All Blog Posts from Crimesider

CHICAGO - Police believe the body of Michael Scott, the Chicago Board of Education President responsible for overseeing Chicago's public schools, was pulled from the Chicago River early Monday morning.

Police officials say they're waiting for Scott's family to confirm his identity as a Chicago paper is reporting the well-respected education leader shot himself in the head.

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CHICAGO - Ever since he was laid off in March, Frank Beil has been on the lookout.

He keeps an eye out for cars moving slowly down the street or strangers walking along the sidewalk of his suburban Chicago neighborhood. He wonders about the times he answers the phone and the caller hangs up.

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CHICAGO - How do college journalism students become prosecution targets in a murder case? Here's how.

Anthony McKinney is serving a life sentence in Illinois for the 1978 murder of a security guard. Journalism students at Northwestern University are making a case that McKinney is an innocent man. And now prosecutors are claiming the student-journalists paid off two witnesses in their quest for a new trial or exoneration for McKinney.

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NEW YORK - Yet another U.S. pilot has been found behaving badly, and this time authorities did something about it before the plane took off.

A United Airlines pilot was pulled from a plane and arrested shortly before takeoff after a co-worker suspected him of being drunk, police and airline officials said Tuesday.

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CHICAGO - The brother of the director of "The Dark Knight" was apparently planning his own Batman-style escape from the Metropolitan Correctional Center, according to CBS station WBBM.

Matthew Nolan, the brother of "The Dark Knight" director Christopher Nolan, is being held at the prison, accused of a murder in Costa Rica.

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HAMMOND, Ind. - As more than a thousand mourners gathered at a Munster, Ind. church for the parents of Chicago CLTV television host Garrard McClendon, police say charges have been filed against two teenagers in connection with their deaths, but still no charges of murder.

Hammond police said at a Monday news conference that 17-year-old Reo Thompson and 18-year-old Gregory Brooks, Jr., are each charged with two counts of robbery, auto theft, two counts of burglary and four counts of confinement.

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NEW YORK - A couple found shot to death in a forest preserve outside of Chicago have been identified as the parents of local television host Garrand McClendon.

CLTV producer Jerry Riles says the two victims found in a Cook County Forest Preserve have been identified as 78-year-old Milton and 76-year-old Ruby McClendon of Hammond, Ind. He said they are the parents of McClendon, a CLTV television host and African American education promoter.

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CHICAGO - First-degree murder charges were dropped Monday against one of four teens accused in the fatal beating of Chicago honor student Derrion Albert that was recorded in a cell phone video.

Eugene Bailey, 18, of Chicago, was arrested Sept. 26, two days after the 16-year-old honor student was killed during a fight after classes let out at Christian Fenger Academy High School on the city's South Side.

Prosecutors dropped the charge Monday with little explanation.

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CHICAGO - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan pledged federal support on Wednesday to fight a surge in youth violence in Chicago and other cities, calling the brutal beating death of Derrion Albert on the city's South Side a wake-up call for the country.

But neither offered specifics or outlined any new strategies on how the government would help quell the increase in the number of violent deaths among teens.

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WAUSAU, Wis. - The buyer of a scenic property in northern Wisconsin will get more than just its bar and restaurant: They'll have a former hideout of Chicago mobster Al Capone.

The 407-acre wooded site, complete with guard towers and a stone house with 18-inch-thick walls, will go on the auction block tomorrow at a starting bid of $2.6 million.

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