Allyson McConnell drowned her two young sons in a bathtub and left them in the water to "rot"

Australian mother Allyson McConnell drowned her two young sons in a bathtub and left them in the water to "rot", the boys' father has told a Canadian court.

Curtis McConnell wept on Tuesday as he recalled frantically searching the family's home in Millet, Alberta, in February 2010 after receiving a call from police that his wife had jumped off a freeway overpass in an apparent suicide bid.

Mr McConnell said he rushed to the home and searched the bedrooms for his sons, 10-month-old Jayden and two-year-old Connor, but could not find them.

He then discovered a locked bathroom, used a knife to unlock it and found the lifeless bodies in the bathtub.

"I just dropped to my knees and I reached into the water and the water was so cold ...," Mr McConnell testified, according to the Edmonton Journal. Read More

Robert E. Underwood a Army Colonel arrested for 'paying a hitman $150,000 to kill his ex-wife and threatening to blow up state capital '

An Army officer in Washington state threatened to blow up the state capitol, personally kill his girlfriend, and hired a hit man for $150,000 to kill his estranged wife and his superior officer.

Lt. Col. Robert E. Underwood, who was arrested Monday night and pleaded not guilty to felony harassment charges, was stationed at the same base as the soldier who made headlines over the weekend for allegedly killing 16 Afghan civilians in a shooting spree.

Underwood threatened to kill girlfriend Serena Kiptoo after she confronted him about a naked photograph of his daughter on his laptop computer.

Court documents say that he then told her that he'd paid a hit man $150,000 to kill both his wife and superior officer. Read More

Danielle Yvonne Slaughter killed her 6-year-old daughter with scissors, because she used 'evil words'

A mom who killed her daughter in a brutal scissor attack wanted to clear an ‘evil presence’ from her Nevada home, police said.

Danielle Yvonne Slaughter, 27, was found by police on Sunday, naked and bloody, running through Las Vegas, according to court documents released Tuesday.

She told officers the blood on her hands was the ‘lamb of god’ and asked 'Did I kill my daughter?' Is she dead?’

Police went to Slaughter’s house, where her six-year-old daughter, Kayla Franks, was found dead.

The mom told police she had been having trouble sleeping since she began taking slimming pill Hydroxycut four days earlier, a drug which was temporarily withdrawn from the market in 2009 over liver damage fears. Read More

Man And Woman Arrested Over Toddler's Death at a property on Kilbourne Road, Belper, Derbyshire

Two people have been arrested on suspicion of murdering a two-year-old boy.

The child died after falling ill at a property on Kilbourne Road, Belper, Derbyshire, at 10.45am on Tuesday.

Police say he was taken to hospital but died a short time later.

Officers have cordoned off a former convenience store and flat above it. Both properties are for sale.

A 41-year-old man and a woman, 32, are being questioned over the boy's death, which is being treated as suspicious.

It is not yet known what caused the toddler's death.

A post-mortem examination was carried out on Tuesday night but detectives are waiting for the results of toxicology tests.

Neighbour Robert Egan told Sky News: "He was a lovely little lad, full of beans, we were all shocked when the paramedics turned up yesterday and the police interviewed us last night". Source

Butler 'injected millionaire socialite with deadly virus and told her she would die if she didn't hand over $8.5million for antidote'

The butler accused of holding millionaire socialite Anne Bass hostage for 12 hours in her Connecticut estate and injecting her with a 'deadly virus' is to face trial today.

Masked assailants convinced the philanthropist that she would die from the injection and demanded that she pay $8.5 million for an antidote.

The men said Bass and her boyfriend, artist Julian Lethbridge, had 20 hours to produce the cash and it was only after the men reconsidered and fled the house, that the victims learned that the substance was harmless, likely an ink.

A trial is starting in U.S. District Court this week for Emanuel Nicolescu, a former head butler at the Bass estate, who is the only person arrested in the crime. Nicolescu, 31, has pleaded not guilty to charges including attempted extortion. His attorney declined comment. Read More

British pensioner and Thai bride found battered to death in remote bungalow

A British pensioner and his Thai wife have been found brutally murdered in a beach resort bungalow on the Gulf of Thailand.

Police were today holding a security guard, a chef and a local fisherman over the murder.

They say the men were looking for cash but only got the equivalent of £41, a bank card and a mobile phone.

The victims were named as Michael Raymond, aged 68, and his Thai wife Suchada Bonkamdi, aged 52.

Their bodies were discovered yesterday afternoon by a maid at the Jack Beach Resort in Prachuap Khiri Khan, 180 miles south of Bangkok.

Both Mr Raymond and his wife had been severely beaten about the face and head.

Case officer Captain Winai Raila-aied said: 'They were beaten with a chair and other hard objects.

'At first two suspects - a chef and a security guard - admitted they had robbed the couple of 2,000 baht (£41), a mobile phone and a Bangkok Bank ATM card.

'Now all three have confessed to their wrongdoing.' Read More

Leanne McNuff Killed by her Boyfriend after her FACEBOOK Account was hacked and status changed to Sleeping Around

A young mother was stabbed to death in front of her four-year-old son after someone changed her Facebook status to 'sleeping around'.

Leanne McNuff, 24, was knifed just an hour after phoning her best friend to say her account had been hacked.

Her soldier boyfriend Ian Lowe, 24, was arrested shortly after she was attacked in front of her son Jaden in her semi-detached home in Droylsden, Greater Manchester.

Today the Private, from 1st Battalion The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment who was leave from serving in Afghanistan, was still being questioned by police over the killing on Sunday evening.

Leanne's best friend Emma Barlow, 26, said she had been worried that someone had hacked her Facebook account shortly before she was attacked.

Emma said: 'I spoke to her around 50 minutes before it happened. She was having problems with her Facebook and had phoned me for help.

'She thought someone had hacked into her account and changed her password. Jaden was still up and I could hear him in the background.'

'Someone had changed her Facebook status and it was saying nasty things about her - things that weren't true.

'She was upset because it was saying things about her sleeping around - it was all untrue. I was trying to contact Facebook.' Read More

Nightmare zoo conditions exposed, Indonesia

The tigers are emaciated and the 180 pelicans packed so tightly they cannot unfurl their wings without hitting a neighbour. Last week, a giraffe died with a beachball-sized wad of plastic food wrappers in its belly.

That death has focused new attention on the scandalous conditions at Indonesia's largest zoo. Set up nearly a century ago in one the most biologically diverse corners of the planet, it once boasted the most impressive collection in Southeast Asia.

But today the Surabaya Zoo is a nightmare, plagued by uncontrolled breeding, a lack of funding for general animal welfare and even persistent suspicions that members of its own staff are involved in illegal wildlife trafficking.

The rarest species, including Komodo dragons and critically endangered orangutans, sit in dank, unsanitary cages, filling up on peanuts tossed over the fence by giggling visitors.

"This is extremely tragic, but of course by no means surprising in Indonesia's zoos, given the appalling way they are managed on the whole," said Ian Singleton, a former zookeeper who now runs an orangutan conservation program on Sumatra island. Read More

Baby girl found dead in washing machine at a house on Brisbane's north, Australia

Police are investigating the death of a baby found in a washing machine at a house on Brisbane's north in January.

The newborn girl was found, wrapped in clothing, at a Bald Hills home on Australia Day.

Detective Senior Sergeant Todd Reid says investigators had to wait for forensic testing before releasing more details.

"Detectives from the North Brisbane Child Protection and Investigation unit were called to an address at Bald Hills - an infant child was located deceased in a domestic washing machine at an address and since that time detectives have been investigating that matter," he said.

Police stepped up their investigation this week after the tests showed the baby had not been stillborn.

Detective Senior Sergeant Reid says it has been a complex investigation.

"As a result of some recent forensic testing and some results that have been achieved - we have been treating it as suspicious the entire time - but we are now able to confirm it is suspicious and we are urging any members of the public who may have information about that matter to contact Crime Stoppers," he said.

Senior Sergeant Reid says police are particularly interested to hear from anyone who knew of the woman's pregnancy. Read More

Ted Nishihara: La Mirada Substitute Teacher Arrested on Suspicion of Child Molestation

A 29-year-old substitute teacher in La Mirada was arrested Monday on suspicion of sexually molesting a student at Los Coyotes Middle School, according to Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department officials.

The mother of a female student at Los Coyotes Middle School said her daughter told her a male substitute teacher, identified by authorities as Ted Nishihara, touched her in a sexual manner during class, police said.

The alleged molestation occurred Thursday, according to district officials.A female student made a report to a guidance counselor, who contacted school administrators, according to Norwalk-La Mirada Superintendent Ruth Perez. Read More

Afghans in anti-U.S. protest over killings

March 13 - Around 2,000 Afghans protest in Jalalabad over the massacre of 16 civilians in Kandahar by an American soldier. Travis Brecher reports

Guatemalan soldier sentenced to 6,060 Years....…And yet, is it really time enough for what he's done?"

(CNN) -- A Guatemalan court convicted a former soldier for his role in a 1982 massacre and sentenced him to more than 6,000 years in prison.

Pedro Pimentel Rios is the fifth former soldier convicted of atrocities for the killing of 250 people in the village of Dos Erres during the country's civil war.

Pimentel was extradited from the United States to Guatemala in July, 2011.

Relatives of the victims told CNN affiliate Noti7 that justice was late, but it finally came.

Judge Irma Valdez said Monday the evidence presented by the prosecution and the testimonies of the witnesses proved that Pimentel was involved in the killings.
He was sentenced to 30 years each for 201 of the Dos Erres killings and another 30 on a charge of crimes against humanity.

Pimentel was part of a special unit known as the Kaibiles, who stormed the village, thinking that residents were hiding left-wing guerrillas. Read More

U.S. Soldier May face Death Penalty

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Afghan protesters angered by the weekend killings of 16 civilians blocked a major highway Tuesday as U.S. President Barack Obama said U.S. officials were "heartbroken" by the deaths.

A U.S. Army sergeant is accused of killing the Afghan villagers in what top commanders say was a rampage Sunday morning near Kandahar. A protest in Jalalabad, near the border with Pakistan, drew hundreds of people Tuesday, with demonstrators blocking the highway to Kabul, provincial government spokesman Ahmad Zaii Abdulzai said.

"We are in the process of trying to reopen," Abdulzai told CNN.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued a fresh denunciation of the attack Tuesday. And in Washington, Obama told reporters that "the United States takes this as seriously as if it was our own citizens and our own children who were murdered." Read More

George Zimmerman a Neighborhood watch captain who shot DEAD unarmed TEEN on his way to store 'had history of aggressive tactics'- WON'T face charges

A volunteer captain of a Florida neighbourhood watch, who shot dead a black teen and then claimed he acted in self defence, had a 'history of aggressive tactics,' it has today emerged.

Neighbours in George Zimmerman's gated community, at Twin Lakes, near Orlando, had issued complaints about the 26-year-old to local police and the homeowners association before the February 26 shooting, a homeowner said.

Zimmerman has not been charged in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, 17, who was gunned down as he returned to his father’s house with candy for his younger brother.

Martin had been visiting his father from Miami.

According to a police report, Zimmerman, who was patrolling the neighbourhood in his car, had initially called police to report a 'suspicious person in the area'.

Zimmerman was told to keep his distance, but before officers could reach the scene, there was some kind of confrontation between him and Martin.

The teen was shot once in the chest just yards from his father's home. Zimmerman claimed he had fired his 9mm handgun in self-defence and the police say they have no reason to suspect he is lying.

A resident, who attended an emergency homeowner's association meeting after the shooting on March 1, told the Huffington Post how 'one man was escorted out because he openly expressed his frustration because he had previously contacted the Sanford Police Department about Zimmerman approaching him and even coming to his home.

'It was also made known that there had been several complaints about George Zimmerman and his tactics' in his neighborhood watch role, they added. Read More

Philip Ward admits Decapitating Girlfriend Veronica Bowen 23 years ago

A pregnant woman's body was found on a rooftop in 1989 after a horrific attack: Her head was missing.

More than two decades later, on Monday, Veronica Bowen's boyfriend was charged with murdering her out of jealousy.

Five years later he would kill another of his girlfriends in the city's suburbs.
Already imprisoned for the second slaying, Philip Ward pleaded not guilty to murdering Bowen, though prosecutors say he recently confessed to a crime in which he'd long been under suspicion.

His lawyer, Franklin Rothman, said that 45-year-old Ward was helping authorities, spurred by a desire to build a better relationship with his and Bowen's two children.

‘I killed Veronica Bowen,’ he told investigators last month at the upstate New York prison where he's serving 20 years to life for killing his subsequent girlfriend, according to prosecutors' court papers. Read More

Donald Trump's sons pictured posing with their 'trophy' carcasses on big African hunt

Grizzly photos have surfaced of Donald Trump's millionaire sons smiling broadly next to the dead carcasses of wild animals that they shot while on a big game hunt in Africa.

Though the two men- Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump- deny any wrong doing and proudly argue that they are hunters, many animal rights advocates are taking jabs at the pair.

In one of the photos, 34-year-old Don holds the sawed off tail of an elephant and another the knife that likely cut it. Read More

David Joseph Pederson a White supremacist who 'went on road trip killing spree with girlfriend' admits to murdering his parents

A white supremacist accused of killing four people in a violent road trip has pleaded guilty to two of the murders, sparing him the death penalty.

David Joseph Pedersen, 31, admitted to shooting his father David 'Red' Pedersen, 56, in the head and slashing the throat of his stepmother, Leslie Mae 'DeeDee' Pedersen, 69 last September in Everett, Washington.

The guilty plea means the killer, who was arrested with his girlfriend in October, will be sentenced to life in prison on Friday, prosecutors said.

Prosecutor Mark Roe said he had not sought the death penalty as Pedersen's father had allegedly sexually abused his children and others - although he did not specify whether the killer himself was a victim.

After his arrest, Pedersen said he had killed his father because he had sexually abused his sister and cousin.

But speaking to the court, Roe added that Pedersen's stepmother was 'an incredibly lovely person who hadn't harmed anyone in her entire life'.

Pedersen and his girlfriend Holly Grigsby, 25, were arrested in California after what police believe was a two-week crime spree across three states. Read More

Annie Kasprzak found murdered in river near her house... as horrified mom realizes she's dead from TV report

Police in Utah are trying to solve the mystery of the murder of a 15-year-old girl whose body was found bloody and bruised in a nearby river hours after running away from home.

Annie Kasprzak's family reported that she was missing after she left home around 7.45pm Saturday night and were also the ones to call police after they watched a television report the next day saying that a body was found in the Jordan River, and that they feared it may be their daughter.

Unfortunately their fears came true as she was found several hundred yards down the river.

Relatives are now calling for the public's help in piece together the answers about Annie's final hours.

A passer-by spotted what police are calling 'a substantial amount' of blood at the edge of the river, along with one of Annie's red sneakers.

'Enough to make us believe something happened,' Sargent Chad Carpenter of the Draper police department said.

Police have been quick to say that it was a suspicious murder and does not appear to be a random act. Read More

Soldier Ian Lowe detained for stabbing his girlfriend to death

This is the first picture of soldier Ian Lowe posing with smiling girlfriend Leanne McNuff - the woman he is suspected of stabbing to death in front of their four-year-old son.

The 24-year-old, from the 1st Battalion The Duke of Lancaster Regiment, is being quizzed on suspicion of murder after Leanne, also 24, was found knifed to death at her semi-detached family home in Droylsden, Greater Manchester.

The couple's young son Jayden was in the house in Mellor Street at the time of the killing at 7.45pm on Sunday night.

Leanne’s mother Margaret and brother Ryan live next door and rushed to Leanne’s home after they heard ‘banging noises’. They discovered Leanne with multiple stab wounds.

Police are treating the death as a domestic dispute. Read More

One hundred paedophiles chemically castrated in controversial prison experiment to crush their sex drive

Image: Evil: Roy Whiting, killer of eight-year-old Sarah Payne.

Around 100 paedophiles have been chemically castrated under a Government scheme to stop them reoffending.

The sex offenders volunteered to take the drugs designed to stifle their libido during a pilot experiment at HMP Whatton in Nottinghamshire.

One course of the drug, leuprorelin, should reduce their testosterone levels to that of a prepubescent boy.

The ongoing experiment could revolutionise the way the British penal system deals with sick criminals such as Roy Whiting, who murdered eight-year-old Sarah Payne in 2000, or Colin Blanchard, who ran the online child sex network that included nursery worker Vanessa George.

The programme at HMP Whatton, a specialist category C prison which holds male sex offender, is being run by the Prison Service and the Department of Health, co-ordinated by criminal psychiatrist Professor Don Grubin.

'I have referred around 100 people for treatment,' he told The Daily Mirror.

'We know the treatment works to reduce sexual arousal and fantasies.'

Chemical castration can cut the rates of reoffending from 40 per cent to five per cent, according to researchers in Scandinavia. Read More