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A 7-year-old girl is safe and sound after a man attempted to kidnap her earlier this week in the toy aisle of a Walmart in Georgia. Brittney Baxter was looking at toys when a man started talking to her and then grabbed her, covering her mouth. She kicked him and screamed until he let her go, which you can see on this surveillance footage. Her mother was just a few aisles away and couldn't believe what had happened. Luckily, no one was injured. The creep who did this, Thomas Andrew Woods, was already on probation for the 2004 killing of his uncle and is now in custody. He is being charged with attempted kidnapping. Major props to Brittney for having the presence of mind to protect herself in what must have been a terrifying situation. More »
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After several weeks of investigating rape allegations made against Greg Kelly, co-anchor of Fox 5's Good Day New York and son of NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, the Manhattan District Attorney has officially decided not to bring charges against Kelly. In a letter, lead prosecutor Martha Bashford said, More »
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News that Mark Berndt, a teacher at Miramonte Elementary School in Florence-Firestone California, was arrested after allegedly spoon-feeding semen to at least 23 students between 2005 and 2010 has been improbably exacerbated with the arrest of yet another Miramonte teacher on allegations of sexual abuse. Police are holding 49-year-old Martin Bernard Springer — a second grade teacher at Miramonte — in lieu of $2 million bail after two former students accused him of improperly touching them within the last three years. Captain Mike Parker of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has said that the investigation is ongoing and that the girls "were allegedly fondled in the the classroom at the Miramonte school by suspect Springer." They were both only 7-years-old when the abuse allegedly took place. More »
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Rich people do some crazy shit, and never has that been more true than in the case of Houston millionaire John Goodman. The 48-year-old heir to an air-conditioning fortune recently legally adopted his 42-year-old girlfriend, Heather Laruso Hutchins. They've been together since 2009, and he decided to make her his legal daughter to avoid losing money in a lawsuit he's facing from drunk driving accident he was in back in 2010. More »
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It's been a bad week for sick child abuse "games" in California. First came news of the teacher who played the terrible "lollypop game" with a student, and now Mark Berndt, a teacher at Miramonte Elementary School in Florence-Firestone, California, has been arrested for playing the "tasting game," in which he got sexual pleasure from spoon-feeding his semen to his students. What's even more horrifying is that he is believed to have abused at least 23 students, both boys and girls, between the ages of seven and ten. More »
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Here's a truly horrifying story: a California teacher has been arrested for blindfolding a second-grader and forcing her to perform oral sex on him, calling it "the lollipop game." More »
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Over the weekend, new details have come out about the interactions between news anchor Greg Kelly and the woman who accused him of rape last week—and the plot has certainly thickened. First, it's becoming more clear what happened the night of the alleged assault. It was initially reported that Kelly, who co-hosts Fox 5's Good Day New York, had met the woman the same night she claims the attack happened, but, in fact, they met two days prior when she recognized him from TV on the street. What followed were two days of sexually explicit text messages. An unnamed source described the interaction to the New York Post as "two days of foreplay." More »
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Brittany Norwood, the woman who was charged last March with murdering her Lululemon co-worker Jayna Murray at the Maryland store where the two women worked, was found guilty this Saturday of murder in the first degree and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The March 11 murder occurred as the result of an argument between the two women that erupted after Murray, a then graduate student at Johns Hopkins Univeristy, caught 29-year-old Norwood stealing a pair of yoga pants. Norwood then attacked and killed Murray, delivering 330 blows with five different weapons to Murray's body. In attempt to cover up the murder, Norwood inflicted minor wounds on her own body, bound her limbs, and fabricated a story about two third-party attackers, which investigators believed for a few days before unravelling the truth. More »
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Students at Tulane University say the uptown New Orleans neighborhood that cradles their campus has become so treacherous a gauntlet of violent crime that they're afraid to travel to and from school and are calling on university president Scott Cowen to devote more resources to ensuring their off-campus safety.  Some, like Vice President of Student Organizations Sam Stone in his letter to the editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, have even claimed that off-campus crime is only getting worse, that "aggravated burglary at night" and "daytime armed carjackings" have escalated to the "forcible rape" of female students in the off-campus area around Tulane.  But, in a city that had the highest murder rate per capita in 2010, where, for every 100,000 residents, 262 are assaulted with a gun, should New Orleans police prioritize crimes in the university neighborhoods, and how much can the university itself do to protect students who choose to commute from off-campus residences? More »
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Somewhere there is a drug dealer who is really pissed that 30 pounds of his choice coke has gone missing. But if he wanted it so badly, he shouldn't have mailed it to the United Nations. The cocaine was sent inside fake diplomatic pouches, and ended up in the UN's mailroom last week. People there immediately recognized the pouches as knock-offs. The real diplomatic mail bags have "United Nations" printed on them, as well as the logo. But these only had the logo, and didn't have any address, manifest, or anything—and yet for some reason DHL delivered them no questions asked. It's highly unlikely that some diplomat was having a load of coke delivered for a party. Instead, they think the fake pouches, which originated from Mexico, were meant to ensure the packages made it through border security without being inspected—but it looks like the plan worked a little too well. More »
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A day after we learned that Greg Kelly, co-host of Fox 5's Good Day New York and the son of New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, had been accused of rape, new details are emerging about the alleged attack and its aftermath. Yesterday, we found out that Kelly met the his accuser on the street, and, after going out drinking, the pair ended up in her office at a downtown law firm where she says the incident occurred. Today we learned that the woman told police that she was "virtually passed out" when Kelly allegedly assaulted her. She also claims she became pregnant as a result of the rape and chose to end the pregnancy. More »
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Today in terrible ideas: a new pair of bills proposed by New Hampshire Republicans would seek to put fresh red tape between police and their ability to arrest domestic abusers in the state. There's no way this could possibly go wrong! More »
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Greg Kelly, an anchor on Fox's "Good Day New York" and the son of New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, is currently being investigated by the Manhattan district attorney's office after a woman walked into a police station Tuesday night and complained that Kelly raped her. More »
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Recently elected (appointed?) Miss America Laura Kaeppeler hasn't been shy about her dad's jail time. In fact, some now allege that her compelling personal story of a parent in prison actually helped her win. And victims of his Ponzi scheme aren't too happy. More »
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Police in Milwaukee are offering a unique service: they'll let you conduct your Craigslist transactions inside the police station, to prevent you from being robbed. Handy! The idea came about after a big uptick in robberies that occurred during the hand-off of goods sold on Craigslist. Police officer Lisa Staffold explains, "The media has deemed it 'robbery by appointment' because you're posting ads, you're selling your iPhones, your iPads, your vehicles, and when you go to a meeting location, you're being robbed." More »
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Last week, police were called the Wisconsin home of Michael West and his wife Rebecca in response to a domestic disturbance. When they got there, they found an upset Rebecca, who was "crying very hard and was bleeding out of her nose." She told the cops that her husband had punched her and strangled her until she lost her vision, after they'd had a fight about money. More »
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Something very strange and very creepy is afoot Los Angeles. Yesterday afternoon two women and their nine dogs were hiking beneath the iconic Hollywood sign that overlooks the city when they made a gruesome discovery: the severed head of a man in a plastic bag. Karen Rayner, a spokesperson for the LAPD, described the way the disturbing find came about: More »
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A pregnant woman in South Carolina was trying to lift a few things from a beauty supply store when one of the store's employees caught her red-handed. Rather than admit she was wrong and return the goods, Alexis Sade Hayes went on the attack. She hit the employee in the head with a can of hairspray she'd been intending to shoplift and then took off running, but not before dropping the purse that contained the stolen items. She was later caught and arrested—and also taken to the hospital for abdominal pain. She claims she was defending herself, but it's clear she was the aggressor. She could face assault charges. More »
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Things are never that serene inside a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant, what with all the overstimulated children running around and all, but things got especially wild at a Chuck E. Cheese in Dearborn, Michigan, yesterday when a brawl broke out during a birthday party. More »
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Here's a very sad story with an even sadder ending. Earlier this week, Darlene Gilkey, a 59-year-old woman with terminal cancer, watched as her husband, Paul Gilkey, fatally shot her son and her two sisters in front of her while she lay in a hospital bed in her living room. Apparently, there had been a dispute over whether Darlene should be served tea and toast or an orange, and her husband became so enraged that he shot the three people before also killing himself. More »
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Joran Van der Sloot has just been sentenced to 28 years in a Peruvian prison for the murder of Stephany Flores. He was also fined $74,000. Peru doesn't have the death penalty or life sentences, and Van der Sloot may have lessened his sentence (prosecutors were reportedly seeking 30 years) by offering a "sincere confession" ("I feel very bad") earlier this week. With good behavior, Van der Sloot could be out in 14 years. If you believe Dave Holloway, the father of Van der Sloot's other alleged victim Natalee, that's pretty scary — says Holloway, "I believe he is beyond rehabilitation." More »
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According to the AP, an Alabama judge has declared Holloway dead six years since the teenage went missing in Aruba. A lawyer for Dave Holloway wasn't surprised that Holloway's mother, who opposed the September request to declare her daughter dead, finally relinquished, as, he says, "No evidence has been found Natalee Holloway is alive." Holloway's father had been seeking the declaration so he could stop paying his daughter's health insurance and transfer her college funds to her brother. More »
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In response to the outrage over Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour pardoning a slew of convicted murderers on his way out of office, the state's corrections commissioner said, "This is just something that happens." Thankfully, officials in the state refuse to accept that there's simply nothing you can do when a governor decides a criminal is actually a good dude. More »
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There's more today from the woman you probably never wanted to hear about again. A week after Casey Anthony's video diary was leaked under mysterious circumstances, she's getting a chance to share her side of the story again, via mental health evaluations conducted during her trial. The doctors' depositions paint Anthony as a mentally stable abuse survivor, but it's entirely possible that this is just evidence of the depths of her deception. More »
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Joran Van Der Sloot has plead guilty to the 2010 murder of Stephany Flores in a Lima, Peru hotel room. He apparently offered a "sincere confession," which under Peruvian law could get him a shorter sentence than a standard guilty plea. According to the AP, he said, More »
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Here's a pro tip: If you're trying to score a few more days off, don't pretend you're the victim of one of the most devestating tragedies a person can go through. And, if asked to provide documentation on said tragedy, definitely make sure all your fonts match. More »
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Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is leaving office today, and he's done something to ensure that a certain group will never forget him. People whose family members were murdered now have to live with the knowledge that their loved one's killer is on the loose because Barbour decided to pardon several inmates, including many who killed their wives and girlfriends. More »
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A gentleman named Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop has been arrested in Madison, Wisconsin for — shocker — possession of drug paraphernalia. More »
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It's time to put away your magnifying glass and stop stroking your imaginary beard because police have identified the woman whose body was found on the Queen's Sandringham Estate. Alisa Dmitrijeva has been missing since August and her body has been at the site for between one and four months. Police still don't know what killed Dmitrijeva, who immigrated from Latvia, and detectives say they're "investigating the murder." More »
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We're aware that most children are little monsters (and not in a fun Lady Gaga way), but a group of Florida students have reached a new low. On Friday, a 13-year-old girl took the school bus in Ocala for the first time. No one would let her sit down, so she sat on her sister's lap instead, prompting even more teasing from the students on the bus. Someone threw a shoe at the girl's head, and when she hurled it back a fight broke out. More »
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One year after a bullet went straight through her head, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords led the crowd in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at a candlelight vigil in Tucson. Giffords' recovery has inspired people across the country, but her presence at numerous memorial events today was particularly meaningful for those still struggling with the aftermath of the Arizona shooting. More »
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Officials have been busy publicly disagreeing over just how serial killer-riddled Long Island is, but it seems any speculation may be premature. Several of the 10 victims recovered on South Shore beaches still haven't been identified, and now police are asking for the public's help. They've released a sketch of a woman whose skull was discovered last April off of Ocean Parkway, 15 years after her legs turned up on a Fire Island beach. Police don't know the woman's approximate age and can't recover dental records, so they're hoping someone will remember a woman who had scars on her right leg and a surgical scar with suture marks on her left ankle. More »
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A video diary made by Casey Anthony back in October has just been leaked — and in it, Anthony promises more video logs and hints at greater media exposure. Oh, good. More »
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Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is still undergoing physical and speech therapy in Houston, but on Sunday she'll return to Arizona to participate in events marking the one year anniversary of the shooting that left her wounded and six people dead. Giffords' husband, Mark Kelly, plans to speak during a vigil at the University of Arizona. Giffords won't do any interviews while in Tucson and isn't expected to speak at the events, but the fact that she's able to attend already says a lot. More »
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For Sarah McKinley of Blanchard, Oklahoma the past few weeks have been unbelievably harrowing. First, the 18-year-old's husband died of lung cancer on Christmas. Then on New Year's eve two men tried to break in her house while she was home alone with her infant son. One of the men made it through her front door, and after checking with a 911 operator to make sure it was legal, McKinley shot and killed him. More »
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The case of the human remains found on Queen Elizabeth's Sandringham Estate has officially become a real-life Masterpiece Mystery. Yesterday police said the remains belong to a young woman and have been lying in the forest for one to four months. Inspectors say she was probably murdered, and may be foreign. The estate is 20,000 acres and sections are open to the public, so it's not quite the same as a crime occurring in the Queen's backyard. However, if you'd like to believe the Queen came this close to playing Miss Marple, the royal family was only yards from the body when they went on a pheasant shoot during the holidays. More »
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For the family of Margaret Anderson, the new year got off to a tragic and violent start. Anderson, a 34-year-old park ranger working at Mount Rainer National Park, was murdered on Sunday. The violence began at around 10:30 a.m. after a ranger attempted to make a routine traffic stop. When the driver of the vehicle refused to pull over, the ranger called for assistance, and Margaret Anderson responded, setting up her patrol car as a road block. When the driver arrived at the spot Anderson had blocked, he got out of the car and shot at Anderson and the other ranger in pursuit of him. Only Anderson was hit—sadly she was killed before she could even get out of her car. More »
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For a good portion of 2011, Northern Virginia was paralyzed in fear of a man who had made a habit of sneaking up behind unsuspecting shoppers in area malls and slashing their posteriors with box cutters and razors. His shenanigans continued unabated for months, until authorities identified the man as Johnny Guillen Pimentel and the slicing stopped. Now, officials fear their suspect may have fled to Peru. More »
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We all have dreams, but few of us are committed enough to write down a list of them and carry it around as a constant reminder of what we're aiming for in life. But Donna Fountain, a 38-year-old from Brooklyn, did just that. Sadly, police found Donna's list with her when she was killed by a hit-and-run driver on Christmas morning. If that's not gut-wrenching enough for you, there's plenty more. Fountain was a single mom to her 8-year-old son Elijah, and her list, which she titled simply "My Dreams," will break your heart: More »
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Maybe it's the stress of endless social obligations, maybe it's the diminished daylight hours, and maybe people are just a bunch of Santapunching Scrooges. No matter the reason, every year, it seems as though a rash of appropriately decorated seasonal violence erupts during the holiday season. Here's this year's rundown of Fe-le-le-le-lelonies. More »
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