All Blog Posts from Crimesider

NEW YORK - "Killing people" and "cutting" -- two hobbies listed by Alyssa Bustamante, the Missouri 15-year-old alleged killer of Elizabeth Olten, 9, in an online profile.

She wasn't exaggerating, police say.

Authorities say the teenager strangled, cut the throat, and stabbed Olten, her young next door neighbor, killing her.

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NEW YORK - Alyssa Bustamante, a Missouri 15-year-old charged with killing her neighbor, 9-year-old Elizabeth Olten, has been indicted and will stand trial as an adult.

Bustamante is accused of killing Olten by strangling the girl, cutting her throat and stabbing her on Oct. 21.

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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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SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The man accused of kidnapping, raping and holding Jaycee Dugard captive for nearly two decades wrote a jailhouse apology letter that talks about "ending a sexual problem believed to be impossible."

But according to CNN, prosecutors believe Phillip Garrido is using this letter as an opportunity to manipulate the "public perceptions" of the kidnapping case.

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NEW YORK - Phillip Garrido, the alleged kidnapper of Jaycee Lee Dugard, apologized "to every human being for what has taken place," in a letter to NBC affiliate KCRA in Sacramento, Calif.

Garrido and his wife Nancy have been charged with kidnapping 11-year-old Dugard in 1991 and holding her hostage for 18 years. Phillip Garrido also allegedly raped Dugard, father two daughters with his victim.

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NEW YORK - The defense attorney for Nancy Garrido, who allegedly held Jaycee Lee Dugard captive for 18 years while her husband allegedly raped and impregnated her, has been removed from the case.


Court documents show that Gilbert Maines was removed during a closed hearing in El Dorado Superior Court on Thursday. However, Judge Douglas Phimister immediately stayed the decision until another hearing Nov. 30.

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NEW YORK - Reid Gray entered his $4 million Florida mansion on the Friday of Labor Day Weekend 2009 to find that his beautiful wife, Quinn Gray, had been kidnapped.

"There are three men holding me right now and they want $50,000 cash," the 37-year-old blonde wrote in a ransom note to her husband. "Do not do anything stupid. NO COPS!"

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NEW YORK - Terrified.

That's what Katie Callaway Hall, the woman Phillip Garrido kidnapped and raped thirty years ago, said she felt as she sat in a California courtroom Thursday and watched Garrido and his wife Nancy Garrido deal with charges of kidnapping, raping and imprisoning another girl, Jaycee Lee Dugard.

"The same old fear came back that I felt 33 years ago," Hall said.

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ANTIOCH, Calif. - The investigation into Phillip Garrido, the man accused of kidnapping and raping Jaycee Lee Dugard, has taken another turn.

The Contra Costa County Sheriff's office said Friday that bone fragments dug up from the backyard of Garrido's Antioch, Calif., home and a neighboring property probably belonged to Native Americans buried a long time ago.

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NEW YORK - HELD HOSTAGE: The True Story of a Mother and Daughter’s Kidnapping by Michelle Renee with Andrea Cagan is the first-person account of a mother’s daring bank heist to save her daughter from a deadly fate.

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