Marshae Jones was charged with manslaughter, while the woman accused of shooting her walks free, report says
A woman from Alabama who was shot in the stomach while pregnant – with the bullets killing the fetus – has been charged with manslaughter.
Marshae Jones was reportedly five months pregnant when she was shot by another woman in December outside a shop in Pleasant Grove, near Birmingham.
Continue reading...The self-avowed white supremacist who plowed his car into counter-protesters opposing a white nationalist rally in Virginia two years ago, killing one and injuring dozens, has asked a judge for mercy and a sentence shorter than life in prison.
Lawyers for James Alex Fields Jr, 22, said in a sentencing memo submitted in court documents on Friday the defendant should not spend his entire life in prison because of his age, a traumatic childhood and a history of mental illness.
Continue reading...Scott Daniel Warren faced up to 20 years in prison in a case aid groups said would have wide implications on their work
A US jury could not reach a verdict Tuesday against a border activist who, defense attorneys say, was simply being kind by providing two migrants with water, food and lodging when he was arrested in early 2018.
Scott Daniel Warren, a 36-year-old college geography instructor, was charged with conspiracy to transport and harbor migrants in a trial that humanitarian aid groups said would have wide implications on their work. He faced up to 20 years in prison.
Continue reading...The comedian’s life was upended in 2016 when his wife died. He discusses her role in the Golden State Killer case, the ‘shadow slog’ of grief – and the reaction to his remarriage
The sad clown. The chronic depressive comedian. It is one of the greatest cliches in showbusiness. Patton Oswalt – ebullient, life-affirming, swearing as he hurtles along the Interstate 10 highway in California – does not sound like one of those. At least, not any more.
Oswalt’s wife, the true-crime writer Michelle McNamara, died suddenly in 2016 at the age of 46. That was the second-worst day of Oswalt’s life. The worst was breaking the news to their seven-year-old daughter, Alice, the next day.
Continue reading...Three people who were wounded in the Virginia Beach shooting remained in critical condition on Sunday, two days after a gunman opened fire in a municipal government building, killing 12.
Related: A mass shooting couldn’t happen in Virginia Beach … until it did
Continue reading...A day after the deadliest US mass shooting this year in which 12 people were shot dead at a government building, Elizabeth Warren was asked what she would do to confront an “overwhelming surge” in such events.
The Massachusetts senator said she wanted to reframe the question, then continued: “It’s not just mass shootings.” Every day in America, she said, gun violence occurs “on sidewalks and playgrounds and people’s backyards. It’s happening family by family across the country. And it doesn’t get the same headlines. And that is wrong.”
Continue reading...America was reeling on Saturday after 12 people were shot dead at a government building in Virginia Beach late on Friday afternoon. It was the deadliest mass shooting this year and prompted fresh demands for gun control reform.
Related: Virginia Beach shooting: 12 dead as city mourns 'the most devastating day'
Continue reading...A gunman killed 12 people and injured at least four others in Virginia Beach, in the latest deadly mass shooting in the US. Authorities said an employee opened fire and shot indiscriminately in a municipal building on Friday. The gunman died at the scene. Police have identified the suspect but have not yet released his name to the public because they have not yet notified his family.
Continue reading...At least four others injured after employee opens fire ‘indiscriminately’ inside municipal building
A gunman killed 12 people and injured at least four others in a Virginia municipal building, in the latest deadly mass shooting to roil the United States.
Authorities said an employee opened fire and shot “indiscriminately” Friday afternoon in a Virginia Beach municipal building that houses several city departments.
Continue reading...Jake Patterson pleaded guilty in March to intentional homicide and kidnapping, after Closs was held for 88 days
A Wisconsin man was sentenced on Friday to life in prison for kidnapping 13-year-old Jayme Closs and killing her parents in a case that mystified authorities until the girl made a daring escape from the remote cabin where she was held for 88 days.
Jake Patterson, 21, pleaded guilty in March to two counts of intentional homicide and one count of kidnapping. He admitted to abducting Jayme in October after killing her parents, James and Denise Closs, at the family’s home near Barron, about 90 miles north-east of Minneapolis.
Continue reading...With Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt playing a TV actor and stuntman who cross paths with the Manson cult, Tarantino has created outrageous, disorientating entertainment
Quentin Tarantino’s exploitation black-comedy thriller Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood finds a pulp-fictionally redemptive take on the Manson nightmare in late-60s California: a B-movie loser’s state of grace.
It’s shocking, gripping, dazzlingly shot in the celluloid-primary colours of sky blue and sunset gold: colours with the warmth that Mama Cass sang about. The Los Angeles of 1969 is recovered with all Tarantino’s habitual intensity and delirious, hysterical connoisseurship of pop culture detail. But there’s something new here: not just erotic cinephilia, but TV-philia, an intense awareness of the small screen background to everyone’s lives. Opinions are going to divide about this film’s startling and spectacularly provocative ending, which Tarantino is concerned to keep secret and which I have no intention of revealing here. But certainly any ostensible error of taste is nothing like, say, those in the much admired Inglourious Basterds. And maybe worrying about taste is to miss the point of this bizarre Jacobean horror fantasy.
Quite simply, I just defy anyone with red blood in their veins not to respond to the crazy bravura of Tarantino’s film-making, not to be bounced around the auditorium at the moment-by-moment enjoyment that this movie delivers – and conversely, of course, to shudder at the horror and cruelty and its hallucinatory aftermath.
Our first non-hero is Rick Dalton, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, a failing cowboy actor and alcoholic going to seed in the autumn of his career and in moments of bad temper beginning to resemble Jack Black. His best friend – pathetically, his only friend – is Cliff Booth, played by Brad Pitt in his Ocean’s-Eleven mode of easygoing competence and imperturbability. Cliff is Rick’s stunt double and has an awful secret in his life: a grisly event for which he may or may not be guilty. Cliff has to drive Rick everywhere because he has lost his licence, and he is Rick’s best pal, assistant, factotum, and the person who has to straighten Rick when he bursts into boozy tears of self-pity.
A top “slave master” in the alleged sex cult Nxivm said in testimony on Friday she herself was sexually and psychologically enslaved by Keith Raniere, the sole defendant in a sex-trafficking trial that has produced a rolling tableau of alleged debauchery and cruelty.
Related: Nxivm trial: alleged sex cult leader tried to 'break' female followers, says witness
Continue reading...Former media mogul who owned Daily Telegraph spent more than three years in prison
Conrad Black, the former media mogul who owned the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator before being jailed for fraud, has been pardoned by Donald Trump – shortly after writing a book praising the US president.
The Canadian-born British citizen was once known for his extravagant lifestyle as he ran an international newspaper empire that included the Chicago Sun-Times and the Jerusalem Post. But he ended up serving three and a half years in prison after being convicted in 2007 of siphoning off millions of dollars from the sale of newspapers owned by the company he controlled.
Continue reading...Tarantino’s epic is the big draw at Cannes. But there are other Manson movies around – including one about what ultimately happened to the young women who fell under the murderer’s spell
Over the last half century, one villain has loomed large over Hollywood. The gruesome murders committed by Charles Manson and his followers in the summer of 1969 have filled countless films and documentaries about stardom and the debaucheries of the 1960s. But his malign influence extends far beyond the screen. Aside from murdering eight people, Manson and his disciples – the Family – have been blamed for wiping out the counterculture, free love, communes and hippies.
Three new films are making fresh attempts to reckon with “the symbol of animalism and evil”, as Rolling Stone magazine called him. The biggest is Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, about to premiere at the Cannes film festival. Set in Los Angeles during the Manson era, the film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a fading TV western star and Brad Pitt as his stunt double, both attempting to make the leap to the big screen. Margot Robbie plays Sharon Tate – the actor and wife of director Roman Polanski – who was brutally murdered by the Family. Manson, a background figure in the film, is played by Damon Herriman.
Continue reading...Actor has apologized after being charged with paying $15,000 to have a proctor boost daughter’s SAT score
Felicity Huffman tearfully pleaded guilty Monday in the college admissions bribery scheme, the biggest name to do so in a scandal that has exposed the lengths to which some wealthy parents will go to get their children into top universities.
The Emmy-winning actor, 56, could face prison time after she admitted to participating in the nationwide scam, in which authorities say parents bribed coaches, rigged entrance exams or both to game the admissions system.
Continue reading...As the trial of the group’s founder, Keith Raniere, begins, experts say people attracted to change are vulnerable to manipulative ‘cultish group behavior’
The federal courthouse in Brooklyn provided a bland judicial setting for some startling testimony this week, as former members of Nxivm, a self-improvement and wellness group that was allegedly a sex cult, described how devotees were manipulated to the point of enslavement to the group’s founder, Keith Raniere.
A case which on the surface contained the compelling components of wellness, self-improvement, celebrity and wealth was quickly reduced to accusations of base criminality.
Continue reading...A judge has sentenced the fake German heiress Anna Sorokin to four to 12 years in prison for defrauding hotels, restaurants, a private jet operator and banks out of more than $200,000.
Related: Glitz, glamour, now guilty: spectacular fall of New York's socialite scammer
Continue reading...Sexual abuse lawsuit reinstated after lawyer argues singer did not reply to legal documents because he is illiterate
R Kelly failed to respond to a lawsuit because he is illiterate, a lawyer for the singer told a judge on Wednesday.
Related: The debate: should Spotify ban R Kelly and Michael Jackson?
Continue reading...Opening arguments are set for Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court as prosecutors have been tight-lipped about who will testify
It was called “collateral” – nude photos and other embarrassing material that female members of an upstate New York self-improvement group turned over to their “masters” to guarantee obedience, silence and sexual fealty to the organization’s spiritual leader, Keith Raniere.
Now some former members of the group, called Nxivm (pronounced nexium) are poised to break their vow of silence by testifying against Raniere, who has been compared to a cult leader. Opening arguments are set for Tuesday at a federal court in Brooklyn.
Continue reading...A suspect opened fire at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte on Tuesday, killing two people and wounding several others before being taken into custody.
Police said one suspect, who some local media reported was a student at the school, was taken into custody following the rampage on the last day of classes for the academic year. Final exams were scheduled for next week.
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