‘A father and his teenage daughter have been found dead inside a Sydney home in what police believe is a murder suicide.
A person returning to the home in the northwest Sydney suburb of Pennant Hills made the grisly discovery at 6pm (AEDT) tonight.
Detectives have established a crime scene and are investigating the circumstances surrounding the two deaths.
A police spokesman said the two bodies inside the house were father and daughter but post-mortem examinations would reveal how they died and in what order.’
‘A New Zealand woman who pulled apart a Christmas cracker got more than the party hat and joke she had expected, finding a dead mouse.
Betty Lawrence, a grandmother from the South Island city of Invercargill, made the discovery sitting down to Christmas dinner with 20 relatives, The Southland Times newspaper reported.
“I had said to my granddaughter ‘what’s the smell’ and we couldn’t work it out until we pulled the cracker,” Lawrence told the newspaper, after finding a dead and partially decomposed mouse.
The discovery curbed her enthusiasm for the Christmas meal.’
‘Two teenagers believed to be imitating the Mortal Kombat video game have been arrested and charged in the death of a 7-year- old Johnstown girl – a sister of one of the suspects. [..]
They began wrestling and enacting a game of Mortal Kombat, court affidavits say. Zoe lost consciousness after being hit, kicked and body-slammed to the floor. [..]
A witness quoted in an affidavit said Roberts told her he had kicked the girl and that his hands were “lethal weapons.”
The witness said Roberts performed a back kick and the girl didn’t get up. He said he and Trujillo “cracked an egg in her mouth . . . in an attempt to see if she was messing around with them” by faking unconsciousness.
The witness said she asked Roberts whether Zoe had asked them to stop. “Yeah, she told me to stop,” he said. Asked why he didn’t stop, he said, “I don’t know; I was drunk.”‘
‘A fruit-picking trip to southern New South Wales ended in the death of a Scottish backpacker who became embroiled in a bizarre row about creationism and evolution.
English backpacker Alexander Christian York, 33, was today sentenced to a maximum of five years jail for the manslaughter of Scotsman Rudi Boa in January last year. [..]
The Scottish couple and York, neighbours at the caravan park, were becoming friends and spent the night of January 27 drinking at the Star Hotel in Tumut.
However, towards the end of the night, an argument between York and the pair about creationism versus evolution escalated into a shouting match at the pub.
The couple, both biomedical scientists, had been arguing the case of evolution, while York had taken a more biblical view of history. [..]
According to Ms Brown, York was making dinner when he attacked the couple outside his tent, stabbing Mr Boa with a kitchen knife as the argument escalated.’
‘After playing World of Warcraft, the 12 year old boy knew how to cope when he was attacked by a moose in the forest.
In the article he describes how he first yelled at the moose, distracting it so his sister got away, then when he got attacked and the animal stood over him he feigned death. “Just like you learn at level 30 in World of Warcraft.”‘
‘This was the incredible scene after a car cartwheeled more than 100ft through the air before embedding itself in a first-floor flat.
John Gordon’s Volvo took off after hitting a tree on a roundabout and flew until it crashed into the flats 15ft off the ground and facing backwards.
The car smashed into a lounge where 19-year-old Laura Stevens had been a few seconds earlier. [..]
Engineers had to spend three hours dismantling the wall of the flats in Werrington, Peterborough, before they could remove the car.
Mr Gordon, from Peterborough, hit the roundabout at around 9.10am on Saturday, clipped a tree and bounced before being catapulted into the air.
His car cartwheeled so it entered Miss Stevens’s flat backwards, sending debris flying on to the floor.’
‘Authorities in Orange County are working to recover the remains of a 24-year-old Anaheim man who was killed Wednesday in a wood chipper accident in Tustin.
The tree service worker “was standing at the back end of the chipper, throwing branches into it with his co-workers nearby,” said Sgt. Pat Welch of the Tustin Police Department.
“One of them looked over, and he was gone.”
Authorities took the wood chipper and the truck attached to it to a parking structure at the coroner’s office, where they plan to dismantle it.’
‘5/13/90
To Sybil,
Lamentably, I killed your cat while trying just to sting it. It was crouched, as usual, under one of our bird feeders & I fired from some distance with bird shot. It may ease your grief somewhat to know that the cat was buried properly with a prayer & that I’ll be glad to get you another of your choice.
I called & came by your house several times. We will be in the Dominican Republic until Thursday. I’ll see you then.
Love, Jimmy’
‘A teenage gunman who killed eight people in a high school rampage before turning the weapon on himself has died in hospital.
Seven students and the school principal died when 18-year-old student Pekka-Eric Auvinen opened fire at a school in southern Finland yesterday, hours after he posted a video on YouTube foreshadowing the massacre.
Witnesses said Auvinen walked through the corridors of Jokela High School firing into classroom after classroom with a .22-caliber handgun.
Police said Auvinen came from “a very normal family”. [..]
The YouTube video, set to a hard-driving song called Stray Bullet by the industrial rock band KMFDM, shows a still photo of a low building that appears to be Jokela High School.’
(2.6meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘The father of a fallen Marine was awarded nearly $11 million Wednesday in damages by a jury that found leaders of a fundamentalist church had invaded the family’s privacy and inflicted emotional distress when they picketed the Marine’s funeral.
The jury first awarded $2.9 million in compensatory damages. It returned later in the afternoon with its decision to award $6 million in punitive damages for invasion of privacy and $2 million for causing emotional distress to the Marine’s father, Albert Snyder of York, Pa.
Snyder sued the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church for unspecified monetary damages after members staged a demonstration at the March 2006 funeral of his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq. [..]
Church members routinely picket funerals of military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, carrying signs such as “Thank God for dead soldiers” and “God hates fags.”‘
‘Tourism officials have been slammed for featuring an axe wielding serial killer on a children’s Christmas advent calendar.
They defended the move by saying mass murderer Fritz Haarmann was part of the German city of Hanover’s history.
The calendar is already on sale at tourism offices and shows children singing Xmas carols and laughing as Santa hands out Xmas gifts – and the Star of Bethlehem twinkles over the rooftops.
But over the first door of the calendar, a trilby wearing man peaks out from behind a tree with a meat cleaver in his left hand.’
see it here »
‘A mother cremated a body she thought was that of her dead son, only for him to turn up alive later, police said on Friday.
Gina Partington’s 37-year-old son Thomas Dennison was reported missing last month and a body was found in Rusholme, Manchester, three days later.
The 58-year-old mother, from Urmston, Greater Manchester, formally identified the body as that of her son and, following an inquest, the body was cremated on October 30.’
‘A 24-year-old New York City man remains jailed after he was found allegedly having sex with a 92-year-old woman’s corpse inside the morgue of the hospital where he worked.
Anthony Merino, who works as a lab technician at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, N.J., was arrested Sunday after police responded to a call from a security guard at the hospital. The guard reported witnessing the lab technician sexually desecrating the woman’s dead body, according to police.
“This is a first,” Lt. Dean Kazinci, spokesman for the Teaneck, N.J., police, told ABC News. “When you think you’ve heard and seen it all, something like this happens.”‘
‘Police say a Milton-Freewater man died after jumping from a vehicle driven by his wife while their two young children were in the back seat.
It happened when the couple was northbound on Oregon 11 Friday night, and the SUV was doing 40 to 50 miles per hour.
Police say alcohol was a contributing factor but gave no other explanation.
Raydel Gutierrez was 24. He was a passenger in the SUV driven by his 24-year old wife, whose name was not released.
Lieutenant Greg Sherman says the couple’s two children, ages 4 and 7, were in the rear seat.
Sherman says Gutierrez intentionally jumped out of the passenger side and landed on the highway.’
‘London’s police force was found guilty Thursday of endangering the public during a frantic manhunt for four failed suicide bombers that led to the killing of an innocent Brazilian man on a subway train [..]
The manhunt unfolded with the British capital already on edge after four suicide bombers killed 52 commuters two weeks earlier.
The officers watching the building trailed Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, out of the apartments, suspecting he was one of the bombers. They followed him onto two buses, into a subway station and finally into a train. There, officers, believing he was a bomber, shot him seven times at close range in front of morning commuters.
On Thursday, a jury found police guilty of breaking health and safety laws. Judge Richard Henriques ordered the Metropolitan Police to pay a total of $2.1 million for breakdowns in the operation.’
‘Passengers on a German train mistook a Halloween reveller dressed up as a gore-covered zombie for a murder victim and called the police.
The 24-year-old man fell into a drunken slumber on his way home from a Halloween party in Hamburg, police in the northern town of Bad Segeberg said on Monday.
Believing his hands and face were smeared with blood, passengers alerted police after getting no response from him. [..]
“Bad Segeberg is in a rural area and Halloween isn’t very well known there,” police spokeswoman Silke Tobies said. “So people weren’t expecting anyone to be dressed up in the train.”‘
‘An 82-year-old Argentine woman who attracted media attention last month when she married a 24-year-old man has died as a result of heart problems.
Adelfa Volpes was admitted to hospital soon after she and her new husband, Reinaldo Waveqche, returned from their honeymoon in Brazil.
She died in a sanatorium in Santa Fe, the city where the couple were married.’
Followup to Man, 24, weds 82-year-old bride.
‘The National Defence Force is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday. [..]
Mangope told The Star that it “is assumed that there was a mechanical problem, which led to the accident. The gun, which was fully loaded, did not fire as it normally should have,” he said. “It appears as though the gun, which is computerised, jammed before there was some sort of explosion, and then it opened fire uncontrollably, killing and injuring the soldiers.” [..]
During the shooting trials at Armscor’s Alkantpan shooting range, “I personally saw a gun go out of control several times,” Young says. “They made a temporary rig consisting of two steel poles on each side of the weapon, with a rope in between to keep the weapon from swinging. The weapon eventually knocked the polls down.”‘
‘Shocked Grade 11 pupils watched as two girls allegedly helped a 19-year-old classmate deliver twins before attempting to flush the babies down the school toilet. [..]
The babies allegedly drowned instantly in the gushing toilet water but did not go down the drain.
A pupil who did not want to be named said the heavily pregnant girl walked out of class and headed for the toilets.
“Her friend followed. After a few minutes she came back in a hurry to call another girl in the classroom. My friend who is in the same class said they did not know what was happening but they could see something big was going on.
“She said about 20 minutes passed and then she decided to go and see for herself what was happening. She allegedly bumped into a teacher carrying a bundle wrapped in a cloth on her way from the toilets,” the pupil said.’
‘An unfortunate, but amazing case: a 25-year-old schizophrenic man shoved a 14.5-cm-long ballpoint pen through his eye socket, all the way to his cerebellum (in the rear of the brain). Hospital staff found him lying in a pool of blood, and the man told doctors he ‘had torn his eyes because it tickled and that 10 years earlier he had shot himself in one eye with an airgun rifle.’ His doctors were puzzled: the man slipped quickly into a coma, but there was no sign of serious trauma to the area other than a small hematoma. A CT scan (above) provided more baffling information, which the doctors initially interpreted as a bullet wound in the left parieto-occipital region. When the patient died 4 days after the injury, the ballpoint pen was discovered wedged deep into the brain. The blunt end of the pen, with cap, had been inserted first, with the cap lodged well into the right lobe of the cerebellum. This is one of the only known suicides on record from “low-velocity” penetrating objects.’
‘A Chinese woman who killed her lover with a rat poison-laced kiss when she suspected him of being unfaithful has been sentenced to death, a newspaper said today.
Xia Xinfeng, from Maolou in the central province of Henan, passed a capsule with rat poison from her mouth to her long-time lover, Mao Ansheng, during a kiss, the Shanghai Daily said.
Mr Mao swallowed the capsule and died soon afterwards.
“The couple had said that if either one of them cheated on the other, he or she would have to die,” the paper said in explaining the mouth-to-mouth assault.
Ms Xia found Mr Mao had been “talking” with another woman, and deemed that he had broken their promise.’
‘The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique has told the BBC he believes some European-made condoms are infected with HIV deliberately.
Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claimed some anti-retroviral drugs were also infected “in order to finish quickly the African people”.
The Catholic Church formally opposes any use of condoms, advising fidelity within marriage or sexual abstinence.
Aids activists have been angered by the remarks, one calling them “nonsense”.’
A list of hundreds of hoaxes that have been perpetrated throughout history.
‘The Church of Scientology has been granted access to a confidential psychiatric report tendered as evidence in the trial of a Sydney woman accused of murdering her family earlier this year.
The 25-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was diagnosed with a psychotic illness last year but allegedly discouraged by her parents from taking her prescribed medication because of their Scientology beliefs. [..]
Cyrus Brooks, community relations officer for the church, said it had sought access to the document after media coverage linking Scientology to the alleged murders, although access was granted on condition that the church not release the report to the media.
Despite this, Mr Brooks has emailed excerpts from the report to journalists to “correct” their reporting of the case.’
Followup to Scientology ‘stopped accused killer getting help’.
‘The amoeba typically live in lake bottoms, grazing off algae and bacteria in the sediment. Beach said people become infected when they wade through shallow water and stir up the bottom. If someone allows water to shoot up the nose — say, by doing a cannonball off a cliff — the amoeba can latch onto the person’s olfactory nerve.
The amoeba destroys tissue as it makes its way up to the brain.
People who are infected tend to complain of a stiff neck, headaches and fevers, Beach said. In the later stages, they’ll show signs of brain damage such as hallucinations and behavioral changes.
Once infected, most people have little chance of survival. Some drugs have been effective stopping the amoeba in lab experiments, but people who have been attacked rarely survive, Beach said.
“Usually, from initial exposure it’s fatal within two weeks,” Beach said.’
Followup to Brain-Swelling Amoeba Blamed For 2nd Child’s Death.
‘A man has died after being found unconscious at a concert by rock group Smashing Pumpkins in Vancouver, Canada.
Security staff saw two people carrying the man out of the crowd at the Pacific National Exhibition Forum, shortly after the band came on stage on Monday.
The fan, who was 20, was given first aid and was taken to St Paul’s Hospital in the city, but was pronounced dead shortly afterwards.
It was an “extremely tragic” event, a spokesman for the venue said.
“A 20-year-old came to enjoy an evening of music but didn’t go home that night,” he added.
Tests from a post-mortem examination are awaited before any conclusions are drawn as to how or why the victim died.’
‘A mum-of-three was “devastated” today after sickos apparently killed and pushed her family’s much-loved pets through letterboxes.
Two rabbits and five guinea pigs – four of them pregnant – were stolen from Paula Beard’s back garden in Rotherham, South Yorkshire.
Animal remains were later found smeared over cars, in gardens and pushed through letterboxes a mile away in Wath-upon-Dearne.
South Yorkshire Police believe the two incidents may be linked and are appealing for witnesses in the area.
Mrs Beard, 37, said she was “absolutely devastated” when she found the runs and cages empty on her patio.
“My pets are my life – they’re like my kids,” she said.’
‘The man is dead. He can’t fight back. Nor could the children he pinned down and molested. Bob Collins was not killed by bowel cancer, as has been widely reported. He had beaten it – though there were complications after he had surgery in Adelaide. Collins is being eulogised as a great fighter for the north. But he did untold damage along the way.
When he had his way with boys, he was consumed by a sickness. But there can be no excuses for Collins. On the times he spoke up for the rights of children, he was the worst kind of hypocrite. And it must be remembered he was smart as a whip, being a minister in both the Bob Hawke and Paul Keating federal cabinets.
Collins was the first former or serving federal minister to be charged with child-sex offences. Police believe his preferred prey was Aboriginal boys, although white boys were not excluded.’
‘The father of an 18-year-old Redwood City man found his son dead after he fell into a waist-high vat of sulfuric acid early Sunday morning in a bizarre industrial accident, police said.
When Fernando Jimenez Gonzalez failed to come home after his shift at Coastal Circuits, his father went looking for him at the Redwood City manufacturing plant, said Sgt. Steve Dowden of Redwood City police. He found his body shortly before 2 a.m. [..]
Police believe Gonzalez passed out from chemical fumes as hesubmerged circuit boards into one of the plant’s three acid-copper-plating tanks, Dowden said.
The other employee at the facility, located in a Redwood City industrial area, was uninjured. It’s unclear why that worker didn’t call emergency crews.’
‘A Pentagon group has encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to target suspected insurgents by scattering pieces of “bait,” such as detonation cords, plastic explosives and ammunition, and then killing Iraqis who pick up the items, according to military court documents.
The classified program was described in investigative documents related to recently filed murder charges against three snipers who are accused of planting evidence on Iraqis they killed.
“Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy,” Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. “Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces.”‘
