Mass Murders

What was supposed to have been a major coup for defense lawyers in the Oklahoma City bombing trial Friday instead generated only confusion when a key witness changed her story about who she saw leaving a Ryder rental truck moments before a bomb blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Defense lawyers at one point had expected her to testify that she saw a single "olive-skinned" man get out of the truck and walk away.

Police have arrested three suspects in the execution-style slayings of five family members during an apparent robbery at their suburban Detroit home. Wayne County Prosecutor Mike Duggan was expected to decide today what charges to bring after the arrests, announced late Tuesday. He said he was "very confident that the Livonia police have the people that are responsible for these murders in custody."

A state appeals court has overturned a conviction in a 1981 Pasadena triple murder, concluding that prosecutors should have uncovered information about a key witness that could have undermined his credibility and led to an acquittal. The ruling came in the case of Anthony Stacy, who was convicted by a Los Angeles County jury of shooting to death a man, a pregnant woman and her viable fetus during a robbery of a drug house. The ruling, centering on the background of witness Charles E.

Steven Kazmierczak wanted infamy. He wanted video-game-style bloodshed. And he wanted to punish Northern Illinois University, the "surrogate family" that had kept his demons at bay but had, he thought, abandoned him, according to a report on the 2008 shooting. In the 18 months leading up to Kazmierczak's lecture hall massacre, his mother died, he lost his job as a corrections officer and he became angry because he thought the university had de-emphasized his graduate program, leading him to transfer to another school, according to the 300-page report released by the university last week.

On the eve of testimony in his murder trial, Michael Naranjo entered a surprise guilty plea Tuesday to fatally stabbing four members of his teenage girlfriend's family in a bloody rampage three years ago at their home in Pico Rivera. Jury selection had already begun when Naranjo pleaded guilty to four counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, charges that will bring him a sentence of life in state prison without the possibility of parole.

The FBI and the military investigated contacts over the last year between an Army psychiatrist accused in the deadly Ft. Hood rampage and a Yemen-based militant cleric linked to some of the Sept. 11 hijackers, but concluded the shooting suspect did not pose a threat, senior law enforcement and military officials said Monday. After U.S. intelligence officials intercepted their e-mails, members of two Joint Terrorism Task Forces contacted Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's superiors and reviewed his academic and military records for evidence of suspicious activity late last year and early this year, according to three senior U.S. officials.

Suspected Muslim rebels ambushed local workers of a Canadian company Thursday in the southern Philippines, killing 12 and injuring 10, the military said. It was the second deadly attack on Mindanao island this week. On Christmas Eve, a bomb exploded outside a mayor's home, killing 17 people. It was not clear whether there was a link between the incidents, which occurred about 100 miles apart. The military blamed the attacks on rebels from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Cody Thunder was sitting in the front row of his biology class at Red Lake High School on Monday, staring at the clock and itching to leave, when he first heard the gunshots down the hall. Seconds later, the 15-year-old turned to look through a window. On the other side of the glass stood student Jeffrey Weise, 16, pointing a handgun at Thunder's head. "He started shooting," said Thunder, who ran for cover after being wounded in the right hip. "I thought he was messing around.

BAKERSFIELD -- Vincent E. Brothers, the man identified by police as the suspect in the Bakersfield killings of his wife, her mother and his three young children, apparently left the city on a bus on the morning of July 2, four days before the victims were last seen alive, court documents revealed Thursday. A bus manifest showed that Brothers got off the bus at Los Angeles International Airport later on July 2.

Diaries kept by the Columbine High School gunmen and nearly 1,000 pages of other documents seized from their homes and cars will be released today, the Jefferson County sheriff said. The documents include messages that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold wrote in each other's yearbooks and a journal kept by Harris' father. Sheriff Ted Mink has said he would not release videotapes the gunmen made out of concern they would encourage copycat attacks.