Confessions

In a videotape played for jurors Tuesday, Maria del Rosio Alfaro told sheriff's investigators that she repeatedly stabbed a 9-year-old girl to death to eliminate her as a witness to a robbery. Prosecutors said Autumn Wallace was stabbed 50 times in the bathroom of the Anaheim home that she shared with her mother and older sister, neither of whom was at home during the attack on June 15, 1990.

Masao Akabori hasn't had a good night's sleep in 35 years, not since he confessed to kidnaping, raping and strangling a 6-year-old girl in a mountain grove near the Oi River one spring day in 1954. In fact, Akabori did not commit the crime. He immediately retracted his confession, saying he made it under police torture, and he steadfastly maintained his innocence over the years, long after he was sentenced to death and began praying for an early execution to end his torment. The wheels of justice turn slowly in Japan, when they turn.

The homicide detective thought he knew the identity of a murderer but couldn't prove it. To make his case, he wanted a confession. But his suspect wouldn't talk. Los Angeles Police Detective Philip Sowers did what one prosecutor said a lot of detectives do. He turned to the informant tank at Los Angeles County Jail for help.

The officer had admonished the three juvenile theft suspects much like a stern parent: tell the truth and you will be released, but if you lie, you will be arrested and taken to jail. Two of the youths denied that they were thieves. But a third admitted that the three had stolen some property. The youth who told the truth was given only a citation and released. The two who lied were taken into custody and later admitted the theft and were charged with burglary and other offenses.

In a dramatic turnaround, a Burbank man admitted on the witness stand Thursday that he led the attack on John Wayne's daughter and her former boyfriend in Newport Beach 19 months ago. Jerrel Lee Hintergardt, 38, however, denied in Orange County Superior Court that he personally beat up Aissa Wayne. He also denied the prosecution's claims that the attack was ordered by Wayne's ex-husband, Dr. Thomas A.

A judge ruled in Hayward that prosecutors may use at trial the alleged confession of a man accused of killing six deer hunters during a confrontation in November. Sawyer County Circuit Judge Norman Yackel also dismissed a defense attempt to have Chai Soua Vang's trial moved to another county because of extensive publicity. Vang, 36, of St. Paul, Minn., testified at the hearing that he told a detective he wanted a lawyer before talking about the shootings, then changed his mind.

German police said a 25-year-old man confessed to murdering fashion designer Rudolph Moshammer, 64, who was found dead in his Munich villa Friday with a cable around his neck. Police arrested a man, an Iraqi asylum seeker named Herisch A., on Saturday after DNA samples made him a suspect, chief police inspector Harald Pickert said. German authorities normally do not release suspects' last names. "After several hours of interrogations he made a confession," Pickert said.

Nick du Toit, the prime witness in an alleged coup plot in Equatorial Guinea, repudiated his confession and said he was coerced by interrogators who threatened to kill him. Equatorial Guinea now intends to seek the extradition of the most prominent figure in the case -- Mark Thatcher, the 51-year-old son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a legal official close to the prosecution said.

A 1984 confession to a Los Angeles murder was illegally coerced by police who continued questioning a suspect after he had asked for a lawyer, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. The ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco entitles Guillermo Plascencia to a new trial unless a federal judge decides that Plascencia's confession could not have influenced the jury's verdict.

Jurors on Wednesday heard one of three defendants confess on videotape his role in the gang rape and assault of a Central Park jogger. The woman "was just hollering, like help, help. They kept smacking her," Raymond Santana, 15, said in the confession.