Latest Crime & Trial News

An Illinois child welfare worker was stabbed to death during a home visit in a town south of Springfield. Diedre Silas, investigator for the state Department of Children and Family Services, was conducting a welfare check on children living in the home in Thayer when she was stabbed. Benjamin H. Reed. Reed is charged with first degree murder and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon in the stabbing death. More

January 5, 2022

A judge on Wednesday denied bail to the second of two people charged with killing one police officer and wounding another at a northern Illinois hotel last week. Darius Sullivan, 25, and Xandria Harris, 26, are charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder in the Dec. 29 attack that killed 49-year-old Bradley police Sgt. Marlene Rittmanic and wounded her partner, Officer Tyler Bailey, who remains in critical condition. More

January 5, 2022

Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted last week of conspiring to recruit and groom teenage girls to be abused by Jeffrey Epstein, intends to request a new trial after revelations by one of the jurors in her case that he was a victim of sexual abuse, her defense lawyers said Wednesday. More

January 5, 2022

The Duchess of Sussex will receive a nominal 1-pound ($1.35) payment for invasion of privacy plus undisclosed damages for copyright infringement, under an agreement that ends her long-running dispute with Britain's Mail on Sunday over the tabloid's publication of a letter she wrote to her father. More

January 5, 2022

As Ghislaine Maxwell strode into the courtroom for the first day of her sex-trafficking trial, no photographer was allowed to catch it. Courtroom artist Elizabeth Williams, however, was at the ready and before the hour was up, the curtain-raising scene was transmitted to news outlets around the world. More

January 5, 2022

A Rock County man has pleaded guilty to killing his 97-year-old grandmother, and a judge has ruled he was not legally responsible for the crime because of his mental illness. More

January 5, 2022

Gov. John Bel Edwards scheduled the pardon ceremony for a spot near where Plessy was arrested in 1892 for breaking a Louisiana law requiring Black people to ride in cars that the law described as “equal but separate” from those for white customers. More

January 5, 2022

The Montana Supreme Court has reversed a Miles City man's conviction for attempted deliberate homicide for threatening to stab a bar owner in the heart while the defendant sat handcuffed in the back of a law enforcement vehicle. The justices, in a 4-1 decision issued on Dec. 28, said Banner Lee Boyd did not take any overt actions toward killing the bar owner and thus the state had not proven its case. More

January 4, 2022

A jury has ended the suspense surrounding the fraud trial of former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes by finding her guilty on four of the 11 charges facing her, but some issues in the legal drama remain unresolved. Here's a look at some of the most pressing questions. More

January 4, 2022

A rural Alaska man who threatened to kill the state's two U.S. senators in a series of profanity-laced voice messages left at their offices in Washington, D.C., has pleaded guilty to making the threats in exchange for having other charges dropped. Jay Allen Johnson, 65, entered his guilty pleas Monday in federal court in Fairbanks to two counts of threatening to kill a U.S. official. More

January 4, 2022

A federal judge has dismissed the lawsuit of a 30-year-old man who alleged that the image of him nude as a 4-month-old on the 1991 cover of Nirvana's "Nevermind" album is child pornography. More

January 4, 2022

The U.S. government announced Tuesday that it charged one of the main suspects in the killing of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse as it unsealed a complaint that revealed federal authorities had interviewed him several months ago while he was hiding in Jamaica. Mario Antonio Palacios, a 43-year-old former Colombian soldier, is charged with conspiracy to commit murder or kidnapping outside the United States and with providing material support resulting in death, knowing or intending that such material support would be used to prepare for or carry out the conspiracy to kill or kidnap. More

January 4, 2022

A new federal court order says a Mississippi city must allow construction of a mosque, two months after the American Civil Liberties Union filed a discrimination lawsuit against the city on behalf of two Muslim men who want to develop the place of worship. More

January 4, 2022

An attorney for a man accused of driving his son to a Dallas-area gas station store where the 14-year-old is accused of fatally shooting three teens and wounding a fourth says the father didn't know his son had a gun. Attorney Heath Harris told The Dallas Morning News he believes evidence will show that 33-year-old Richard Acosta, who is charged with capital murder, is innocent. More

January 4, 2022

A Douglas County woman who was accused of faking her daughter's terminal illness, seeking donations, and causing her death, pleaded guilty to lesser charges as part of a plea deal. Kelly Renee Turner, 43, pleaded guilty on Monday to child abuse causing death, theft and charitable fraud. She was initially charged in October 2019 with two counts of first-degree murder, among several other charges, in the August 2017 death of her 7-year-old daughter, Olivia Gant. More

January 4, 2022

A judge was mostly dismissive Tuesday of oral arguments by a lawyer for Prince Andrew who wants to win fast dismissal of a lawsuit alleging that the prince two decades ago sexually assaulted a 17-year-old American who was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein. More

January 4, 2022

A firearms store and gun range in suburban Kansas City refused to let a Muslim woman use the range unless she removed her hijab, a Muslim civil rights organization alleged in a federal lawsuit. More

January 4, 2022

The hunt for a Texas man accused of murdering his estranged wife and apologizing to their children in an online video has ended, according to authorities. More

January 4, 2022

Authorities say they received a call about a driver asleep inside a vehicle parked on an exit ramp of a parking garage located in the 3500 block of South Las Vegas Boulevard. More

January 4, 2022

A federal judge in Oklahoma on Monday set a Jan. 28 date for the resentencing of “Tiger King” Joe Exotic. More

January 4, 2022

Distress calls to law enforcement connected to the investigation into a possible serial killer on Long Island may soon be released. More

January 4, 2022

The private 2009 legal deal resolved Giuffre's allegations that Epstein had hired her as a teenager to be a sexual servant at his estate in Palm Beach, Florida. More

January 3, 2022

A federal magistrate judge refused to dismiss the indictment against Victor Hill, who is charged with violating detainees' civil rights. More

January 3, 2022

New York Attorney General Letitia James recently subpoenaed former President Donald Trump and his two eldest children, demanding their testimony in connection with an ongoing civil investigation into the family's business practices, according to a court filing made public Monday. More

January 3, 2022

A judge delayed the trial for Theodore Edgecomb, who is charged with reckless homicide in the death of Jason CLeereman. More

January 3, 2022

A jury convicted Holmes on two counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud after seven days of deliberation. More

January 3, 2022

Drew Peterson, the former Chicago-area police sergeant who was convicted in 2012 of killing his third wife, is set to return to court this month after a judge agreed to hear his motion to vacate the verdict. More

January 3, 2022

Prince Andrew's effort to immediately block the progression of a lawsuit by a woman who says he sexually assaulted her when she was 17 — on the grounds that she no longer lives in the U.S. — was rejected by a federal judge as oral arguments were set to proceed Monday on the prince's request to dismiss the lawsuit. More

January 3, 2022

By COLLEEN SLEVIN Associated Press DENVER (AP) — Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Thursday shortened the prison sentence of a truck driver convicted in a deadly crash to 10 years, drastically reducing his original 110-year term that drew widespread outrage.   The decision on Rogel Aguilera-Mederos’ sentence was among several year-end commutations and pardons issued by […] More

December 31, 2021

The sex-trafficking trial of Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, ended with a guilty verdict, but that hasn’t stopped the flow of false news that has swirled around the case. On Thursday, posts emerged falsely claiming that trial documents were sealed to protect Epstein — who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex crimes […] More

December 31, 2021