All Blog Posts from Crimesider

HIGHLAND PARK, Mich. - Jamar Pinkney Sr., the 37-year-old Michigan father who allegedly shot and killed his teenage son because the boy told him he molested a 3-year-old girl, will pursue an insanity defense, his lawyer said Tuesday.

On the same day, a judge in the Detroit enclave of Highland Park ruled that Pinkney Sr. will stand trial on first-degree murder, assault and firearm charges.

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RICHMOND, Calif. - Prosecutors say at least six young men, some not even old enough to drive, raped and beat a 15-year-old girl outside Richmond High School in California while others watched, laughed, and took cell phone pictures.

Now, the six defendants, ranging in age from 15 to 21, have pleaded not guilty to the charges against them. They entered their pleas to rape and other charges Tuesday morning in Contra Costa County Superior Court.

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NEW YORK - According to crime statistics from the Department of Justice, 67 percent of sexual assault victims in 2008 were juveniles and an astonishing 93 percent of these victims knew their attackers. When Robin Sax worked as a deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County specializing in sex crimes against children, she personally reviewed at least five new cases every day.

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LEXINGTON, Mo. - Dark, sordid, tales of a rural Missouri man and his four adult sons raping, sodomizing, sexually abusing children, and even murdering, in a house of horror, are coming to light two decades later.

As authorities work to piece together exactly what happened, Burrell Mohler Sr., 77, and his four adult sons appeared in court in western Missouri on Tuesday where they were charged with sex crimes including rape and sodomy. A new search warrant claims one of the suspects even forced his victims to help kill and bury a man.

Hell on earth. But is it true?

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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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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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CLEVELAND - Anthony Sowell, the registered sex-offender facing five counts of aggravated murder, would offer free barbecue to his neighbors, even as corpses were lying around his three-story Cleveland home, according to the Associated Press.

Residents said that in retrospect the smell alone should have raised questions. It wafted down the street, sometimes forcing employees at the sausage shop near his home to abandon the store on hot summer days.

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CLEVELAND - As police say they have identified Cleveland mom Tonia Carmichael as the first of at least 11 bodies found in the home of Anthony Sowell, the woman's family is outraged that police didn’t take their cries for help seriously a year ago.

"They told us to go home, and as soon as the drugs are gone, she'll show up," said Markiesha Carmichael-Jacobs, whose 53-year-old mother, Tonia, a drug addict, vanished Nov. 10, 2008. Police identified her Wednesday as one of the victims, saying her body was found buried in the backyard with marks indicating strangulation.

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RICHMOND, Calif. - On Oct. 24, police say dozens of teens gawked, laughed and took photographs while a 15-year-old girl was brutally gang-raped and beaten outside a Richmond High School homecoming dance.

But one brave girl, who was not even there, wouldn't stand for it.

"I was watching a movie, and my brother-in-law came in and he told me 'I don't know what to do, because there is a girl back there and she has been raped. I'm scared,'" 18-year-old Margarita Vargas said.

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