kidnapped at knifepoint at 14 and held captive for nine months by an itinerant street preacher, has married her Scottish fiance at a Mormon temple in Hawaii. The wedding came several months ahead of scheduled plans for the nuptials after news of her engagement last month drew widespread media attention. A family spokesman said Smart married Matthew Gilmour, of Aberdeen, Scotland, on Saturday on Oahu's North Shore. Read more...
More Human Remains Found on Long Island
Police said that more human remains have been found on New York's Long Island, in the same area where authorities are hunting for a possible serial killer. The Suffolk County Police Department said the remains -- confirmed to be human -- were discovered by a man walking his dog in Manorville, N.Y. Read more...
Body Found in Search for South Carolina Woman
A South Carolina coroner has identified a body found in a national forest as that of a woman who went missing this month. Authorities said the woman, 30-year-old Dara Lee Watson, was killed by her former fiance days before he committed suicide. Charleston County Coroner Rae Wooten said Saturday that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head. The body was found Friday in the Frances Marion National Forest, not far from where police had discovered the woman's torched SUV. Read more...
Speed Freak Killer Cites More Bodies
Sacramento television station CBS-13 has received a letter it says is from serial killer Wesley Shermantine claiming he knows of sites where the bodies of additional victims were dumped. The station reports that in a letter with Shermatine's signature from San Quentin State Prison, the convicted killer says there are two locations where his accomplice, Loren Herzog, disposed of two victims. Shermantine says he hasn't revealed the locations because he hasn't been paid $33,000 promised by bounty hunter Leonard Padilla. Read more...
Mom, Baby Found Shot to Death
Police say a 19-year-old mom and her 1-year-old daughter were found shot to death in a Cleveland garage next to the body of the woman's estranged boyfriend, who was suspected of kidnapping them. Cleveland police Sgt. Sammy Morris said the three were found with gunshot wounds before 3 a.m. Sunday in a closed garage at an unoccupied building. He said it appeared the man, Thomas Lorde, 35, had shot himself in the head. Read more...
Woman Admits to Taking Baby From Womb
A Kentucky woman pleaded guilty but mentally ill to killing an expectant mother and taking her baby. Kathy Coy of Morgantown cried as she entered the plea in Warren Circuit Court. Family and friends of the victim, 21-year-old Jamie Stice, looked on, all wearing pink ribbons. Coy pleaded guilty to three counts — murder, capital kidnapping and kidnapping. The plea deal calls for her to receive life in prison without parole when she's sentenced March 1. Read more...
Meth Case Involves 3 Generations of 1 Family
It's a generational thing: Deputies in Florida say a man, his daughter and his grandson, along with a fourth person said to be a family relative, are accused of working together to manufacture methamphetamine. Dixie County Sheriff's officials said 54-year-old Allen J. Brannin, his 34-year-old daughter, Amy M. Brannin, and her 18-year-old son, Austin J. Brannin, were arrested. Another relative, 18-year-old Tyler W. Cannon, was also arrested. Read more...
Robin Thicke Arrested for Marijuana Possession
Robin Thicke is singing the blues. The R&B singer was arrested for possession of marijuana in New York City. Thicke, 34, was arrested by officers who saw him smoking a joint in a black Cadillac Escalade. The singer was in the car with another person, but only Thicke was arrested. "He wasn't driving," a police source tells the newspaper. "He was sitting in the car. He was arrested and a small amount of marijuana was recovered on him." Read more...
February 17, 2012
Dougherty Gang Takes Plea Deal
The two brothers of the former fugitive Dougherty Gang have joined their sister in pleading guilty to reduced charges in connection with their failed high-speed attempt to avoid law enforcement in Colorado. Ryan Dougherty, 21, and Dylan Stanley-Dougherty, 26, entered pleas in Huerfano County court. A week ago, Lee Grace Dougherty, 29, pleaded guilty to lesser charges after prosecutors agreed to drop attempted murder charges. Read more...
Amanda Knox Has Deal With HarperCollins
Amanda Knox has a book deal. The young exchange student whose conviction in Italy and eventual acquittal on murder charges made headlines worldwide has an agreement with HarperCollins to tell her story. The 24-year-old Seattle resident, imprisoned for four years in Perugia, Italy, has not publicly discussed her ordeal beyond a brief expression of gratitude upon her release last October. Read more...
Sex Offender Eyed in Cold-Case Disappearance
A convicted child rapist is being eyed by South Carolina cops in the disappearances of two young women, including a New York teenager who disappeared while on spring break in Myrtle Beach almost three years ago. Detectives say Raymond Moody is the primary "person of interest" in the 2009 disappearance of 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel, who was last seen on surveillance video leaving a popular Myrtle Beach hotel in a case that sparked widespread media coverage. Moody, who served 21 years in prison for abducting and raping a California girl in 1983, is also being looked at in connection with another missing woman, 28-year-old Crystal Soles. Read more...
Couple Gets 8 Years in Son's Cancer Death
The parents of an 8-year-old boy who died from Hodgkin lymphoma after suffering for months from undiagnosed swollen glands were sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to denying him medical treatment. Attorneys for Monica Hussing, 37, and William Robinson Sr., 40, had said the parents had financial problems and tried to get checkups for their son but could not afford it. Read more...
Deputy Arrested for Lewd Acts With a Child
A veteran Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy was arrested and booked on charges of committing lewd acts upon a child, police said. Oscar Rodriguez, who was last stationed at Marina Del Ray station, allegedly committed the offenses while he was off duty, the Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement. His bail has been set at $100,000, police said, adding that the sheriff's department was conducting its own internal investigation. Read more...
Paul McCartney Giving Up Marijuana
The Beatles musician has smoked the herbal drug since The Beatles's hey day in the 60s, but has given up marijuana so he can be a better parent to his eight-year-old daughter, Beatrice, his child with ex-wife Heather Mills. He told Rolling Stone magazine: "I did a lot, and it was enough. I smoked my share. When you're bringing up a youngster, your sense of responsibility does kick in. Enough's enough - you just don't seem to think it's necessary." Read more...
February 16, 2012
Serial Killer's Tips Leads to Burial Sites
Investigators have found almost 1,000 human bone fragments in an old abandoned California well as they excavate one of five burial sites marked on a serial killer's map. The bones are believed to be the victims of the 'Speed Freak Killers' who were convicted of seven murders, but were suspected in many more. Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog, who were childhood friends, are suspected in dozens of deaths in California in the 1980s and 1990s. Read more...
Gabe Watson Weeps at Diving Murder Trial
As Gabe Watson struggled to save his wife during their fateful Queensland dive he thought other divers in the vicinity would think "something odd was going on", Watson told Townsville detectives. The police interview was played to the jury on the third day of Watson's murder trial in Birmingham, Alabama. He wept in court as he listened to a portion of the police interview where he recalled the moment he was told attempts to resuscitate his wife failed. Read more...
Florida Executes Man for Woman's 1980 Murder
Florida executed a 65-year-old man on Wednesday who had spent more than three decades on death row for the murder of a woman he met at a bar. Robert Waterhouse was put to death by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Raiford, the fourth inmate executed in the United States this year. He was pronounced dead at 8:22 p.m. local time, said Department of Corrections spokeswoman Jo Ellyn Rackleff. He was sentenced to die for the January 1980 murder of Deborah Kammerer, a 29-year-old St. Petersburg woman who encountered Waterhouse at a bar in the Tampa Bay area. Read more...
Josh Powell Set Up Sham Residence
Authorities said Josh Powell was not living at the house he rigged as a bomb and blew up, killing himself and his two young sons, the Tacoma News Tribune reported. Pierce County sheriff's detectives told citizens at a community meeting on Monday that the house Powell showed to authorities was a sham -- intended to look like a loving home where his two sons could visit, according to the newspaper. Read more...
Ayla's Dad Bought Insurance Policy
The mother of a missing Maine toddler said the girl's father took out a life insurance policy just weeks before she disappeared. "In the same week Justin took Ayla from me, he took out a life insurance policy on Ayla," Trista Reynolds said. "Now, why did he take out that life insurance policy? I'm still trying to figure that one out myself. Because who takes a life insurance policy out on their own child?" Read more...
Couple Accused of Starving Daughter, 15
A Madison man and his wife have been arrested for allegedly torturing and starving the man's 15-year-old daughter, who told authorities she was forced to live in the basement of their home on the city's Southeast Side for years. The girl, who weighs about 70 pounds, told authorities she was forced to drink her urine and eat her feces, according to a police affidavit. Chad G. Chritton, 40, and Melinda J. Drabek-Chritton, 42, were being held Tuesday in Dane County Jail. Read more...
Student Sues School Over Strip Search
A Georgia middle school student claimed in a lawsuit Wednesday he was humiliated and traumatized when he was brought to a vice principal's office and forced to strip in front of classmates who said he had marijuana. The student, then in the seventh-grade, said he still suffers from emotional distress because his classmates taunted him by calling him Superman, the underwear he was wearing when he was strip-searched. The student is suing the Clayton County school district for unspecified punitive and compensatory damages. Read more...
Drug Bust Nabs 17 TCU Students
Seventeen students, including four football players, were arrested in a drug bust at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, school officials said. At a news conference, officials said those arrested sold drugs to undercover narcotics officers both on and off campus during a six-month investigation. "There is no doubt all of those arrested today are drug dealers," said Steve McGee, TCU chief of police, according to NBCDFW.com. "These individuals engaged in hand-to-hand delivery, for money, with undercover narcotics agents." Read more...
