Arrests Northern California

A paroled three-time rapist was brought back to Orange County from his Northern California hide-out Tuesday to face charges that he murdered a 23-year-old Huntington Beach woman he met last Thursday at a local nightclub. A crowd of about 100 onlookers jeered and booed as Edward Patrick Morgan Jr.

Four suspects arrested in the murders of four people found in a dilapidated duplex containing drug paraphernalia are members of a white supremacist group, authorities said. "The common thread we're finding is they all belonged to what appears to be a self-proclaimed white supremacist-type group," Stanislaus County Sheriff's Lt. Richard Breshears said. "There doesn't appear to be any racial overtones in this (the four victims were white). The motive is really up in the air a little."

Sheriff's officials announced Friday that they had cracked a case of "grand theft Pokemon"--tracking down 161 trading cards that had been confiscated, and then lost, by a local school. The owner of the cards, 11-year-old Rudy Donithan-Treat, was awarded $1,500 in Small Claims Court last week after a judge determined that the school bore responsibility for loss of the cards, which are popular with many children.

Charles Rothenberg, who set his son on fire 13 years ago as the boy slept in a Buena Park motel room, was charged Thursday in Oakland with shooting and wounding a man in the head. Rothenberg, 55, was the most closely guarded parolee in California after he was released from prison in 1990. He was arrested Tuesday night in connection with the Jan. 12 shooting of a 47-year-old man at an Oakland Travelodge, and was charged with attempted murder and committing a felony with a firearm.

Two Hollywood men are in custody as suspects in the slaying of an Oscar-winning sound producer whose body was found July 20 in his Los Feliz home, police said Monday. Fingerprints in the home of the victim, Robert Glass, led detectives to suspect Christopher Bradford, 24, Lt. Dave Waterman said. Bradford's roommate, John Ramirez, 27, had allegedly been seen by witnesses carrying a television from Glass' Griffith Park Boulevard home, Waterman said.

A veteran prosecutor who heads a special operations staff of 30 lawyers in the Santa Clara County district attorney's office has been arrested on suspicion of buying antiques from a burglary ring specializing in stealing collector's items. Over the weekend, undercover investigators videotaped Deputy Dist. Atty. Alan Nudelman, 46, allegedly paying $100 for an antique porcelain pedestal-type sink and an oak dropfront desk in the parking lot of a Los Gatos market, police said.

Three young sisters were in foster homes Friday and their mother was in custody after the girls were found malnourished in a squalid apartment and able only to grunt, authorities said. Neighbors said authorities had ignored repeated pleas to end the girls' "nightmare." Ruby Pointer, 40, pleaded not guilty Friday to child endangerment and marijuana cultivation charges. Police said that Pointer is not cooperating with them and that she breaks into incoherent speech when questioned.

Prosecutors in Northern California say they have uncovered a murder-for-hire plot to kill the estranged wife of a prominent Ventura County businessman. Law enforcement officials said a tip from an FBI informant helped them foil a plot to kill Linda Lou Mannheimer, a mother of three and wife of Lee Mannheimer, the president of PerfectData, a publicly traded computer products firm in Simi Valley. One suspect, John Herbert Judd Jr., a 49-year-old Placer County electronics technician, awaits a preliminary hearing in November on charges of solicitation to commit murder.

A mother used duct tape to suffocate her three little girls in their pajamas, then climbed into bed with them and took an overdose of prescription drugs, police said Tuesday. The woman, Megan K. Hogg, 25, was treated at a hospital, then booked for investigation of homicide and taken for a psychiatric evaluation. Hogg left two notes describing her actions, police said. "In 29 years, I've seen a lot of evil. Nothing like this," said Lt. Steven Lowe.

An ex-convict suspected of shooting a sheriff's deputy in the brazen escape of an inmate was captured Sunday, authorities said. Gerard Joseph Gallant Jr. offered no resistance when he was arrested just outside Sacramento, federal and local police said. Gallant, 53, had been sought since Tuesday, when he allegedly shot and seriously wounded Sacramento County Sheriff's Deputy Steven Fonbuena while aiding in the escape of inmate Vincent Carrafa.