A New York jury, with the conviction Tuesday of a bodega clerk in the 1979 kidnapping and killing of 6-year-old Etan Patz, brought to a close what a prosecutor called one of the city’s “oldest and most painful unsolved crimes.”
The guilty verdict against Pedro Hernandez, 56, in connection with a murder that sparked an era of heightened awareness of crimes against children, marks the end of an agonizing wait of nearly 40 years for Etan’s parents.
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“The Patz family has waited a long time, but we’ve finally have found some measure of justice for our wonderful little boy Etan,” his father, Stanley, said.
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Etan disappeared on May 25, 1979, as he walked to a school bus stop. In the early 1980s, his photo appeared on milk cartons across the country, the first time the method was used to help locate missing children.
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Hernandez, who was convicted after the jury deliberated nine days, faces a maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison at sentencing later this month.
A son of Jerry Sandusky, the former Pennsylvania State University football coach convicted of sexually assaulting young boys, was himself arrested on Monday on child sex abuse charges.
The son, Jeffrey S. Sandusky, 41, faces 14 criminal counts in Centre County, Pa., including criminal solicitation, sexual abuse, child pornography and corruption of minors for alleged crimes in 2013 and 2016, court records show. Prosecutors said at least one of his victims — reportedly two teenage girls — was younger than 16 at the time of the abuse.
According to an affidavit posted online by USA Today, investigators found that Mr. Sandusky exchanged sexually charged text messages with one of his victims. The affidavit said that Mr. Sandusky said that what he had done was “not weird” because he studied medicine. Some details of alleged encounters were redacted, though the allegations include statutory sexual assault and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.
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Jeffrey S. Sandusky, above, supported his father, Jerry, when he was on trial for child sexual abuse.Credit Centre County Correctional Facility, via Associated Press
Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has been extradited to the United States, Mexico’s government said Thursday, a little more than a year after the Sinaloa cartel leader was caught following his brazen escape from a maximum-security prison.
Several U.S. jurisdictions want to try the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel on federal drug trafficking charges, including prosecutors in San Diego, New York, El Paso, Texas, Miami and Chicago.
A plane carrying Guzman landed at MacArthur Airport on Long Island, New York, at around 9:30 p.m., where dozens of U.S. marshals and other law enforcement officers were gathered.
The Justice Department said Guzman was will “face criminal charges in connection with his leadership of the Mexican organized crime syndicate known as the ‘Sinaloa Cartel,” and is charged in six separate indictments in the U.S.
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Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is escorted by soldiers during a presentation in Mexico City, Jan. 8, 2016. On Jan. 19, 2017, Mexican government officials announced that El Chapo would be extradited to the United States. Tomas Bravo / Reuters
Esteban Santiago returned from a tour in Iraq a changed man, his aunt said Saturday. He talked about the destruction he witnessed. About the killing of children. Visions that haunted him.
“His mind was not right,” the aunt, Maria Ruiz Rivera, told CNN in a phone interview from her home in New Jersey. “He seemed normal at times, but other times he seemed lost. He changed.”
Santiago is suspected of killing five people Friday at Florida’s Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said.
Relatives said he had been different since returning from Iraq, where he was deployed with the Puerto Rico National Guard from April 2010 to February 2011.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the New Year’s attack at Istanbul’s Reina nightclub that left 39 people dead, but authorities are still scrambling to find the killer.
ISIS’ claim, made in a statement posted to Twitter, cannot be independently verified by CNN. But it boasted about the first major terrorist attack of 2017.
“In continuation of the blessed operations which ISIS carries out against Turkey, a soldier of the brave caliphate attacked one of the most popular nightclubs while Christians were celebrating their holiday,” the statement read.
Both Turkish and US officials have called the attack an act of terrorism.
Anis Amri, the Tunisian-born suspect in the Berlin truck rampage that killed 12, was shot dead early Friday.
One Italian police officer was wounded in the encounter, although his injuries were not life-threatening, officials said.
A video surfaced of a man who appeared to be Amri pledging allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
ROME — The suspect in the Berlin truck rampage was killed in a early-hour shootout after a chance encounter with police on the outskirts of Milan, according to Italian officials.
Italy’s Interior Interior Minister Marco Minniti described how cops noticed a “man who walked suspiciously” at around 3 a.m. in Milan’s Sesto San Giovanni neighborhood.
“When he was stopped, the man shot the policemen with a gun. The police shot back,” Minniti told reporters at a press conference in Rome. One officer was wounded in the firefight.
Dylann Roof has been found guilty of the Charleston church shooting and must now beg for his life or be sent to his death.
A jury took just two hours to convict the 22-year-old of 33 federal crimes after a week-long trial in which he was described as a suicidal loner who viewed the nine black parishioners he killed as ‘animals’.
Roof made no attempt to deny slaughtering his victims on June 17, 2015, at Emanuel AME Church, only entering a not-guilty plea to avoid being sent to his death.
He will now serve as his own lawyer and beg for his life as jurors weigh up whether to sentence him to life behind bars or execution despite a judge’s suggestion to have an attorney speak for him.
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Roof was arrested on June 18 last year (pictured). He upheld his decision to represent himself at sentencing
A man who killed an Alabama convenience store clerk more than two decades ago was put to death Thursday night, in an execution that required two consciousness tests as the inmate heaved and coughed 13 minutes into the lethal injection.
Ronald Bert Smith Jr., 45, was pronounced dead at 11:05 p.m., about 30 minutes after the procedure began at the state prison in southwest Alabama.
Smith was convicted of capital murder in the Nov. 8, 1994, fatal shooting of Huntsville store clerk Casey Wilson. A jury voted 7-5 to recommend a sentence of life imprisonment, but a judge overrode that recommendation and sentenced Smith to death.
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This undated photo provided by the Alabama Department of Corrections shows Ronald Bert Smith Jr.. Smith, who was executed late Thursday, Dec. 8, 2016 for the 1994 slaying of a Huntsville store clerk. AP
Dateline NBC’s social and digital series ‘Missing in America’ began on December 5, 2013, following a question the night before to our Facebook community, “Do you know anyone who has simply vanished?” The response was overwhelming. Since that first post, every Monday, we have featured the story of a different missing person brought to our attention from a member of our online communities.
On this third anniversary of the series, more than a third of those we have featured are still missing. Several have had someone charged in connection with their cases. In others, a person has been convicted of their murder. But they still have not been brought home.
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This map shows all the locations across the country where those part of our Dateline Missing in America remain missing from.
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Click link belowfor article and photos with stories of persons still missing:
A Georgia father convicted of murder after leaving his toddler son in a hot car two summers ago was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Monday.
Jurors last month convicted Justin Ross Harris of malice murder and other charges in the June 18, 2014, death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper, who was left in a Hyundai Tucson for seven hours in sweltering heat. Jurors believed Harris left the little boy to die on purpose.
Harris, 35, was also convicted of eight counts of malice murder, felony murder, cruelty to children in the first and second degree, sexual exploitation of and dissemination of harmful material to minors.
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Justin Ross Harris and his son Cooper. Facebook via WXIA
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Guilty verdict in decades-old murder case
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Anis Amri German police via AP
James' World 2 