Kidnapings

A dead man was officially named Adam Walsh's killer Tuesday, but not because of any new evidence or a deathbed confession. Police simply took another look at 27 years of tips, psychic revelations, often-botched police work and a serial killer's chilling admissions and decided it was time. Time to ease the suffering of the Walsh family and time to point the finger at the man Hollywood Police Chief Chad Wagner said had been the prime suspect all along: Ottis Toole.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Two foreign women working for a Swiss-based aid group have been kidnapped in the remote northeastern province of Badakhshan, Afghan officials said Wednesday. Three male Afghan colleagues were abducted as well, but one apparently escaped and then alerted the authorities, according to officials in Faizabad, the provincial capital. The medical team was captured by a group of gunmen Tuesday while traveling by donkey or horseback in an isolated district where floods have washed out roads, and an intensive search was underway, said Abdul Mahrouf Rasikh, a spokesman for the provincial governor.

The 68-year-old man accused of snatching 10-year-old Nichole Taylor Timmons from her bedroom Monday night waived extradition from Nevada on Wednesday and is expected to return here by week's end to face a battery of state charges. Riverside Deputy Dist. Atty. Mike Soccio said suspect Glenn MacArthur Park was "answering questions well and cooperating with the investigation" being conducted by authorities in Reno.

SAN DIEGO —Two members of a Mexican organized crime group that terrorized border communities were found guilty Wednesday of taking part in the strangling deaths of two men whose bodies were later dissolved in lye and dumped at a ranch outside San Diego. The mens' ruthless tactics were the trademark of a gang that broke off from the drug cartel waging war in Tijuana nearly a decade ago, according to prosecutors. The Palillos, or Toothpicks, came to the San Diego area in 2003 after splitting from the notorious Arellano Felix drug cartel.

Philippine troops Wednesday rescued a kidnapped American businessman who had been chained by his neck and feet for 22 days, Philippine and U.S. officials said. Alastair Joseph Onglingswan, 35, was rescued in a house in Bacoor, south of Manila, by a government anti-kidnapping force and military intelligence agents, officials said. A suspect was arrested and was being interrogated, officials said.

Authorities recovered the strangled body of a popular grupera singer Monday, just two days after the slaying of another grupera singer in her hospital bed, officials said. Sergio Gomez, lead singer for the group K-Paz de la Sierra, had been kidnapped in the southern state of Michoacan late Saturday and had been missing for two days before officials found his body. Zayda Pena was killed in her hospital bed in the border city of Matamoros on Saturday, hours after surviving an assault.

Eight alleged members of the San Diego County Mexican Mafia prison gang pleaded not guilty to charges of drug manufacturing, extortion, kidnapping and murder. The three women and five men, who appeared in court Monday, were the first of 35 gang members and associates charged in a 52-count indictment. Entering their pleas were Sergio Pulido Perez, 47; Leonard Parmer, 19; Denise Ortega, 27; Pamela Thompson, 39; Jaime Lopez Jr.

The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba. But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.

The forecast called for heavy snow on the route home, so the three pilots who had just flown a covert CIA-sponsored "extraordinary rendition" flight were forced to stay an extra night at the Gran Melia Victoria, a luxury hotel overlooking the marina on the island of Majorca. Up in Room 552, the pilot who called himself Capt.

Marjorie Miller reports that "the U.S. government said it would no longer kidnap Mexican citizens but refused to back up its pledge with any legal guarantees" (July 2). U.S. officials seem to be unaware that Mexico and other countries already have a new and plain-spoken legal safeguard against future kidnapings. On Nov. 11, 1990, the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs came into force. In text blunt enough for all to understand, the convention enjoins that a treaty party "shall not undertake in the territory of another Party the exercise of jurisdiction and performance of functions which are exclusively reserved for the authorities of that other Party by its domestic law."

A Hollywood casting director charged with failing to comply with sex offender registry laws testified Tuesday that his use of a professional alias was not an attempt to hide his criminal past. "I've spent so long trying to become a productive member of society there's nothing I want to do to go back to jail," Jason James Murphy told a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge during a hearing in Beverly Hills to determine whether prosecutors have enough evidence to proceed to trial.

JACOBABAD, Pakistan — Rachna Kumari, 16, was shopping for dresses in this city's dust-choked bazaar when it happened. The man who her family says abducted her was not a street thug. He was a police officer. Nor was he a stranger. Rachna's family knew and trusted him. He guarded the Hindu temple run by her father, an important duty in a society where Hindus are often terrorized by Muslim extremists, and he had helped Rachna cram for her ninth-grade final exams. After she disappeared from the market, he did not demand a ransom.

IDLIB, Syria - In a rickety office building once used by agricultural engineers in the village of Hazano, rebels with the Missiles of Justice militia waited to hear word of negotiations about a hostage swap that night. Sitting at an old metal desk, a Sunni Muslim rebel named Mustafa manned a phone, waiting for new reports of kidnappings. He had started a list of missing Sunnis in a notebook, including a young man in a white Mazda and a pharmacist. The list didn't include the names of the Shiite Muslim hostages the rebels were holding in a building somewhere in the village.

IDLIB, Syria - Scattered around the house that Abu Nadim once shared with his wife and five children are hints of its former existence: a SpongeBob SquarePants pillow, a baby's crib, a woman's purse. Now the four-room home is a bomb-making workshop. Bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, containers of peroxide and acetone and powdered aluminum cover the floor, along with boxes of wires, PVC pipes, computer parts and cigarette ash, as if someone had wandered through without thought for an ashtray.

Syria'sarmed rebels have committed "serious human rights abuses," including kidnappings and torture, and reportedly executions, of security personnel and civilians, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday. The group painted a dark picture that is in stark contrast to the "freedom fighter" image that the rebels and their political allies outside Syria have sought to project to the world. In an open letter to the opposition, Human Rights Watch depicts a decentralized, disparate guerrilla structure in which armed groups seem to operate with complete autonomy, sometimes acting on sectarian motives to kidnap and kill security force members and civilians considered pro-government.

After a devout 63-year-old north Texas woman was abducted and sexually assaulted by a former neighbor, she said she survived by praying and reading the Bible. A jury convicted Jeffrey Allan Maxwell, 59, of Corsicana this week of aggravated kidnapping and two counts of aggravated sexual assault. On Wednesday, a judge sentenced him to three life terms. Maxwell must serve two of his three sentences consecutively, meaning he will not be eligible for parole for 60 years. “I'm proud that it's all over,” Lois Pearson told the Weatherford Democrat after the verdict.

A former baby-sitter was arrested and the 10-year-old girl he is suspected of abducting hours earlier in Riverside was recovered in good condition Tuesday when a tribal police officer stopped the man's pickup on a reservation in Nevada. "She was extremely glad to see me," said Ray East, the Walker River Indian Reservation policeman who stopped the pickup. "She's in excellent condition."

The mother of a kidnapped 3-year-old boy made a desperate plea for his release Tuesday before draping herself over his picture and sobbing. "Please, I am asking them to release my son and give him back to me," a distraught Maria Rosalina Millan implored in Spanish during a news conference at the San Bernardino County sheriff's station. "He doesn't owe anything. I don't owe anything. He's a good boy."

Salt Lake City - Elizabeth Smart, the young woman from Utah who was kidnapped at knifepoint at 14 and held captive for nine months by an itinerant street preacher, has married her Scottish fiance at a Mormon temple in Hawaii. The wedding was held several months earlier than planned after news of her engagement last month drew widespread media attention. A family spokesman said Smart married Matthew Gilmour of Aberdeen, Scotland, on Saturday on Oahu's north shore. "Elizabeth's desire was for what most women want - to celebrate her nuptials in a private wedding with family and close friends," family spokesman Chris Thomas said in a statement.

As a B-movie actress in the 1940s, Elyse Knox was perhaps best known for the only horror film she ever made, "The Mummy's Tomb," with Lon Chaney Jr. as the monster who kidnaps her. She later recalled working through the night on the abduction and graveyard scenes with Chaney, miserable in heavy makeup and wearing a strap around his neck to help support her weight as he carried her. "After it was over, he thanked me for being petite," Knox...