Murders Los Angeles

Saying he wanted to do the right thing, the man convicted of killing Bill Cosby's only son, Ennis, has written a letter to the California attorney general's office confessing to the crime and asking that his 1998 appeal be dropped. "It is based on falsehood and deceit. I am guilty and I want to do the right thing," Mikail Markhasev, 22, wrote in the letter. "More than anything, I want to apologize to the victim's family.

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.

Erik and Lyle Menendez's Beverly Hills therapist, who heard them confess to killing their parents and then became a key witness in the first of the brothers' two murder trials, was stripped of his psychology license Friday. L. Jerome Oziel, who had been accused by a state panel of breaking confidentiality rules and having sex with female patients, surrendered his license to the state Department of Consumer Affairs' Board of Psychology. In a deal that was agreed to Sept.

They were bone-chilling crimes, sensational murders that spread fear through Los Angeles and turned their mastermind into a criminal antihero familiar to the world. Charles Manson and four of his followers were convicted in the 1969 killings and have been in prison ever since. But now one of them has persuaded a judge to hear her claim that she is rehabilitated and deserves to be freed. San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Bob N.

The annals of child kidnapping are replete with heartbreaking tragedies, but probably none have been quite as bizarre as the crime that first mesmerized, then convulsed, Los Angeles more than 70 years ago. By the time it was over, it would involve not only an apparent abduction, but also impersonation, police coercion, false imprisonment, psychiatric abuse and--this being Los Angeles--a court fight that stretched on for more than a decade.

Kenneth Dean Hunt is no criminal mastermind. He was a handyman, the guy next door, a man with a record of sex crimes and aggressive outbursts. Yet, Hunt, 34, nearly managed to escape justice after raping and killing two women in his neighborhood. His crimes, a decade apart, were decidedly imperfect, but he managed to avoid detection: The first time, a tip pointing in his direction didn't register with police; the second time, investigators didn't realize a murder had occurred.

At first, the murder seemed to have all the markings of an attempted carjacking. When Los Angeles police officers reached the scene on the dark Boyle Heights street July 26, they found affluent software designer Bruce Cleland lying in a pool of blood across the street from his new black 4Runner. His distraught wife, Rebecca, said she had been knocked unconscious when she got out of the vehicle to check the tailgate and awoke to the gruesome sight.

Light does not easily penetrate the clouded story of Betty Short, a 22-year-old unemployed cashier and waitress whose body was found cut in half and gruesomely mutilated 50 years ago this month in a vacant lot in Southwest Los Angeles. The unsolved killing remains Los Angeles' premier myth noir, a tale of a tragic beauty clad in black, prowling the night life, a cautionary fable that rings as true today as it did in 1947. The legend insists on a shadowed, epic tone.

A shootout Sunday between armored car guards and gunmen, one armed with an AK-47 assault rifle, left one bystander dead and at least three people wounded after a botched robbery outside a Van Nuys Costco store teeming with shoppers, authorities said. Panic-stricken customers, many with children, dived for cover in the pandemonium. Bullets shattered car windows 100 yards away.

A videotape played Monday in a Los Angeles courtroom showed that Latasha Harlins had turned away from a scuffle with a Korean grocer when the black teen-ager was shot in the back of the head. "This is not television. This is not the movies. This is real life," Deputy District Attorney Roxane Carvajal had warned the jury. "You will see Latasha being killed. She will die in front of your eyes."

Five years ago, the small, frail body of 47-year-old Armenak Gyulbudagyan was found riddled with bullets in the trunk of his car. No one was arrested for the killing and the investigation grew cold, relegated to the back burner by overworked detectives. But the crime was always on the mind of Kristine Langhenry, the victim's only daughter. She wrote letters to the Los Angeles Police Department, asking for help. Nothing came of them, she said.

After an eight-month investigation that has taken detectives to four states, Los Angeles police officials say they have made "significant progress" in the search for the killer of actor Robert Blake's wife, but they are not ready to name a suspect. The detectives have spent much of their time pursuing possible leads from videotapes, photographs, letters and other documents that belonged to Bonny Lee Bakley, who was shot to death on May 4 in Studio City, police officials say.

Terry Gray is struggling this Christmas Day to explain to his son something that he himself cannot understand: Why 5-year-old Terry will never see his mother again. Gray is haunted by the Friday afternoon scene that changed his life and that of his son. That day, Gray and his girlfriend, Sandra Dyer, were passing beneath the Harbor Freeway when a man's body dropped from the overpass onto the roof of their car. The man had shot and killed his wife and then shot himself at the edge of the freeway.

It looks like unincorporated East Los Angeles will finish 2001 with the lowest number of homicides in decades. The area, home to 128,000 people and patrolled by the Sheriff's Department, has had only five homicides as of Thursday, compared with 18 killings in 2000. "That is kind of incredible," Sheriff's Homicide Bureau Lt. Ray Peavy said. "I almost don't want to say anything because I don't want to jinx it." You have to go back to the 1970-71 fiscal year for an East L.A.

The owner of the Palomar Hotel in Hollywood and his stepfather pleaded not guilty Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court on charges of murder, arson and insurance fraud in connection with a fire in August that killed two people. Judge Henry Barela ordered Juan Jose Ortiz, 44, and Joseph Donald Lewellen, 67, back to court Jan. 18, when he will set a date for a preliminary hearing. Ortiz and Lewellen were arrested Nov. 21 at their North Hills home. They could face the death penalty.

Two people died and three others were wounded in several unrelated shootings in Los Angeles on Thursday and Friday. In the first, an unidentified man in his 30s was found shot in the head and torso in the 1200 block of West Court Street just north of downtown at 5:22 p.m. Thursday. He was pronounced dead at County-USC Medical Center. At 11:05 p.m. Thursday, firefighters responded to a call in the 9400 block of South Harbor Boulevard. They found Guion Pierre Revels, 18, dead from a gunshot wound.

For almost two weeks, jurors in the retrial of the Menendez brothers have been focusing on the bloody details of parricide, replayed shot by shot and larger than life. It has been grim work. They have heard the chilling, metallic clicks of a 12-gauge Mossberg shotgun similar to the alleged murder weapons; they have seen the blood-encrusted polo shirt Jose Menendez wore when he died. And countless autopsy photos have been projected on a courtroom screen.

A North Hollywood man who is the only person convicted of murder in connection with the Los Angeles riots last year was sentenced Monday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a killing that took place on the first night of unrest. Traville Craig, 19, was convicted of first-degree murder last month for using a board to strike Elias Garcia Rivera, who was the only riot-related fatality in the San Fernando Valley.

A suspected gang member has been arrested in the September slaying of a man at a Granada Hills grocery store, authorities said Friday. Brian Phillips, 25, of Downey is being held without bail at the Twin Towers jail in downtown Los Angeles after he was arrested at his home early Wednesday, police said. Phillips was due in San Fernando Superior Court on Friday, but his arraignment was postponed until next month. Los Angeles Police Det.

Two young Central Los Angeles men were shot to death and a third was wounded when they were set upon by gang members, police said Friday. Detectives said the trouble erupted Wednesday on East Manchester Avenue near Central Avenue when gang members asked Esteban Ortiz, 21, whether he was a member of any other gang and then attacked him with their fists when he said he was not.