All Blog Posts from Crimesider

PERUGIA, Italy - The murder charges against Amanda Knox are "pure fantasy" according to the American student, who addressed an Italian court over the weekend.

Knox, along with two others, is accused in the fatal stabbing of her British roommate Meredith Kercher.

Italian prosecutors, in their closing arguments, said Knox and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, should be convicted on charges of murder and sexual violence for the 2007 slaying.

Read full post…

NEW YORK - In an exclusive interview with CBS News Crimesider, one of Alyssa Bustamante's closest friends said that the alleged killer of Missouri 9-year-old Elizabeth Olten had talked about murdering before, and had a psychologically troubled past that may have been overlooked by professionals.

Jennifer Meyer, 15, who spoke exclusively with Crimesider in a phone interview on Friday, Nov. 20, said that Bustamante had once told her, "I wonder what it would be like to kill somebody."

Read full post…

NEW YORK - Crimesider has obtained exclusive photos of Alyssa Bustamante, the 15-year-old alleged killer of Elizabeth Olten, 9.

The collection of Facebook and MySpace photos reveals a multi-faceted teenage girl who appears troubled and typical at the same time — smiling, seemingly carefree in one photo, holding her hand as a gun to her head in the next.

Read full post…

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.

Read full post…

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - Alyssa Bustamante, the 15-year-old accused of killing her 9-year-old neighbor Elizabeth Olten, was sent to a mental hospital after her lawyer said she showed signs of severe depression and anxiety.

A judge ordered Bustamante to be taken to the Fulton State Hospital for up to 96 hours, but it was unclear exactly when that clock started. The order by Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce is dated Thursday but did not have a time stamp; it was released Friday.

Read full post…

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - If police have it right, 5-year-old Shaniya Davis was raped, strangled to death, then dumped off a rural North Carolina road near a pile of deer carcasses in trash bags.

The man who they say is at the center of the horrible crime is Mario McNeill, who was seen on a hotel video surveillance tape carrying Shaniya, Nov. 10, the day she went missing.

Read full post…

PERUGIA, Italy - Minutes before her death, British student Meredith Kercher was fighting with her American roommate Amanda Knox, according to Rudy Hermann Guede, the man already convicted of killing her.

There was a loud scream and Kercher ended up dead, the Ivory Coast native said at the opening of his appeal in a Perugia, Italy court.

Read full post…

HIGHLAND PARK, Mich. - When Jamar Pinkney Sr. heard his 15-year-old son, Jamar Pinkney Jr., had sexual contact with a 3-year-old girl, he made the teen strip at gunpoint, marched him to a vacant lot and shot him to death despite pleas from the boy and his mother, a relative said.

Michigan authorities filed a first-degree murder charge Wednesday against the 37-year-old father in the shooting death Monday of Jamar Pinkney Jr. in the Detroit enclave of Highland Park.

Read full post…

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Police say Boynton Beach newlywed Dalia Dippolito thought she had the perfect plan to off her husband, Michael Dippolito, but the hit man she tried to hire was an undercover officer, and he's got the video to prove it.

Investigators have now released that video and others, including Dalia Dippolito's shocking interrogation by police, along with 400 pages of documents.

Read full post…

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (CBS/AP> Blessed with a Friday off from school, 15-year-old Alyssa Bustamante dug two holes in the ground to be used as a grave, authorities said. For the next week, she attended classes, all the while plotting the right time for a murder, they said.

That time arrived the evening of Oct. 21, when Bustamante strangled 9-year-old neighbor Elizabeth Olten without provocation, cut the girl's throat and stabbed her, prosecutors said. Why?

Read full post…