All Blog Posts from Crimesider

SALT LAKE CITY - Abducted from her bedroom at knifepoint when she was just 14, Elizabeth Smart was whisked away from her family to a campsite in the mountains above her Salt Lake City home in 2002.

While the whole world searched and prayed, Smart endured nine months of brutal rape and torture.

Now, seven years after it began, Wanda Barzee, one of the two defendants charged in the case, has pleaded guilty and begged forgiveness.

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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Will a Little Rock jury deliver a death sentence to the killer of Arkansas news anchor Anne Pressly?

The jury convicted Curtis Lavelle Vance of murder, rape and other charges on Wednesday. It is now weighing whether to impose the death penalty on Vance, who police say admitted to beating the KATV anchorwoman with a wood-handled garden tool.

The attack shattered Pressly's face and sent her into a coma. She never regained consciousness and died five days after the Oct. 20, 2008 attack.

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MIAMI - A computer hacker accused of masterminding one of the largest cases of identity theft in U.S. history agreed Friday to plead guilty and serve up to 25 years in federal prison for his crimes.

Albert Gonzalez of Miami was charged with conspiracy, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges in federal courts in New York and Boston. Court documents filed in federal court in Boston indicate the 28-year-old Gonzalez agreed to plead guilty to 19 counts and combine the two cases in federal court in Massachusetts.

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LOS ANGELES - Will Chris Brown soon be picking up your trash or will he be given celebrity treatment during his six months of community labor?

A judge on Tuesday sentenced Chris Brown, 20, to five years' probation and six months' community labor for the beating of Rihanna and ordered the R&B singer to stay away from his former girlfriend for the next five years.

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WASHINGTON - A judge found a District of Columbia woman guilty Wednesday of killing her four daughters.

Thirty-four-year-old Banita Jacks was convicted of four counts of felony murder, three counts of premeditated first-degree murder and four counts of first degree child cruelty. She was acquitted of one count of premeditated first-degree murder.

D.C. Superior Court Judge Frederick H. Weisberg decided the case himself after Jacks waived her right to a jury trial.

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WASHINGTON - A Washington woman accused of killing her four daughters created a "prison of torture" in her own home, and long planned how she would carry out the murders and get away with it, prosecutors said Monday.

The decomposing bodies of Banita Jacks’ four girls were found by U.S. Marshals serving an eviction in her southeast D.C. home in January 2008. The girls are believed to have been ages 5 to 16 when they died.

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LONDON - A judge acquitted Amy Winehouse on Friday of assaulting a fan who asked to take her picture.

District Judge Timothy Workman found the 25-year-old singer not guilty of punching dancer Sherene Flash in the eye after the fan asked to take her picture following a charity ball in September.

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JENA, Louisiana (AP) Five of six black teens accused of beating a white classmate in a case that led to the biggest civil rights protest in decades are expected to plead guilty Friday

The six students were initially charged with attempted murder in a 2006 attack on Justin Barker.

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NEW YORK - A nightclub bouncer was convicted Wednesday in the brutal murder of a graduate student, a killing that stirred memories of New York City's notorious “preppie killer” case and spurred a crackdown on nightlife security.

Wearing dark glasses, Darryl Littlejohn looked straight ahead as the first-degree murder verdict was read after about six hours of jury deliberations.

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