RENO: BRIANNA DENISON BODY FOUND

Brianna Zunino Denison

A sign with a photograph showing Brianna Denison, a 19-year-old college student missing since she was abducted nearly a month ago, is seen on Friday, Feb. 15, 2008 near a field where the body of a woman was found in Reno, Nev. A worker found the body about noon in a brush-covered field on the city's south side near a light industrial area, Reno police spokesman Steve Frady said. (AP Photo/Kevin Clifford)

Washoe County coroner Personnel remove the body of a woman found in a field in Reno, Nev., on Friday, Feb. 15, 2008. A worker found the body about noon in a brush-covered field on the city's south side near a light industrial area, Reno police spokesman Steve Frady said. (AP Photo/Kevin Clifford)

In Reno, a Body Is Found and Fear Mounts
By MARTIN GRIFFITH – 54 minutes ago

RENO, Nev. (AP) — A 19-year-old college student missing since she was abducted nearly a month ago was strangled by a serial rapist who has attacked at least two other women and may strike again, Reno police said Saturday.

An autopsy confirmed that a dead woman found Friday in a brush-covered field near a business park was Brianna Denison and that she died of strangulation, Reno Deputy Police Chief Jim Johns said.

Her body had been in the field for more than a week about 8 miles from the house where she last was seen early Jan. 20 at the edge of the University of Nevada, Reno, he said.

"I would say this is a serial rapist," Johns said at a news conference. "We have two, probably three (cases) linked through DNA."

"The totality of the information in this case leads us to believe it is a sexually motivated crime," he said. "I'm worried this guy is still out there, and I'm worried somebody else is going to get hurt."

Campus officers will do all they can to support investigators "in hunting this animal down and bringing him to justice," said university Police Chief Adam Garcia.

Heavy snowfall over the past few weeks may have delayed the discovery of her body, police said.

Denison was abducted by a suspected rapist that police have linked by DNA to a string of attacks near the Reno campus. A student at Santa Barbara City College in California, she was visiting her hometown over winter break and was last seen sleeping on a couch at a friend's rental house just off campus.

DNA evidence links Denison's kidnapping to two other attacks on women near the university late last year, police said, and an earlier campus attack also could be related.

In that earlier incident, the attacker brazenly raped a woman at gunpoint in a garage where campus police park their cruisers.

Based on partial descriptions from previous victims, police have described the suspect as a white male between ages 28 and 40 and at least 5 feet 6, with a long face and brown hair. He was believed to have no accent or regional dialect.

STAY WITH THIS STORY. YOU CAN HELP CATCH THIS KILLER ...

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hA_DEEClMpRwsFr29Un8v3z-yCtwD8URQR600

KATHRYN FAUGHEY: DAVID TARLOFF, KILLER ARRESTED

AP Photo/ANDY KROPA

Kathryn Faughey's casket is carried from St. Monica's Roman Catholic Church in New York, Saturday, Feb. 16, 2008. The 56-year-old therapist was slain in her office just a short walk from the church where her funeral Mass was said. Police are still hunting for clues that might help identify the killer. From right is Faughey's husband, Walter Adam, and her best friend, Patricia Daly. The woman at left is unidentified. (AP Photo/Patrick McCarthey)

New York City psychologist Kathryn Faughey, left, was found dead in her Upper East Side office. The killer -- who police say may have used a meat cleaver to kill the doctor -- was sketched by authorities. (ABC/AP Photo)

Police Arrest Man in Therapist Killing
By COLLEEN LONG,
AP/ Posted: 2008-02-16 19:05:49
Filed Under: Crime News, Nation News

NEW YORK (Feb. 16) - A Queens man with a history of mental problems was arrested Saturday in the vicious slaying of a psychologist attacked in her office with a meat cleaver, police said.

David Tarloff, 39, was taken into custody in the morning after investigators matched him with three palm prints found at the bloody crime scene, said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

Tarloff made statements incriminating himself during a 25-minute interrogation, Kelly said. The questioning stopped when he asked for a lawyer, and it wasn't clear later Saturday whether he had an attorney. Murder and attempted murder charges are pending, Kelly said.

Therapist Kathryn Faughey was slashed 15 times with the cleaver and a 9-inch knife in her Manhattan office Tuesday evening. A psychiatrist who worked in the building, Dr. Kent Shinbach, went to Faughey's aid and was badly injured.

During questioning, Tarloff said he had gone to the office because Shinbach had him institutionalized in 1991. He said he planned to rob the psychiatrist and leave the country with his mother, who lives in a nursing home, but until recently had lived with him in an apartment in Queens.

(snip)

Sisters Betty and Margaret Feeney, who live below Tarloff, said they have known him his entire life. They described him as unstable but were shocked that he was accused in the slaying."I know he's crazy and everything," said Betty, 72. "I don't think that he's capable of doing something like that - of killing somebody. I really don't."

She said that Tarloff would come around asking for money but that she would not give it to him."

I would keep out of the elevator if I saw him. I was scared of him. I wouldn't go near where he would be," she said. "He used to make terrible noise above us. We had an awful time with him. He was tramping back and forth all hours of the night."

MORE TO COME ON THIS STORY...

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/police-arrest-man-in-therapist-killing/20080214072909990002

BOBBY CUTTS GUILTY! KILLED JESSIE DAVIS AND FETUS

Former Police Officer Bobby Cutts Jr. was arrested and charged with two counts of murder on June 23, 2007, after Ohio authorities discovered the body of his girlfriend Jessie Davis and their unborn child. (ABC News)

AP/ In this image from WOIO-TV, a body believed to be that of missing pregnant woman Jessie Davis, 26, is removed from Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

Ohio: 26-year-old Jessie Davis, who went missing. Davis is nine months pregnant. (ABC News)

Prosecutors and investigators brought the carpet from Jessie Davis' home into court.

Patricia Porter, mother of Jessie Davis, listens to the judge instruct the jury in the trial of Bobby Cutts Jr., Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2008, in Canton, Ohio. Cutts could receive the death penalty if convicted of killing Jessie Marie Davis, who was nine months' pregnant with his child. (AP Photo/Bob Rossiter, Pool) (Bob Rossiter - AP)

Bobby Cutts Jr. Found Guilty of Killing Pregnant Girlfriend and Fetus, Mistrial Request Denied
Friday, February 15, 2008

CANTON, Ohio — A former police officer who tearfully told jurors he accidentally killed his pregnant lover was convicted Friday of murdering her and their unborn child.

Bobby Cutts Jr. could face the death penalty. He had claimed he accidentally killed Jessie Davis by putting an elbow to her throat, then panicked.

• Click here for photos.

Cutts, 30, was convicted of aggravated murder in the death of the nearly full-term female fetus, which carries the possible death penalty. Jurors will return later this month to weigh a sentencing recommendation.

(snip)

Jurors reached their decision on their fourth day of deliberations. Cutts sat with his hands on his lap and held his head erect without emotion as the verdicts were read.

Prosecutors told the jury that Cutts killed Davis, 26, last June at her Lake Township home to get out of child support payments for a fourth child.

The couple's 2 1/2-year-old son, Blake, who was found home alone, gave investigators their first clues to his mother's disappearance when he said, "Mommy's crying. Mommy broke the table. Mommy's in the rug," and, later, "Daddy's mad."

For more than a week, Cutts, then an officer on the Canton police force, denied knowledge of her whereabouts as thousands searched in the area. He finally led authorities to the body, wrapped in a comforter and dumped in a park about 20 miles from her home.

Cutts testified for four hours Monday, saying tearfully that he accidentally killed Davis as he was trying to leave her house and she didn't want him to go. He said he then panicked.

READ MURDER CONVICTION...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330787,00.html

KISHWAUKEE COMMUNITY HOSPITAL: NIU SHOOTING VICTIMS ARRIVE

Welcome to the
Kishwaukee Community Hospital site.

Due to an incident at Northern Illinois University, we will be using this
Web site to update you as often as possible.

The most recent update was made at 8:50 p.m. on Thursday 2/14

18 patients have arrived.

1 – fatality confirmed, unidentified male
(not identified as the gunman)

6 – critical patients transferred
2 flown to Saint Anthony Medical Center
3 flown to Good Samaritan Hospital
1 flown to Rockford Memorial Hospital

3 – admitted to Kishwaukee Community Hospital

8 – discharged


Press conference scheduled for 11 a.m. at Kishwaukee Community Hospital.

NO MEDIA will be allowed in the Patient Care Areas of the Hospital.


For further information, please visit this site again and be sure to “refresh”
your browser. You also may call (815) 756-1521 x153737

Thank you!

NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIV: COLE HALL SHOOTING, 16 WOUNDED, 6 DEAD

Outside Cole Hall on the Northern Illinois University campus in DeKalb. on Thursday. Several people were confirmed wounded Thursday afternoon in a shooting in a lecture hall on the NIU campus, authorities said. A statement posted at 3:50 p.m. on the university's Web site said "several people" were taken away by ambulance. (Northern Star photo by Jim Killam / February 14, 2008)

A team of medical personnel move a shooting victim to a waiting helicopter for a medical evacuation from Kishwaukee Community Hospital in DeKalb on Thursday. (Tribune photo by Stacey Wescott / February 10, 2008)

Cole Hall, a lecture space at the center of campus, where the shooting reportedly took place.

Ambulances line up at Northern Illinois University after a shooting.

5 shot dead, including gunman, at Northern Illinois University

DEKALB, Illinois (CNN) -- A gunman dressed in black walked from behind a curtain at the front of a large lecture hall Thursday at Northern Illinois University and shot 22 people, four fatally, then killed himself, authorities said.

Seventeen victims were taken to Kishwaukee Community Hospital, its Web site said.

Of those, six were in critical condition and were flown to other hospitals. One fatality, a male, was confirmed -- but was not the gunman, the hospital said. Two were admitted, and three others were discharged. The other five were not addressed on the Web site.

Most of the injuries are head and chest gunshot wounds, a spokeswoman tells CNN.

The shooting occurred shortly after 3 p.m. (4 p.m. ET) in Cole Hall. The class runs from 2 p.m. until 3:15 p.m., university President John Peters said.

"It started and it stopped very quickly," said Police Chief Donald Grady. The gunman, whose identity has not been revealed publicly, was not a student at the NIU campus in DeKalb, west of Chicago, but "may have been a student somewhere else."

Police do not have an apparent motive now, Grady said.

Kevin McEnery said he was in the classroom when a man dressed in a black shirt, dark pants and black hat burst in carrying a shotgun.

"He just kicked the door open, just started shooting," said McEnery, who was in the class at the time. "All I really heard was just people screaming, yelling 'get out.' ... Close to 30 shots were fired."

Watch McEnery describe the chaos at the scene »

There are about 162 registered students in the class that met in the large lecture hall.

"Witnesses say someone dressed in black came out from behind a screen in the front of the classroom and opened fire with a shotgun," Peters said.

The gunman fired from a stage at the front of the classroom, Grady said.

READ ABOUT THIS STUDENT MASSACRE...

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/14/university.shooting/index.html#cnnSTCText

PAMELA SMART: WILLIAM FLYNN, NO RELEASE FOR SHOOTER

William Flynn, 33, tearfully apologized as he asked for a reduced sentence.

Flynn, shown on the stand on his 17th birthday, was 16 when he shot his older lover's husband.

Pamela Smart doesn't deny she had an affair with Flynn, but says she had no role in her husband's slaying.

Gunman in Smart case denied release

Tue February 12, 2008

Associated Press

BRENTWOOD, New Hampshire (AP) -- The gunman in the notorious Pamela Smart murder case has been denied early release from prison, but he will be eligible for parole three years earlier than he previously would have been.

William Flynn, 33, was 16 in 1990 when he shot Smart's husband in the couple's condominium.
He said he killed Smart at the behest of his wife, Pamela Smart, a media coordinator at Flynn's high school who had seduced him and was threatening to break off their affair.

Judge Kenneth McHugh, in an order released Tuesday, found that 18 years in prison for the murder wasn't enough.

McHugh wrote that after hearing the expressions of hurt and anger from the Smart family at Flynn's hearing last month, the court suspects that even Flynn "in the deep recesses of his soul would agree."

McHugh ruled that Flynn could become eligible for parole after he had served 25 years in prison, three years sooner than he would have under the 28 years-to-life prison sentence he is serving. Flynn had asked to be released now because he has spent more than half his life behind bars.

Flynn will have served 25 years in prison on June 4, 2015, when he is 41, according to Susan Morrell, senior assistant attorney general.

READ UPDATE OF THIS INFAMOUS CRIME...

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/02/12/smart.gunman.ap/index.html

Movie starring Nicole Kidman, "To Die For," was based on the Pamela Smart story.

CHOMP

BOBBY CUTTS: ON TRIAL FOR KILLING PREGNANT GIRLFRIEND, JESSIE DAVIS

Jessie Marie Davis

Jessie Davis' 2-year-old son, Blake, right, was the first to provide clues into the disappearance of the expecting mother from her Lake Township, Ohio, home, by telling police, "Mommy was crying. Mommy broke the table. Mommy's in rug." One week later, on June 23, 2007, police found Davis' body in a park and arrested Bobby Cutts Jr., who is said to be the father of the baby she was supposed to deliver July 3, 2007.

Former Canton patrolman Bobby Cutts Jr. breaks down while testifying in his trial Monday in Canton, Ohio. Cutts could receive the death penalty if convicted of killing Jessie Marie Davis, inset, who was nine months' pregnant with his child. (Pool Photo/AP)

Cutts murder trial wraps for the day
Posted by February 06, 2008 17:11PM

A witness in the Bobby Cutts murder trial stunned the court when he revealed Cutts said he wanted to kill Jessie Davis a full month before her death.

"I'm going to kill the bitch and throw her in the woods," Richard Mitchell said Wednesday afternoon, recalling a conversation he had with Cutts.

Mitchell, a longtime friend of Cutts, said he thought Cutts was joking. But Mitchell also testified that he told authorities he would not tell them if he knew anything about Cutts' role in the disappearance of Jessie Davis.

Cutts, a former Canton police officer, is accused of strangling Davis in her Plain Township home before dumping her body in the tall grass of a wooded area in a Summit County park. Co-defendant Myisha Ferrell testified Tuesday that Cutts, 30, admitted killing Davis June 14, holding up one bent arm to show how he choked Davis to death.

Canton police officer David Clouse testified that he trained Cutts and other officers to use choke holds to restrain unruly prisoners. Clouse said he only teaches officers how to use a hold that places pressure on blood vessels in the side of the neck.

But he also demonstrates a more dangerous hold that can suffocate, Clouse said. He demonstrated it on an assistant county prosecutor and it resembled the hold that Ferrell described on the witness stand.

Cutts' former wife, Kelly Schaub, testified about the ongoing affair Cutts had with Davis while married to Schaub. Schaub said she often spoke to Davis, trying to convince Davis to leave her husband alone.

Two other women testified about having affairs with Cutts, bringing to four the number of women who had romantic links to Cutts in 2007. Part of the state's case is that Cutts was under increasing pressure because of the affairs, financial problems and his crumbling marriage.

THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING OF THE TRIAL...

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/02/cutts_murder_trial_wraps_for_t.html

TRAITORS ARRESTED: LEAKED SECRETS TO CHINA

Federal prosecutors including Kenneth Wainstein, center, announce the arrests Monday.

Federal authorities bring boxes to a home following a raid in connection with a spy investigation in New Orleans, Monday, Feb. 11, 2008. (Bill Haber/ AP)

Feds: U.S. defense analyst leaked secrets to China

From Terry Frieden, CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A U.S. Defense Department analyst has been arrested and charged with espionage, accused of passing American military secrets to the Chinese government.

Court documents unsealed Monday following arrests in two states identify the defense worker as Gregg William Bergersen, 51, of Alexandria, Virginia.

Bergersen is a weapons systems policy analyst at the Defense Department's Defense Security Cooperation Agency in Arlington, Virginia. He is charged with conspiracy to disclose national defense information illegally to unauthorized individuals.

In an unrelated espionage case, federal authorities in California arrested a former Boeing Co. engineer and charged him with working as an unregistered agent and stealing trade secrets for the Chinese government.

"These two cases plainly represent the magnitude of the threat we face," said Kenneth Wainstein, assistant attorney general for national security.

"It's a threat to our national security and to our economic position in the world," he added, "a threat that is posed by the relentless efforts by foreign intelligence services to penetrate our security systems."

Wainstein said the Chinese government is among the most aggressive of foreign powers seeking access to U.S. military and economic secrets.

Also in the Virginia case, two Chinese immigrants -- Tai Shen Kuo, 58, and Yu Xin Kang, 33, both of New Orleans, Louisiana -- were charged with conspiracy to disclose national defense information to a foreign government.

THERE IS NOTHING WORSE THAN A TRAITOR...

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/02/11/espionage.indictments/index.html

Giving away secrets to another country is serious business. The question I have is "When did they stop executing spies?"

CHOMP

ART STOLEN FROM ZURICH MUSEUM: WORTH MILLIONS; $90,000 REWARD

Vincent Van Gogh: "Chestnut in Bloom"
Claude Monet: "Poppie Field Near Vetheuil"
Edgar Degas: "Count Lepic and His Daughters"
Paul Cezanne: "Boy in a Red Jacket"

Feb. 11: The museum holding the collection of E. G. Buehrle, in Zurich, Switzerland was robbed by an armed gang Sunday. (AP/Keystone)

1: Zurich police say the three robbers entered the museum just before it shut on Sunday

2: Officers say one of the men used a gun to force 15 visitors and several staff to the floor

3: Police say his two accomplices then seized the four paintings from a ground-floor display hall - according to the museum website, the Music Room

4: Eyewitnesses say the robbers loaded the art into a white vehicle in front of the museum and

drove off. It was all over in three minutes, police say

Armed Robbers Steal $163 Million Worth of Art From Zurich Museum
Monday, February 11, 2008

Associated Press

ZURICH, Switzerland — It was one of the biggest art robberies in European history, police said Monday.

Armed and masked, three men entered a private Zurich museum just before closing Sunday and made off with paintings by Cezanne, Degas, van Gogh and Monet worth 180 million Swiss francs (US$163.2 million; euro112.4 million).

Calling it a "spectacular art robbery," police asked witnesses to help reconstruct the robbers' getaway from the E.G. Buehrle Collection, a private museum for Impressionism that has had its own troubled history with stolen art.

"This is an entirely new dimension in criminal culture," Zurich police spokesman Marco Cortesi said, calling it the largest art robbery in Switzerland's history and one of the biggest ever in Europe.

The three men, wearing ski masks and dark clothing, entered the Buehrle museum a half-hour before closing Sunday. While one used a pistol to force museum personnel to the floor, the two others went and collected the four paintings from the exhibition hall, police said.

One of the men spoke German with a Slavic accent, police said. They loaded the paintings into a white vehicle parked out front. Police, asking for witness to come forward, said the paintings may have been sticking out of the trunk as the robbers made their getaway.

A reward of 100,000 francs (about US$90,000 or euro62,500) was offered for information leading to the recovery of the paintings — Claude Monet's "Poppy field at Vetheuil," Edgar Degas' "Ludovic Lepic and his Daughter," Vincent van Gogh's "Blooming Chestnut Branches," and Paul Cezanne's "Boy in the Red Waistcoat."

The FBI estimates the stolen art market at US$6 billion (euro4.1 billion) annually, and Interpol has about 30,000 stolen works listed in its database.

DO YOU HAVE INFORMATION? $90,000 REWARD...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330273,00.html

TINLEY PARK: POLICE SKETCH OF LANE BRYANT KILLER

Tinley Park police have released this sketch of the man suspected of fatally shooting five women in a Lane Bryant clothing store. (Courtesy)

The face of a mall killer
TINLEY PARK Cops release sketches of suspect as rites are held for 3 victims
February 10, 2008
BY CHRIS FUSCO Staff Reporter/cfusco@suntimes.com
Contributing: SouthtownStar reporters Stephanie Gehring and Carly A. Mullady

Tinley Park police Saturday released a composite sketch of the man believed to have shot five women to death at a Lane Bryant in the south suburb last weekend.

Police also announced they're evaluating "a very large quantity of evidence" from the crime scene, although they would not discuss what they've found in and around the store at the Brookside Marketplace mall.

Meanwhile Saturday, two of the women were laid to rest and a service was held for a third.

About 800 people packed the Word of Life Church in Crest Hill to remember store manager Rhoda McFarland, 42, of Joliet, an Air Force veteran, former Nicor Gas employee and outgoing youth pastor. Speakers stressed that McFarland should be remembered for how she lived, not how she died.

(snip)

He is described as black, approximately 25 to 35 years old, 5-foot-9 to 6-feet and 200 to 230 pounds -- with a "husky build, broad shoulders, weight proportionate to height." He had three to five "puffy" cornrows pulled back toward the back of his head, and one braid hanging down next to his right ear with four light green beads on the end.

Also, police distributed fliers to people at the mall "who may have seen something" the morning of Feb. 2 because they frequent it only on weekends, Tinley Park police Cmdr. Rick Bruno said.
Anyone with information is asked to call (708) 444-5394, a 24-hour hotline. A $55,000 reward is offered.

LET'S CATCH THIS COLD-BLOODED KILLER...TODAY!
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/786774,CST-NWS-shoot10.article