Murders Los Angeles

Arnelle Simpson has always had a famous father. There were always people interrupting their dinners out to ask for his autograph; there have always been exchanged whispers-- "That's O.J. Simpson's daughter"-- when she showed up somewhere. "I've dealt with that all my life. I can read lips," she said with a chuckle. But that was scant preview of the kind of fame that would be bestowed upon her in the past 16 months between her father's arrest and her father's acquittal.

Casting doubt upon a Houston man's story that his co-worker fell to her death from a City of Industry hotel balcony while the two were having sex, Los Angeles County coroner's officials Thursday ruled the woman's death a homicide. Sandra Orellana, 27, was "assisted" in toppling over the balcony railing outside her room at the Industry Hills Sheraton in November and plunging 11 stories to her death, coroner's spokesman Scott Carrier said. Thursday's was just the latest twist in the macabre case.

Snoop Doggy Dogg, one of the nation's preeminent rap artists, was acquitted along with his bodyguard Tuesday of first- and second-degree murder charges in the shooting death of a gang member at a Palms park. Jurors also acquitted the 24-year-old rapper, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, and bodyguard McKinley Lee on one charge each of conspiracy to commit assault in connection with the August 1993 death of Philip Woldemariam.

John C. Holmes, the world's premier pornographic film star, sobbed as he sat in a steaming bathtub early one morning in July, 1981. Haltingly, Holmes confessed to his wife that he had played a central role in four brutal murders earlier that month in a drug dealers' hillside home in Laurel Canyon. "There's somebody out there who wants to kill me," Holmes told Sharon, his wife of 16 years. Frightened, she asked, "Why?" For a time, John Holmes was silent. Finally, he replied: "The murders . . .

In these days of support groups, Violet Loggins could start a large one for people whose husbands, sons, brothers, daughters or friends were murdered by one man. Loggins' own mourning began seven years ago. Her husband, Donald Ray Loggins, worked at a local cable company, and since the birth of their son five months earlier, he had been as punctual as a Marine Corps reveille. He would pull into the driveway of their pleasant two-bedroom, South-Central Los Angeles home at 2:45 p.m.

Displaying a gruesome photo and a bloodstained pair of tennis shoes, prosecutors began building their case Wednesday against Lyle and Erik Menendez, accused of murder in the 1989 shotgun slayings of their parents. The photo, posted on a bulletin board for jurors to examine, shows the brothers' father, Jose Menendez, slumped in the corner of a white couch, his head at an odd angle and his white shirt covered with blood.

A businessman convicted of second-degree murder in the drowning of the ex-wife of Jackson 5 member Tito Jackson was sentenced Monday to 15 years to life in prison. Donald Bohana, 61, said at the trial that Delores "DeeDee" Jackson died in a swimming pool accident, but prosecutors said she had been beaten and choked. Bohana and Jackson, 39, had been dating about three months when she drowned in August 1994 at his home.

To the extent that the world knew Ennis Cosby, it was as a shining star of his father's hilarious imaginary life. He was the sly adolescent whose first words upon turning 16 were, allegedly: "Wanna Porsche." He was the kid who shaved his head for no reason and attacked his sisters with wet towels. He was Theo Huxtable, the TV son on "The Cosby Show," whose relationship with his father redefined, with long-overdue dignity, the entertainment industry's portrayal of African American families.

It was a murder investigation that began more than three years ago when a pair of hikers discovered Ron Baker's mangled corpse lying near the mouth of a railroad tunnel at a Chatsworth park. Baker, a 21-year-old astrophysics major at UCLA, had been stabbed 18 times. His throat was slashed so badly his head had nearly been severed from his slightly built body. Los Angeles police detectives initially thought the body was that of a transient who had been hit by a train.

Kitty Menendez was suicidal over her husband's eight-year extramarital affair, and Jose Menendez was "the ultimate control freak," two witnesses testified Friday at Lyle and Erik Menendez's murder trial. Continuing to round out a personality profile of the parents, the defense on Friday called its 52nd and 53rd witnesses: Kitty Menendez's onetime therapist and Jose Menendez's ex-corporate colleague. North Hollywood psychologist Edwin S.