US serial killer found guilty of murdering 11 women (AFP)

CLEVELAND, Ohio (AFP) – Relatives of 11 murdered women wept in court as Ohio jurors found a man guilty of killing them and burying their bodies in his house.

Jim Allen, the father of Leshanda Long, whose skull was recovered from a bucket found in the Cleveland home of Anthony Sowell, said he was glad justice had been served.

"The pain will never be completely gone, but this is a good day for my family," Allen said.

Sowell, 51, was on Friday found guilty on 82 counts after 15 hours of deliberations over three days by the jury. He was only found not guilty on one count of aggravated robbery against Gladys Wade, who had testified he attacked her in 2009.

Prosecutors for the case said Sowell was sexually motivated and acted alone when he killed the women, whose decomposed remains were found in his backyard and inside his home after his arrest in October 2009.

Sowell had blamed the smell emanating from his house on a nearby sausage factory.

He did not show any emotion as Judge Dick Ambrose read out each verdict, but as he left the courtroom, he hoisted his handcuffed hands in the air, looking directly at the cameramen and photographers.

Sowell could now face the death penalty, and Ambrose scheduled the trial to resume on August 1, when jurors will have to decide whether to recommend the death penalty.

Donnita Carmichael, daughter of Tonia Carmichael, the first victim identified by the medical examiner's office, said she was relieved this part of the trial had ended.

She hugged her grandmother and Tonia's mother Barbara in the courtroom as the verdict was read. They both wept.

"I'm excited for my family and now we can try to move on from this," Carmichael said. "We have been through a lot."

The gruesome case that unraveled on October 29, 2009 had officials scrambling to explain why the crimes weren't discovered sooner.

The women allegedly killed by Anthony Sowell were exclusively poor, black and hampered by lifestyles that took them on and off the streets.

Because of their socioeconomic situation, they were not always reported as missing immediately.

Testimony in the trial lasted for three weeks, and the defense and prosecution refused to comment after the verdicts were returned, saying the case is under a gag order.

The deceased victims are: Tonia Carmichael, Leshanda Long, Amelda Hunter, Crystal Dozier, Kim Smith, Diane Turner, Telacia Fortson, Janice Webb, Nancy Cobbs, Tishana Culver and Michelle Mason.

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Body of missing Brooklyn boy found in trash container (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The remains of a 9-year-old boy who disappeared while walking home from day camp were discovered in a trash container on Wednesday in Brooklyn, police said.

A 35-year-old man was taken into custody, police said.

Leibby Kletzky, 9, was supposed to meet his family on Monday on his walk home from day camp in Brooklyn's Borough Park neighborhood but never arrived, police said.

After an extensive search, his dismembered body was found stuffed in a suitcase, wrapped in a plastic garbage bag inside a dumpster. Other remains were found inside a refrigerator in a home nearby.

Police said they had surveillance video of the boy, who lived in the borough's tightly knit Orthodox Jewish community, getting into a car with an unidentified man a few blocks from the park.

"I don't think there is anyone in this world that can comprehend what just happened," said state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who helped search for the boy.

"In a neighborhood like ours where our crime rate is almost nonexistent, where a boy disappears and is brutally murdered is beyond comprehension."

Hikind said the suspect also lived in the Orthodox community.

Police were slated to hold a news conference later on Wednesday to disclose further details."

(Reporting by Aman Ali; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Jerry Norton)

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Casey Anthony trial: Should investigators have found Caylee four months sooner? (The Christian Science Monitor)

The man who discovered the skeletal remains of two-year-old Caylee Anthony testified Tuesday in the murder trial of her mother that he tried three times in August 2008 to get the sheriffa€™s department to investigate what appeared to be a childa€™s skull in a wooded area not far from Cayleea€™s home.

Roy Kronk, a county meter reader, said he called the Orange County Sheriff’s Office on three consecutive days, but no one from law enforcement went into the swampy woods to investigate.

One deputy, after a cursory look around, even berated him for wasting the department’s time with a frivolous report.

Four months later on Dec. 11, 2008, Mr. Kronk said he returned to the same place in the woods near a distinctive log.

IN PICTURES: Key players in the Casey Anthony trial

He told the jury that he saw a plastic bag. “I held the bag up,” Mr. Kronk said. “The contents of the bag shifted and that’s when I discovered the skull. It was at my feet.”

Kronk’s testimony has been highly anticipated among those closely following the Casey Anthony murder trial. In most cases, Kronk would be hailed a hero for helping to bring closure to the grim vigil for the missing toddler. But defense attorneys are hoping to use the unusual circumstances surrounding the discovery of Caylee’s remains as a way to suggest reasonable doubt to the jury.

In his fiery opening statement, defense attorney Jose Baez accused Kronk of moving and hiding Caylee’s remains.

a€?We are not saying he had anything to do with her death, but he is a morally bankrupt individual who took her body and hid her,a€

It is unclear why Kronk – or anyone else – would risk the legal consequences of tampering with evidence. Defense lawyers have suggested that he needed money and was hoping to receive a $255,000 reward offered in the nation-wide search for Caylee. But hiding the remains would not boost the reward.

Rather than implicating Kronk in some ill-defined conspiracy, his testimony on Tuesday raises serious questions about the basic competence of investigators with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.

Had law enforcement responded to Kronk’s first phone call to police on Aug. 11, forensic experts would have had a significantly better chance to lift fingerprints, DNA, or other direct physical evidence from the deteriorating duct tape found near Caylee’s skull.

The defense suggests that police conducted thorough searches in the wooded area and were unable to locate Caylee’s decomposing body because it had been moved and hidden for a period of time.

Prosecutors maintain it was not detected because the area was underwater for much of the summer due to a tropical storm and heavy rains.

The truth may never be known. Kronk testified that the first time he entered the wooded area on Aug. 11 a€“ less than two months after Caylee is thought to have died a€“ he saw a gray vinyl bag and what looked like it might be a small human skull. He said there was no peculiar odor in the area.

Later that night he called the sheriff’s department. “I don’t know what it is,” he told the dispatcher. “I’m not saying it is Caylee or anything. This could be nothing.”

Kronk was asked by Defense Attorney Cheney Mason whether he saw the same grey vinyl bag when he returned to the scene four months later on Dec. 11.

“No,” he said.

Kronk said he wasn’t sure the skull was real, or even a skull. He said he prodded the object with his meter-reader stick “and tipped it up. I apologize for doing so, but I didn’t know what it was.”

He added: “I gently pivoted it up.”

“It wasn’t stuck in the mud, was it?”

“No,” Kronk said.

Kronk’s testimony was different than the first written statement he gave to police in early 2009. In that statement he said that the bag opened and a small human skull with duct tape and hair dropped out.

“That was my original statement,” he acknowledged. He said he “made a mistake” in the statement.

“Did the skull come out in any way,” Mr. Mason asked.

“No sir.”

“You recognize that you said that under oath before, but now you are saying something else,” Mason said.

“That whole period for me is a little fuzzy,” Kronk said. “After finding what I found, it kind of unnerved me.”

Kronk’s testimony came on Day 30 of the first-degree murder trial of Casey Anthony, the Florida mother accused of using chloroform and duct tape to kill her toddler daughter. Prosecutors say she kept the child’s body in the trunk of her car for several days before dumping it in the wooded area around the corner from the family home.

Defense lawyers maintain that Caylee accidentally drowned and that her mother, Casey, panicked. Rather than call police, she hid the body with the help of her father.

George Anthony denies any involvement.

In other testimony on Tuesday, the defense team called Mr. Anthony to the stand and confronted him with accusations that he had an extra-marital affair with Krystal Halloway, a former volunteer in the Caylee search effort.

“Did you have a romantic relationship with her,” Baez asked.

“No sir,” he said. “To me that is very funny.”

Baez wasn’t done. “Were you ever intimate with her,” he asked.

“No sir. That also is very funny.”

Mr. Anthony acknowledged going “a few times” to Ms. Halloway’s home, but he said his actions were noble. She had told him she was dying of a brain tumor and he said he went to comfort her.

The defense attorney also asked whether Mr. Anthony had ever told Ms. Halloway that Caylee’s death was “an accident that snowballed out of control.”

“That conversation was never there. I never confided in any volunteers,” Mr. Anthony said.

“You never told Krystal Halloway while the two of you were being romantic that this was an accident that snowballed out of control,” Baez asked.

“I never did.”

On cross-examination, Assistant State Attorney Jeffrey Ashton threw in a zinger question of his own.

“Did you ever tell [Halloway] that while your daughter was home on bond that you grabbed her by the throat, threw her up against a wall, and said ‘I know you did something to Caylee, where’s Caylee,’ ” Mr. Ashton asked.

Mr. Anthony responded: “No sir. I’d never do something like that.”

The trial is set to resume Wednesday morning.

IN PICTURES: Key players in the Casey Anthony trial

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2 men found guilty in murder of Calif journalist (AP)

OAKLAND, Calif. – A jury convicted the leader of a financially troubled community group of three murders, including the shotgun shooting death of the first American journalist killed on U.S. soil for reporting a story in nearly two decades.

Yusuf Bey IV, former head of Your Black Muslim Bakery, was found guilty Thursday in a month-long spree of violence that culminated with the August 2007 shooting of Chauncey Bailey while he walked to the newspaper where he was investigating the financial woes of Bey's group.

Jurors also found co-defendant Antoine Mackey guilty in the murders of Bailey and Michael Wills, but deadlocked on a murder charge against him in the death of Odell Roberson Jr.

"I hope that it sends the message that the First Amendment is not going to be murdered by murdering journalists," prosecutor Melissa Krum said of the verdicts. "You cannot kill the man and expect the message to be killed."

Founded some 40 years ago by Bey's father, the bakery, which promoted self-empowerment, became an institution in Oakland's black community while running a security service, school and other businesses. In recent years, the organization was tainted by connections to criminal activity.

Prosecutors argued that Bey felt he was above the law and was so desperate to protect the legacy of his family's once-influential bakery that he ordered Bailey murdered. The Oakland Post editor had been working on a story about the organization's finances as it descended toward bankruptcy.

Bey and Mackey, both 25, appeared stoic during the reading of the verdicts, which prompted tears from the families of the victims and defendants.

"Justice has finally been done," Bailey's cousin, Wendy Ashley-Johnson, said outside court. "Now Chauncey can rest. This chapter is over."

Bey's attorney, Gene Peretti, said he had thought the case would end in a mistrial because jury deliberations had entered a third week.

"It's a surprise and very disappointing frankly," Peretti said, adding that his client was "a little bit stunned."

Mackey's lawyer, Gary Sirbu, said his client was a victim of guilt by association because he was tried alongside Bey.

"In this particular case, I think Mr. Mackey should have had a separate trial," Sirbu said.

Both lawyers planned to appeal. Bey and Mackey could get life in prison without the possibility of parole when they are sentenced on July 8.

Bey's mother, Daulet Bey, who wept before and after the verdicts were read, said, "I believe in my son's innocence, I do."

Bey was charged with ordering the killing of Bailey, 57, as well as the slayings of Roberson, 31, and Wills, 36, in July 2007.

Mackey, a former bakery supervisor, was accused of acting as the getaway driver for Devaughndre Broussard, who confessed to killing Bailey on a busy city street with three shotgun blasts, including a final shot to the face to ensure his victim was dead.

Mackey was convicted of murder for shooting Wills. He was accused of aiding Broussard in Roberson's shooting, but jurors couldn't decide whether he was guilty.

Prosecutors said Bey ordered Broussard to kill Roberson in retaliation for the murder of Bey's brother by Roberson's nephew.

Mackey was accused of killing Wills at random after Mackey and Bey had a conversation about the Zebra murders, a string of racially motivated black-on-white killings in San Francisco in the 1970s. Bey and Mackey are black, and Wills was white.

Broussard, the prosecution's key witness, testified that Bey ordered him and Mackey to kill the three men in exchange for a line of credit.

The two-month-plus trial featured more than 70 witnesses for the prosecution and only a few for the defense, including Mackey.

Broussard struck a plea deal of 25 years in prison in exchange for serving as the prosecution's key witness. The former bakery handyman inexplicably laughed several times while testifying for more than a week, including while describing Bailey's shooting on Aug. 2, 2007.

Lawyers for Bey and Mackey questioned Broussard's credibility. Prosecutor Krum told jurors that while Broussard, 23, is a "sociopath," his testimony was credible.

Before the killing of Bailey, Cuban-American Manuel de Dios Unanue, an outspoken journalist, was shot in the head in a New York City restaurant in 1992.

Police believe drug traffickers and businessmen plotted to murder him in retaliation for hard-hitting stories he had written about their operations, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Frank Smyth, CPJ's journalist security coordinator, said Thursday's verdicts were reassuring.

"This sends a signal to those who would violently attack the press in the United States that they will not get away with it," Smyth said.

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Four people found shot to death in North Carolina (Reuters)

BOSTON (Reuters) – Police found four people shot to death on Saturday in Research Triangle Park off Highway 54 in Durham, North Carolina, local officials said.

Three women were found shot to death inside a car, a green Honda Accord, while a man was found dead just outside the vehicle, said Lt. Stanley Harris, a spokesman for the Durham County sheriff's office.

Police responded early on Saturday to a call that came in just before midnight on Friday, Harris said.

The investigation is ongoing and the bodies are at the medical examiner's office, he said. No other information was currently being released.

Research Triangle Park is a 7,000-acre technology, science and business park, home to more than 170 global companies, according to its website.

(Reporting by Lauren Keiper; Editing by Greg McCune)

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Strauss-Kahn DNA found on maid's clothes: reports (AFP)

NEW YORK (AFP) – Investigators found traces of semen from former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on the clothes of a hotel maid who accused him of attempted rape, media reports said.

DNA was found on the shirt of the 32-year-old woman who said she was attacked in Strauss Kahn's New York hotel suite, according to NBC and ABC television.

The DNA matched sperm on the collar of the maid's shirt, according to The Wall Street Journal and France 2 television channel.

All of the media quoted sources close to the investigation. But neither police, nor prosecutors nor Strauss-Kahn's lawyers would comment on the reports.

The evidence could prove that there was a sexual encounter but not that there was violence of any kind, experts said.

Strauss-Kahn has denied charges made against him. The French politician, who is racing to find a new home, told his former staff how he is confronting a "personal nightmare."

Under house arrest pending trial, he has been rejected by one luxury residence because of his newfound notoriety and must soon leave his temporary apartment.

Charges that he attempted to rape and sexually assault the chambermaid on May 14 forced him to resign as head of the International Monetary Fund last week and torpedoed his chances of standing in the French presidential election next year.

But Strauss-Kahn again denied the accusations in an email message sent to IMF staff Sunday in which he expressed "profound sadness" at the way he left his $450,000-a-year tax-free post.

"I deny in the strongest possible terms the allegations which I now face; I am confident that the truth will come out and I will be exonerated," he wrote.

"In the meantime, I cannot accept that the Fund --- and you dear colleagues -- should in any way have to share my own personal nightmare. So, I had to go."

Strauss-Kahn is holed up in the Empire Building at 71 Broadway, where management has apologized to residents and said the new arrival will be gone by "early" this week.

His wealthy wife, French television journalist Anne Sinclair, had previously arranged a $15,000 a month apartment on the Upper East Side. But Strauss-Kahn was rejected after residents complained about the bad publicity.

Sinclair left the Broadway apartment for a few hours on Sunday on what was believed to be part of the new hunt for a home. She has suspended her blog about American life.

"Dear reader, many, many many of you have sent me messages," Sinclair wrote. "I cannot answer everybody, but know that these touched me and helped me."

"You will understand the circumstances that have forced me to temporarily suspend this blog. All I can say is, a bientot."

While Strauss-Kahn gets used to bail life wearing an ankle bracelet and being forced to stay in an apartment under the watch of video surveillance and and armed guard around the clock, the legal battle is heightening even before his next court appearance on June 6 to make a formal plea.

His lawyer Benjamin Brafman visited Strauss-Kahn on Monday. He has said his client will plead not guilty and that he is confident his client will go free.

The defense team has hired a posse of private investigators who, according to media reports, are already sifting through the 32-year-old accuser's personal history in New York and her native Guinea in West Africa.

Prosecutors told Strauss-Kahn's bail hearing last week that they are also building a "strong" case in support of the accusations.

Strauss-Kahn was arrested on an Air France flight just as it was about to leave New York's John F. Kennedy airport, a few hours after the alleged attack. He spent the first days in detention at the notorious Rikers island jail.

He now faces seven counts, including the attempted rape charge.

Ian Weinstein, a law professor at Fordham University in New York, said that if convicted at trial, "a sentence of 10 years in prison is entirely likely, and a sentence higher than that is entirely possible."

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