Decapitated

A band of men armed with knives and axes decapitated 31 people who had been forced into the streets from their homes in Medea, south of Algiers, the El Watan newspaper reported. The attack by about 50 men took place early Saturday, the newspaper quoted local residents as saying. El Watan said a Medea resident called the paper, saying, "You have to do something. More than 30 people had their throats slit. Soon they're going to exterminate the entire town."

A New Jersey woman decapitated her toddler son, put his head in a refrigerator and then stabbed herself to death Wednesday after dialing 911, police say. Officers who responded to Chevonne Thomas' 911 call were in her home, unaware she was sitting upstairs, when they discovered the body of 2-year-old Zahree Thomas on the first floor. When they realized someone was on the second floor, most of the officers withdrew and set up a perimeter around the house until they could find a way to safely determine who was inside.

Three bodies were found in an irrigation ditch in Ciudad Juarez, on the border with Texas, where drug violence has increased despite the presence of thousands of soldiers. One of the bodies had been decapitated, and the other two were found with their heads wrapped in packing tape, according to a city fire department report. All three bore signs of torture -- a trademark of drug gang violence.

At least 27 people were slain early Sunday in a remote area of northern Guatemala that has become a key base for Mexican drug-trafficking groups, authorities said. Police said a small army of gunmen attacked workers on a coconut farm in the northern province of Peten, a zone that has become increasingly dangerous as Mexican drug smugglers extend operations in Central America to escape a crackdown at home. The victims included 25 men and two women, all of whom were decapitated, according to Jaime Leonel Otzin, director of Guatemala's National Civil Police.

Nazi hunters arrived in Chile on the trail of Aribert Heim, known as Dr. Death for killing hundreds at an Austrian concentration camp during World War II and who they believe may be lurking in Patagonia. Heim, who kept the skull of a man he decapitated as a paperweight, is the most wanted Nazi war criminal still thought to be alive. He would be 94; his family says he died in 1993. The Simon Wiesenthal Center is offering a bounty of about $450,000 for Heim.

Seven inmates were slain, most of them beheaded, in a brutal prison fight between gang members in Guatemala, authorities said. Inmates at the Pavoncito prison in Fraijanes mutilated and decapitated five rivals, putting a head on a stick in a gruesome spectacle that could be seen from outside the prison. Two other inmates were killed in the fight. The rioting began when prisoners were transferred Friday to Pavoncito from another prison. Police and prison authorities regained control of the jail.

It is, of course, only a coincidence that the same week the United States was submerged in a Beatles-inspired wave of nostalgia for the 1960s, one of the most emblematic symbols of those times, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, reappeared in the news when a Bolivian general acknowledged that the leftist revolutionary had been buried, not incinerated, in Bolivia, after he was executed for his antigovernment activities in 1967.

MEXICO CITY - Mexican authorities responding to an anonymous tip discovered about 50 mostly mutilated bodies dumped on the side of a highway between Monterrey and the U.S. border, a region where rival gangs are battling for control over a lucrative drug-trafficking corridor. The bodies of at least 43 men and half a dozen women were found Sunday in plastic garbage bags near the town of Cadereyta Jimenez, the location of a large state-run oil refinery, officials in the state prosecutor's office told The Times.

Carmen Maldonado Santana and her four children were found decapitated in their house in this small mountain town Thursday, and police said the woman's husband, Hector Mercado Cedeno, was a suspect. Police said they had not determined a motive.

A 27-year-old man was charged today with decapitating his adoptive parents with a saw, police said. The bodies of Anthony and Ann Camerlengo, both 73, were discovered Tuesday night in the basement of their home. The man's legs also were cut off. The couple's heads were found in a storm drain down the street early today. Thomas Camerlengo was charged with murder and weapons possession, police said.

A British national was found guilty Tuesday on two counts of murder in the stabbing death of a woman and the decapitation of her boyfriend in what a prosecution witness said was a drug-fueled, paranoid slaughter at a Tujunga condominium. Jurors deliberated for about a week before returning the guilty verdicts against Neil Revill, 38, a small-time drug dealer, nearly a decade after the October 2001 killings of Arthur Davodian and Kimberly Crayton. A jailhouse informant told jurors in the six-week trial that Revill confessed to murdering the pair, believing that Davodian was involved in a plot with Israeli organized crime figures who planned on killing him. Revill was convicted of second-degree murder for Davodian's death and first-degree murder for Crayton's slaying.

Charlie Sheen's estranged wife said this week that the TV star vowed to decapitate her and send her severed head to her mother. But Brooke Mueller's statements filed in court are not enough for the Los Angeles Police Department to open a criminal investigation. This week a judge issued a temporary restraining order against Sheen, who has pleaded no contest twice on domestic violence charges. But LAPD officials said they've determined that they can launch a probe only if Mueller files a complaint, which as of Friday she has not. "It is incumbent on her to come forward and make a police report," said Los Angeles Police Sgt. Mitzi Grasso.

The bodies of at least 25 people, 15 of them with their heads cut off, were discovered Saturday in the resort city of Acapulco, authorities said. Drug cartel violence has increasingly plagued Acapulco as rival gangs fight for control of the local market, occasionally spilling into the tourist areas of the city. Even though most of Saturday's killings appeared to have steered clear of those sections, the violence damages the reputation of a once-glamorous city struggling to make a comeback amid President Felipe Calderon's drug war. The grimmest discovery came as police were investigating a burning car in a shopping center parking lot early in the morning: the decapitated bodies of 15 people.

Nine months before the mother of a 4-year-old decapitated him with a Ginsu knife, the principal of a Highland Park preschool phoned Los Angeles County's child abuse hotline to report that the woman was screaming and shouting outside the building. Yolanda Tijerina's tirade, which seemed directed at no one in particular, drew a crowd of neighbors and staffers at Meridian Children's Center. "I think you killed my son!" shouted Tijerina, whose 4-year-old boy, Lars Sanchez, attended the school.

A 20-year-old Santa Maria man has been arrested on suspicion of an apparently random ax attack that decapitated a man out for his morning walk. "We're not sure what motivated this young man," said Santa Maria police Lt. Dan Ast, who added that the ax had been stolen during a recent home burglary. Nicholas Bendle was being held in Santa Barbara County Jail on Monday as police investigated the death of 69-year-old Frederick Holgate. The victim, who walked with a cane, was "attacked without warning" early Saturday and did not know his assailant, the police spokesman said.

Police said they found a 3 1/2 -week-old infant stabbed and decapitated in a San Antonio home and his mother screaming that the devil told her to do it. Otty Sanchez, 33, was hospitalized in critical condition with self-inflicted stab wounds to her chest and stomach, said San Antonio police spokesman Joe Rios. Investigators took a sword, a machete and a kitchen knife from the home. Officers also found two children unharmed there. Rios said that when police arrived, Sanchez was sitting on the couch "screaming that she killed her baby," whom police identified as Scott Wesley Buchholtz-Sanchez.

An 11-year-old boy who was fishing with companions off a railroad bridge in Pico Rivera was decapitated by a passing freight train Saturday as he tried to race to safety. The 3,600-foot-long freight had come out of a sharp curve near Whittier Boulevard about 1:40 p.m. and was about to cross the bridge over the San Gabriel River when the engineer spotted the six youngsters on the trestle. The railroad man was unable to stop the train and frantically blew his air horn to warn the children.

A Los Angeles man accused of killing his mother's fiance and dumping the headless body in a trash bin pleaded not guilty Wednesday. Police arrested Marcus Darnell Jacobs, 26, on Sunday, and prosecutors filed one count of murder Wednesday. Jacobs is in County Jail in lieu of $1-million bail, authorities said. The body of Legrand Franklin, 54, was found Jan. 17 in southwest Los Angeles.

Three bodies were found in an irrigation ditch in Ciudad Juarez, on the border with Texas, where drug violence has increased despite the presence of thousands of soldiers. One of the bodies had been decapitated, and the other two were found with their heads wrapped in packing tape, according to a city fire department report. All three bore signs of torture -- a trademark of drug gang violence.

A U.S. citizen was one of the three men who were found decapitated this week in Tijuana, Mexican authorities said Friday. The body of George Harrison, a 38-year-old former Chula Vista resident, had been dismembered and mutilated and was dumped in a vacant lot near Tijuana's beachside bullring. Authorities said they suspected that it was an organized crime hit.