All Blog Posts from Crimesider

TEXARKANA, Arkansas - Evangelist Tony Alamo has been convicted of being a pervert pastor and taking underage girls across state lines for sex.

Now the evangelist will spend the rest of his life behind bars after being sentenced Friday to 175 years in prison for for molesting children that he took as "brides" in his ministry.

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LEXINGTON, Mo. - Police investigating a western Missouri family accused of sexually abusing children are now searching a family property for dead bodies. They are also looking for buried glass jars, which the alleged victims say contain notes documenting their sexual abuse years ago.

Lafayette County Sheriff Kerrick Alumbaugh said there has been an indication of "body or bodies in numerous locations," although he would not say whose bodies they might be.

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Online retailer eBay said it will not allow an auction planned to raise money to defend Scott Roeder, the man charged with killing Kansas abortion provider George Tiller.

Roeder's supporters had hoped to sell off an unusual array of items to raise money for his defense against murder charges.

One of the proposed items was the "Army of God" manual, an underground publication geared towards anti-abortion "militants" which describes dozens of ways to shut down abortion clinics, including bombing.

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ELDORADO, Texas - Where will Texas find 12 impartial jurors in the trial of alleged child rapist and unabashed polygamist Raymond Jessop? That's the question being played out in the small, dusty town of Eldorado, three hours north of San Antonio, where the lifestyle of a breakaway Mormon sect is under scrutiny.

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. - EBay is suddenly finding itself in the middle of the abortion debate.

Anti-abortion activists are planning an auction on EBay and other online shopping sites to raise money to defend the man charged with killing Wichita, Kan., abortion doctor George Tiller.

The alleged shooter, Scott Roeder, said in a phone interview that he was excited about the auction, which is to include a manual for anti-abortion "militants" and a prison cookbook.

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ELDORADO, Texas - America will get another look inside the secretive polygamist sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), as one of its patriarchs, Raymond Jessop, is about to face a jury for allegedly sexually assaulting a child – his own wife.

Jessop, 38, the first of a dozen polygamist sect members charged with abuse of women is set to stand trial Monday, 18 months after agents raided the group's remote ranch and carted off more than 400 children in the largest child custody case in American history.

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LOUISVILLE - A decade ago, Mark Hourigan was convicted of sexually abusing an 11-year-old boy in central Kentucky. Now, he is a tiny church's newest minister, who is also a "gifted music leader" and popular among its three dozen members.

Long before Hourigan joined the flock at the City of Refuge Worship Center in Louisville, he served a five-year sentence in prison and the 41-year-old was placed on Kentucky's sex offender registry for the rest of his life.

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JACKSONVILLE, Florida - It was a slug from a .357-caliber Magnum that ended Ken Cooper's 13-year career as a bank robber and started him on the path toward "redemption" and a chain of five prison ministries.

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NEW YORK - Phillip Garrido, the man accused of kidnapping and impregnating Jaycee Lee Dugard and convicted of raping another woman thirty years ago, dropped off his personal manifesto with the FBI a mere four days before he was arrested for allegedly holding Dugard prisoner in his backyard for 18 years.

In the document, entitled “Origin of Schizophrenia Revealed," Garrido claims to have a solution to stop schizophrenics from becoming violent.

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BEAVER, Utah Warren Jeffs, the polygamous sect leader who is used to getting his way with little girls, is learning what it's like to be forced beyond his will. The 53-year-old is now being being force-fed in jail for the second time in less than a week after again refusing to eat, officials said Tuesday.

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