History > 2007 > USA > Crime, violence (II)

3 Bodies Found at Home

With Dead Infant

July 30, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:44 a.m. ET
The New York Times

OCEAN CITY, Md. (AP) -- Investigators found the bodies of three children near the home of a woman who was charged last week with killing her infant, Ocean City police said Monday.

The age of the children was not immediately known.

Police search the apartment of Christy Freeman, 37, after the body of an infant was found wrapped in a blanket. Freeman lived in the apartment with her boyfriend and her four children, police said Sunday.

    3 Bodies Found at Home With Dead Infant, NYT, 30.7.2007,
    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Mother-Charged.html

2 Children Found Dead

in Boston Home

July 30, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:09 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BOSTON (AP) -- Two children were found stabbed to death in a home, and their mother was hospitalized after an apparent domestic incident, police said.

Officers entering the home Sunday night found the children, a boy and a girl, dead from stab wounds. The mother was rushed to a hospital, where her condition was not immediately known.

Officers arrived on what was described as a well-being check and entered by removing an air conditioner, said Boston Police Superintendent John Gallagher. The victims had multiple stab wounds.

''This is not a random incident. We are confident the neighborhood is still a safe neighborhood at this point,'' said Gallagher, adding that there were no arrests and no search for any suspects.

Police did not immediately identify the children, reported to be aged 10 and 12, nor the mother.

Friends and relatives said the woman had been distraught after recently losing her job at Children's Hospital.

''She was desperate,'' said Juan Gonzalez, a friend who came to the scene Sunday night.

Gonzalez said the woman never threatened to hurt her children.

''She was a nice person, she was a good mother. She loved those kids so much,'' he said.

    2 Children Found Dead in Boston Home, NYT, 30.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Fatal-Stabbings.html

For Suspect in 3 Deaths, Family Steeped in Prominence

July 26, 2007
The New York Times
By ALISON LEIGH COWAN and STACEY STOWE

STAMFORD, Conn., July 25 — His grandfather was a leading Russian theatrical director and the son of a princess. His grandmother was a pioneering modern dancer. His uncle retired three years ago as chief executive of a major public relations company.

But this week, the family of Joshua Komisarjevsky was under a different sort of spotlight. On Tuesday, Mr. Komisarjevsky, 26, was charged with 13 felony counts, including kidnapping and sexual assault, in the brutal invasion of a home in Cheshire, only a few miles from his own house in the same town. By the time the ordeal was over, a woman and her two daughters were dead, and the father, a prominent doctor, was in the hospital after being clubbed in the head.

The authorities say that Mr. Komisarjevsky and Steven J. Hayes, 44, of Winsted, broke into the home of Dr. William Petit Jr., 50, around 3 a.m. Monday and sexually assaulted Dr. Petit’s wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and one of their daughters. They forced Ms. Hawke-Petit to withdraw $15,000 from a local bank while the others remained hostage, the authorities said, and set fire to the house before trying to flee in the family van.

On Tuesday, the state’s medical examiner’s said that there was evidence that Ms. Hawke-Petit had died of asphyxiation and that the daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11 — who a police source, granted anonymity because the investigation was continuing, said were both tied up in different rooms — had died of smoke inhalation. As of Wednesday, prosecutors had not decided whether to seek the death penalty.

“I know most people think they should be fried tomorrow, but we have a lot to examine here before making a decision to seek a capital charge,” said Michael J. Dearington, the state’s attorney for the judicial district of New Haven, who is handling the case.

But the state’s attorney for Waterbury, John A. Connelly, said on Wednesday, “From what I’ve been told about this crime, there are about five ways you could charge capital felony.”

Mr. Connelly added, “Based on the facts of this case, I don’t think there has been a more horrendous murder in the state of Connecticut in the last 30 years.”

The circumstances surrounding the grisly murders bear an eerie resemblance to those in Truman Capote’s novel “In Cold Blood,” which recounted the 1959 murders of a family in Holcomb, Kan., at the hands of two misfits who met in prison and came up with a scheme to rob Herb Clutter, whom they believed to be the richest farmer in Kansas.

After killing four members of the Clutter family, they ended up with $41. And though determined to leave no witnesses, the pair were eventually tracked down, convicted and executed.

Monday’s crime rattled the residents of Plainville, a town where the Petit family was long involved in civic affairs, as well as those in Cheshire, who were shocked by the news that a suspect was one of their own — and was from an illustrious family.

“This kid came from a cultured background,” said a former neighbor who knew the family years ago. “He also came not from huge money, but from a fairly affluent background.”

Members of the extended Komisarjevsky family, some of whom still live within shouting distance of Mr. Komisarjevsky’s last known address, a house on North Brooksvale Road, have been accomplished in the arts, in public affairs and in business.

His grandfather, Theodore Komisarjevsky (pronounced ko-mi-sor-JEFF-ski), who died in 1954, was a celebrated theatrical figure in Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution. Theodore Komisarjevsky’s father was an opera singer, his mother was Princess Kourzevich, and his sister Vera was an actress noted for her Ibsen portrayals.

He eventually made his way to London, Paris and Darien, Conn., where he enjoyed fame as a producer, director, playwright and set designer. He married Ernestine Stodelle, a prominent modern dancer, after his second marriage, to Dame Peggy Ashcroft, ended.

One of Theodore and Ernestine’s sons, Christopher Komisarjevsky, went on to run Burson-Marsteller, the public relations firm. Another son, Benedict, who became an electrical contractor in Cheshire, is the father of the defendant.

Shortly after the grandfather died, in 1954, Ms. Stodelle married John Rensselaer Chamberlain, a newsman and writer who had lost his own wife in 1955. The couple had one son together, leading some neighbors to refer to their blended clan, consisting of his two daughters, her two sons and daughter and the son they had together, as a local answer to the Brady Bunch.

Besides writing jobs he had for The New York Times after finishing at Yale University and his later work as an editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Chamberlain became a syndicated columnist for King Features. He died in 1995.

Over the years, Mr. Chamberlain came to own a tremendous amount of land in Cheshire, a rural section of central Connecticut, including the white pre-Revolutionary house on North Brooksvale Road where Benedict Komisarjevsky lives and where Benedict’s son came and went. A bail commissioner said at Tuesday’s arraignment that Joshua Komisarjevsky — whom one judge in 2002 called a “cold, calculating predator” — had at least 20 previous convictions.

School officials in Cheshire say they have no record of Mr. Komisarjevsky’s attending the public schools there, and some neighbors said he may have been home-schooled or sent to private school.

Former neighbors said the Komisarjevskys’ house, listed in “Landmarks of Old Cheshire,” a 1976 town publication, once had a clay tennis court that was always bustling with neighborhood children.

On Tuesday, there was little sign of that. A backhoe was parked in the rear and car parts lay strewn about the side yard. The house was in need of paint, and the hole where the front doorknob should be was wadded with paper.

“That house has been going downhill steadily for 30 years,” said the neighbor who has known the family for years.

Dozens of acres from the former Chamberlain holdings have been turned into upscale housing developments, including one that bears the name Chamberlain Court.

A reporter who tried to visit Ms. Stodelle on Tuesday at her home across the street from the suspect’s home was met by a man who said he was her son. “She’s 95, and has nothing to do with it,” he said.

Alison Leigh Cowan reported from Stamford, and Stacey Stowe from Cheshire and Plainville, Conn. Joyce Cohen contributed reporting from New York.

    For Suspect in 3 Deaths, Family Steeped in Prominence, NYT, 26.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/26/nyregion/26slay.html

Woman and 2 Daughters Killed in Connecticut Home Invasion

July 24, 2007
The New York Times
By THOMAS J. LUECK and STACEY STOWE

The wife and two daughters of a prominent Connecticut endocrinologist were killed yesterday morning by two men who invaded their suburban home in Cheshire, held them hostage for hours, set fire to the house and then rammed three police cars with the family’s sport utility vehicle before they were subdued, the authorities said.

The doctor, William A. Petit Jr., 50, medical director of the Joslin Diabetes Center at the Hospital of Central Connecticut, survived the attack and staggered from the burning house with what a neighbor described as a bloody head wound. He was hospitalized in stable condition.

Law enforcement officials in Cheshire, a prosperous suburb 15 miles north of New Haven, declined to identify the two men who were in custody, or the charges against them.

Neighbors of the Petits on Sorghum Mill Drive, in a subdivision of tall trees and manicured lawns, described a chilling sequence yesterday. They said the family’s house was suddenly engulfed in flames, police cars converged, and two young men — one with a shaved head and the other with closely cropped hair — ran from the house and tried to flee in one of the family’s vehicles.

“In Cheshire, we are not used to this type of event,” said Michael Cruess, the town’s police chief. “It’s very tragic, and it is probably going to reach right down to the roots of this community.”

The authorities said that Dr. Petit’s wife of 22 years, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and two daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11, were declared dead at the scene after the police and firefighters arrived at the home shortly after 9:30 a.m.

Ms. Hawke-Petit was co-director of the health center at the Cheshire Academy, a boarding and day school.

Hayley graduated in June from Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, and planned to attend Dartmouth, her father’s alma mater. Michaela was to enter the sixth grade at the Chase Collegiate School in Waterbury.

The authorities said that two men showed up at the Petit house early yesterday, but that it was unclear how they gained entry or what happened inside about 9 a.m. But at that point, the police said, either the mother or the 17-year-old daughter accompanied one of the two assailants in a family car to a local Bank of America branch, where she withdrew an undisclosed amount of cash.

“Bank employees were suspicious enough to contact the Cheshire Police Department, who immediately went to the bank and the victims’ residence to intercept the vehicle involved,” said Lt. J. Paul Vance of the Connecticut State Police.

He declined to comment on a report on The Hartford Courant’s Web site that Ms. Hawke-Petit had appeared at the bank and managed to slip a note to a bank employee that her family was being held hostage.

Details of what followed remained unclear yesterday, and law enforcement officials in Connecticut declined to comment on several questions about the case pending charges against the two men and their arraignment scheduled for today in State Superior Court in Meriden. They said autopsies would also be performed today by Connecticut’s chief medical examiner, and refused to discuss any evidence or whether the deaths resulted from the fire or an assault.

Lieutenant Vance said the first police officer to arrive at the Petit house saw that it was on fire and saw two men trying to flee in a car. When the officer tried to block the men, they rammed his police cruiser, Sergeant Vance said.

The officer then called for help, and fellow members of the Cheshire Police Department positioned two more police cars nose-to-nose as a barricade a few houses away.

A neighbor, Anton Rao, an optometrist who described himself as a close friend of the Petits’, said the two men drove into the police barricade at close to 60 miles per hour, and crashed through it before their car broke down and came to a halt.

Dr. Rao said he was on his way home about 9:30 a.m. when he saw the police with rifles outside the Petit house. He said he parked his car and continued on foot along a path in the backyards of the subdivision to reach his own house. “I told my own kids to go to the basement and lock the doors,” he said yesterday, choking back tears.

Yesterday afternoon in a drenching downpour, more than a dozen neighbors huddled under umbrellas along the family’s street, consoled one another, and tried to fathom what had descended on the Petits.

“Something must have gone terribly wrong because these people would give away everything they had,” said Kim Ferraiolo, 37, who lives next door.

She said her three children, ages 3, 4 and 7, had frequently played unattended with Michaela Petit in the two families’ yards. “I think that is probably going to change for a while,” she said.

The neighbors said the Petits were a busy family, but retained a balance in their lives. Ms. Hawke-Petit, who once worked as a nurse at Yale-New Haven Hospital, joined the staff of the Cheshire Academy to work with young people, they said. She and her husband also devoted time to a youth group at their church, neighbors said.

Dr. Petit was in stable condition yesterday at St. Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury, according to a hospital spokesman.

While keeping a demanding schedule for his medical practice, the neighbors said, Dr. Petit was often seen pruning, arranging and tinkering around the yard of the family lawn. Besides his hospital position, Dr. Petit is president of the Hartford County Medical Association and has written extensively on endocrinology.

Colleagues at the Hospital of Central Connecticut said they learned of what had happened to Dr. Petit and his family shortly before noon yesterday.

“It think it’s not sinking in quite yet,” Laurence A. Tanner, president of the hospital, said in an interview.

He added: “Dr. Petit is an incredible doctor. He’s not only dedicated to his patients, but he’s a teacher and a researcher.”

Both of the Petit daughters were described as outgoing and popular.

“Michaela, our fifth grader, was bright, very high-achieving, a confident, happy girl,” said John Fixx, headmaster of Chase Collegiate. “She brightened every day.”

At Miss Porter’s, Hayley had run cross-country, played basketball, was co-captain of the crew team and worked to raise money for multiple sclerosis research.

Burch Ford, the school’s headmistress, said yesterday that the younger children “really looked up to her.”

“It’s just unspeakable, a horribly senseless tragedy,” she said.

Kristin Hussey contributed reporting.

    Woman and 2 Daughters Killed in Connecticut Home Invasion, NYT, 24.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/nyregion/24slay.html

After a Brutal Attack, Many Hope for Change but Few Expect It

July 19, 2007
The New York Times
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., July 16 — The single mothers and children who fill most of the apartments at Dunbar Village — a housing project on the poor, black, north side of this city — are used to nightly gunfire. They are used to theft, assault, murder and the indifference of federal and local authorities.

But nothing could have prepared them for the awfulness of the attack that took place last month, which the local prosecutor called “the worst crime I’ve seen in 37 years in the business.”

After dark on June 18, the police say, as many as 10 armed assailants repeatedly raped a Haitian immigrant in her apartment at Dunbar Village and then went further, forcing her to perform oral sex on her 12-year-old son. They took cellphone pictures of their acts. They burned the woman’s skin and the boy’s eyes with cleaning fluid, forced them to lie naked together in the bathtub, hit them with a broom and a gun and threatened to set them on fire.

Neighbors did not respond to her screams, and no one called the police. The victims ended up walking a mile to the nearest hospital afterward.

[On Wednesday, a grand jury indicted Avion Lawson, 14; Jakaris Taylor, 15; and Nathan Walker, 16, on charges in connection with the case that include eight counts of sexual battery by multiple perpetrators, two counts of kidnapping and one count of promoting sexual performance by a child. The three teenagers, who will be tried as adults, face life in prison if convicted.]

The police have said that Mr. Lawson’s DNA was found in a condom at the crime scene.

The people of Dunbar Village are petrified, furious and doubtful that even such a savage crime will bring about change. West Palm Beach — “a city of unsurpassed beauty,” its Web site says — has eagerly permitted luxury condominiums and revitalized neighborhoods for the rich and middle class. But the north side, where steady violence has pushed up the city’s crime rate, continues to languish.

“They keep promising, promising, promising,” said Citoya Greenwood, who lives four doors down from the attack victims, who have since moved away. “Nothing is getting done.”

Ms. Greenwood, 33, is one of the few Dunbar Village residents speaking openly about the attacks. Others agreed to be interviewed but would not give their names, fearing consequences. The police said many had shrunk away from their questions, a longstanding problem in the neighborhood.

On Monday, Ms. Greenwood attended a city meeting where she implored the mayor and commissioners not to forget what happened.

“Just stop by and see what goes on there,” she said, “and you’ll see how I have to live and how my daughter has to live every day.”

Laurel Robinson, executive director of the West Palm Beach Housing Authority, said that even before the attack, the agency had decided to allow only a single entrance for cars at Dunbar Village and to install a “panoramic security camera” with a direct feed to the police department. The camera will allow the police to monitor most of the 17-acre property, Ms. Robinson said.

Cars will need an electronic device to open the gate at night, she said, but there is no way to stop people from entering on foot. As dismal as the conditions are at Dunbar Village, she said, more than 700 families are on a waiting list for housing there and at four other projects in West Palm Beach.

Mayor Lois Frankel said improving Dunbar Village and the surrounding neighborhood was “high on my radar screen,” ideally by replacing the complex with mixed-income housing. But Ms. Frankel said the city had already tried to address problems there, adding, “It would not be accurate to say that these people live in an enclave of neglect.”

The housing authority is financed by the federal government, and has repeatedly failed to win a federal grant that would have allowed the demolition of Dunbar Village and relocation of its 300 residents. Four years ago, Congress eliminated $165,000 a year that paid for extra policing at the city’s housing projects as a part of a national cutback in housing money.

“It didn’t affect the people’s lives on Palm Beach,” Ms. Robinson said, referring to the wealthy island across the Intracoastal Waterway from West Palm Beach, “but it sure affected the people who live in Dunbar Village.”

The rape victim, a Haitian immigrant, lived quietly, Ms. Greenwood and other neighbors said, rarely letting her son venture outside their apartment in a dull yellow building with wooden porches and clotheslines in the backyard.

She has left Dunbar Village, neighbors said, but this month she gave an interview to WPTV, a local television station. She described how that night, someone knocked at her door and said her tires were flat. When she returned from checking on the car — borrowed from a friend because hers had recently been stolen — a throng of men, their faces covered, followed her inside.

They had two guns, she said. They stayed three hours.

“Nobody came for us,” the woman, 35, said in the interview with WPTV. “Nobody even called the police for us.”

She had been victimized before at Dunbar Village, she said; her apartment had been robbed, her car stolen, her son shoved off his bicycle.

Maybe she was singled out because she is Haitian, the woman said, adding, “I don’t know the reason.”

Ted White, a spokesman for the West Palm Beach Police Department, said detectives were analyzing evidence and interviewing people who might lead them to more suspects.

Nine people have been murdered in West Palm Beach so far this year, Mr. White said, down from 13 by this time last year. Palm Beach County is particularly worried about youth violence; the county sheriff’s office created an antigang task force in January, and West Palm Beach is planning to expand the boundaries for its curfew law, which now bars people under 18 from the downtown area after 11 p.m. on weekends and 10 p.m. on weeknights.

The curfew will not help Dunbar Village, less than two miles north of downtown, where residents described packs of teenagers loitering outside well past midnight in the months before the attack. One neighbor of the victim, who would not give her name but said she had waited two years for housing in Dunbar Village, said teenagers used to lurk under a tree with droopy branches just behind the victim’s apartment.

Those branches are gone now — cut off by maintenance workers last weekend so the new security camera will have a better view. The nights have been quiet at Dunbar Village, the neighbor said, and on a recent searing afternoon, the only sign of life outside was children at play.

“That’s going to be scarred in my mind forever,” the neighbor said, her voice rising, before driving off with her daughter. “I could have never, ever believed that would happen six doors down from me.”

Outside another unit, Calvin Jones, 71, said he would leave with his 13-year-old granddaughter this weekend. They came to Dunbar Village from Gulfport, Miss., after Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Jones said, and now they were going back — though with no home.

“If you knew that happened,” he asked, “would you stay here?”

    After a Brutal Attack, Many Hope for Change but Few Expect It, NYT, 19.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/us/19palm.html

Preteen Sisters Arrested for Kidnapping

July 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:45 a.m. ET
The New York Times

ENID, Okla. (AP) -- Detectives arrested a 12-year-old girl and her 10-year-old sister for allegedly abducting their neighbor's 1-year-old son and demanding $200,000 for his return.

Brandon Wells was safe back at home Thursday night, hours after intruders broke into his family's residence and took him while his mother, Sheila Wells, slept, police said.

''I've been doing this 18 1/2 years, and this is the first time I know of when a 10- and a 12-year-old kidnapped a 1-year-old,'' said police Capt. Dean Grassino. ''It definitely ranks up there with the unusual crimes.''

The siblings, who were not identified because of their ages, are accused of sneaking into Wells' home at about 5:30 a.m., taking Brandon and leaving a ransom note.

''If you want to see your son again then you won't call police and report him missing and you will leave $200,000 on the sofa tonight and we will return your son back safe,'' the note read, according to police.

The note was signed, ''the kidnappers.''

The plan began to unravel when the girls' mother saw them with the child, police said. They told their mother they had found the boy on the corner, police said.

As girls' mother tried to find Sheila Wells' telephone number, the 12-year-old returned to Wells' residence and told her it was the younger sister who was responsible for the abduction, Grassino said.

Wells immediately retrieved her child from the girls' home and police were called, Grassino said.

Wells said she knew the girls and had banned the 10-year-old girl from her home a few weeks ago, but did not say why.

The girls appeared in Garfield County District Court on Thursday afternoon and were taken to Community Intervention Center for juveniles. They have not been formally charged.

''I know they're so young, but they need to learn from their mistakes,'' Wells said.

    Preteen Sisters Arrested for Kidnapping, NYT, 6.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Young-Kidnappers.html

AP: Benoit Strangled Wife, Smothered Son

June 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:10 p.m. ET
The New York Times

ATLANTA (AP) -- Pro wrestler Chris Benoit strangled his wife and smothered his son before hanging himself in his weight room, a law enforcement official close to the investigation told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Authorities also said they are investigating whether steroids may have been a factor in the deaths of Benoit, his wife and their 7-year-old son. Steroid abuse has been linked to depression, paranoia, and aggressive behavior or angry outbursts known as ''roid rage.''

''We don't know yet. That's one of the things we'll be looking at,'' said Fayette County District Attorney Scott Ballard. He said test results may not be back for weeks.

Autopsies were scheduled Tuesday by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Authorities were investigating the deaths at a secluded Fayette County home as a murder-suicide and were not seeking any suspects. The official who described the manner of death spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information was to be released at a news conference later Tuesday.

Investigators believe Benoit (pronounced ben-WAH) killed his wife, 43-year-old Nancy, and son Daniel during the weekend and then himself Monday. The bodies were found Monday afternoon in three separate rooms of the house, off a gravel road about two miles from the Whitewater Country Club.

Fayette County Coroner C.J. Mowell did not return calls seeking comment. The answering service for his funeral home said he was out of town.

Asked about the condition of the interior of the house, sheriff's Sgt. Keith Whiteside said investigators found ''nothing really out of the ordinary.'' He said Benoit was found in the home's weight room, his wife in an office and the son in an upstairs bedroom.

This is a breaking news update. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

ATLANTA (AP) -- Pro wrestler Chris Benoit strangled his wife and smothered his son before hanging himself in his weight room, a law enforcement official close to the investigation told The Associated Press Tuesday.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Authorities also said they are investigating whether steroids may have been a factor in the deaths of Benoit, his wife and their 7-year-old son who were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide.

Fayette County District Attorney Scott Ballard said test results may not be back for weeks or even months.

Autopsies were scheduled Tuesday by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in DeKalb County.

    AP: Benoit Strangled Wife, Smothered Son, NYT, 26.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Wrestler-Dead.html

Wrestler Benoit, Wife and Son Found Dead

June 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:16 a.m. ET
The New York Times

FAYETTEVILLE, Ga. (AP) -- Details of the deaths of pro wrestler Chris Benoit, his wife and their 7-year-old son may seem ''a little bizarre'' when released to the public, a prosecutor said.

Authorities were investigating the deaths at a secluded Fayette County home as a murder-suicide and were not seeking any suspects outside the home.

Fayette County District Attorney Scott Ballard told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ''The details, when they come out, are going to prove a little bizarre.''

Those details may emerge after the completion of autopsies scheduled for Tuesday.

Investigators believe Benoit killed his wife and son over the weekend and then himself sometime Monday. The bodies were found Monday afternoon in three different rooms of the house on Green Meadow Lane, in a subdivision off a gravel road about two miles from Whitewater Country Club.

The autopsies were scheduled to be done at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab in DeKalb County.

World Wrestling Entertainment said on its Web site that it asked authorities to check on Benoit and his family after being alerted by friends who received ''several curious text messages sent by Benoit early Sunday morning.''

Pope said the three were found about 2:30 p.m., but he would release no other details about the deaths.

Stamford, Conn.-based WWE also said on its Web site it had further information on the deaths of Benoit, 40; his wife, Nancy, 43; and son, Daniel, but had been asked by authorities not to release it.

Benoit, a native of Canada, was born in Montreal. He was a former world heavyweight champion, Intercontinental champion and held several tag-team titles over his career. He was known by several names including ''The Canadian Crippler.''

''WWE extends its sincerest thoughts and prayers to the Benoit family's relatives and loved ones in this time of tragedy,'' the federation said in a statement on its Web site.

Benoit was scheduled to perform at the ''Vengeance'' pay-per-view event Sunday night in Houston, but was replaced at the last minute because of what announcer Jim Ross called ''personal reasons.''

Benoit maintained a home in metro Atlanta from the time he wrestled for the defunct World Championship Wrestling.

The WWE canceled its live ''Monday Night RAW'' card in Corpus Christi, Texas, and USA Network aired a three-hour tribute to Benoit in place of the scheduled wrestling telecast.

Benoit's wife managed several wrestlers and went by the stage name, ''Woman,'' The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

They met when her then-husband drew up a script that had them involved in a relationship as part of an ongoing story line on World Championship Wrestling, the newspaper said.

Benoit has two other children from a prior relationship.

    Wrestler Benoit, Wife and Son Found Dead, NYT, 26.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Wrestler-Dead.html

Prisoner Kills Officer at Utah Hospital

June 25, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:09 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A prison inmate getting medical treatment at the University of Utah stole a gun from a corrections officer Monday and fatally shot him, authorities said.

The inmate fled the scene and drove to a Arby's restaurant, where he was captured by police.

The prisoner was inside an examination room at the campus orthopedic center, university Police Chief Scott Folsom said.

''There was some sort of altercation. The inmate got hold of the weapon and shot the officer,'' he said.

A spokesman for the Utah Department of Corrections said officers routinely transport prisoners to the university for medical appointments.

''Nobody here can remember one of our officers every being killed during a transfer,'' spokesman Jack Ford said.

    Prisoner Kills Officer at Utah Hospital, NYT, 25.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Medical-Center-Shooting.html

Sheriff: Ohio Woman Killed in Her Home

June 25, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:42 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CANTON, Ohio (AP) -- A police officer is accused of killing his pregnant girlfriend in her home, where furniture was found overturned and bleach spilled on the floor, a day after her mother last heard from her, a sheriff's complaint said.

Jessie Davis' body was found Saturday in Cuyahoga Valley National Park, still carrying her dead, nearly full-term fetus, a girl she planned to name Chloe.

Davis' boyfriend, Bobby Cutts Jr., the father of her 2-year-old son, was charged with two counts of murder and due in court Monday. Davis' relatives have said they believed Cutts also was the father of her fetus.

A sheriff department sergeant's affidavit filed Sunday describes the allegations against him. It says he is accused of killing Davis and the fetus at the Davis' home in nearby Lake Township on June 14. The document does not say how they were killed.

Davis' mother last spoke to her by phone a day before.

Davis, 26, of Lake Township near Canton, was reported missing after her mother found her grandson home alone, with bedroom furniture toppled and bleach spilled on the floor. The boy, Blake, gave investigators some of their first clues, saying: ''Mommy was crying. Mommy broke the table. Mommy's in rug.''

Messages left Monday for Davis' family and Cutts' attorney were not returned.

One of Cutts' former high school classmates, Myisha Ferrell, was jailed for allegedly hindering the investigation and also due in court Monday. She is accused of giving false statements to investigators, according to an inmate biography form.

Ferrell, 29, was arrested and jailed Sunday, but authorities declined to release other information, including whether she had a lawyer.

Also Monday, Davis' father, Ned Davis, thanked the thousands of volunteers who helped search for his daughter and said he was overwhelmed with grief.

''It's been, at best, it's been very, very difficult,'' Ned Davis said on NBC's ''Today'' show. ''I don't believe I can really quantify what our family's feeling.''

''The loss of Jessie has been overwhelming. There are no words,'' he said.

Sheriff's deputies and FBI agents with a search warrant broke down the door of Ferrell's apartment Saturday night, agent Scott Wilson said. She was not home during the search.

Justin Lindstrom, 27, an upstairs neighbor of Ferrell's, said officers spent two hours searching the woman's apartment Saturday night before leaving with several full, brown paper bags and bottles of bleach from the basement. Authorities would not describe what the deputies seized.

Ferrell worked at a Denny's restaurant until quitting her job Friday, Lindstrom said. A manager at Denny's confirmed that Ferrell had worked there as a dishwasher.

Lindstrom said Ferrell lived in the apartment downstairs with her 11-year-old daughter. He said she had parties every night.

Cutts also has a 9-year-old daughter with another woman, Nikki Giavasis, who now lives in Los Angeles. The two lived together for awhile, but when she began seeing another man in 1998, Cutts was accused of breaking into her home while she was inside with former NBA player Shawn Kemp of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Cutts pleaded no contest to a disorderly conduct charge and was sentenced to three years' probation. Giavasis told police she feared for her safety. The pair are involved in a custody dispute.

Over the weekend, people placed flowers and red and yellow ribbons just below a sign identifying Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Just down the road from where the expectant mother's body was found, someone posted a sign saying, ''God bless you Jessie and Chloe, forever in our hearts.''

Davis' body was found in an area with a dirt road, a small dirt parking area and a couple of benches overlooking a grassy field.

''Somebody found her and for that, I'm very appreciative,'' her father said.

    Sheriff: Ohio Woman Killed in Her Home, NYT, 25.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Pregnant-Woman-Dead.html

Day of Grief in New Jersey After Violence Claims 3 Lives

June 23, 2007
The New York Times
By RICHARD G. JONES

MONTCLAIR, N.J., June 22 — It was hardly a new path that Thomas Reilly traced from his native Ireland to northern New Jersey, where after two decades of hope and hard work his immigrant aspirations had seemingly been fulfilled. He was a successful business owner. He had married. He had two adorable daughters.

But in recent months, things began slowly peeling apart. He was working two handyman jobs to support his family. He separated from his wife, Teresa, and, under the terms of a court order, was allowed to see his children three times a week.

“He was just trying to do better and move up the ladder,” said Assemblyman Thomas P. Giblin, a friend of Mr. Reilly. “I know he had friends who were telling him to stay strong.”

But according to the authorities, Mr. Reilly hit bottom Thursday night when, the police said, he drowned his two daughters, Megan, 6, and Kelly, 5, in the bathtub of his apartment here before hanging himself.

“It’s a nightmare of every kind,” said Deputy Chief Roger S. Terry of the Montclair Police Department.

The apparent double-murder and suicide has jolted this upper middle-class suburb about 12 miles west of Manhattan, where before Thursday night’s carnage there had been one homicide in the past two years.

“You know it can happen anywhere,” said one resident, Kerry Kosick, 52, “but you never think it’s going to happen in Montclair.”

And, friends of the Reillys said, it appeared just as unlikely that a family that seemed so stable could splinter so violently.

But in a news conference on Thursday, the authorities said the Reillys’ marriage had grown strained and taken a bleak turn in recent months. Mr. Reilly, who was 46 and the former owner of the Irish Cottage pub in West Orange, was arrested in March and charged with simple assault in an attack on his wife.

Mrs. Reilly had successfully sought a restraining order against her husband, and he moved from the brick ranch that they shared in Verona to a first-floor apartment in a three-story Victorian on Claremont Avenue here.

The restraining order spelled out the times Mr. Reilly could visit his children: Tuesdays, Thursdays and one weekend day. The authorities said that the schedule caused an argument between the couple Thursday afternoon: Mrs. Reilly had wanted to pick up the children earlier than scheduled, and Mr. Reilly wanted to keep them longer than agreed.

That evening, Mrs. Reilly called the police after going to Mr. Reilly’s apartment to retrieve the children and not getting an answer at the door or a response on the telephone.

“When officers arrived, they observed a light on in the first-floor bathroom,” Chief Terry said.

Officers rang tenants’ doorbells about 7:20 p.m. and a neighbor, on the second floor, answered. When officers entered Mr. Reilly’s apartment on the first floor, they moved from room to room and found them empty.

But in the bathroom, they found Megan and Kelly, clad in T-shirts and shorts, in a full tub.

“The crime scene is very horrific,” Chief Terry said. “One of the girls still had her sandals on.”

Officers then began to search for Mr. Reilly, eventually finding his body hanging from an electrical cord that had been looped around one of the rafters on the unoccupied third floor of the building.

Then they had to inform Mrs. Reilly, who was sitting in a car parked by the curb while the police conducted their search.

Robert Denco, 55, who lives in an apartment building next door to the Victorian where Mr. Reilly lived, had come outside when the police arrived and watched as an officer — Chief Terry said the officer was herself a mother of young children — broke the news.

Almost immediately, Mr. Denco said, Mrs. Reilly began weeping and let loose a loud, plaintive wail that filled the stretch of Claremont Avenue. She was so distraught that the authorities took her to Mountainside Hospital for sedation; she was released by Friday afternoon.

“That scream,” Mr. Denco said, “will live in my memory.”

There was another unforgettable image, Mr. Denco said. He described how those standing in the street watching the police also could see Mr. Reilly’s body — backlit by police flashlights — through a third-floor window.

“You could see his arms dangling,” Mr. Denco said.

By Friday morning, a lone officer stood patrol outside the home making sure that the curious kept their distance. A roll of unused police tape sat on the front steps. Traffic slowed along Claremont Avenue as drivers pointed and stared.

About a mile away, over on Witherspoon Road in Verona, neighbors recalled the Reillys as a pleasant family. Jasper Powell, who lives across the street from the family, talked about how the girls waved at everyone who passed by.

Another neighbor, Beth Shabazian, remembered how Mr. Reilly had built the cedar swing set for the girls that sat in the backyard.

Another woman, who said she had been Megan’s kindergarten teacher at Our Lady of the Lake School in Verona but spoke on the condition that she not be named, said that Mr. Reilly had recently attended the school’s year-end recital.

“I don’t know what could have hardened his heart to make him do that to those two little girls,” she said.

Back on Claremont Avenue, one passer-by, Jacqueline D’Arcio, stopped her black Infiniti and regarded the tan Victorian. She talked about marriages gone sour and closed doors and two terrified little girls in a bathroom.

“It affects you,” Ms. D’Arcio said of the crime. “It affects you if you have kids, it affects you if you’re in the neighborhood, it affects you if you’re a human being.”

    Day of Grief in New Jersey After Violence Claims 3 Lives, NYT, 23.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/23/nyregion/23slain.html

N.J. Man Kills 2 Daughters and Himself

June 22, 2007
The New York Times
By JENNIFER 8. LEE and CHARLES V. BAGLI

A man apparently drowned his two young daughters in a bathtub and then hanged himself from the rafters of the attic in his home in Montclair, N.J., the Montclair police said yesterday.

The man, identified as Thomas Reilly, 46, had separated from his wife, Teresa, several months ago and was renting a house in Montclair, said Thomas P. Giblin, a friend of the family who is also a state assemblyman. He identified the girls as Megan, 6, and Kelly, 5.

The couple had bought a house in neighboring Verona before they separated and Mr. Reilly moved to Montclair.

Deputy Police Chief Roger Terry said his department got a phone call from the Verona police around 7 p.m. saying that the girls’ mother, who lived in Verona, had become concerned because she had not been able to reach Mr. Reilly at home after dropping off the girls with him earlier in the day.

When officers arrived at the house on Claremont Avenue, they discovered the two girls in a bathroom on the first floor and soon found Mr. Reilly in the attic.

Mr. Giblin said that Mr. Reilly, a building engineer, was originally from County Cavan in Ireland. He worked two jobs, including a night shift. One of his jobs was at 10 Exchange Place in Jersey City and the other was nearby at Onyx Equities.

“He was very conscientious,” Mr. Giblin said. “It’s unfortunate, to say the least. He seemed to really love his kids.”

Mr. Reilly had also previously worked at St. Barnabas Hospital and had owned a bar, friends said.

The girls’ mother arrived at the house last night to pick up her children and found the police there. She was not allowed inside, so she paced back and forth talking on her cell phone.

At one point, a police officer came out of the house, pulled her aside and sat her down to talk to her, said Robert Denko, a neighbor who watched the police arrive.

“That’s when I heard her scream,” he said. “It was a Hollywood scream.”

She was taken to Mountainside Hospital in Montclair in an ambulance, Chief Terry said.

Mr. Denko said last night that Mr. Reilly’s hanging body was visible through the window as the police shined a flashlight on it. He was wearing a blue soccer jersey with short sleeves.

    N.J. Man Kills 2 Daughters and Himself, NYT, 22.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/nyregion/22drown.html?hp

Crowd Kills Man After Car Hits Child

June 21, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:44 a.m. ET
The New York Times

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- Police urged witnesses to come forward and help them find the mob that beat a man to death after the car he was riding in apparently struck and injured a child.

Investigators were struggling to piece together what happened Tuesday when David Rivas Morales died defending the driver from members of a crowd. There could have been anywhere from two to 20 attackers, Austin Police Commander Harold Piatt said.

The car in which Morales, 40, was a passenger had entered an apartment complex's parking lot when it struck a 2-year-old boy, Piatt said. The boy was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

The driver got out of the car to check on the child and was confronted by several people, Piatt said. When they attacked the driver, Morales got out of the car to protect the driver and was attacked as well. Police said no guns or knives were used.

The driver got away and is cooperating with investigators. Police identified the child as Michael Hosea Jr.

There were conflicting accounts of how many people were in the area. Police originally estimated 2,000 to 3,000 and a woman who lives at the complex said hundreds who had been at a Juneteenth festival filled the parking lot and street.

But late Wednesday police spokeswoman Toni Chovanetz said only 20 people were in the area where the assault occurred.

Chovanetz also said there was no connection to the nearby city-sponsored festival for Juneteenth, which commemorates Texas slaves getting the word that they had been freed.

Margaret Morales said a young boy came to her door to tell her that her brother was lying on the ground outside. She found David Morales, sprawled on the pavement 100 feet from her townhouse, battered and choking on blood.

She said her mother came running after hearing her screams, but police wouldn't let either of them get close to him.

Police arrived one minute after receiving a 911 call, by which time the beating had stopped, Chovanetz said. But the Morales family complained that medical help was slow in coming.

Chovanetz said witnesses told police that three or four men attacked Morales, knocking him to the ground. A man got out of another vehicle and hit Morales again, Chovanetz said.

David Morales arrived at the hospital about 35 minutes after the 911 call was received, said Warren Hassinger, Austin-Travis County Emergency Services spokesman. Emergency officials said police ordered them to wait until the area was secure.

Several hundred people had filled the parking lot and street as the daylong festival at a nearby park ended and spilled over into the surrounding neighborhoods, said Katherine White, a Morales family friend who lives in a townhouse next door to where the beating took place.

Margaret Morales said her brother, who was staying with her, was a painter on his way home from work. The driver, whom she knew only as Victor, picked him up and dropped him off everyday, she said.

The Morales family remembered David as a caring brother who loved the San Antonio Spurs and was thrilled when they won the NBA title last week. Earl White, Katherine's brother, said David Morales enjoyed sitting on the porch, watching the neighborhood children play in the parking lot.

''I just want the people caught and brought to justice,'' another sister, Elizabeth Morales, said. ''I want them to feel the same pain that they caused my brother.''

    Crowd Kills Man After Car Hits Child, NYT, 21.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Crash-Assault.html

Violence at Milwaukee Juneteenth Day

June 21, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:08 a.m. ET
The New York Times

MILWAUKEE (AP) -- Police in riot gear dispersed the crowd at the city's Juneteenth Day celebration after a man was pulled from a car and beaten and an officer was injured trying to break up a fight.

''During the day the crowd was very well behaved and everything was fine throughout the afternoon. Unfortunately at closing time everything came unhinged and there were some problems,'' Police Department spokeswoman Anne E. Schwartz said of the incidents Tuesday evening.

A large group leaving the area after the festival commemorating the end of slavery winded down attacked at least two cars, and one of the drivers was pulled from his vehicle and beaten, she said.

The man suffered facial cuts and a broken tooth, police said.

Schwartz said a big fight erupted in the area about the same time between groups of girls and then grew larger as more people got involved.

Police in riot gear attempted to disperse the crowd, Schwartz said.

About a block away, a police sergeant trying to break up a fight between groups of girls was injured when a 17-year-old girl punched his riot helmet hard enough to shatter the shield.

The officer had cuts to his face that required three stitches and had scratches to his neck, authorities said.

The girl was in police custody, facing possible charges of battery to an officer, authorities said.

The organizer of the Juneteenth celebration said the violence was unrelated to the day's activities.

''You just had a group of individuals that decided that they wanted to do something entirely different. It's just sad that you have a few fools that got out of hand,'' said McArthur Weddle, Juneteenth Day president. He has no plans to change the event next year.

Juneteenth Day events are held in communities around the country to commemorate the day in 1865 when Union soldiers landed at Galveston, Texas, to announce the Civil War was over and that slaves were free.

    Violence at Milwaukee Juneteenth Day, NYT, 21.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Juneteenth-Violence.html

4 Charged With Homicide, Abuse in Wis.

June 21, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:58 a.m. ET
The New York Times

PORTAGE, Wis. (AP) -- Police initially went to a rental property in this sleepy Wisconsin town in search of a 2-year-old girl kidnapped from her Florida foster home by her mother last fall.

What they found was a house of horrors, detectives say: A roving band of suspected identity thieves who had killed one of their own, buried her in the backyard and locked her bloody and beaten her 11-year-old son in an upstairs closet.

''It's crazy. Weird,'' said next-door neighbor Angie Turley, who moved from Milwaukee to Portage to get away from crime. ''It can happen anywhere.''

Charged Wednesday with being a party to first-degree intentional homicide, hiding a corpse and child abuse are Candace Clark, 23; Clark's boyfriend, Michael Sisk, 25; Michaela Clerc, 20; and Felicia Mae Garlin, 15.

The teen is the dead woman's daughter and the sister of the boy in the closet.

Police said the group arrived in February in Portage, a town of 8,000 about 40 miles north of Madison that touts itself as ''Where the North Begins.''

The group was joined by Garlin's mother, Tammie Garlin; her 11-year-old brother; and three other children, including the kidnapped girl.

Detectives said the group was running from the law in several states. Clark was wanted in Florida in her 2-year-old daughter's abduction, as well as in Kentucky on felony warrants for financial fraud, Columbia County District Attorney Jane Kohlwey said.

Sisk was wanted in Colorado for not returning to jail after he was let out on work release, Kohlwey said. In the past year, the group had lived in Florida, Maine, Tennessee, Kentucky and Colorado, and came to Wisconsin to see snow, a criminal complaint said.

The group was making a living through financial fraud using aliases, prosecutors said. Kohlwey said investigators found a stash of money orders in the house, each good for $500, made out to the fake names.

They tortured the 11-year-old -- identified in the complaint only by his initials -- by whipping him, withholding food, scalding him with hot water and pulling his genitals with pliers, the complaint said. The group sometimes choked him until he nearly passed out and forced him to sleep naked in his sister's closet, prosecutors said.

His mother and sister helped torture him, prosecutors said.

At some point, the group turned on Tammie Garlin, burning her and forcing her into the closet with the boy, he told authorities. She was the only one who helped him, by putting cream on his wounds, he said.

The complaint said Tammie Garlin and Clerc had been lovers but had separated, and that Clerc was upset because she thought Tammie Garlin had cheated on her. Detectives, however, said they weren't sure why the others turned against Tammie Garlin.

Police said Clark told them Tammie Garlin died June 4. According to the complaint, Felicia Garlin and Clerc had kicked her, then later that day carried her into the bathroom, where Clerc dropped her head on the floor.

Sisk went into the bathroom and shut the door. He emerged a few minutes later, announcing Tammie Garlin was dead. Clerc laughed, the complaint said.

They buried her in the backyard. The landlord said Sisk approached him a few weeks ago asking if he could plant a garden in the spot.

He never got around to it. Florida detectives were closing in.

Portage officers, alerted by sheriff's deputies in Lake County, Fla., went to the house June 14. They found the missing toddler, along with Clark's two other children, and caught her trying to give them a false name, the complaint said.

Police found the 11-year-old sitting on the closet floor with his knees pulled to his chest, his body a mess of cuts, burns and scars. His feet were burned so badly he couldn't walk.

The complaint said the boy told a doctor, ''I don't want to hurt no more.''

Police captured Sisk at a Milwaukee bus terminal with a ticket to Kentucky the next day. Police caught him because his bus had been delayed, police Lt. Mark Hahn said.

A judge on Wednesday denied bail for Sisk and Clark, identified by prosecutors as the group's leaders. He set bail at $500,000 for Felicia Garlin and $350,000 for Clerc.

Defense attorneys said the allegations in the complaint are unproven and they don't have the money to flee. But Judge Alan White said all four posed a flight risk.

Hahn said investigators were trying to piece together the group's activities and whereabouts across the country.

''We could have victims from all over in different parts of the country,'' he said. ''Fortunately, it ended here.''

    4 Charged With Homicide, Abuse in Wis., NYT, 21.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Body-Found.html

Deadly Bat Attack Caught on Tape

June 14, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:26 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Police were searching for a man caught on videotape attacking a mentally disabled man with an aluminum baseball bat, causing injuries that eventually killed the man.

The suspect is seen on a surveillance tape approaching James McKinney, 41, from behind, swinging the bat full force and striking McKinney in the head. McKinney was knocked to the ground, his head bleeding from the blow.

At one point McKinney rises up as an unidentified passer-by calls 911.

McKinney suffered massive head injuries from the attack May 29 in a residential area, police said. He died June 3.

Authorities said it appears the suspect may have been targeting people in the area.

''It's terribly disturbing that this individual appeared to be hanging out in this particular area for several minutes, probably up to five minutes, seemed to be looking for a victim,'' said Officer Karen Smith of the Los Angeles Police Department.

No motive for the attack has been determined.

    Deadly Bat Attack Caught on Tape, NYT, 14.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Baseball-Bat-Attack.html

MySpace Page May Have Been Suspect's

June 8, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:47 a.m. ET
The New York Times

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) -- He calls himself ''Jack'' and considers himself a ''Sweet Troubled Soul'' on his MySpace page. His interests include ''eating small children and harming small animals.'' The page appears to belong to Edwin R. Hall, the man accused of kidnapping 18-year-old Kelsey Smith and killing her.

If true, it lends disturbing significance to the bizarre claims on the Web site in light of the charges against him.

Hall was charged Thursday with premeditated first-degree murder in Smith's death and aggravated kidnapping for her abduction Saturday from a Target store parking lot. His bond was set at $5 million.

Only the name ''Jack,'' by which Hall is known to neighbors, is used on the MySpace page, and the picture posted strongly resembles the 26-year-old. The person on the MySpace page also uses the same age and location as Hall, and a person with the same name as his wife, Aletha, has a page linked to ''Jack's.''

In a photo on the page, the man is posing with a young boy. Neighbors said Hall and his wife have a 4-year-old son.

It was Hall's neighbors who told police he resembled the man they were looking for.

Cameron Migues, 30, said he and his wife laughed when they noticed a similarity between Hall and the man pictured in a surveillance video that police were using to solicit leads in the abduction. But then a video of the truck was released, and ''we put two and two together,'' said Migues, who called a police hot line Wednesday morning.

Hall was being held at the Johnson County jail and appeared in court via a video feed looking tired and downcast. He spoke briefly, waiving reading of the charges until he could hire his own attorney. His next appearance was scheduled for June 14.

If convicted, he faces a minimum sentence of 25 years to life in prison for the murder charge and more than 12 years for aggravated kidnapping, Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline said.

Kline said it was unclear whether the case would be tried in state or federal court but that the death penalty would be possible either way.

It is a federal offense to cross state lines while committing a kidnapping resulting in a death. Authorities have not said how or where Smith was killed.

''If we believe the crime is severe enough, and we do in this case, we will go to the jurisdiction that provides the most severe penalty,'' Kline said. ''The discussions continue almost around the clock.''

Detectives talked to Hall shortly after Smith's body was found Wednesday in a wooded area in Missouri.

Authorities have declined to offer a motive but say there is no evidence that Smith and Hall knew each other.

Neighbor Harold Barry, 50, said he was surprised when he heard Hall had been arrested. Hall recently helped him repair his pickup truck, he said.

''If I can go see him, I will see if I can help him out,'' said Barry, who added that Hall seemed especially close to his son.

''He loved his son his so much,'' Barry said. ''He had his small kid in that truck every time I saw him.''

Smith had been missing since Saturday night, when she went to a Target store in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park to buy a gift for her boyfriend.

Surveillance video showed her being forced into her car around 7:10 p.m., and the car drove off. It was found in a nearby mall parking lot about two hours later.

Associated Press writer Caryn Grant contributed to this report.

    MySpace Page May Have Been Suspect's, NYT, 8.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Missing-Teen.html

Connecticut Girl Missing Nearly a Year Is Found in a Closet

June 7, 2007
The New York Times
By LISA W. FODERARO and STACEY STOWE

When the police showed up with search warrants yesterday morning at a scruffy house on a busy street corner in West Hartford, Conn., they assumed they were looking for evidence in the possible killing of a 15-year-old girl, missing for almost a year.

Shortly after she disappeared on June 16, the police thought that the girl, whom they called a habitual runaway, had taken off from her home in nearby Bloomfield yet again. But as the investigation unfolded, they found “bits and pieces of information that suggested foul play,” said Capt. Jeffrey Blatter of the Bloomfield Police Department, and detectives kept circling back to a dog trainer who was a business acquaintance of the girl’s stepfather.

Yesterday morning, after entering the house on Newington Road, where the dog trainer, Adam Gault, 41, lived with a woman identified as Ann Murphy, 40, the police pushed aside a large bookcase and discovered a locked door that led to a narrow closet under a staircase. Inside was the girl, crouched and pale but not visibly injured.

“It was so unexpected,” Captain Blatter said at a news conference. “The investigators were shocked and very relieved. We never gave up hope, but when we went to do today’s search it was unfortunately under a belief that there may be a victim of homicide.”

But the details of the case seemed to raise as many questions as they answered in terms of the nature of the girl’s relationship with Mr. Gault.

He was charged with second-degree unlawful restraint, second-degree reckless endangerment, second-degree custodial interference, interfering with an officer, risk of injury to a minor and second-degree forgery, and was held in $500,000 bond.

Ms. Murphy was charged with conspiracy to commit second-degree reckless endangerment, conspiracy to commit second-degree custodial interference and risk of injury to a minor. She was held in $100,000 bond.

A second woman who lived in the house, Kimberly Cray, 26, was charged with the same crimes that Ms. Murphy is accused of, and was being held in $500,000 bond, said Lt. Dan Coppinger of the West Hartford Police Department.

All three suspects were scheduled to appear in Superior Court in Hartford today.

Captain Blatter described the teenager as a “good student,” but a “child from some troubled circumstances.” He said that she had not been abducted and in fact had “found what she believed to be a friend” in Mr. Gault.

For the past year, she has had no contact with her parents, and the police said there was no evidence that she had been out in public in all that time. Yet investigators said they did not believe that she was holed up in the closet for long; rather, they said, the couple may have hidden the girl there moments before the police moved in to search for DNA and other evidence that they suspected would lead them to her. They said a teenage boy, possibly the son of Mr. Gault or Ms. Murphy, also lived in the house.

It was unclear whether the teenage girl, who was examined by doctors, had been held against her will.

“We just don’t know yet,” Captain Blatter said. “Even if she were to say that she was comfortable in that environment, many of the things we found during the initial search would suggest that any 14-year-old would not have believed that to be a safe, comfortable environment.”

Later, Captain Blatter described the two-story aluminum-sided house as “filthy,” with no sheets on the beds. Investigators also found the “possibility of sex toys,” he said. For now, however, none of the charges relate to sex crimes.

Also at the news conference, Capt. Lori Coppinger of the West Hartford police said the cases of other missing girls were being revisited to determine whether Mr. Gault may have been involved. “We don’t anticipate any girls now missing, but we are familiar with this individual,” Captain Coppinger said. “We’ve had juveniles associated with this individual.”

Early yesterday evening, officers were still moving through the house, in the blue-collar Elmwood section of West Hartford. A plastic play set shared the weedy yard with a dog run.

The police did not reveal the girl’s identity, but her name and photograph were immediately posted on news Web sites. Captain Blatter said that she was in protective custody. Asked whether she had been harmed by the adults, Captain Blatter said it was safe to assume that a teenager “under the influence of a 40-year-old has been harmed in some way.”

It was unclear what kind of life the girl had with her family or why she had run away in the past; Captain Blatter said they were “concerned” and “have been cooperating with us.” He did not elaborate on Mr. Gault’s business relationship with them, but the girl’s mother and stepfather own a dog kennel in Bloomfield.

Dan Milner, a sophomore at Bloomfield High School and a friend of the girl’s older brother, said the two of them used to search for the girl when she disappeared. “She was young and curious,” he said outside the school. “It was always like she’d run away and come back home.”

Another student, Veronica Foster, who said she and the girl had been close in middle school, said, “We all thought something happened to her.”

    Connecticut Girl Missing Nearly a Year Is Found in a Closet, NYT, 7.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/nyregion/07missing.html

Texas Mom Kills 3 Children, Herself

May 30, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:59 a.m. ET
The New York Times

HUDSON OAKS, Texas (AP) -- Alejandra Estrada broke into her sister's trailer because she wanted to know why she hadn't shown up at work.

Inside, she found Gilberta Estrada and Gilberta's four young daughters hanging in a closet.

Gilberta Estrada, 25, and three of the girls were dead. The youngest, 8-month-old Evelyn Frayre, was alive but in dire need of medical care.

Alejandra Estrada pulled the infant from the noose and called 911. The child was listed in good condition at a Fort Worth hospital, Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler said.

Fowler said the hangings appeared to be murder-suicide because the doors were locked from the inside and a relative said Gilberta Estrada had been depressed. He said they had last been seen alive Monday afternoon outside the trailer and things had appeared normal.

''My mind cannot get around how all this can happen,'' Fowler said. ''It's almost unthinkable.''

Filly Echeverria, who said she was the children's godmother, identified the dead children as Maria Teresa Estrada, Janet Frayre and Magaly Frayre. Authorities said they believed their ages were 5, 3 and 2.

Fowler said more information, such as how long they had been dead and whether the children were drugged or suffocated before they were hanged, would be released after autopsies Wednesday.

After hanging her daughters with pieces of clothing tied around a wooden board that served as a clothes rod, Estrada apparently looped the noose around her neck, leaned into it and buckled her knees to kill herself, Fowler said.

He said Gilberta Estrada had won a temporary restraining order in August against Gregorio Frayre Rodriguez, believed to be the father of Evelyn and some of the other youngsters, after a domestic violence incident involving Estrada.

Fowler said the couple had stopped living together in February. Tuesday was the first emergency police call to the trailer, and Fowler said there was no evidence that Frayre abused the girls.

A telephone listing for Frayre, 38, could not immediately be located.

Child Protective Services will decide who will take custody of the baby, Fowler said.

Texas has had several children killed by their mothers in recent years.

Less than five years ago, another Hudson Oaks family was torn apart when Dee Etta Perez, 39, shot her three children, ages 4, 9 and 10, before killing herself.

Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the family's Houston bathtub in 2001. In 2003, Deanna Laney beat her two young sons to death with stones in East Texas, and Lisa Ann Diaz drowned her daughters in a Plano bathtub. Dena Schlosser fatally severed her 10-month-old daughter's arms with a kitchen knife in 2004.

All four of those women were found innocent by reason of insanity. Yates initially was convicted of capital murder, but that verdict was overturned on appeal.

Associated Press writer Jamie Stengle in Dallas contributed to this report.

    Texas Mom Kills 3 Children, Herself, NYT, 30.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Children-Killed.html

4 Dead in Home, Baby Hanging but Alive

May 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:37 a.m. ET
The New York Times

HUDSON OAKS, Texas (AP) -- A relative found the bodies of a 23-year-old woman and her four small daughters hanging in a closet in their mobile home Tuesday morning, all of them dead but an 8-month-old, who was taken to a hospital, the sheriff said.

The woman's sister, who also lived in the Oak Hills mobile home park, about 25 miles west of Fort Worth, found the bodies, Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler said.

He said the dead children were ages 5, 3 and 2.

The young survivor was taken to Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth. There was no immediate word on the child's condition.

The deaths were under investigation.

    4 Dead in Home, Baby Hanging but Alive, NYT, 29.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Children-Killed.html

Youth, Gang Crimes Increasing

May 15, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:05 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Increasing violence among teenagers and other youths appears to have contributed to a nationwide crime spike, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Gangs and gun violence are partly to blame for the rise in crime that is on pace to increase for the second straight year, says Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in a prepared speech.

In response, the Justice Department is pledging to spend nearly $50 million this year to combat gangs and guns, and will push Congress to enact new laws to let the federal government better investigate and prosecute violent crime.

FBI data from last fall show violent crimes, including murders and robberies, rose by 3.7 percent nationwide during the first six months of 2006. Those findings came on top of a 2.2 percent crime hike in 2005 -- the first increase since 2001.

Faced with the discouraging data, Gonzales last fall ordered a study of 18 cities and suburban regions to show why crime is surging.

According to Gonzales' prepared remarks and a Justice Department fact sheet, obtained by The Associated Press, the study found:

--That a growing number of offenders appear to be younger, and their crimes more violent, and that laws in some states provide few, if any, tough penalties on juvenile offenders.

--Many youths have little parental oversight and are too easily influenced by gang membership and glamorized violence in popular culture.

--Loosely organized gangs present the biggest concern for law enforcement officials because they are hard to investigate and their members often commit random acts of crime out of self-protection.

--Offenses committed by people using firearms pose a major threat not only to communities, but also to police. So-called ''straw purchases,'' where gun owners buy their firearms through a go-between is an area of concern.

The Justice Department plans to distribute $18 million in grants nationwide this year to prevent and reduce illegal gun sales and other firearms crimes.

Gonzales also will announce spending $31 million in new funds this year to combat gangs, according to the Justice Department fact sheet. The department also is working on a new crime bill to help federal authorities assist local and state police in cases involving juvenile crime.

    Youth, Gang Crimes Increasing, NYT, 15.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Crime-Cities.html

New York Plan for DNA Data in Most Crimes

May 14, 2007
The New York Times
By PATRICK McGEEHAN

Gov. Eliot Spitzer is proposing a major expansion of New York’s database of DNA samples to include people convicted of most crimes, while making it easier for prisoners to use DNA to try to establish their innocence.

Currently, New York State collects DNA from those convicted of about half of all crimes, typically the most serious.

The governor’s proposal would order DNA taken from those found guilty of any misdemeanor, including minor drug offenses, harassment or unauthorized use of a credit card, according to a draft of his bill. It would not cover offenses considered violations, like disorderly conduct.

In expanding its database to include all felonies and misdemeanors, New York would be nearly alone, although a handful of states collect DNA from some defendants upon arrest, even before conviction.

Mr. Spitzer is also seeking mandatory sampling of all prisoners in the state, as well as all of those on parole, on probation or registered as sex offenders.

That expansion alone would add about 50,000 samples to the database, at a cost of about $1.75 million, his office said. It did not provide an estimate of the cost of taking DNA samples in all future convictions.

“This legislation will help us bring the guilty to justice and exonerate those who have been wrongly accused,” Mr. Spitzer said in a statement. He plans to introduce his bill this week.

The bill would make it easier for prisoners and defendants to obtain court orders to have their DNA tested against evidence collected in their cases and to have that evidence tested against the entire database of DNA, aides to the governor said.

It also would allow prisoners who have pleaded guilty to seek DNA testing that might prove them innocent, the aides said; some judges now decline such requests.

Police officials and prosecutors nationwide have trumpeted DNA collection as one of the most effective tools in law enforcement. New York’s database, for example, now contains almost 250,000 samples and has produced matches in almost 4,000 cases, according to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services.

At the same time, DNA has become a useful tool for defense lawyers whose clients proclaim their innocence long after their convictions.

According to the Innocence Project, a legal clinic affiliated with the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University in Manhattan, DNA testing has led to the exoneration of 23 people in New York who had been convicted of crimes, and more than 200 nationwide.

By addressing concerns about access for the wrongly convicted, Mr. Spitzer may have a better chance of gaining support among state lawmakers for an expansion of DNA collection, said Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol, a Brooklyn Democrat who is chairman of the Codes Committee, which deals with criminal justice.

“I’ve always been in favor of the expansion of the database to all crimes, but I want these protections to be put in place so that there’s a balance between protecting the innocent as well as prosecuting the guilty,” Mr. Lentol said. “I think the governor is on the right track doing it this way.”

Mr. Lentol acknowledged that his support for DNA testing in all convictions was not in line with his colleagues in the Democratic majority in the Assembly, who have repeatedly blocked bills passed by the Republican-controlled State Senate that would have expanded DNA collection. The Senate passed such a bill again this month.

Charles Carrier, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, said he could not yet comment on Mr. Spitzer’s proposal.

He said that in the past, Assembly Democrats have been reluctant to approve wider DNA testing because of concerns about “the way evidence was cataloged and stored, handled and controlled and processed.”

Some civil liberties groups oppose broader collection of DNA samples, out of concerns about how they might be used beyond the justice system.

“Because DNA, unlike fingerprints, provides an enormous amount of personal information, burgeoning government DNA databases pose a serious threat to privacy,” said Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “They must include strict protections to assure that DNA is collected and used only for legitimate law enforcement purposes, such as exonerating the innocent or convicting the guilty.”

John McArdle, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, said that Mr. Bruno had not seen the governor’s bill and would not comment on it until he had.

But Mr. McArdle said that Mr. Bruno supported the expansion of DNA collection to the perpetrators of all crimes, as well as another proposal Mr. Spitzer has included in his bill: giving prosecutors up to five more years to bring charges in cases where DNA evidence has been collected but not yet matched to a particular person.

New York has had a DNA database since 2000. Originally, it included samples from people convicted of sex offenses and only certain felonies.

But it has been expanded twice in the last three years to include all felonies and some misdemeanors, aides to the governor said.

Still, only about 46 percent of people convicted of crimes in the state are required to submit to the collection of a DNA sample, which now is usually done by swabbing the inside of the mouth.

Mr. Spitzer, a Democrat in his first year as governor, is not the first political leader in the state to call for such an expansion. His predecessor, George E. Pataki, a Republican, pushed for an “all crimes” bill.

Last year, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a Republican, also campaigned for the testing of everyone who is convicted, saying that murderers and rapists also commit petty crimes and that mandatory DNA collection could lead to their convictions for the more serious offenses.

But Mr. Spitzer is wrapping his proposal for expanding the database together with ideas that are more likely to appeal to those who believe many defendants are wrongly convicted.

He is seeking to require that prosecutors notify the court if they learn that there may be DNA evidence that could exonerate a prisoner. Currently, state law does not obligate prosecutors to volunteer that information, a lawyer in the governor’s office said.

Mr. Spitzer’s proposal also calls for the creation of a state office that would be responsible for studying all cases that resulted in exonerations and looking for flaws in the system that led to those wrongful convictions. That office would not be an independent body, often referred to as an “innocence commission,” but a part of the Division of Criminal Justice Services.

Assemblyman Michael N. Gianaris, a Queens Democrat, is sponsoring a bill to create an “innocence commission,” which is part of a package of legislation relating to DNA testing that was introduced this month. The package includes a bill proposed by Mr. Lentol that would expand prisoners’ access to the DNA database.

Barry Scheck, the co-director of the Innocence Project, said that many of the people his organization had helped to exonerate would have been freed much sooner, or would not have been convicted at all, if the changes sought by Mr. Lentol and his colleagues had been in place.

Mr. Scheck and his co-director, Peter Neufeld, were not prepared to comment on Mr. Spitzer’s bill.

    New York Plan for DNA Data in Most Crimes, NYT, 14.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/14/nyregion/14dna.html?hp

In Domestic Abuse, Digital Photos Can Say More Than Victims

May 7, 2007
The New York Times
By CARA BUCKLEY

Her body was crisscrossed with his rage. And after she slipped off her clothes, wincing, the police officer photographed every welt. The bruises marbling her upper arm. The places where her skin broke. Her striated back, which looked as if it had been flogged with a cat o’ nine tails.

In the first raw hours after the attack, the 39-year-old woman, a mother of five, tearfully told the police that her husband had whipped her with a cable. She would later recant her story, and say she was suffering from a skin condition caused by asbestos, a story that convinced no one.

But the Queens district attorney’s office pressed forward with the prosecution anyway, armed with the damning digital photographs. Even though the victim refused to testify, her husband was convicted in 2005 and got a one-year prison term, largely, prosecutors believe, because of the pictures.

Providing digital cameras to the police is revolutionizing the prosecution of domestic violence in New York City, according to district attorneys, victim advocates and forensic technicians.

In Queens, the first borough to use the technology, prosecutors say there has been a notable increase in conviction rates since the police there began taking digital photos at domestic violence scenes about five years ago.

In 2002, the first full year digital cameras were used in Queens, prosecutors saw a spike in felony domestic violence convictions. They said 81 percent of the 474 felony domestic violence cases resulted in convictions, compared with 52 percent of the 437 domestic violence cases in 2000, when the police still used Polaroids, which yielded poorer quality, darker, grainy images that tended to fade.

For misdemeanor domestic violence cases, 60 percent of the 3,948 cases ended in convictions in 2002, compared with 51 percent of the 4,013 misdemeanor cases in 2000.

Digital cameras have now been placed in all of the city’s 76 precincts and nine public housing police stations; as of last year, there were at least two in each station house, according to Chief Kathy E. Ryan, of the Police Department’s Domestic Violence Unit. And although the district attorneys in the other boroughs say they cannot gauge the cameras’ effect on conviction rates, either because it is too early or difficult to assess the impact of the cameras alone, they all say digital cameras have vastly improved the way they prosecute domestic violence cases.

“Even if there is an increase in convictions, it doesn’t tell us it’s because the photographs are so much better,” said Penny Santana, chief of the domestic violence bureau for the Bronx district attorney’s office. But, she added, the use of digital pictures “has certainly enhanced our prosecution.”

For one thing, the cameras capture what Polaroids, and the human eye, often miss. Defensive cuts on an outstretched hand. Bruises on the skin of women with dark complexions. When the pictures are magnified, other wounds appear, like broken capillaries, tiny cuts and jagged flaps of skin.

Police officers can also immediately transmit the pictures, by computer, to a database available to prosecutors citywide. Before, with Polaroids, prosecutors had to subpoena a police officer to take photographs to their office, a process that could drag on for days.

Now, as soon as a photo is uploaded, prosecutors can immediately assess the gravity of the wounds and decide how aggressively to pursue a case. The digitally transmitted pictures are now also available for a defendant’s first appearance in court, which experts say is a crucial time in domestic violence cases.

“One of the most serious decisions a judge can take is to set bail instead of sending the person home, where the battery continues,” said Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney.

In Queens, Scott E. Kessler, who heads the district attorney’s domestic violence bureau, has found that when the police take photographs, bail is set in nearly a third of the cases. But without a photo, he said, the figure falls to 14 percent, with the rest of the defendants being released on their own recognizance.

The reason, he says, is the extreme visceral reaction the photos elicit.

“When you’re in a front of a judge, you describe the injuries written in the complaint, the bruising, the swelling, the blood,” Mr. Kessler said. “But until a person sees another human being with those injuries, with the swelling, the blood, the bruising, it’s hard to get that point across.”

Mr. Kessler is supporting an effort by City Councilman Eric N. Gioia of Queens for money to be included in the next city budget to have digital cameras put in every patrol car in the city, though Chief Ryan said officers responding to domestic violence calls often bring the precinct’s camera with them.

Many police departments nationwide, including those in Los Angeles and Miami, have begun using digital cameras in recent years. Other departments have been slower to embrace the technology, often because they lack the money to buy the equipment or the expertise to start an online database.

For departments that use cameras, there is often lag time before officers get accustomed to them and learn how to take good pictures. In New York, Chief Ryan said officers are starting to catch up with Queens. On average citywide, police are now taking digital pictures in about half of the domestic violence cases they respond to. That was an improvement, she said, from three months ago, when they were being used in just 20 percent of the cases.

Justice John M. Leventhal of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, the first judge to preside over the nation’s first court to handle felony domestic violence cases exclusively, said the images speed up the judicial process. Faced with graphic documentation of the crime, an abuser is often quicker to agree to a plea deal, experts say. Conversely, charges are dropped more quickly if the photographic evidence is scant.

“The cases that should be tried are,” Justice Leventhal said. “And the cases that shouldn’t won’t be.”

Victims reluctant to go to a precinct house out of fear or shame may be willing to consent to having their pictures taken. Photos taken at the scene of an attack often paint a fuller picture, capturing smashed furniture, blood on floors or walls, phone cords ripped from their sockets or cellphones snapped in two.

Ward Allen, a forensic imaging consultant with SDFI-Telemedicine, a forensic photography company based in California, said digital photos have also revamped the investigation of sex crimes. Tiny cameras can photograph minuscule internal injuries, he said, and the images can now be sent, securely, virtually anywhere in the world.

The cameras also lift some of the burden of proof from victims, advocates say. Instead of having to testify, photos of wounds, often blown up for the courtroom, can speak for a victim. This has helped prosecutors in what are known as “victimless trials,” in which victims refuse to testify, a common thread in domestic violence cases.

The vast majority of domestic violence victims do not report their injuries, prosecutors say. Of those who do, most later minimize or change their stories, like the woman who was whipped with a cable. The detailed photos, along with the admissibility in court of what are known as “excited utterances,” or what the victim reports to the police immediately after the crime, help a prosecutor’s case.

There has been criticism about trials proceeding without the victim’s consent or against their will. Some believe it makes victims vulnerable to more violence, especially if they stay with their attackers. But others say victimless trials tell offenders that they are still facing legal consequences.

“It sends a message to offenders that that’s a crime, and that it’s going to be pursued no matter what the victim may or may not want,” said Maureen Curtis, senior director of Safe Horizon, the largest crime victims organization in the country.

In Queens, prosecutors are now in the midst of a particularly grisly victimless trial. The attack happened in February, on a darkened street in Springfield Gardens. A 23-year-old woman was repeatedly slashed in the face, and later, hysterical and bleeding profusely, told the police that her husband had attacked her with a razor blade and snatched her baby. The baby was found, and the woman later retracted her story. But the prosecutors had a photo of her taken soon after the attack, staring balefully at the camera, her lip split open, crescents of flesh missing from her left eyelid and cheek.

Her husband was indicted and is now on trial, according to Pamela J. Papish, an assistant district attorney. “Because of photos,” she said.

    In Domestic Abuse, Digital Photos Can Say More Than Victims, NYT, 7.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/nyregion/07cameras.html

Mo. Teen Brutally Stabbed on School Bus

May 4, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:22 p.m. ET
The New York Times

STEELE, Mo. (AP) -- A teenager boarded a school bus with a hunting knife and stabbed another student more than a dozen times before bystanders could pull him away, police and the victim said.

John Moore, 14, was in good condition Friday, two days after the attack. The suspect, also 14, was put in juvenile custody. No motive has been determined.

A hearing is planned for Monday to determine if the suspect should be charged as an adult, said Sheriff Tommy Greenwell, adding that his office will likely ask prosecutors to consider a charge of attempted murder.

The stabbing happened as John got on the South Pemiscot School bus on Wednesday and headed toward the back, where the suspect was sitting, the sheriff said.

John said the attack came as a surprise.

''He was like, what's up? So I was like, what's up too. I turn around and he starts stabbing me,'' he told Fox News Channel in an interview aired Friday. ''I scooted up 3 feet and I fall down, and he keeps on stabbing me. Just stabbing me, stabbing me, stabbing me.''

The bus driver pulled into a convenience store parking lot and began calling for help, Greenwell said. The store owner and other bystanders managed to pull the suspect off the bus and disarm him.

''I was just wondering if I was going to die and if my 6-year-old sister was watching, because she must be traumatized from seeing that,'' John said.

John said he was stabbed 20 times and had a collapsed lung.

A few other students were on the bus, but no one else was hurt, Greenwell said.

Pemiscot County is in Missouri's southeast corner.

    Mo. Teen Brutally Stabbed on School Bus, NYT, 4.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bus-Stabbing.html

A Case of Rough Play, or More, That Turned Fatal in Queens

April 29, 2007
The New York Times
By ELLEN BARRY

On a recent afternoon behind Public School 127 in East Elmhurst, Queens, two girls in jeans and parkas crouched on the ground, track-and-field-style, and then skipped the length of the basketball court. Boys flung a ball back and forth with maniacal energy. There was no reminder of the moment that passed here a month ago, when one 13-year-old boy struck another on the head and the second sat down, in pain.

But in two homes in East Elmhurst, that moment goes on and on.

On 100th Street, a family is mourning the boy who was hit, Guarionex Montas, who died March 24 of a skull fracture and bleeding in his brain. Miguel Cepeda cannot shake the memory of holding Guarionex, his nephew, that night, when bloody foam began to flow from his nose and mouth so fast that Mr. Cepeda used a roll of Bounty trying to soak it up.

A cousin remembers quieter things about the boy, known as Guachy (pronounced GWA-chee): How he wanted to be a detective, how he had trouble pronouncing the letter R. He was, she said, “the loved one out of the whole family.”

Ten blocks away, another family is frightened for their own boy, a gangly seventh grader who faces a charge of third-degree assault. When he was arrested and taken to a juvenile center, his uncle flew in from Los Angeles, and 20 supporters showed up for hearings in Queens Family Court. Borough President Helen Marshall, a neighbor in East Elmhurst, was so concerned that she offered to supervise him when he was released.

“Whatever happens, this child has to be cleared of this thing,” she said in an interview.

In the coming months, the justice system will struggle to find an appropriate punishment — if any — for an act that seems to fall into the murky area between play and violence. Defense attorneys say the boys were engaged in slap-boxing, an ordinary form of adolescent horseplay; prosecutors say the boy hit Guachy in the head with a hard object and then threatened to hurt him and his brother if they reported it. As the case progresses, East Elmhurst is torn along an invisible line, with two large families mobilized in the name of their sons.

“This is a very tragic case, and also a very difficult case,” Judge Rhea Friedman said at a hearing earlier this month. “It is distressing to have to make critical decisions with so little information, frankly.”

The two boys were friendly, by all accounts. Guachy’s mother moved her four children to East Elmhurst from the South Bronx a year ago, hoping to raise them in a safer, more middle-class neighborhood. The family of the other boy — The New York Times is withholding his name because he is being charged as a juvenile — has lived in East Elmhurst since the 1950s, when it was one of the few neighborhoods where black families could buy a house.

He gave the police his account of what happened on March 23. The afternoon began with a trip to McDonald’s and a visit to a friend’s house to play Xbox 360. After that, he said, the group “went to the handball court to slap-box.”

His uncle, a video producer and editor who lives in Los Angeles, said slap-boxing, done with an open hand, is a longstanding and benign tradition in the neighborhood.

“It’s part of how you develop a reputation for being able to stand up for yourself,” he said. “It’s sort of like an entry into your teen years. It’s like cubs fighting. Whoever’s the quickest tends to win.”

In this case, the boy told police, Guachy got hurt. He said he hit Guachy in the temple, and that Guachy sat down, complaining of a headache. Guachy’s brother Jose, a 15-year-old who attends the sixth grade at P.S. 127, said it was time to go. When Jose went to fetch their coats, the boy said in the statement, Guachy hit his head a second time, on a pole, but no explanation was offered in the first court appearance as to why he did so. The boy also reported that Guachy had been drinking alcohol.

Guachy’s uncle Casimiro Cepeda said Guachy did not drink, and noted that the blow to the head came just an hour after school had let out.

Guachy and Jose walked five blocks to their apartment. Neither said anything to their mother or stepfather about what had happened, but Guachy went to bed, saying he felt sick. He woke up complaining of pain and swelling, so his stepfather stepped out to buy Advil. A few hours later, Jose saw blood pouring from his brother’s nose and mouth.

Hours passed in the hospital before the doctors gave the results of a CT scan: Guachy’s skull had been fractured and a vein had burst, Mr. Cepeda recalled. He was declared dead at 10 the next morning.

The family pressed Jose to explain what had happened. At first, he said the injury had happened accidentally — a flying elbow in a basketball game — but then he changed his story. Later, when the family was in the Dominican Republic for Guachy’s funeral, Jose told authorities that the other boys had threatened that he would be “stabbed or jumped” if he told the truth.

Now, Jose told them, he felt safe enough to say that the boy “took an object and hit the decedent in the head,” as the city’s lawyer, Theresa Wilson-Campbell, put it in court. Ms. Wilson-Campbell said that when the police executed a search warrant at the boy’s home, they found a small black umbrella with a wooden handle that the authorities believe might be the weapon.

Other boys at the playground gave “widely different accounts,” describing the two boys as “playing,” said Melanie Shapiro, a defense lawyer, at the hearing. Everyone described them as close friends, she said.

The boy who hit Guachy was one of the mourners at his wake in Queens on March 27; Guachy’s relatives remember that he dropped off a card and a stuffed rabbit. On March 30, he was arrested.

Prosecutors for the City Law Department, which handles juvenile delinquency cases, are not allowed to discuss pending cases publicly. But a typical investigation would begin by seeking facts, said Laurence Busching, the Law Department’s family court division chief: Where were the kids in relationship to each other? How big or small were they? Were these “two kids who have been playing all along and something just happened, or is there some motive and some reason it changed from play to something else?” How much harm are they physically capable of inflicting?

“Even though you have great emotional responses, you still have to put those things aside and focus on what are the facts,” Mr. Busching said.

The charge at the boy’s arrest was manslaughter — which could bring a penalty of 18 months in a juvenile center — and he was detained. When the deadline arrived to file, though, the city could present evidence only for two lesser charges of third-degree assault, a misdemeanor that could bring a maximum penalty of a year in a juvenile center. After a juvenile is placed with the Office of Children and Family Services on a delinquency case, the agency can seek to extend the placement year by year until his 18th birthday.

Kim McLaurin, the head attorney at the Legal Aid Society’s Queens juvenile rights division, said taking the boy from his home could prove particularly damaging.

“On the one hand, you do appreciate the fact that a child has died,” she said. “But you don’t want to prejudge, because the stakes are high.”

In court, Ms. Wilson-Campbell argued that the boy had a history of being aggressive, and said the principal of P.S. 127 was trying to remove him from school because of discipline problems.

She also quoted from a notebook found in a search of the house, which described him as the leader of a gang of 50 boys, and said that “they sent out their boys when somebody messes with them.”

“It seems to be part fiction and part journal,” she said of the writings.

Judge Friedman seemed skeptical, and ordered the boy released to his mother, warning him sternly against having contact with members of Guachy’s family. She noted that his school records showed good attendance and did not reflect a “dangerous or aggressive youngster,” and that he had no juvenile police record. “I do not see the nexus between any alleged gang activities and, for lack of a better word, dangerousness,” she said.

She found probable cause for one count of third-degree assault. “It is either a terrible accident gone wrong, or it may be something that rises to the level of penal law,” she said. “We don’t know the answer to that.”

The Cepedas buried Guachy in Villa Altagracia, a seaside city in the Dominican Republic, where his mother grew up. They were still there when they heard that the boy had not been charged with manslaughter, and it angered them to hear that elected officials like Ms. Marshall had come out in his support.

Guachy’s mother and stepfather met on Friday afternoon with Councilman Hiram Monserrate, who represents East Elmhurst. Edwin Hernandez, 33, a cousin, said they believe the beating “had something to do with a gang in school, maybe an initiation or something, where they take one of the weakest kids.”

“It is not justice,” said Mr. Cepeda, Guachy’s uncle . “You see people working for the city trying to save this guy. You know the thing he did; he didn’t break a window.”

The other boy’s family and their supporters are, for their part, fiercely protective.

“I don’t know where he’s going in life, but I’m going to make sure that he gets there,” said Ms. Marshall, who allowed the boy to stay in her office at Borough Hall for two days when he was released. Relatives are particularly angry that prosecutors have said that he was affiliated with a gang. His uncle called that notion “laughable.”

“I know the kid,” he said. “He doesn’t even backtalk. He doesn’t have the temperament for that.”

    A Case of Rough Play, or More, That Turned Fatal in Queens, NYT, 29.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/nyregion/29punch.html

NY Man Charged in Attack on 101 - Year - Old

April 28, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:16 p.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- A man accused of beating and mugging a 101-year-old woman and two others was arraigned Saturday on charges that included hate crimes, authorities said.

Jack Rhodes, 44, was held without bail on charges of robbery, grand larceny, burglary and assault. Some of those charges were listed as hate crimes because two of the women were at least 60 years old. Authorities said Rhodes targeted the women because of their age, a violation of the New York State Hate Crimes Act of 2000.

Rhodes, whose last known address was in Queens, was arrested Friday on unrelated drug charges.

Police questioned him after noticing he matched a photo of a person wanted in the attacks, including one on Rose Morat, 101, whose March 4 beating was caught on surveillance tape.

The grainy images show Morat, who was using a walker, trying to leave her apartment building when a man attacked her and hit her in the face. Morat suffered a fractured cheekbone and bruises. Her assailant got away with $33 and her house keys.

The footage caused public outrage and the NYPD assigned dozens of detectives to the case. The NYPD showed the surveillance video to every uniformed officer in the city.

Rhodes is also accused of attacking 85-year-old Solange Elizee, 51-year-old Angela Khan and burglarizing a building. All the attacks took place in Queens.

He faces up to 25 years if convicted. A message left with his lawyer was not immediately returned Saturday.

''I am so sorry for what happened,'' Rhodes said as he was led out of a police station, the New York Post reported Saturday.

    NY Man Charged in Attack on 101 - Year - Old, NYT, 28.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Elderly-Woman-Robbed.html

Body Found in Burned Home After Manhunt

April 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:08 a.m. ET
The New York Times

MARGARETVILLE, N.Y. (AP) -- Authorities recovered a body Wednesday night from the shell of a house that burst into flames just as police were storming in during a hunt for a man suspected of shooting three state troopers, one fatally.

Police could not immediately confirm the body was that of Travis D. Trim, a 23-year-old whom police had been looking for since a trooper was shot during a routine traffic stop Tuesday in rural upstate New York.

But they said they believed it was the same person who shot two other troopers earlier in the day, because the body was found slumped in a doorway holding a rifle in the same area where shots were fired, said Preston Felton, acting superintendent of the New York State Police.

''It's reasonable to say he had no intention of coming out of there alive,'' Felton said.

Authorities believed Trim holed up in the farm house amid a manhunt in eastern New York. The home, located in the hamlet of Arkville, includes two red barns and was described by neighbors as a weekend residence.

How the fire started wasn't known. Sharpshooters were in position and authorities had fired tear gas into the home just before the flames began. Felton said that the suspect might have set the fire, or that tear gas fired into the home could have ignited something.

The saga began Tuesday, when police said a trooper stopped Trim in a stolen minivan for a minor traffic infraction in the Margaretville area.

When Trim failed to provide identification, Trooper Matthew Gombosi told him he was under arrest, said Preston L. Felton, acting superintendent of the State Police.

Then, Felton said, Trim pulled a handgun from his waistband and shot Gombosi. His body armor kept him from being seriously injured, but the suspect escaped, police said.

Police swept the area and found the stolen Dodge Caravan abandoned on a road in nearby Middletown.

Wednesday morning, Troopers David C. Brinkerhoff and Richard Mattson were shot while searching the farm house for Trim, Felton said. Shots came from the home and police fired back, authorities said, but didn't know if they struck the person inside.

The wounded troopers were pulled from the house by two other officers who were helping search the farm.

Brinkerhoff, who was shot in the head, died shortly afterward. Mattson, wounded in the left arm, was in serious but stable condition after surgery at Albany Medical Center, where he had been taken by helicopter.

Brinkerhoff, 29, an eight-year member of the state police, is survived by his wife and a 7-month-old daughter.

Felton said it could take a day or two to identify the body found in the home. The home's owner, Rommel Aujero, was aware that it burned and ''appears to be a very understanding man,'' Felton said. A number for Aujero could not be located.

The standoff came seven months after the arrest of a man who also shot three troopers, one fatally, during a months-long manhunt in western New York.

Last summer, Ralph ''Bucky'' Phillips led police on a five-month manhunt throughout heavily wooded western New York after breaking out of a county jail. He shot one trooper during a traffic stop and two others who were searching for him. One of those troopers died.

Phillips was captured in September and is serving two life sentences. After that manhunt, the union that represents state troopers sharply criticized the way state police officials managed the search.

Trim had a record of arrests for nonviolent crimes, but his grandmother said he had tried to turn his life around.

''He wanted to go to college. We talked to his probation officer to help fix it up,'' Ruth Trim said by phone from her home in Dickinson Center before the body was recovered. ''I'm devastated. He was going to go to college to make something of himself.''

Trim had been enrolled briefly at the State University of New York-Canton but withdrew in November, said Randy Sieminski, a school spokesman. He was registered in the school's motorsports performance and repair program.

Trim's family and officials at schools he attended were stunned to hear he was a shooting suspect.

''It's all so bizarre,'' said Mark Hill, a SUNY-Canton instructor who had Trim in a freshman class. ''He had no bad dealings here. He got along with everyone and worked well in team settings.''

At the state Capitol on Wednesday, the Republican state Senate leader demanded the Democratic governor use his influence to bring back the death penalty, saying it had apparently become ''open season on law enforcement people.''

A New York Court of Appeals ruling in 2005 effectively nullified the death penalty in the state. Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno said his chamber would approve legislation next week to bring it back for the killing of police officers and prison guards and in cases of deaths caused by terrorists.

    Body Found in Burned Home After Manhunt, NYT, 26.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Trooper-Shooting.html

F.C.C. Moves to Restrict TV Violence

April 26, 2007
The New York Times
By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON, April 25 — Concerned about an increase in violence on television, the Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday urged lawmakers to consider regulations that would restrict violent programs to late evening, when most children would not be watching.

The commission, in a long-awaited report, concluded that the program ratings system and technology intended to help parents block offensive programs — like the V-chip — had failed to protect children from being regularly exposed to violence.

As a result, the commission recommended that Congress move to limit violence on entertainment programs by giving the agency the authority to define such content and restrict it to late evening television.

It also suggested that Congress adopt legislation that would give consumers the option to buy cable channels “à la carte” — individually or in smaller bundles — so that they would be able to reject channels they did not want.

“Clearly, steps should be taken to protect children from excessively violent programming,” said Kevin J. Martin, the agency’s chairman and a longtime proponent of à la carte programming. “Some might say such action is long overdue. Parents need more tools to protect children from excessively violent programming.”

The commission report, which was requested by Congress three years ago, was sharply criticized by civil liberties advocates and by the cable television industry for proposing steps that both said would be too intrusive.

“These F.C.C. recommendations are political pandering,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union. “The government should not replace parents as decision makers in America’s living rooms. There are some things that the government does well. But deciding what is aired and when on television is not one of them.”

She added: “Government should not parent the parents.”

A spokesman at the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, Brian Dietz, said consumers “are the best judge of which content is appropriate for their household.”

“Simple-sounding solutions, such as à la carte regulation of cable TV packages, are misguided and would endanger cable’s high-quality family-friendly programming, leaving parents and children with fewer viewing options,” he said.

Executives at the major networks said that they wanted to study the report, which was released Wednesday evening, before commenting.

A spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters, Dennis Wharton, said that broadcast television was “far more tame than programming found on pay TV in terms of both sex and violence.”

Noting that the association, along with all the networks and major cable groups, is in the middle of a $300 million marketing effort to help educate parents about the V-chip and other technology to block programs, Mr. Wharton said, “Should this not be given a chance to work?”

The report and accompanying recommendations set the stage for a political battle between the commission and three powerful interest groups — the broadcasters, the cable TV industry and satellite television.

It comes on the heels of efforts by the agency to penalize radio and television stations for violating the indecency rule. Those penalties have been challenged in courts on the grounds that they violate the First Amendment.

The outcome of the cases, which could wind up in the United States Supreme Court, could determine whether the government would have the authority to impose limits on violent programs.

The report said that research on whether violent programming had caused children to act more aggressively was inconclusive. But it also cited studies, including one by the surgeon general, that say exposure to violent content has been associated with increased aggression or violent behavior in children, at least in the short term.

It said that the V-chip and other blocking technology had failed because, according to recent studies, nearly 9 out of 10 parents do not use them And the ratings system was of limited use, the study found, because less than half of parents surveyed had used it.

In addition, many also believed the ratings were inaccurate. Mr. Martin and other supporters of à la carte programming say that it would be easier to put in place than content-based regulations because it would not face the same First Amendment challenges.

“There is no First Amendment right to get paid for your channels,” Mr. Martin said. “All of the versions of à la carte would keep government out of regulating content directly while enabling consumers, including parents, to receive the programming they want and believe to be appropriate for their families.”

The groups supporting such an approach range from Consumers Union to the Parents Television Council, an organization that has lobbied for more stringent penalties for obscene and violent programs.

But such a proposal faces formidable obstacles in Congress because of the influence of the industries involved. The cable industry has fought hard against new regulations and has said that attempts to force à la carte programs would prompt the closing of many educational and local stations.

The broadcasters say that it would be difficult to formulate a definition of “violence” and that tougher regulations could wind up censoring otherwise legitimate programs.

But Mr. Martin rejected that argument, noting that the industry has already formulated ratings to describe the level of violence in programs, and therefore government-imposed limits on when programs could run would be constitutional.

A leading sponsor of efforts to force cable companies to offer à la carte services has been Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. But he is spending less time in Congress these days as he begins his campaign for president.

    F.C.C. Moves to Restrict TV Violence, NYT, 26.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/business/media/26fcc.html

Arrest Made in 'Bishop' Pipe Bomb Case

April 25, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:03 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CHICAGO (AP) -- Authorities arrested a suspect Wednesday morning in the case of two dud pipe bombs that were mailed to companies in Chicago and Kansas City along with letters signed ''The Bishop,'' the U.S. Postal Inspection Service said.

The postal inspection service did not immediately release any further details. A news conference was expected later Wednesday.

Investigators have said ''The Bishop'' mailed more than a dozen letters to financial institutions for 18 months and appeared to have ties to the Chicago area.

The letters include references to heaven and hell and threats made to recipients if their stock did not move by $6.66; the number '666' is associated with Satan. Two dud pipe bombs mailed to companies in Chicago and Kansas City in January included threatening letters with phrases such as ''Bang you're dead'' and ''Tic-toc.''

    Arrest Made in 'Bishop' Pipe Bomb Case, NYT, 25.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Pipe-Bombs.html

Bus Violence Rattles Minn. Riders

April 25, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:55 a.m. ET
The New York Times

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Commuters in the Twin Cities have been rattled by a series of attacks on buses in recent weeks, including two killings, and police have stepped up patrols of mass transit to safeguard worried passengers. Transit officials insist the three violent crimes since early March were isolated problems.

''I'm not minimizing how serious this is, but I guess my perspective has to be that we provided 74 million rides last year with only a few minor incidents,'' said Dave Indrehus, the police chief for Metro Transit. ''We've got a safe system.''

Kevin Davis is among the passengers who are increasingly concerned for their safety. He now avoids interacting with other commuters.

''I don't look at anybody on the bus. I don't talk to anybody on the bus. I just look down and mind my own business,'' Davis said Tuesday as he waited at a stop along Route 5, considered the city's most rough-and-tumble route.

Acording to the Federal Transit Administration, there were only eight homicides on buses and commuter trains nationwide from 2002 to 2006, with the most in a single year being four in 2003.

''You shouldn't have to worry about something so simple as riding on a bus,'' said Davis, who doesn't have a car.

In the first attack, a man trying to calm down rowdy behavior on a bus in Minneapolis was shot in the chest March 8 but survived. A 15-year-old boy was facing attempted murder charges.

Four days later, a 60-year-old man who had been yelling at a bus driver in Minneapolis died after another passenger punched him in the face, causing him to fall backward and hit his head on the pavement. The other passenger, a 47-year-old man, was charged with second-degree murder.

Early Sunday, a 16-year-old boy was shot to death on a bus in downtown St. Paul. Authorities arrested a 17-year-old boy who they say knew the victim.

It's all been enough to worry the thousands of Twin Cities residents who rely on buses, the most popular means of public transportation in the area.

''I see a lot of messed-up stuff, and that's all the time,'' said Rosealee Jones, a Minneapolis woman who commutes to work by bus. ''You get afraid something's going to happen, but usually it's just big talk -- kids acting foolish. I don't like to think that's changing.''

Indrehus said the violence on buses is a ''reflection of what happens in the communities that they serve.''

Transit police are increasing the number of officers on buses, with six to eight officers now spending a full shift on a bus each day and others rotating through for partial shifts.

On Monday, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak proposed spending $500,000 for safety improvements such as increasing police patrols along Route 5.

Indrehus said Metro Transit is installing more security cameras on buses. It's also encouraging MAD DADS, a national men's group that seeks to provide positive role models for troubled youth, to increase its recent practice of bus ride-alongs on some urban routes.

''We want to be there before people starting getting outrageous, to calm them down and get them in a positive frame of mind,'' said V.J. Smith, president of the Minneapolis chapter.

Riders said they are happy to see anything that would make their travels safer. But all agree the most effective measure will be having more officers along for the ride.

''The police are going to have to step it up,'' said Eddie Lipsco, who said he's disabled and needs the bus to get to his doctor's appointments. ''That's the only thing that's going to make these punks settle down.''

------

On the Net:

Metro Transit: http://www.metrotransit.org

    Bus Violence Rattles Minn. Riders, NYT, 25.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bus-Attacks.html

9 Killings in 3 Months Spur Change in Trenton

April 8, 2007
By KAREEM FAHIM
The New York Times

TRENTON, April 4 — The homicide rate in this city is soaring, and the police know retaliation can only make things worse.

That means detectives need to find the man who shot and killed Matthew Brunson, in a grassy lot behind Dee Dee’s Lounge and Liquor Store, before Mr. Brunson’s buddies do. “They said, ‘Don’t worry about it, Mama, we’re going to get them,’ ” Mr. Brunson’s mother, Maria DeLeon, recalled her son’s friends telling her after he was killed on March 20. “I told them, ‘No, I don’t want to see no more violence.’ ”

Mr. Brunson, 27, was the eighth of nine people killed in the first three months of the year, up from two homicides in the same period last year.

The rash of killings has shaken this city of 85,000 people and strained the resources of the Police Department’s eight homicide detectives, some of whom are working 18- or 20-hour shifts. With arrests in only two of the nine cases, the authorities have variously attributed the violence to the availability of guns, to gang members disrespecting one another or simply to the kind of bloodshed that often follows the drug trade.

In March alone, seven people were killed, a monthly total higher than anyone here can remember; at this pace, the annual homicide rate would top the 31 recorded in 2005, the most reported in four decades. Already, the nine homicides are more than the full year’s total recorded in 1999, 1994 and 1985.

The authorities have tried to calm residents by saying the violence seems confined to conflicts within a small circle of men.

Investigators say they have been hindered by a lack of cooperation from a public frozen by a history of witness intimidation and retaliation, especially in neighborhoods like the West Ward, where the latest killing, of an 18-year-old man on March 26, caused a few residents to say it was time to move. “The fear is real,” Trenton’s mayor, Douglas H. Palmer, acknowledged. “But what we need is for the citizens to give us anonymous tips, and not to tolerate this kind of behavior.”

Capt. Joseph Juniak, who oversees 67 detectives as chief of the Trenton police force’s Criminal Investigative Bureau, offered little detail about the open homicide investigations, saying there were many theories about the motives, ranging from simple street robberies to the meting out of violent discipline within gangs.

“I remember a time similar to this, when crack was introduced to the streets,” he said. “Unfortunately, in urban areas, it’s a way of life.”

Other cities in the region have also been seized by rising violence. In Philadelphia this year, there were 104 homicides through April 2, a significant increase over the same period last year. Newark’s homicide rate is also up slightly this year, despite an overall drop in crime.

“I hope this is just one of those streaks,” said Captain Juniak, who took over the department’s detective bureau two weeks ago.

Joseph J. Santiago, the department’s director, called the spate of homicides in March “extraordinary,” particularly because of what he described as a “highly unusual victim profile.”

Several of the victims lived outside Trenton, and they included men ages 50, 43 and 27 — beyond the 18- to 24-year-old range detectives are most used to seeing. In many of the cases, investigators say, the killings seem less like gang warfare, and more like violence stemming from narcotics sales.

Also puzzling is the accompanying drop in most of the city’s other crime categories, including sexual assaults, auto theft and robbery, which are all lower than in the same period last year. But the homicides are enough: In part to prevent violent retaliations, the police have established a large presence in some parts of the city in recent weeks, especially near the housing projects.

Around the Wilson-Haverstick project, where Naquan Archie, 18, was shot and killed on March 26, the police “stop and challenge” groups of young men, asking what they are doing and where they are headed. In the evenings, the police footprint grows, giving the neighborhood the appearance of a crime scene. A truck parked near the housing project is a mobile base for officers in the area, and inside on a recent day, an officer peered at maps of the neighborhood.

Capt. Paul Messina, the department’s head of patrol, said the Wilson-Haverstick operation was one of five such special patrols now operating throughout the city.

There are some who say it is not enough. Tony Mack, a Freeholder who ran for mayor, called the police response “reactive,” saying a larger, permanent police presence was needed in more than a dozen trouble spots in the city.

Mr. Santiago said the police were paying attention to areas with a history of crime, adding that the attention to some neighborhoods after violence prevented further outbreaks.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation offered the police its help, including software to help manage cases and track leads, Mr. Santiago said. But some of the investigators said they did not have time to learn how to use the software.

“Yes, you do,” Mr. Santiago said he had replied.

The rising violence in Trenton is part of a nationwide pattern, said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. His organization released a report last month that showed large increases in violent crime in spots across the country since late 2005, especially in midsize and larger communities like Trenton, and Prince George’s County, Md., which has seen a similar surge in its homicide rate this year, with 11 killings in as many days in March.

“We don’t see this in smaller cities, and we didn’t see this five years ago,” Mr. Wexler said.

For Tamala Whittington, 40, who lives in the Wilson-Haverstick houses, the violence does not so much surge and recede as simply lurk. Last year, she sent her 11-year-old son to live with his aunt a short drive away from the projects after a stray bullet hit a 7-year-old girl in the face as she rode her bicycle. The girl survived. After the shooting of Mr. Archie last month, Ms. Whittington said, she, too, has decided to move, perhaps to nearby Lawrenceville.

“I try not to stay outside,” Ms. Whittington said. “I’m always looking. I’m in my car, and I’m gone.”

The first day of 2007 brought Trenton’s first homicide, of Steven D. Mason, 43. Less than a week later, Antonio Green, 23, was shot and killed in an apparent robbery. Two people have been arrested in connection with Mr. Green’s death.

February was quiet. Then the violence exploded.

On March 5, 20-year-old Rajeem Denson — who made the newspapers at age 11 after his near-drowning during a swimming class led to a state law governing swimming instructors in public schools — was shot and killed outside his home.

The next day, there were two more: Jarrett James, 18, and Sidibrima Joseph Massaquoi Jr., 23, who was fatally shot in the basement of the house where he lived with his girlfriend, said his father, Sidibrima Joseph Massaquoi Sr.

“The death certificate said there were multiple shots,” Mr. Massaquoi said. “One to his heart. The other perforated his lungs.” He said that he did not know why his son was killed, but that his son and his girlfriend had fought about another man recently.

“I think it’s somebody that both of them knew,” Mr. Massaquoi said of his son’s killer.

Robert Fiorello, who leads an antigang program for a nonprofit group called PEI Kids, said Mr. James, the other March 6 victim, worked for him for two summers as a peer mentor and was not in a gang.

“He was like a son to me,” Mr. Fiorello said. “He was a good kid with a few frailties.”

Edgar Rios, a homicide detective and a 26-year veteran of the department, is investigating three of this year’s killings, including those of Mr. James and Mr. Brunson. His work gets harder by the year.

“Years ago, they would tell us basically anything we want to know,” he said of residents. “Now they’re scared for their life. All you can do is keep going back at them, and treat them nice. Let them know you need their help.

“But it takes time,” he added.

    9 Killings in 3 Months Spur Change in Trenton, NYT, 8.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/nyregion/08trenton.html

Home Where Family Died Is Now Safe Haven

April 8, 2007
By MELODY SIMMONS
The New York Times

BALTIMORE, April 7 — For most of the last five years, the charred corner house in a blighted East Baltimore neighborhood stood vacant, a symbol of all that could go wrong in an urban war on drugs.

Last week, though, that changed.

The sound of children’s laughter once again fills the row house, which made headlines in 2002 when a drug dealer kicked open the front door in the middle of the night and set it ablaze, killing Angela Dawson, a neighborhood crusader; her husband, Carnell; and their five children, ages 9 to 14.

The house has been renovated as the Dawson Safe Haven Community Center, and officially opened last week.

“We will not let them be forgotten,” said Pamela V. Carter, 53, director of the center. “The tragedy put a great cloud over us. People were heartbroken and hoped to see something done about this tragedy.”

Ms. Dawson, 36, was known as a fierce opponent of the drug dealing that routinely took place outside her door. The fire occurred on Oct. 16, 2002, after Ms. Dawson had filed a string of complaints with the police against drug dealers.

Days after the fire, the police arrested Darrell Brooks, 21, who lived near the Dawson home. Mr. Brooks pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence without parole.

Each year on the anniversary of the fire, a vigil has been held on the street outside the home. A memorial garden was planted on an adjacent corner, filled by a small grove of trees and mosaic plaques bearing the name of each victim.

Plans for the center have been in the works for years, Ms. Carter said, with financing for the $1.5 million project coming from city, state, federal and private sources.

Construction began a year ago and inspired a mixture of hope and horror among the neighbors. Many said they wanted the house to be renovated but feared stirring up memories of the fire.

“It’s very important for the kids to come here, but I think a bit eerie sometimes” said Taneisha Sanders, a coordinator at the center. “They say, I wonder where this or that was, or where the kids were” at the time of the fire.

The third floor, where the family’s bedrooms had been, today holds a busy computer lab. An arts and crafts center sits one floor below. Outside, a bright blue light flashes 24 hours a day, notification that a police camera is trained on the corner.

Ms. Carter said drug dealers still did business in the neighborhood, but she is not deterred. “You’ll see them, hanging around and standing on different corners and things,” she said, “but it’s not like I’m afraid. I have a job to do. I walk in God’s blessings and so far, they’re very respectful. They know we mean business and that we’re here to stay.”

Baltimore ranks among the nation’s most violent cities. As of Friday, the city had recorded 71 homicides this year, higher than last year’s count at the same date. The police say most of the killings are drug related.

Visitors to the center one busy afternoon this week said they came at first out of curiosity. Taylor Street, 12, a sixth grader, is working on a biography of the Baltimore jazz musician Cab Calloway. “Everybody was scared to come in here,” she said. “They said the spirits were going to come back,” Taylor said. “But once I was here, it was fine.”

Aaron Anderson, 15, who lives nearby and knew the Dawson children, added: “It’s sad. I’d rather not be here and them still alive, but the center will play a big role in keeping kids off the streets.

“The streets are terrible,” Aaron added. “Anything can happen on any given day. You can get shot, killed, everything. Maybe it might save somebody’s life and make them realize they should come in here and do their homework. It’s easier.”

    Home Where Family Died Is Now Safe Haven, NYT, 8.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/us/08baltimore.html

Injured in Iraq, a Soldier Is Shattered at Home

April 5, 2007
The New York Times
By DEBORAH SONTAG

DUNBAR, Pa. — Blinded and disabled on the 54th day of the war in Iraq, Sam Ross returned home to a rousing parade that outdid anything this small, depressed Appalachian town had ever seen. “Sam’s parade put Dunbar on the map,” his grandfather said.

That was then.

Now Mr. Ross, 24, faces charges of attempted homicide, assault and arson in the burning of a family trailer in February. Nobody in the trailer was hurt, but Mr. Ross fought the assistant fire chief who reported to the scene, and later threatened a state trooper with his prosthetic leg, which was taken away from him, according to the police.

The police locked up Mr. Ross in the Fayette County prison. In his cell, he tried to hang himself with a sheet. After he was cut down, Mr. Ross was committed to a state psychiatric hospital, where, he said in a recent interview there, he is finally getting — and accepting — the help he needs, having spiraled downward in the years since the welcoming fanfare faded.

“I came home a hero, and now I’m a bum,” Mr. Ross, whose full name is Salvatore Ross Jr., said.

The story of Sam Ross has the makings of a ballad, with its heart-rending arc from hardscrabble childhood to decorated war hero to hardscrabble adulthood. His effort to create a future for himself by enlisting in the Army exploded in the desert during a munitions disposal operation in Baghdad. He was 20.

He was also on his own. Mr. Ross, who is estranged from his mother and whose father is serving a life sentence for murdering his stepmother, does not have the family support that many other severely wounded veterans depend on. Various relatives have stepped in at various times, but Mr. Ross, embittered by a difficult childhood and by what the war cost him, has had a push-pull relationship with those who sought to assist him.

Several people have taken a keen interest in Mr. Ross, among them Representative John P. Murtha, the once-hawkish Democrat from Pennsylvania. When Mr. Murtha publicly turned against the war in Iraq in 2005, he cited the shattered life of Mr. Ross, one of his first constituents to be seriously wounded, as a pivotal influence.

Mr. Murtha’s office assisted Mr. Ross in negotiating the military health care bureaucracy. Homes for Our Troops, a nonprofit group based in Massachusetts, built him a beautiful log cabin. Military doctors carefully tended Mr. Ross’s physical wounds: the loss of his eyesight, of his left leg below the knee and of his hearing in one ear, among other problems.

But that help was not enough to save Mr. Ross from the loneliness and despair that engulfed him. Overwhelmed by severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, including routine nightmares of floating over Iraq that ended with a blinding boom, he “self-medicated” with alcohol and illegal drugs. He finally hit rock bottom when he landed in the state psychiatric hospital, where he is, sadly, thrilled to be.

“Seventeen times of trying to commit suicide, I think it’s time to give up,” Mr. Ross said, speaking in the forensic unit of the Mayview State Hospital in Bridgeville. “Lots of them were screaming out cries for help, and nobody paid attention. But finally somebody has.”

Finding a Way Out

Fayette County in southwestern Pennsylvania, once a prosperous coal mining center, is now one of the poorest counties in the state. The bucolic but ramshackle town of Dunbar sits off State Route 119 near the intersection marked by the Butchko Brothers junkyard.

Past the railroad tracks and not far up Hardy Hill Road, the blackened remains of Mr. Ross’s hillside trailer are testament to his disintegration. The Support our Troops ribbon is charred, the No Trespassing sign unfazed.

Mr. Ross lived in that trailer, where his father shot his stepmother, at several points in his life, including alone after he returned from Iraq. Its most recent tenant, his younger brother, Thomas, was in jail when the fire occurred.

Many in Mr. Ross’s large, quarreling family are on one side of the law or the other, prison guards or prisoners, police officers or probationers. Their internal feuds are so commonplace that family reunions have to be carefully plotted with an eye to who has a protective order out against whom, Mr. Ross’s 25-year-old cousin, Joseph Lee Ross, joked.

Sam Ross’s childhood was not easy. “Sam’s had a rough life from the time he was born,” his grandfather, Joseph Frank Ross, said. His parents fought, sometimes with guns, until they separated and his mother moved out of state. Mr. Ross bore some of the brunt of the turmoil.

“When that kid was little, the way he got beat around, it was awful,” his uncle, Joseph Frank Ross Jr., a prison guard, said.

When he was just shy of 12, Mr. Ross moved in with his father’s father, who for a time was married to his mother’s mother. The grandfather-grandson relationship was and continues to be tumultuous.

“I idolized my grandpaps, but he’s an alcoholic and he mentally abuses people,” Mr. Ross said.

His grandfather, 72, a former coal miner who sells used cars, said, “I’m not an alcoholic. I can quit. I just love the taste of it.”

The grandfather, who still keeps an A-plus English test by Mr. Ross on his refrigerator, said his grandson did well in school, even though he cared most about his wrestling team, baseball, hunting and fishing. Mr. Ross graduated in June 2001.

“Sammy wanted me to pay his way to college, but I’m not financially fixed to do that,” his grandfather said.

Feeling that Fayette County was a dead end, Mr. Ross said he had wanted to find a way out after he graduated. One night in late 2001, he said, he saw “one of those ‘Be all you can be’ ads” on television. The next day, he went to the mall and enlisted, getting a $3,000 bonus for signing up to be a combat engineer.

From his first days of basic training, Mr. Ross embraced the military as his salvation. “It was like, ‘Wow, man, I was born for the Army,’ ” he said. “I was an adrenaline junkie. I was super, super fit. I craved discipline. I wanted adventure. I was patriotic. I loved the bonding. And there was nothing that I was feared of. I mean, man, I was made for war.”

In early 2003, Private Ross, who earned his jump wings as a parachutist, shipped off to Kuwait with the 82nd Airborne Division, which pushed into Iraq with the invasion in March. The early days of the war were heady for many soldiers like Private Ross, who reveled in the appreciation of Iraqis. He was assigned to an engineer squad given the task of rounding up munitions.

On May 18, Private Ross and his squad set out to de-mine an area in south Baghdad. Moving quickly, as they did on such operations, he collected about 15 UXO’s, or unexploded ordnances, in a pit. Somehow, something — he never learned what — caused them to detonate.

“The initial blast hit me and I went numb and everything went totally silent,” he said. “Then I hear people start hollering, ‘Ross! Ross! Ross!’ It started getting louder, louder, louder. My whole body was mangled. I was spitting up blood. I faded in and out. I was bawling my eyes out, saying, ‘Please don’t let me go; don’t let me go.’ ”

A Casualty of War

When his relatives first saw Mr. Ross at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, he was in a coma. “That boy was dead,” his grandfather said. “We was looking at a corpse lying in that bed.”

As he lay unconscious, the Army discharged him — one year, four months and 18 days after he enlisted, by his calculation. After 31 days, Mr. Ross came off the respirator. Groggily but insistently, he pointed to his eyes and then to his leg. An aunt gingerly told him he was blind and an amputee. He cried for days, he said.

It was during Mr. Ross’s stay at Walter Reed that Representative Murtha, a former Marine colonel, first met his young constituent and presented him with a Purple Heart.

From the start of the war, Mr. Murtha said in an interview, he made regular, painful excursions to visit wounded soldiers. Gradually, those visits, combined with his disillusionment about the Bush administration’s management of the war, led him to call in late 2005 for the troops to be brought home in six months.

“Sam Ross had an impact on me,” Mr. Murtha said. “Eventually, I just felt that we had gotten to a point where we were talking so much about winning the war itself — and it couldn’t be won militarily — that we were forgetting about the results of the war on individuals like Sam.”

Over the next three years, Mr. Ross underwent more than 20 surgical procedures, including: “Five on my right eye, one on my left eye, two or three when they cut my left leg off, three or four on my right leg, a couple on my throat, skin grafts, chest tubes and, you know, one where they gutted me from belly button to groin” to remove metal fragments from his intestines.

But, although he was prescribed psychiatric medication, he never received in-patient treatment for the post-traumatic stress disorder that was diagnosed at Walter Reed. And, in retrospect he, like his relatives, said he believes he should have been put in an intensive program soon after his urgent physical injuries were addressed.

“They should have given him treatment before they let him come back into civilization,” his grandfather said.

A Hero’s Welcome

The parade, on a sunny day in late summer 2003, was spectacular. Hundreds of flag-waving locals lined the streets. Mr. Ross had just turned 21. Wearing his green uniform and burgundy beret, he rode in a Jeep, accompanied by other veterans and the Connellsville Area Senior High School Marching Band. The festivities included bagpipers, Civil War re-enactors and a dunking pool.

“It wasn’t the medals on former Army Pfc. Sam Ross’s uniform that reflected his courage yesterday,” The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote. “It was the Dunbar native’s poise as he greeted well-wishers and insisted on sharing attention with other soldiers that proved the grit he’ll need to recover from extensive injuries he suffered in Iraq.”

For a little while, “it was joy joy, happiness happiness,” Mr. Ross said. He felt the glimmerings of a new kind of potential within himself, and saw no reason why he could not go on to college, even law school. Then the black moods, the panic attacks, the irritability set in. He was dogged by chronic pain; fragments of metal littered his body.

Mr. Ross said he was “stuck in denial” about his disabilities. The day he tried to resume a favorite pastime, fishing, hit him hard. Off-balance on the water, it came as a revelation that, without eyesight, he did not know where to cast his rod. He threw his equipment in the water and sold his boat.

“I just gave up,” he said. “I give up on everything.”

About a year after he was injured, Mr. Ross enrolled in an in-patient program for blind veterans in Chicago. He learned the Braille alphabet, but his fingers were too numb from embedded shrapnel to read, he said. He figured that he did not have much else to learn since he had been functioning blind for a year. He left the program early.

Similarly, Mr. Ross repeatedly declined outpatient psychiatric treatment at the veterans hospital in Pittsburgh, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. He said he felt that people at the hospital had disrespected him.

After living with relatives, Mr. Ross withdrew from the world into the trailer on the hill in 2004. That year, he got into a dispute with his grandfather over old vehicles on the property, resolving it by setting them on fire. His run-ins with local law enforcement, which did not occur before he went to Iraq, the Fayette County sheriff said, had begun.

But his image locally had not yet been tarnished. In early 2005, Mr. Murtha held a second Purple Heart ceremony for Mr. Ross at a Fayette County hospital “to try to show him how much affection we had for him and his sacrifice,” Mr. Murtha said.

A local newspaper article about Mr. Ross’s desire to build himself a house came to the attention of Homes for Our Troops.

“He’s a great kid; he really is,” said Kirt Rebello, the group’s director of projects and veterans affairs. “Early on, even before he was injured, the kid had this humongous deck stacked against him in life. That’s one of the reasons we wanted to help him.”

Mr. Ross, who had received a $100,000 government payment for his catastrophic injury, bought land adjacent to his grandfather’s. Mr. Rebello asked Mr. Ross whether he might prefer to move to somewhere with more services and opportunities. But Mr. Ross said that Dunbar’s winding roads were implanted in his psyche, “that he could see the place in his mind,” Mr. Rebello said.

A Life Falls Apart

In May 2005, Mr. Ross broke up with a girlfriend and grew increasingly depressed. He felt oppressively idle, he said. One day, he tacked a suicide note to the door of his trailer and hitched a ride to a trail head, disappearing into the woods. A daylong manhunt ensued.

Mr. Ross fell asleep in the woods that night, waking up with the sun on his face, which he took to be a sign that God wanted him to live. When he was found, he was taken to a psychiatric ward and released after a few weeks.

The construction of his house proved a distraction from his misery. Mr. Ross enjoyed the camaraderie of the volunteers who fashioned him a cabin from white pine logs. But when the house, which he named Second Heaven, was finished in early 2006, “they all left, I moved in and I was all alone,” he said. “That’s when the drugs really started.”

At first, Mr. Ross said, he used drugs — pills, heroin, crack and methadone — “basically to mellow myself out and to have people around.” Local ne’er-do-wells enjoyed themselves on Mr. Ross’s tab for quite some time, his relatives said.

“These kids were loading him into a car, taking him to strip clubs, letting him foot the bills,” his uncle, Joseph Ross Jr., said. “They were dopies and druggies.”

Mr. Ross’s girlfriend, Barbara Hall, moved in with him. But relationships with many of his relatives had deteriorated.

“If that boy would have come home and accepted what happened to him, that boy never would have wanted for anything in Dunbar,” his grandfather said. “If he had accepted that he’s wounded and he’s blinded, you know? He’s not the only one that happened to. There’s hundreds of boys like him.”

Some sympathy began to erode in the town, too. “There’s pro and con on him,” a local official said. “Some people don’t even believe he’s totally blind.”

After overdosing first on heroin and then on methadone last fall, Mr. Ross said, he quit consuming illegal drugs, replacing them with drinking until he blacked out.

Mr. Ross relied on his brother, Thomas, when he suffered panic attacks. When Thomas was jailed earlier this year, Mr. Ross reached out to older members of his family. In early February, his uncle, Joseph Ross Jr., persuaded him to be driven several hours to the veterans’ hospital in Coatesville to apply for its in-patient program for post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Due to the severity of his case, they accepted him on the spot and gave him a bed date for right after Valentine’s Day,” his uncle said. “Then he wigged out five days before he was supposed to go there.”

It started when his brother’s girlfriend, Monica Kuhns, overheard a phone call in which he was arranging to buy antidepressants. She thought it was a transaction to buy cocaine, he said, and he feared that she would tell his sister and brother.

After downing several beers, Mr. Ross, in a deranged rage, went to his old trailer, where Ms. Kuhns was living with her young son, he said.

“He started pounding on the door,” said Ms. Hall, who accompanied him. “He went in and threatened to burn the place down. Me and Monica didn’t actually think he was going to do it. But then he pulled out the lighter.”

Having convinced himself that the trailer — a source of so much family misery — needed to be destroyed, Mr. Ross set a pile of clothing on fire. The women and the child fled. When a volunteer firefighter showed up, Mr. Ross attacked and choked him, according to a police complaint.

A judge set bail at $250,000. In the Fayette County prison, Mr. Ross got “totally out of hand,” the sheriff, Gary Brownfield, said. Mr. Ross’s lawyer, James Geibig, said the situation was a chaotic mess.

“It was just a nightmare,” Mr. Geibig said. “First the underlying charges — attempted homicide, come on — were blown out of proportion. Then bail is set sky high, straight cash. They put him in a little cell, in isolation, and barely let him shower. Things went from bad to worse until they found him hanging.”

Now Mr. Geibig’s goal is to get Mr. Ross sentenced into the post-traumatic stress disorder program he was supposed to attend.

“He does not need to be in jail,” Mr. Geibig said. “He has suffered enough. I’m not a bleeding heart, but his is a pretty gut-wrenching tale. And at the end, right before this incident, he sought out help. It didn’t arrive in time. But it’s not too late, I hope, for Sam Ross to have some kind of future.”

    Injured in Iraq, a Soldier Is Shattered at Home, NYT, 5.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/us/05VET.html?hp

10 - Year - Olds Accused in Homeless Beating

March 30, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:34 p.m. ET
The New York Times

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- A homeless day laborer was recovering in a hospital Friday after two 10-year-old boys and an older teen were charged with attacking him on a street and smashing a concrete block into his face.

The three boys, each charged with aggravated battery, face a hearing next week to determine if they should remain in juvenile detention. At their first court appearance, the two younger boys were escorted from jail in oversized white jumpsuits, their hands chained in front of them and their legs in shackles.

''They are dangerous,'' the victim, John D'Amico, told The Associated Press from his hospital bed. ''The street doesn't need them. They need to be somewhere.''

D'Amico said he was walking with a friend through a Daytona Beach neighborhood just before 9 p.m. Tuesday when the trio on bicycles started throwing sand and small rocks at them.

Then they got off their bikes and started throwing larger rocks, he said.

D'Amico said he fell into a wall after the 17-year-old punched him in the face, breaking the brick wall. One of the 10-year-olds then slammed a piece of the broken wall onto his face, he said.

''They were big kids for their age,'' D'Amico told the AP. ''The little kid was taunting me. The big kid came over and just slugged me. If they just would have let me walk on, I would have walked on.''

D'Amico has had reconstructive surgery on his face since the attack. He said he didn't think he was targeted simply for being homeless.

''I don't look that homeless. I'm not really dirty, slobby homeless,'' he said. ''I'm familiar in the neighborhood. I don't know these kids, never seen them before.''

Police didn't return a phone message left Friday seeking comment, and no parents were in the courtroom during the boys' first appearance before a judge Wednesday.

A police report shows the parents were notified of the boys' arrests.

''For a 10-year-old to pick up a cinder block and smash somebody's face with it, that defies logic,'' police Chief Michael Chitwood told The Daytona Beach News-Journal on Thursday. He said the court system needs to take a close look at the children's backgrounds and families.

It was not immediately clear if the boys had attorneys. A message left with the public defenders office was not immediately returned.

    10 - Year - Olds Accused in Homeless Beating, NYT, 30.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Homeless-Beating.html

Bank Robbery Turns to Standoff Nearby

March 27, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:10 p.m. ET
The New York Times

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- A SWAT team poured into an office building across from a bank robbery scene Tuesday after a caller threatened to start shooting people if a suspect arrested at the bank wasn't released.

The robbery at the Commercial Bank of Florida happened around 10:30 a.m., and police later arrested a man. Shortly after that, the bank received the threatening phone call, said police spokesman Bobby Hernandez.

At about the same time, people ran out of an office building across the street saying there were two men with guns, Hernandez said.

The FBI sent a SWAT team, hostage negotiators and agents with bomb-sniffing dogs, though it wasn't clear if there were any hostages, FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela said. It also wasn't clear if the threats to shoot people in the building were real.

Police have been communicating with an individual using a cell phone who may be inside the building, Hernandez said. He gave no other details.

    Bank Robbery Turns to Standoff Nearby, NYT, 27.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bank-Robbery.html

Sheriff: Slain student burned on grill

24.3.2007
USA Today
AP

HOUSTON (AP) — A 19-year-old Texas A&M University student was killed by her ex-boyfriend, who then dismembered and burned her body on a patio grill, authorities said Saturday.

Investigators say Timothy Wayne Shepherd, 27, confessed Wednesday to strangling Tynesha Stewart because he was angry she had begun a new relationship. Shepherd, who is charged with murder, is being held on $250,000 bond.

"We have determined through this investigation that the defendant dismembered Tynesha Stewart and. .. he burned the body parts," Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas said. "There are no remaining body parts."

The announcement Saturday ended a debate in the Houston area about whether law-enforcement officials should launch a massive and expensive search of the area's overflowing landfills in hopes of finding Stewart's remains.

Officials first thought that the body had been disposed in a large commercial trash bin that had since been emptied.

Sheriff's investigators had decided against launching a costly and time-consuming search for Stewart's remains, angering her family and friends. Complaints from activists and lawmakers prompted Thomas to get emergency approval to spend up to $500,000 for a search.

Thomas said he knew, but could not disclose, that there were no body parts to find. He said investigators were unable to release that information to the public or to Stewart's family because of the investigation. Stewart's family has since been advised, and understands why there will be no search, Thomas said.

Stewart, a college freshman from Houston, was last seen with Shepherd on March 15 while she was home for spring break visiting her mother. Friends have said Stewart and Shepherd quit dating at the beginning of this school year.

Shepherd's attorney, Chip Lewis, has not returned calls for comment. Thomas said Stewart's family has asked for privacy and will not respond to calls from the media.

Authorities did not give any more details about how they believe the slaying occurred, but said nothing remains of Stewart. Although human remains generally require extremely high temperatures to destroy, he would not discuss how he believed the body could be burned to nothing.

    Sheriff: Slain student burned on grill, UT, 24.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-03-24-grilled-student_N.htm

Guardian Angels Seek Out More Mean Streets

March 22, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL WILSON

It began in 1979 at a McDonald’s in the Bronx where they all worked, 13 men living on little more than unsold hamburgers. It was a citizens’ watch group with a paramilitary look, part nosy misfit and part kung-fu: the Guardian Angels.

They set up headquarters in Hell’s Kitchen and patrolled Times Square when it was a skid row. Some appreciated their efforts, others thought they were clowns or, what’s worse, thugs. Their red berets became as common as graffiti and squeegee men, and the group was reviled by the city’s administration. Mayor Edward I. Koch dismissed them as vigilantes.

But skid row is gone: New York City has experienced an impressive drop in crime. Hell’s Kitchen needed its building back, because everyone wants to live there now. The organization’s major annual fund-raiser last year was a gala dinner June 6 at Cipriani 42nd Street. Waiters passed with trays of bellinis and risotto dishes, while the group’s leader and founder, Curtis Sliwa, attired in a tuxedo, introduced Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to the crowd. The mayor thanked the group and said, “They make our streets safer.”

It was a long way from McDonald’s, but the venue was not the only change. In an act of reinvention and expansion that would have been hard to imagine 28 years ago, the Guardian Angels has broadened its presence around the country, with more than 50 chapters established in places like Peoria, Ill.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Toledo, Ohio; and Opa-Locka, Fla. Mr. Sliwa seems to spend as much time on airplanes as he once did patrolling subways.

If Times Square, as it is often said, is the new Disney World, then Main Street is the new Times Square.

“Those are war zones,” Mr. Sliwa said, speaking of gang violence in Florida with the verbal bluster he has perfected as a radio host. The existence of chapters outside New York is not new, but the number is on the rise.

Exporting a New York image can be jarring, as men who once walked blocks of peep shows and prostitutes now must explain their mission all over again, under Spanish moss or inside Baptist churches. As with any franchise, there are mixed successes; some recent comments about the group echoed those made decades ago when they were formed. Are they vigilantes or volunteer saviors? Visits to two chapters, in Savannah, Ga., and Montgomery, Ala., showed a tug of war between good intentions and reality.

Norman Whipple, 48, joined the Guardian Angels in Philadelphia in 1980, leaving 10 years later for Savannah, where he went to work at the airport as a baggage handler for AirTran Airways. “He said, ‘Oh man, I’m going down here to ‘Leave It to Beaver’ land,’ ” Mr. Sliwa said. “He figured his Guardian Angels days had passed him by.”

But in 2003, a stained glass artist, Gerald Schantz, alarmed by the rise in crime in downtown Savannah and nearby neighborhoods, called Mr. Sliwa. “If you look at the numbers and you’re not one of the numbers, we don’t have a crime problem,” Mr. Schantz said recently. “But if your car’s been broken into or your girlfriend’s been hassled while she’s walking around, then we do.”

Mr. Whipple, more than 10 years and a few extra pounds distant from the last time he put on a beret, dropped by the first meetings.

“I met the guys and said I’d help them out with the chapter,” he said. “I ended up becoming the chapter leader.”

Gary Borum, 44, a bouncer, left Hempstead on Long Island to start a chapter in Colorado Springs in 2000. “They think Guardian Angels are a bunch of thugs, but that’s not the case,” he said. “People are scared because they’ve got a big gang problem out here. This town’s backwards. It reminds me of something from back in the ’60s. They want to expand and they don’t want the big city problems, but guess what? They have them.”

“If I had a choice, I’d be back in Long Island, I swear,” he said. “But it’s too expensive there.”

Mr. Whipple loves Savannah, but the work of being an Angel is not the same as when he started out. Eleven people joined the chapter in 2003, and six or eight members regularly patrolled for a time, but interest seems to have dropped. When people join, they “find it’s not what they’re expecting,” Mr. Whipple said. The mindset of the volunteers has changed since the us-against-them attitude that existed in Philadelphia 20 years ago, he said.

“It was an honor if someone tapped your shoulder and said, ‘Put on a T-shirt. You’re going out on patrol,’ ” Mr. Whipple said. “Now, they think they deserve to go out on patrol.”

He tries to get out once a week, on Saturdays, and usually has just one member with him. They spend more time giving directions to tourists than chasing muggers. The mayor at the time the chapter began, Floyd Adams, was not thrilled about their arrival.

“They came in, organized some citizens who felt there was an extra need of protection, and they took advantage of that need. It was short lived,” said Mr. Adams, who left office in 2004. “This is the most beautiful city in the world. Better than New York.”

In Montgomery, the Angels began making inroads last year. An analyst with the National Guard named DeUndra Christopher, 29, had recently risen to some prominence after a public reconciliation with another woman who had stabbed her in the chest, almost fatally, 11 years earlier. The stabber, Shyvat Cooper, 16 at the time, served a year and a half in prison, and after they reconciled — at a family funeral — they organized stop-the-violence rallies. Then, when Ms. Christopher saw a television news report about the Guardian Angels, she called Mr. Sliwa.

Several months later, in February, three members of the Guardian Angels arrived in Montgomery for two days of patrolling and recruiting. They drove to a blighted neighborhood near downtown, where a house marked “Bad Boys Boxing Gym” leaned so badly it could have been doubling as the heavy bag. They parked, and walked about in red jackets and berets, their arms swinging stiffly at their sides, powerlifter style, and handcuffs clinking on their belts.

They looked like grand marshals of a parade that no one was watching. They had better luck the next day. The ranking member, Frank Lee, who started out patrolling New York City, approached some women watching their toddlers play in the grass outside the Victor Tulane Court housing projects and asked, “How you all doing? Enjoying the nice weather?”

When the Angels walked away, one of the women, Tawana Tellis, 26, said, “I don’t know anything about them.” Her friend, Lazandra Watson, 24, replied, “They’re like that Dog on TV,” referring to a reality show about a bounty hunter.

They visited a shopping mall and met a young security officer with a crewcut.

“You ever have to run anyone down?” one of the Angels, a bounty hunter from Chattanooga who goes by the name Flute, asked.

“Oh, all the time,” the officer said.

“That’s awesome, man,” Flute said.

That night, Feb. 22, they held a training session in a Baptist church for people who had attended a first meeting in October. But no one from the first meeting returned. Besides the pastor and a church member doing electrical work for him, only one other man attended: a 48-year-old retired auto worker from Michigan the three Angels had met that afternoon.

Mr. Lee ran through some of the basics nevertheless: hand signals, the history of the uniform. “This jacket does not stop a bullet,” he warned. “Ask Curtis. He’s been shot by the mob.” He demonstrated some self-defense moves on a junior member, tipping him to the floor by painfully manipulating his wrist.

Mr. Lee said he was not discouraged by the turnout. “If three people showed up tonight, or 300, if I get to just one. ...” he said, eyeing a possible recruit in the young electrician. Then he and the other two Angels piled into their rental car and headed back to their hotel.

    Guardian Angels Seek Out More Mean Streets, G, 22.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/nyregion/22guardians.html

Minn. Police Investigate Dog Beheading

March 15, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:51 a.m. ET
The New York Times

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- A 17-year-old girl who spent weeks looking for her missing dog unwrapped a box left on her doorstep and found the pet's severed head inside, authorities said.

Homicide investigators were looking into the case because of the ''implied'' terroristic threat, St. Paul Police Sgt. Jim Gray said. The Humane Society of the United States said Wednesday it was offering a reward of up to $2,500 for information leading to an arrest and conviction.

''This was extraordinarily heinous,'' said Dale Bartlett, the Humane Society's deputy manager for animal cruelty issues. ''I deal with hundreds and hundreds of cruelty cases each year. When I read about this case, it took my breath away. It's horrible.''

After Crystal Brown's 4-year-old Australian shepherd mix wandered away last month, she put up ''missing'' posters in her neighborhood and went door to door looking for him. She called the St. Paul animal shelter and rode the bus there several times.

''I felt empty,'' Crystal told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis. ''I couldn't talk to anyone. He was my dog. It was just me and him. ... I told him everything and he never shared any of my secrets.''

Two weeks ago, a gift-wrapped box was left at the house Crystal shares with her grandmother. The box had batteries on top, and a note that said ''Congratulations Crystal. This side up. Batteries included.''

Crystal opened the box and found her dog's head inside. The box also contained Valentine's Day candy.

Crystal screamed when she saw her dog's face.

''She was just hysterical,'' said Crystal's grandmother, Shirley Brown. ''She was screaming. She said, 'Grandma, it's my dog's head!'

''I said, 'no it can't be!'''

Authorities say the case is an isolated incident and the suspect likely knew the family. A motive is unclear.

''This was so cruel,'' Crystal said. ''This is one sick, twisted person.''

    Minn. Police Investigate Dog Beheading, NYT, 15.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Beheaded-Dog.html

N.Y. mugger sought after attacks on elderly women

Mon Mar 12, 2007 12:14PM EDT
Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York's streets and newspapers were flooded on Sunday with pictures of a mugger who has attacked at least two elderly women in the borough of Queens, including one who is 101 years old.

The other woman was an 85-year-old who uses a walker. Both were recovering from the violent robberies, which occurred a week ago in different apartment buildings but only reported over the weekend.

Rose Morat, 101, told the New York Post she wished she could have fought back: "Fifteen years ago, we would have had a tussle."

Both women were robbed of less than $35, and Morat suffered a fractured cheekbone during the attack which was captured by cameras. The other was robbed of two rings including her wedding ring.

Police distributed pictures of a suspect, a black male, taken from surveillance video.

"We are pulling out all the stops to find him," said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. A police fraternal organization offered a $1,000 reward on Sunday, and callers have made some 1,000 calls to tip lines, some of which provided leads, Kelly said.

Surveillance video from one of the muggings in a Queens apartment building captured part of one attack and has been posted on several local media Web sites and shown to all Queens police officers and many in Brooklyn in recent days, police said.

    N.Y. mugger sought after attacks on elderly women, NYT, 12.3.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1126492620070312

Violent Crime in Cities Shows Sharp Surge

March 9, 2007
The New York Times
By KATE ZERNIKE

Violent crime rose by double-digit percentages in cities across the country over the last two years, reversing the declines of the mid-to-late 1990s, according to a new report by a prominent national law enforcement association.

While overall crime has been declining nationwide, police officials have been warning of a rise in murder, robbery and gun assaults since late 2005, particularly in midsize cities and the Midwest. Now, they say, two years of data indicates that the spike is more than an aberration.

“There are pockets of crime in this country that are astounding,” said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which is releasing the report on Friday. “It’s gone under the radar screen, but it’s not if you’re living on the north side of Minneapolis or the south side of Los Angeles or in Dorchester, Mass.”

Local police departments blame several factors: the spread of methamphetamine use in some Midwestern and Western cities, gangs, high poverty and a record number of people being released from prison. But the biggest theme, they say, is easy access to guns and a willingness, even an eagerness, to settle disputes with them, particularly among young people.

“There’s a mentality among some people that they’re living some really violent video game,” said Chris Magnus, the police chief in Richmond, Calif., north of San Francisco, where homicides rose 20 percent and gun assaults 65 percent from 2004 to 2006. “What’s disturbing is that you see that the blood’s real, the death’s real.”

The research forum surveyed 56 cities and sheriffs’ departments — as small as Appleton Wis., about 100 miles northwest of Milwaukee, and as large as Chicago and Houston. Over all, from 2004 to 2006, homicides increased 10 percent and robberies 12 percent.

Aggravated assault, which is usually accompanied by the use of a weapon or by a means likely to produce severe injury or death, according to an F.B.I. Web site, increased at a relatively modest 3 percent, but aggravated assaults with guns rose 10 percent. And some cities saw far higher spikes.

Homicides increased 20 percent or more in cities including Boston, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Hartford, Memphis and Orlando, Fla. Robberies went up more than 30 percent in places including Detroit, Fort Wayne, Ind., and Milwaukee. Aggravated assaults with guns were up more than 30 percent in cities like Boston, Sacramento, St. Louis and Rochester.

Seventy-one percent of the cities surveyed had an increase in homicides, 80 percent had an increase in robberies, and 67 percent reported an increase in aggravated assaults with guns.

This study relies on numbers from cities, rather than yearly F.B.I. totals, which are typically released in the fall. The group collected similar numbers last year, and those numbers were largely borne out by the data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Police chiefs say the trends in aggravated assaults are particularly alarming. They are often considered a better gauge of violence than homicides; the difference between the two is often poor marksmanship or good medical care.

“Had we not had some of the trauma rooms we have here in Rochester, our homicide numbers would be higher,” said Mayor Robert Duffy, who served as a police chief for seven years.

While murder rates hit 11-year highs in places like Boston, police officials note that they are not seeing the highs of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when crack cocaine fueled spikes, particularly in large cities. Some cities like Denver and Washington had declines in homicides.

Still, the overall trend is mirrored in other places not covered by the report. New York City, for example, which had enjoyed remarkable declines and seemed immune to the rising murder rate elsewhere in 2005, reported a 10 percent increase in homicides in 2006. In Chicago, which had been cited as another model of declining violence, homicides rose 4 percent from 2004 to 2006.

Police officials say the violence tends to happen among young men in their late teens and early to mid-20s. In some cases, it is random. But in many cases, it is among people who know one another, or between gangs, as a way to settle disputes. Arguments that 20 years ago would have led to fistfights, police chiefs say, now lead to guns.

“There’s really no rhyme or reason with these homicides,” said Edward Davis, the police commissioner in Boston. “An incident will occur involving disrespect, a fight over a girl. Then there’s a retaliation aspect where if someone shoots someone else; their friends will come back and shoot at the people that did it.”

In Richmond, Chief Magnus said he would often go to the scene of a crime and discover that 30 to 75 rounds had been fired. “It speaks to the level of anger, the indiscriminate nature of the violence,” he said.

“I go to meetings, and you start talking to some of the people in the neighborhoods about who’s been a victim of violence, and people can start reciting: ‘One of my sons was killed, one of my nephews,’ ” he said. “It’s hard to find people who haven’t been touched by this kind of violence.”

Many chiefs blame the federal government for reducing police programs that they say helped cut crime in the 1990s. But they also say the problem is economic and social. “We seem to be dealing with an awful lot of people who have zero conflict-resolution skills,” Chief Magnus said.

In Rochester, Mr. Duffy said his city had the state’s highest dropout rate — half of all students drop out— and the highest child poverty rate, with 40 percent of children under 18 living below poverty level.

“There’s a direct correlation between the kids who drop out of our high schools who get involved in selling drugs and who end up in homicides,” Mr. Duffy said.

As a police chief, Mr. Duffy brought in programs that had reduced crime in other cities: a project cease-fire to end gun violence, a Compstat data collection program to identify the areas of most stubborn crime. But it has not helped.

“We’re doing all the right things consistently, but we have not seen relief,” he said. “It takes much more than law enforcement.”

    Violent Crime in Cities Shows Sharp Surge, NYT, 9.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/us/09crime.html?hp

Scared Silent

With Witnesses at Risk,

Murder Suspects Go Free

March 1, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

NEWARK, Feb. 27 — When Yusef Johnson, a 15-year-old honors student, was killed outside an apartment complex here so gang-infested it is known as Crazyville, a witness came forward within days and told the police she knew the man she had seen fire the fatal shots.

In another case three months later, in November 2005, officers found two people who identified a street gang leader as the man they saw kill a marijuana dealer named Valterez Coley during a dispute over a woman.

And when Isaiah Stewart, a 17-year-old wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet from a recent brush with the law, was gunned down that December, another Newark teenager sketched a diagram of the crime scene, correctly identified the murder weapon and named a former classmate as the person he had watched commit the crime.

They seem like slam-dunk cases, but none of the three suspects have been arrested. It is not that detectives are unsure of their identity or cannot find them. Rather, it is because so many recent cases here have been scuttled when witnesses were scared silent that the Essex County prosecutor has established an unwritten rule discouraging pursuit of cases that rely on a single witness, and those in which witness statements are not extensively corroborated by forensic evidence.

The 3 are among at least 14 recent murders in Newark in which witnesses have clearly identified the killers but no charges have been filed, infuriating local police commanders and victims’ relatives.

In 8 of the 14 cases, according to court documents and police reports, there was more than one witness; in two of them, off-duty police officers were among those identifying the suspects. But in a DNA era, these are cases with little or no physical evidence, and they often involve witnesses whose credibility could be compromised by criminal history or drug problems, or both.

“No one wants to solve these cases and lock up the killers in these cases more than we do,” the county prosecutor, Paula T. Dow, said in a recent interview. “But we have to weigh the evidence and move forward only if we believe that the witnesses are credible and that they’ll be there to testify at trial.”

The tension between the police and prosecutors here over the evolving standards of evidence required to authorize arrest warrants is a stark example of the profound effect witness intimidation is having on the criminal justice system in New Jersey and across the country.

Surveys conducted by the National Youth Gang Center, which is financed by the federal Department of Justice, have found that 88 percent of urban prosecutors describe witness intimidation as a serious problem.

In both Baltimore and Boston, where “stop snitching” campaigns by rap artists and gang leaders have urged city residents not to cooperate with the authorities, prosecutors estimate that witnesses face some sort of intimidation in 80 percent of all homicide cases.

In Essex County, prosecutors report that witnesses in two-thirds of their homicides receive overt threats not to testify, with defendants and their supporters sometimes canvassing witnesses’ neighborhoods wearing T-shirts printed with the witnesses’ photographs or distributing copies of their statements to the police.

Dozens of New Jersey murder cases have been undone over the past five years after witnesses were killed, disappeared before trial or changed their stories.

In 2004, the Newark police determined that four people found dead in a vacant lot had been killed to silence a witness to a murder; a witness to that quadruple homicide was later shot to death as well.

Ms. Dow, who was appointed in 2003 amid criticism of county prosecutors’ ability to close cases, said she was simply adapting to the evolving code on the streets, where gang violence and widespread distrust of law enforcement have deprived prosecutors of one of the legal system’s most crucial components: dependable witnesses.

The state’s attorney in Baltimore, where witness intimidation is a notorious problem, has taken an even more rigid stand, refusing to file charges in any single-witness case without extensive forensic corroboration.

But that approach differs sharply from those of prosecutors in many other urban areas, like Brooklyn, where the district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, has in recent years taken to reviewing all single-witness cases personally.

In Newark, where the homicide rate has risen in the past few years, the police, local politicians and victims’ relatives are all questioning why prosecutors are holding detectives to a higher standard than the law requires — and letting dangerous criminals remain on the streets.

“How can they leave him out there?” asked Yusef’s mother, Tosha Braswell, referring to the man who shot him. “Are they waiting for him to kill someone else’s son?”

Tension Between Officials

Newark’s mayor, Cory A. Booker, who was elected last year on a promise to reduce crime in the city, recently met with Ms. Dow to ask her to be more aggressive in filing charges. In recent years Newark police officials have accused the prosecutor of being reluctant to take on cases that could be difficult to win because her office was criticized after losing a succession of high-profile trials.

The police director, Garry F. McCarthy, worries that the prosecutor’s approach undermines his crime-fighting strategy of focusing on the small group of criminals responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime.

“The law states the standard for arrest is probable cause, which is different than what is required for conviction beyond a reasonable doubt,” Mr. McCarthy said. “Our goal is to arrest quickly to avoid the potential for additional crime. An arrest does not prevent an ongoing investigation from proceeding.”

Ms. Dow declined to discuss details of any open cases. But she said that she was proud of her office’s performance, and that she hoped her rigorous standards for filing charges would lead investigators to work harder at getting corroboration.

“It’s easy for the police to point fingers when they haven’t done enough detective work to get a conviction,” she said.

In Essex County, the conviction rate for homicides, which includes plea agreements, was 79 percent in 2006, up from 74 percent when Ms. Dow took over three years earlier (but down from 86 percent in 2005 and 83 percent in 2004).

In Baltimore, prosecutors under Patricia C. Jessamy, the state’s attorney, obtained convictions in 65 percent of homicide cases last year, up from 59 percent in 2005 and 52 percent in 2004.

While prosecutors are often measured by such conviction rates, it is difficult to tell through statistics whether they are shying from hard-to-win cases.

What most irks the police is the failure to even file charges in cases in which witnesses have solidly identified a suspect, like the 14 here in Newark over the past three years in which Ms. Dow has declined to authorize arrest warrants. Six of these cases rely on a single witness, including the slayings of Yusef Johnson and Valterez Coley.

Yusef was a football star with a 3.7 grade-point average before he was killed in August 2005. According to police reports, a woman told detectives she had seen the shooting from 30 feet away and was well acquainted with the gunman, a member of the Crips street gang, because he frequently sold cocaine to her.

The case helps illustrate why prosecutors may shy away from single-witness cases: Given the suspect’s status as both a gang member and the witness’s drug supplier, even detectives have their doubts about whether the woman would ultimately testify at trial — or be believed.

On the night Mr. Coley was gunned down near a porch in Newark’s Central Ward, two men told the police they had seen the gunman, whom they identified as a leader of the 252 Bloods street gang. The witnesses said the gunman was looking to settle a score with a young man who had a relationship with his girlfriend, and mistook Mr. Coley for his rival.

But one of the men soon fled the state, leaving the police with a lone witness — and thus no charges have been brought.

Danger in Cooperation

Gregory DeMattia, chief of the Essex County prosecutor’s homicide division, said his investigators saw fallout from witness intimidation every day. When they arrive at a crime scene, he said, bystanders scatter so neighbors will not think they are cooperating with the police.

Those who do help often do so surreptitiously — leaving detectives a note in a trash can or asking to be taken away in handcuffs “so that neighbors will think they’re in trouble with the police and not cooperating,” Mr. DeMattia said.

Prosecutors in other cities tell similar stories about their witnesses being pressured, and say they are cautious about pursuing cases based on lone witnesses because of worries about faulty memory, ulterior motives and, as in the Yusef Johnson case, credibility.

That is part of why Ms. Jessamy, in Baltimore, has all but refused to file charges in single-witness situations.

But across Maryland in Prince George’s County, where there is also a serious gang problem, State’s Attorney Glenn F. Ivey has taken the opposite tack. He insists on pursuing single-witness cases even though he was criticized publicly for losing 4 of them in 13 months.

“If you have a single witness and you believe their story, I believe you’ve got to go forward, even if it’s a case you might lose,” said Mr. Ivey, whose office’s conviction rate on homicides is more than 80 percent. “I’m not going to give the gang members, the murderers and the rapists an easy out. And if they know that all they have to do is get your case down to one witness, I think it would encourage them to use even more intimidation.” Here in Newark, even in cases with multiple witnesses — and occasionally even when one of those witnesses is a police officer — the prosecutor has sometimes been unwilling to authorize arrests.

Take the case of Lloyd Shears, an Army veteran killed during a robbery in December. A man told the police he had seen his neighbor fire the fatal shots. A woman who had been standing next to him told detectives she heard the shots, and then turned to see the neighbor running from the scene. But the neighbor has not been charged.

Or consider the killing of Shamid Wallace, an 18-year-old found face down in the street last August with several gunshot wounds in his torso. Detectives found two witnesses who identified the man they said they saw kill Mr. Wallace. An off-duty Newark police officer heard the gunshots, saw a man fleeing with a gun and later picked the suspect out of a photo array. The suspect has not been arrested.

Then there is Farad Muhammad, who was stabbed to death last July. One witness told the police she had seen someone she knew running away from Mr. Muhammad’s body. An off-duty police officer from neighboring East Orange identified the same man, saying he had seen the suspect chasing Mr. Muhammad with a knife. Again, no charges were filed.

Yusef’s parents, who keep a shrine of photographs surrounding his school sports trophies, still hope that his suspected killer will be arrested soon.

“It’s like they don’t care enough,” said his father, Scottie Edwards, a delivery truck driver.

Wielding Fear Like a Weapon

But to those who suggest Ms. Dow is overreacting to the problem of witness intimidation, her supporters point to the death of Steven Edwards, who was shot and killed in a car on South Eighth Street in January 2006. Within a month, detectives had three witnesses identifying the gunman.

One of the witnesses, a gang member, quickly announced he would never testify for fear he would be ostracized for helping the police — or wind up murdered himself. Six months later, another witness was himself charged in two homicides, shattering any credibility.

The third witness picked the suspect out of a photo array, but immediately began to waver when asked about testifying in open court.

“She would not say she was 100 percent sure,” said a police report on the case, “because she was afraid of retaliation.”

    With Witnesses at Risk, Murder Suspects Go Free, NYT, 1.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/nyregion/01witness.html