Jason Alexander arrived uninvited at pop star’s California home as she got ready to marry Sam Asghari
A man once briefly married to Britney Spears has been convicted of aggravated trespassing and battery after appearing uninvited at the pop star’s wedding in June.
Jason Alexander, 40, pleaded no contest to two misdemeanour counts in a California court, prosecutors in Ventura County said.
Continue reading...Co-founder of Guadalajara cartel was one of FBI’s most-wanted fugitives after being freed from prison in 2013
Rafael Caro Quintero, a drug lord known as “the narco of narcos” who was behind the killing of a US drug enforcement agent in 1985, has been captured by Mexican forces nearly a decade after walking out of prison, according to the country’s navy.
Caro Quintero was arrested after a search dog named Max found him hiding in brush in the town of San Simon in Sinaloa state during a joint operation by the navy and the attorney general’s office, a navy statement said. The site was in the mountains near Sinaloa’s border with the northern border state of Chihuahua.
Continue reading...Robert John Lanoue was charged last week in killing of Anne Pham who disappeared while walking to kindergarten in California
A 70-year-old Nevada man has been charged in the 1982 killing of a five-year-old girl who disappeared while walking to her kindergarten class in California after detectives solved the case using DNA evidence, authorities said.
Robert John Lanoue, of Reno, Nevada, was charged last week in the killing of Anne Pham.
Continue reading...22-year-old breakout star on Netflix’s cheerleading show had pleaded guilty to crimes relating to child abuse images and soliciting sex from minors
Jerry Harris, the star of hit Netflix series Cheer, has been sentenced to 12 years behind bars in the US for crimes relating to child sexual abuse images and soliciting sex from minors.
Prosecutors had urged the lengthy sentence, saying that Harris’s status as a celebrity had enabled him to “persuade and entice” his young victims to engage in sexual conduct.
In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453. In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International
Continue reading...Shooting injured dozens and killed six, including 76-year-old grandfather Nicolas Toledo and teacher Jacki Sundheim
The first details have begun to emerge of the victims of the mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, after a lone gunman fired into a crowd of people watching the Chicago suburb’s Fourth of July parade.
The shooting killed six and injured dozens, triggering panic and shock across the US as yet another attack disrupted what is usually a day of patriotic celebration.
Continue reading...The British socialite maintained her innocence as women came forward to accuse her of sexual abuse and trafficking
Shortly before Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in her New York sex trafficking case, several of the former British socialite’s victims provided impact statements in court.
The victims who addressed Judge Alison Nathan described harrowing abuse at the hands of Maxwell and her one-time boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein and the longterm emotional impact that still haunts them.
Continue reading...The disgraced British socialite’s lawyers argued that she was threatened in jail and cannot be made proxy for Jeffrey Epstein
Ghislaine Maxwell’s attorneys argued on Wednesday that the disgraced British socialite should be sentenced to “well below” the 20 years imprisonment that probation authorities have recommended in her New York federal sex-trafficking case.
In a pre-sentencing report, Maxwell’s attorneys provided detailed descriptions of her allegedly perilous conditions in jail, and described an emotionally distressing upbringing, as part of their argument for leniency.
Continue reading...Miah Cerrillo recounts at gun violence hearing how she watched as her teacher and friends were shot and acted quickly to save herself
An 11-year-old survivor of the elementary school massacre in Uvalde, Texas testified before the House oversight committee on Wednesday, as lawmakers continued to try to reach a compromise on gun control legislation after a series of devastating mass shootings.
The House hearing came two weeks after an 18-year-old opened fire at Robb elementary school, killing 19 children and two teachers, and three weeks after 10 people were killed at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
Continue reading...Mark Collins took his four grandsons to his ranch but within hours they fell victim to an escaped prisoner on a murderous rampage
Mark Collins had brought his four grandsons Waylon, Karson, Hudson and Bryson up to his ranch north-west of Houston on Thursday for what sounded like a southern boy’s dream: shooting guns, taking boats on big ponds and fishing.
While Collins knew authorities had been looking in the general area for a convicted murderer with ties to a Mexican drug cartel who had broken free from a prison bus three weeks earlier, he may not have known that the fugitive had apparently burglarized a home next door to the ranch, according to family friend David Crain.
Continue reading...Gonzalo Lopez, who had links to a Mexican drug cartel, had been on the run since escaping prison bus and stabbing driver
A convicted murderer with ties to a Mexican drug cartel killed four Houston-area children and their grandfather before police shot him dead on Thursday, more than three weeks after he escaped a prison bus in Texas and went on the run, authorities said.
Officers said Gonzalo Lopez, 46, who escaped from custody while serving two life sentences, killed the five family members – all strangers to him – and stole their truck while they were at their weekend cabin.
Continue reading...Bureau says in warrant that Ohio man Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab planned assassination out of revenge for Iraq war
The FBI claims an Islamic State sympathizer living in Ohio plotted to assassinate George W Bush, but confidential informants helped federal agents foil the plan, according to court records.
Details of the alleged scheme to kill the former president are laid out in a warrant that the FBI obtained in March to search the accused operative’s cellphone records, a 43-page document that was only unsealed in recent days.
Continue reading...Thomas Lane agrees to spend three years in prison after accepting guilty plea, a year after Derek Chauvin convicted of murder
A former Minneapolis police officer pleaded guilty on Wednesday to manslaughter in the murder of George Floyd and agreed to spend three years in state prison, officials said.
Thomas Lane’s plea to a count of aiding and abetting manslaughter came a year after his former colleague Derek Chauvin, who was recorded by a bystander killing Floyd by kneeling on his neck, was convicted of murder and sentenced to more than two decades in prison.
Continue reading...Amnesty International calls for restoring full tribal control over crimes on Native land to improve enforcement
Amnesty International has called on the US government to fully restore tribal jurisdiction over crimes on Native lands in the face of staggeringly high rates of sexual violence against Native women, according to a report released on Tuesday.
Nearly one in three American Indian and Alaska Native women have been raped – more than twice the average for white women and probably an undercount given gaps in data collection, according to the report.
Continue reading...Friends of Vicky White are baffled why she fled with her murder suspect boyfriend, before killing herself as police closed in
Maybe it was because she had endured the loss of two longtime partners over the last several years. Or perhaps she feared – if she didn’t go through with it – her loved ones would be killed.
Whatever the case, James Ballentine hopes there’s a good explanation for why his neighbor of nearly 40 years, Vicky White, ignited a romantic affair with an inmate of the rural Alabama jail where she was the assistant director, and helped him escape, before she shot herself to death as police closed in 11 days later and about 300 miles away. It was a story that captured national and global attention.
Continue reading...David Harville is one of six others charged for harassing the Boston duo who ran a new newsletter criticizing the company
A former eBay executive pleaded guilty on Thursday to participating in a scheme to terrorize the creators of an online newsletter that included the delivery of live spiders and other disturbing items to their home.
David Harville, eBay’s former director of global resiliency, is the final onetime eBay employee charged in the case to plead guilty. Six others have admitted to their roles in the harassment campaign targeting a Massachusetts couple who publish the newsletter EcommerceBytes, which eBay executives viewed as critical of the company.
Continue reading...The man was rescued after his boat sank in 2016 but his mother was not. Investigators found the boat had been tampered with
A man found floating on a raft off the coast of Rhode Island in 2016 after his boat sank was charged in an indictment unsealed Tuesday with killing his mother at sea to inherit the family’s estate.
The eight-count indictment released in federal court in Burlington, Vermont, also says Nathan Carman shot and killed his grandfather, John Chakalos, at his home in Windsor, Connecticut, in 2013 as part of an effort to defraud insurance companies, but he was not charged with that killing.
Continue reading...Homicide investigators are trying to identify the child, whose cause of death is not yet known
Police in Canada are trying to identify a young Black girl whose body was found in a Toronto dumpster, a grim discovery that has shaken the city and seasoned investigators looking into the case.
The Toronto police service announced on Thursday that the body, discovered on Monday in an affluent neighbourhood, was that of a young Black girl, believed to be between the ages of four and seven.
Continue reading...Maxwell Berry, 23, who was restrained in his seat with tape, also was sentenced to a year of supervised release after his jail time
An Ohio man who had to be restrained in his seat with tape after groping and assaulting flight attendants during a flight from Philadelphia to Miami last year has been sentenced by a federal judge to 60 days in prison.
Maxwell Berry, 23, also was sentenced by US district judge Robert Scola Jr to a year of supervised release after his jail time.
Continue reading...The Washington DC shooting was the most recent to spawn out of the extremist culture of unregulated ‘chan’ message boards
When police in Washington DC burst into a fifth-floor apartment building on 22 April in search of a man who allegedly had shot four people at random, they found Raymond Spencer dead by his own hand, a cache of guns and ammunition, and a poster with an ironic white supremacist meme.
The poster invoking the meme, popular on the extremist online forum 4chan, was a stark reminder that this attack blamed on Spencer, 23, was only the most recent mass casualty attack to spawn out of the ugly extremist culture of unregulated internet message boards such as 4chan.
Continue reading...New York judge said there was no evidence Trump had conducted a thorough search for the records sought by attorney general
A New York judge on Friday denied a request from Donald Trump’s lawyer to end a contempt-of-court finding against the former US president and kept in place $10,000-a-day fine over his failure to comply with a subpoena issued by the state attorney general investigating the business practices of Trump’s family company, the Trump Organization.
Justice Arthur Engoron in New York state court in Manhattan said he was not satisfied with an affidavit provided by Trump and said there was no evidence Trump had conducted a thorough search for the records sought by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James.
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