All Blog Posts from Crimesider

LOS ANGELES - Samantha Geimer, the woman who Roman Polanski raped as a 13-year-old girl in 1977, is now fighting in a California court to set the embattled director free.

Geimer's attorney, Lawrence Silver, argued in front of California’s Second District Court of Appeal for an end to the 32-year-old case, Thursday Dec. 10, saying Geimer has repeatedly said she wants it dropped, and citing a recently adopted law allowing victims to have a say in cases.

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NEW YORK - Five years ago, New Jersey resident Biurny Peguero said she was visciously gang-raped by three men in a van after a night of drinking in upper Manhattan. Her testimony sent William McCaffery to jail despite a lack of DNA evidence linking him to the crime.

Now, on the advice of her priest, Peguero has admitted it was all a hoax. On Monday in a Manhattan court, she pled guilty to perjury charges and could face seven years in jail. As a result of her new testimony McCaffery, the man convicted of raping her in 2005, was released from prison and is now awaiting final dismissal of the charges.

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GSTAAD, Switzerland - If only we could all be as lucky as Roman Polanski.

The Oscar-winning director of "Rosemary's Baby," "Chinatown" and "The Pianist" has moved from cooling his heels in a Swiss jail to home confinement in a swank million-dollar Alpine chalet as he prepares for potential extradition to America for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl.

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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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