All Blog Posts from Crimesider

JUPITER, Fla. - A Thanksgiving dinner turned into a violent horror show as three women and a child in bed were shot to death during a family gathering, say Florida police, and now Paul Michael Merhige, the man police say is responsible, is on the run.

Police said 17 relatives were in the house when Paul Michael Merhige, 35, shot to death his twin sisters Carla and Lisa Merhige, 33, aunt Raymonde Joseph, 76, and 6-year-old cousin Makayla Sitton.

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SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - Devon Hollahan, a 22-year-old Arizona man who teaches English overseas, vanished during a concert in Germany last weekend. Now his father is fighting to find him and bring him home safely.

Hollahan was last seen at around 3 a.m. Nov. 21 after a concert in Frankfurt, Germany. He was traveling back to a hostel with his friend Josh Friedman, who stopped to ask for directions. When the friend turned back around, Hollahan was gone.

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TAMPA, Fla. - The way Kathleen Heide tells it, a prison movie she watched on TV as a kid back home in New Jersey started it all.

The 1950 film "Caged" was about a naive 19-year-old woman who becomes hardened after going to prison for a robbery. Heide figures it was about 9 when she saw it on TV in the early 1960s and found herself thinking for the first time about "why people got in trouble." It's a theme she would end up exploring for much of her life.

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NEW YORK - "Courage" may not be a stone cold killer living on death row, but he was slated for execution anyway -- that is, until President Barack Obama gave this lucky bird a second chance.

After 10 months in office, Obama granted his first pardon — to Courage, a turkey spared the Thanksgiving table.

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FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - Bradley Lockhart, the father of Shaniya Davis, the North Carolina girl who was kidnapped, raped, and murdered in early November, said he made the best decision he could at the time when he let the girl live with her mother, who has since been charged with prostituting her own daughter.

Lockhart said during a Tuesday interview on NBC's "Today" show that he regrets how the decision turned out, but thought he was making the right choice for the daughter he had raised himself.

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DEERFIELD BEACH, Fla. - Six weeks after a group of Florida teens doused 15-year-old Michael Brewer in rubbing alcohol and lit him on fire, burning over 65 percent of his body, one of the teens initially accused is speaking out and he claims he was "best friends" with the victim.

"I'm Jeremy Jarvis; I want to read something I wrote last night," the 13-year-old said Tuesday during a press conference.

"I want to express my deepest sympathy for Mikey and his family," he said. "I will pray for Mikey to grow stronger every day and have a speedy recovery."

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NEW YORK - Nude, yes. Lewd, no.

A New York judge dismissed public lewdness and other charges Monday against 26-year-old model Kathleen Neill who posed for a nude photo shoot at the Metropolitan Museum of Art while visitors looked on.

Neill, also known as "K.C.," was arrested in August during photographer Zach Hyman's shoot in the arms and armor department in the Met.

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WASHINGTON - They are unusual bedfellows.

Homosexuals and religious groups, who are often at loggerheads over gay marriage, seem to have at least one thing in common. Reports of hate crimes against both groups were up sharply in 2008, according to an annual FBI statistics report released on Monday.

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SAN FERNANDO, Calif. - Authorities are searching for a man suspected of robbing a nun in the parking lot of a grocery store in San Fernando, Calif., and the heist was caught on surveillance tape.

A pair of nuns in full religious dress were putting their groceries into their vehicle in the parking lot of a Food 4 Less store on Glen Oaks Boulevard, when police say a man in a white t-shirt approached them and asked a question.

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OKLAHOMA CITY - Former Marine David Allen Tyner has been arraigned on six counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of four people whose bodies were found in a burning home, including prostitute Brooke Phillips featured on the HBO reality series "Cathouse."

According to the Oklahoman, prosecutors believe that Tyner, a member of a Native American gang called the Native Brotherhood, was gunning for his old boss, Casey Mark Barrientos, 32, a Hispanic man with a history of drug offenses. Tyner once worked for Barrientos as a body guard, the paper said.

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