Teen strangled, slit 9-year-old's throat 1
Dad sets dog on fire for jumping on couch 2
Dad executes son accused of molesting 3
Wednesday, Nov. 18 2009 @ 11:51AM
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Cathouse star Brooke Phillips and another woman were shot before the home was set aflame
UPDATE: Suspect David Allen Tyner is a cage fighter and former high school All-American wrestler. See update after the jump...

David Allen Tyner, a suspect in the murder-arson case that left four people dead in Oklahoma City, has turned himself in after an arrest warrant was issued. Police believe he may be responsible for the murders of Milagrous Barrerra, Brooke Phillips -- who appeared in HBO's Cathouse series -- and two people still unidentified.

Tyner has yet to face official charges, but since Barrerra and Phillips were both pregnant, he's expected to be hit with six counts of homicide. Both women were shot before the house was set on fire. Because the bodies were so badly burned, police are having a hard time identifying the victims...

Tags: Oklahoma
Wednesday, Nov. 18 2009 @ 8:00AM
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Ryan Sheckler's CFO allegedly helped himself to $365,000
Wednesday morning's Breakfast Reading from around the Village Voice Empire:

Accountants Don't Do Well in Prison
CFO Matthew Mercuro accused of helping himself to skateboarding star Ryan Sheckler's money.

The Problems with Being a Ninja
When you try to leap a fence, sometimes you get impaled.

A Serial Killer's Refuse
One of the last of Dean Corll's 27 victims is buried anonymously 36 years after his murder.

By Pete Kotz in Animal Cruelty, celebrity crime
Wednesday, Nov. 18 2009 @ 7:08AM
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Dale Bozzio was a sex symbol in her day...
Dale Bozzio, frontwoman for the '80s new wave band Missing Persons, has been convicted of animal cruelty for leaving more than a dozen cats without food or water at her rural New Hampshire cabin.

Cops say two cats died and others starved while they were left to fend for themselves with their litter boxes overflowing. Another 12 cats had to be euthanized. Bozzio blamed it on a caretaker who hadn't tended to the animals while she was gone for a week, but a judge ruled that the conditions were in place for quite some time.

Bozzio's lawyer, Dennis O'Connor, tried to blame the incident on the difficult life of a has-been rocker. "An artist like Dale lives in a different world," he told the Boston Phoenix. "The little details of life that some of us, myself included, try to take care of, those end up on the back burner for artists like Dale..."

By Pete Kotz in celebrity crime, robbery, unsolved
Tuesday, Nov. 10 2009 @ 11:30AM
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His defense: He already has more jewels than a Hamptons society maiden. Why would he need more?
Comedian Katt Williams was arrested yesterday for breaking into the rural home of record producer Barry Hankerson. Daniel Paul Broach, an employee at the ranch in Coweta County, Georgia, called police to say Williams had busted into the house with a crowbar. Rare coins and $3,500 in jewelry were missing.

But Williams claims it's all a big mistake. He says he'd been living at the home for the last month while filming a movie produced by Hankerson. And according to his lawyer, Hankerson had given him permission to stay at the house.

Attorney William Briggs also busted out the Trophy Wife Defense to proclaim his client's innocence, saying that Williams usually wore more than $3,500 in jewelry on any given day, so why would he need to steal Hankerson's?

Tags: Georgia
Monday, Nov. 9 2009 @ 1:01PM

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He may have won $500,000, but what's that compared to the riches found in the pharmaceutical trade?
Adam Jasinski, who won $500,000 in the reality show Big Brother 9, wasn't content to simply live good with all that money. Like dumb crackers everywhere, he decided to parlay it into even bigger money by becoming a major league drug dealer...

Monday, Nov. 2 2009 @ 12:10PM
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The Little Rock TV anchor was murdered in her bed last October
In October of last year, Little Rock morning TV anchor Anne Pressly awoke to find a man "committing a sex act" beside her bed, according to police. Startled, the man began hammering her with a garden tool. Anne fought back, as her shattered left arm would indicate. But the man hit her as many as five times.

Anne was taken to the hospital in a coma, and she never regained consciousness before dying five days later. But even without her statement, police still believe they have their man: Curtis Lavelle Vance.

He goes on trial today for the murder of the 26-year-old TV woman, who was killed in her home near the Little Rock Country Club. As police tell it, they not only have the DNA from semen found in Anne's bedroom, but a taped confession from Vance himself...

Tags: Arkansas
Thursday, Oct. 29 2009 @ 2:12PM
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Lou Dobbs believes his enemies are being inflamed by the liberal media
After getting a series of threatening phone calls, CNN host Lou Dobbs claims someone shot at his Wantage, New Jersey home earlier this month. Dobbs said on his radio show that he was outside with his wife when someone shot at the house on October 5.

"This shot was fired with my wife not, I don't know, 15 feet away, and we had threatening phone calls that I decided not to report because I get threatening phone calls."

New Jersey State police were called to the home that day after Dobbs and his wife heard gunfire. The bullet struck the side of the house and fell to the ground. It's now being analyzed. "We're not sure what the intended target was," Sgt. Steve Jones told Fox News. "It's still under investigation..."

Tags: New Jersey
By Pete Kotz in celebrity crime, homicide
Monday, Oct. 26 2009 @ 2:07PM
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The cowboy champ was shot in a dispute over a fence
Rodeo star Sonny Jim was among the toughest to ever enter the sport. The Navajo was a world champion cowboy into his 40s and 50s. Now he's dead, gunned down in Grant, New Mexico.

Detectives say the incident was prompted when Sonny was visiting the home of friend Wayne Johnson. They apparently got into a beef with neighbor Danny Stanfield over a fence that divides their property. As things heated up, Stanfield retrieved a gun from his home and started blasting. Sonny and Johnson were shot multiple times.

One of them tried to call 911, police say, but Stanfield kicked the phone away. He was still standing near the bodies when detectives arrived.

Tags: New Mexico
By Pete Kotz in celebrity crime, homicide
Tuesday, Oct. 20 2009 @ 6:50PM
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The murder occurred during a violent struggle in suburban New Orleans
From Caleb Hannan at our sister paper, Seattle Weekly:

Former Seahawks player Terreal Michael Bierria, 29, has been arrested on one count of first degree murder after a violent struggle in a New Orleans suburb left one man dead. St. Tammany's parish deputies in Slidell booked Bierria after he placed himself at the apartment where authorities found 29-year-old Soron Salter dead.

When they arrived on the scene deputies found the front door partially opened with blood smeared on it and Salter on the floor behind the door. Investigators say Salter had wounds that indicated a violent struggle. Witnesses told police that a gray Cadillac had been parked at the scene until just a few minutes before they arrived.

Read complete story here.

Tuesday, Oct. 20 2009 @ 11:02AM
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Police found Jasper Howard stabbed outside a school dance
UPDATE: Police have arrested a suspect in the murder. See update after the jump...

University of Connecticut starting cornerback Jasper Howard was leaving a school dance just after midnight this morning when a fight broke out between two groups of people. Howard and another person were stabbed.

Police responded at about 12:30 a.m. to find the victims. Howard, 20, was later pronounced dead at a hospital. (See his Facebook page here.) The second victim, who hasn't been named, was treated and released. Police are still looking for the attacker, and believe the assault wasn't a random crime.

Howard is the third Connecticut student to be killed in the last three months. In September, Yale graduate student Annie Le was found murdered in a laboratory building at the campus. Coworker Raymond Clark was arrested in the case...