Murder Case

After Eileen Franklin-Lipsker witnessed the murder of her best friend, she wondered why no one, including police investigators, thought to question her because she was only 8 years old. Now, at 29, she will finally testify, and what she will say, she promises, is that the man she saw commit the crime was her own father. Franklin-Lipsker, who came forward with her accusation for the first time last month, is the key witness against George Thomas Franklin Sr., 50, a former San Mateo firefighter.

SEATTLE - John Henry Browne's first brush with the U.S. military was during the Vietnam War. The lanky attorney, then a student who drove a purple hippie van, was rejected for the draft because he was too tall. "I had done research, and I knew if you were over 6 foot 6 you were not qualified to go kill short people," said Browne, who has a 1969 photo of himself in an Uncle Sam hat towering above a sea of fellow antiwar protesters. "So I'd done a bunch of yoga and stretched myself - and I got some help from some Quaker doctors - and I went in with a letter saying I was close to 6-7, which I was at the time.

The labyrinthine murder and insurance-fraud case of Dr. Richard Boggs went to the jury Wednesday, after an eleventh-hour admission by his lawyer that the Glendale physician is "unquestionably guilty" of conspiring to collect life insurance benefits by falsifying the victim's identification.

When a burglar carrying a bag of stolen car stereos swung it at Greyston Garcia's head, Garcia swung back with his fist - in which he clutched a kitchen knife. Garcia recovered the bag, which held his own stereo, and went home thinking he'd seen the burglar run away uninjured. But the burglar later died and, months after the Jan. 25, 2011, confrontation, Garcia was facing a second-degree murder charge in a Miami-Dade County courtroom. Garcia claimed self-defense, citing Florida's 7-year-old “stand your ground” law, which is also at the center of the Trayvon Martin shooting case.

Four months after a grand jury indicted two white men in the dragging death of a black man in this racially troubled northeast Texas town, key evidence against the pair appears to be evaporating -- and one defense attorney believes he can win an acquittal when the first case comes to trial in July. Police have alleged that Shannon Keith Finley and Charles Ryan Crostley, both 28, used Finley's pickup truck to run over and kill Brandon McClelland, 24, on a rural road in September.

Stephanie Lazarus, the Los Angeles Police Department detective accused of murdering the wife of a love interest, pined for the man and grew deeply upset when he did not return her affection, according to court testimony Tuesday. Prosecutors allege that Lazarus, a 25-year LAPD veteran, beat and shot Sherri Rae Rasmussen to death in February 1986, three months after the woman married John Ruetten, whom Lazarus had dated shortly before. Lazarus was arrested in June, 23 years after the killing, when cold-case detectives reopened the dormant investigation and linked her to the crime through DNA tests on saliva taken from a bite mark on the victim.

When homicide detectives arrived at a wind-swept Palmdale parking lot nine years ago, they found the bullet-torn body of 18-year-old Michelle O'Keefe slumped in the front seat of her electric-blue Mustang and virtually no evidence to identify her killer. There was no handgun, no fingerprints. The only witness was a security guard who said he heard the gunshots.

By the end of 1938, Weldon R. Irvin sensed that he was a marked man and that death was not far off. The ex-bookie could have stayed out of Los Angeles and maybe he would have lived -- at least for a while. But he evidently decided to face the person who would kill him in what The Times called the "perfect murder case."

Two men who served prison sentences for the attempted murder of an Orange County sheriff's sergeant three decades ago cannot be tried for murder after the sergeant, who was paralyzed, died of his injuries last year, a court of appeal ruled. The murder case against Robert Duston Strong and David Michael Knick must be dropped because at the time of the shooting, a victim had to have died within three years and a day of the crime to face a murder charge, the appeals panel ruled. The Orange County district attorney's office filed murder charges against Strong and Knick after Sgt. Ira Essoe, whose legs were amputated as a result of the shooting, died last year.

The trial of a Swedish hip-hop artist accused of killing a pedestrian who slapped his SUV began Wednesday with a defense attorney asserting that the late-night killing in a Hollywood crosswalk was self-defense. The lawyer said David Jassy, a 35-year-old songwriter and producer from Stockholm, got out of his rented vehicle and assaulted pedestrian John Osnes, a 55-year-old jazz pianist, because he feared for the safety of himself, his girlfriend and the SUV. "He finds himself confronted with an angry drunk who has been hitting his car," attorney Alec Rose said.

The walls of Jann Eldnor's San Marino barbershop are packed with silver-studded horse saddles and Western memorabilia, but a painting of a bespectacled man behind bars is the hub of conversation. The man in the portrait is Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, a former client of Eldnor's who last week was ordered to stand trial for the murder 27 years ago of San Marino resident John Sohus. Sohus and his wife, Linda, disappeared in February 1985, when Gerhartsreiter was living in their guesthouse.

Two men who served prison sentences for the attempted murder of an Orange County sheriff's sergeant three decades ago cannot be tried for murder after the sergeant, who was paralyzed, died of his injuries last year, a court of appeal ruled. The murder case against Robert Duston Strong and David Michael Knick must be dropped because at the time of the shooting, a victim had to have died within three years and a day of the crime to face a murder charge, the appeals panel ruled. The Orange County district attorney's office filed murder charges against Strong and Knick after Sgt. Ira Essoe, whose legs were amputated as a result of the shooting, died last year.

The jury in the murder trial of the driver of a runaway big rig that killed a 12-year-old girl and her father two years ago in La Cañada Flintridge reported Thursday that it had reached verdicts on the two counts of second-degree murder but was deadlocked on the lesser charges of involuntary manslaughter. The Los Angeles County Superior Court judge sent the jury back to deliberate on the involuntary manslaughter charges against the driver, Marcos Costa, 46. The verdicts on the second-degree murder charges were not announced.

Great con artists understand this about human nature: The suckers want to be taken. In 1978, a poor, semi-educated German teenager named Christian K. Gerhartsreiter arrived in New England on a falsified student visa. Brilliant, charismatic and twisted, he soon realized that Americans were easily duped by claims of great wealth and European titles. Cultivating an eccentric, Segway-riding persona, a wardrobe from "The Official Preppy Handbook" and a posh accent, Gerhartsreiter honed his deceptions from San Marino's leafy streets to Greenwich, Conn., to Wall Street, assuming roles of British baronet, Hollywood producer, Ivy League graduate and high-flying bond trader.

A lawyer for Phil Spector urges a state appellate panel to overturn the music producer's murder conviction on the grounds that the judge was a participant in a multimedia presentation used by prosecutors in their closing arguments. A lawyer for Phil Spector urged a state appellate panel Tuesday to overturn the music producer's murder conviction on the grounds that a multimedia presentation used by prosecutors in their closing arguments turned the trial judge into a government witness.

A Los Angeles County judge dismissed criminal charges Monday against a man who spent more than 20 years behind bars for a murder he insists he did not commit. The action brings to an end a two-decade legal saga in which five of the six witnesses who identified Francisco "Franky" Carrillo in court as the gunman in a fatal drive-by shooting recanted their testimony last month. Though Carrillo's conviction was overturned three weeks ago, prosecutors could have sought to retry the murder case.

Will Bronas lived a quiet life on a tree-lined street in Lakewood until the day sheriff's deputies from two states showed up at his door and took him away in handcuffs. Authorities say his real name is James Edward Sims, and he had been on the run since Jan. 18, 1981, when he allegedly shot and killed a man in Fort Myers, Fla. He had assumed the identity of Willis Bronas — who died in 1973 — and lived in Lakewood for 19 years before being arrested Friday. Sims, now 66, is accused of shooting 29-year-old Roy Radabaugh in the face in the parking lot of a bar after the men argued over an exotic dancer named Lafonda Dalton.

A state appellate court ruled Wednesday that a judge abused his discretion when he found a Sylmar woman "factually innocent" of her husband's murder after a jury acquitted her. Reversing a 1999 decision by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Judge L. Jeffrey Wiatt, the appellate justices also said that "there was clearly enough evidence" in the prosecution of Jeanie Adair "to have allowed the jury to convict." Under Wiatt's ruling, Adair's arrest and court records would have been destroyed.

A bitterly divided Supreme Court on Tuesday tossed out a jury verdict won by a New Orleans man who spent 14 years on death row and came within weeks of execution because prosecutors had hidden a blood test and other evidence that would have proven his innocence. The 5-4 decision delivered by Justice Clarence Thomas shielded the New Orleans district attorney's office from being held liable for the mistakes of its prosecutors. The evidence of their misconduct did not prove "deliberate indifference" on the part of then-Dist.

A CIA contractor indicted earlier in the day on two murder charges in Pakistan was acquitted and released on Wednesday after a deal to pay "blood money" to the victims' families was reached, Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah told Reuters. The deal ends a long-simmering diplomatic standoff between Pakistan and the United States. "The court first indicted him but the families later told court that they have accepted the blood money and they have pardoned him," Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah told Reuters.