Sept. 3, 2013 The Independent
In Holland he is nicknamed the “Beast of Appingdam” – but white-haired, frail and aged 92, Siert Bruins hardly looked the brutal Nazi war criminal as he shuffled into a German courtroom on Monday to face charges of murdering a Dutch resistance fighter at the end of the Second World War.
In 1949, Holland sentenced the Dutch-born former Nazi SS officer to death in absentia for killing resistance fighter Aldert Klaas Dijkema in September 1944. Bruins is accused of shooting his victim four times in the back after he was captured by an SS squad near the town of Appingdam.
Yesterday, nearly 70 years after the murder, Bruins appeared for the first time in court in the town of Hagen to answer for the killing. But although he admitted joining the Waffen SS as a volunteer in 1941, he maintained a stony silence as judges read out the charges against him. Read More
Sept. 3, 2013 CNN
A California principal, accused of murdering her husband, is due in court Tuesday -- the same day that her husband is laid to rest.
Leslie Jenea Chance, who led a California elementary school, shot her husband to death, police say, and left his car some 20 miles away from his bullet-riddled body.
The accusation left parents shocked. They remember Chance as a jovial woman, a hardworking professional, and an involved mom.
"It was hard to believe," Ken Chichester, a school district spokesman told CNN affiliate KGET. "Several of the people I talked to, their first response was they got the wrong person this time. It was out of character and very hard to believe."
Todd Chance's body was found August 25, in an almond orchard in Bakersfield, a city about 100 miles north of Los Angeles. Later that day, his black Ford Mustang was found abandoned in a residential area in the city. Read More
The brutal slaying of an Australian who was attending college in the U.S. on a baseball scholarship has shattered two towns on opposite sides of the globe. Three teens have been arrested charged as adults for the crime.
DUNCAN, Okla. -- With a motive that's both chilling and simple - to break up the boredom of an Oklahoma summer - three teenagers randomly targeted an Australian collegiate baseball player who was attending school in the U.S. and killed him for fun, prosecutors said Tuesday as they charged two of the boys with murder.
Prosecutor Jason Hicks called the boys "thugs" as he described how Christopher Lane, 22, of Melbourne, was shot once in the back and died along a tree-lined road on Duncan's well-to-do north side. He said the three teens, from the grittier part of town, chose Lane at random and that one of the boys "thinks it's all a joke."
Hicks charged Chancey Allen Luna, 16, and James Francis Edwards Jr., 15, of Duncan, with first-degree murder. Under Oklahoma law they will be tried as adults. Michael Dewayne Jones, 17, of Duncan, was charged with using a vehicle in the discharge of a weapon and with accessory to first-degree murder after the fact. He is considered a youthful offender but will be tried in adult court.
Jones wept in the courtroom after he tried to speak about the incident but was cut off by the judge who said it wasn't the time to sort out the facts of the case. Jones faces anywhere from two years to life in prison if convicted on the counts he faces. Read More
Aug. 21, 2013 New York Times
DECATUR, Ga. — A school clerk here on Tuesday stalled a man dressed in black who had sneaked into an elementary school with an AK-47, giving the police time to arrive before he could make his way into classrooms packed with 800 children.
The man, who the police said was Michael B. Hill, 20, and lived near the school, the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy, was in a car that the police said they suspected carried some type of explosives along with other weapons.
He most likely followed someone into the secure school, according to an account by police and school officials.
Once inside, he made his way to the main office, said Cedric Alexander, chief of the DeKalb County Police Department. He demanded that someone call a local television station. Antoinette Tuff, a clerk, made the call. Read More
Aug. 17, 2013 Associated Press
BOSTON — Longtime Boston Red Sox broadcaster Jerry Remy said Saturday he could not describe his "disgust and remorse" over allegations his son fatally stabbed his girlfriend a day after being released from custody for allegedly assaulting her.
In a statement released through his Twitter account, Remy said he and his wife are "heartbroken" over the death of Jennifer Martel on Thursday night, allegedly at the hands of his son, Jared.
"Words cannot describe my wife's and my grief," Jerry Remy wrote. "Son or not, I am at loss for words articulating my disgust and remorse over this senseless and tragic act." Read More
July 16, 2013 CNN
A nationwide sweep by federal agents targeting the violent MS-13 street gang has resulted in hundreds of arrests, including 263 gang members, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency announced Friday.
Those arrested in the July and early August sweep include suspects wanted on murder, assault, sexual assault, robbery and kidnapping charges, among other offenses, ICE said in a news release.
Among those charged are 158 members and associates of MS-13, with 105 others allegedly belonging to other gangs. Authorities arrested 84 non-gang members wanted on criminal charges and 14 people on immigration violations as part of the same sweep, according to the federal agency.
Special agents with ICE's Homeland Security Investigations unit also seized 28 firearms, 10 kilograms of marijuana, 123 grams of cocaine, over 770 grams of heroin and about $22,400 in cash. Read More
Aug. 13, 2013 CNN
Federal agents say they've now linked 11 killings to admitted serial killer Israel Keyes and are looking into possible ties to killings in other countries.
Keyes killed himself in December, about nine months after his arrest in the slaying of an Anchorage, Alaska, coffee barista. Police said he admitted to at least seven other slayings, from Vermont to Washington state, before his death.
In a statement issued Monday afternoon, the FBI office in Anchorage said agents have now added three more to that grim tally, based on his statements:
-- a pale-skinned woman in an older car, "possibly having a wealthy grandmother"
-- one in which the victim was posed to make it look like the death had been an accident
-- one "in Texas or a surrounding state" that he had denied committing before his death. Read More
On the night of November 29, 1988, near the impoverished Marlborough neighborhood in south Kansas City, an explosion at a construction site killed six of the city’s firefighters. It was a clear case of arson, and five people from Marlborough were duly convicted of the crime. But for veteran crime writer and crusading editor J. Patrick O’Connor, the facts—or a lack of them—didn’t add up. Justice on Fire is OConnor’s detailed account of the terrible explosion that led to the firefighters’ deaths and the terrible injustice that followed. Also available from Amazon
