Murders

Two 17-year-old girls have been sentenced for torturing and butchering an elderly woman, less than three weeks after a pair of 10-year-olds were charged with murdering a toddler. Again, a troubled nation is asking, how could this happen? Edna Phillips, 70, was throttled with her dog's leash and stabbed or slashed 86 times. The mental images of the crime have shocked the nation just as the video pictures of little James Bulger being led to his death did last month.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — A 29-year-old farmworker was convicted Tuesday of the murder of South African white supremacist leader Eugene TerreBlanche, but his teenage companion was acquitted in the killing, which had sparked fears of racial violence. Chris Mahlangu was found guilty of killing TerreBlanche, his employer and longtime advocate of a separate state for white Afrikaners. Patrick Ndlovu, 18, who was 15 and present at the slaying, was found guilty of housebreaking with intent to steal.

As he lay dying in London's University College Hospital in November 2006, exiled former KGB and FSB agent Alexander "Sasha" Litvinenko was being filmed by documentarian Andrei Nekrasov. He told Nekrasov: "If anything should happen to me, I beg you to show this tape to the whole world." Nekrasov kept the promise he made to his friend, who died three weeks after falling ill from what was later discovered to be radiation poisoning from a lethal dose of Polonium-210 in his tea, believed to have been slipped in during a meeting with two of his former FSB (Russia's modern-day secret police)

Long Beach Opera's new production of Osvaldo Golijov's "Ainadamar" comes at an important time. The opera is a meditation on the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca's murder by the fascists during the Spanish Civil War, which is ever relevant, especially in the way the work echoes the current situation in the Middle East. But there is another reason why this opera matters right now, despite LBO's somewhat slapdash production at Terrace Theater Sunday night. Golijov has been going through a bad patch, and we need to be reminded why the music world would be unwise to lose faith in him. He has missed deadlines, including for a violin concerto that was to have been premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic a year ago. He has also come under attack for plagiarism by "gotcha" critics who miss the larger context of his work and what makes it so culturally rich and pertinent.

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.

An Atlanta-based rapper was fatally shot in the valet waiting area of the Beverly Center mall Monday by a suspect who fled in a silver Mercedes SUV, according to police. Officers later detained a "person of interest" as he approached the ticketing area at Los Angeles International Airport armed with a gun. The shooting occurred about 3:10 p.m. in the parking garage of the popular Westside mall, sending diners in nearby restaurants diving for cover.

When jurors begin deliberations today in the murder-for-hire case involving a slain Huntington Beach doctor and his wife, they will be forced to reconcile two very different portraits of the defendant, Adriana Vasco. Throughout a week of testimony, prosecutors have portrayed the 35-year-old as manipulative and dangerous, a woman who had an affair with Dr.

Police have arrested two alleged gang members on suspicion of murder and a hate crime in the fatal stabbing of a Corona teenager in May. A third suspect remains at large. Dominic Redd, 15, was stabbed multiple times May 11 in the Cantadora Apartment Complex in Corona, about a mile from Centennial High School, where he was a freshman. The two suspects in custody, 15 and 16 years old, are members of a Corona street gang, said Sgt.

On the West Side of San Bernardino, most everyone knew Johnny and Gilbert Agudo. They'd grown up in the tight-knit barrio. Handsome and charismatic, they were the presidents of two cliques of the West Side Verdugo street gang: Johnny, 31, of 7th Street Locos and Gilbert, 27, of the Little Counts. United, they led their gangs in feuds with rivals from other parts of town. But then things took an unexpected turn.

Two decades ago, on a warm summer night, the wife of a minister and mother of three died under heartbreaking circumstances. Her station wagon ran off a gravel country road and overturned in the Cottonwood River outside Emporia, Kansas. Early Sunday morning hikers came upon the body, floating in shallow water. But the death of Sandy Bird wasn't an accident.

A Newport Beach woman who arranged for a former NFL player to kill her wealthy boyfriend in a 1994 plot to collect $1 million in insurance money was sentenced Friday to life in prison. But sentencing for onetime New England Patriot linebacker Eric Naposki was continued to Aug. 10 after he refused to leave his courthouse holding cell. The prosecutor called Naposki's actions "a final blaze of no class and cowardice" by the man who fired six gunshots into the chest of Bill McLaughlin, who died in his Balboa Coves home.

A Riverside County jury convicted a parolee Friday of first-degree murder for shooting a Riverside police officer in 2010, a brutal slaying that occurred after the officer pleaded with the killer. Earl Ellis Green, 46, faces a possible death sentence for the murder of Officer Ryan Bonaminio, an Iraq War veteran who had been on the force for four years. The jury deliberated for about three hours before returning with the guilty verdict with special circumstances that would make Green subject to execution.

It was a murder that prosecutors say was committed in a fit of rage and jealousy and then covered up for more than two decades. But on Friday, as she was sentenced to 27 years to life in prison for killing her ex-boyfriend's wife, former Los Angeles Police Det. Stephanie Lazarus masked any emotion, other than a glance and wave in the direction of her mother as she was led away in handcuffs. The sentencing brought to a close a case that garnered national attention for its sensational story line of a lovelorn cop killing a woman she viewed as a romantic rival and then harboring the dark secret for 23 years.

Following an emotionally charged hearing, an Orange County judge ruled that two Fullerton police officers will stand trial for the death of a mentally ill homeless man who was beaten in a violent confrontation last summer. The ruling means that Manuel Ramos, 38, could be the first police officer in modern Orange County history to be tried for murder for on-duty actions . Ramos is charged withsecond-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. Cpl. Jay Cicinelli, 40, will be tried on charges of involuntary manslaughter and excessive use of force.

His mother said a quiet prayer of thanks. His father dropped his head and rubbed his eyes. Four years after Los Angeles High School football star Jamiel Shaw II's death, the gang member accused of gunning him down because he was carrying a red Spider-Man backpack was convicted Wednesday of first-degree murder. Jurors deliberated for barely half a day before returning the guilty verdict against Pedro Espinoza, now 23. The panel found to be true allegations that Espinoza committed the crime in association with a gang and that he personally discharged a firearm.

A convicted killer who died on death row while his appeal languished before the California Supreme Court should have his case decided posthumously, his attorney told the state high court. Scott F. Kauffman, who represented Dennis Lawley for 19 years, contends that his client was innocent of a 1989 murder for hire that sent him to San Quentin. Lawley, he said, deserves a ruling on his claims, even if the outcome will have no practical consequence. "Mr. Lawley's death does not erase the injustice of his conviction and sentence," Kauffman told the court in a written motion.

Police on Thursday arrested the last remaining suspect in last week's slaying of a Corona teenager -- as thousands gathered the same day for the victim's funeral. Corona and Riverside police, acting on a tip, arrested Edward Juan Cuellar, 16, of Corona about 1 a.m. after the sport utility vehicle he was riding in with five other people was stopped on Van Buren Boulevard in Riverside, said Sgt. Neil Reynolds of the Corona Police Department.

A third person was indicted Thursday in the case of a homeless man who was hit by a car and left lodged in the windshield until he died. Herbert Cleveland, 24, was charged with helping dump the man's body in Cobb Park to try to conceal the alleged hit and run. According to police, Chante Mallard told investigators she was returning from a nightclub Oct. 26 when she hit Gregory Biggs.

The 17-year-old football star's skin was black and his backpack red. Were it not for those colors, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday, Jamiel Shaw II might never have been murdered by an 18th Street gang member eager to earn his stripes. Deputy Dist. Atty. Allyson Ostrowski said Pedro Espinoza, now 23, shot Shaw execution-style in 2008 thinking he was a Bloods gang member because he was African American and was carrying a red Spider-Man backpack. Shaw, who played for Los Angeles High School, was killed in March of that year just a few houses away from his Arlington Heights home.