Orange County

Olympic sprint champion Florence Griffith Joyner died after suffering an epileptic seizure, according to autopsy results released Thursday, and her family and friends say they hope the findings will put to rest rumors that drug use contributed to her death. Griffith Joyner died last month in her sleep at age 38. Her husband, Al Joyner, bitterly criticized those who suggested that she took performance-enhancing drugs.

SAN DIEGO -- A week after suffering a stroke, Roman Catholic Bishop Cirilo Flores remains in the hospital "undergoing treatment and tests," the San Diego diocese said Thursday. The bishop "expects to go home from the hospital in the near future for continued recovery," said Msgr. Steven Callahan, the diocese vicar general. Flores, 65, suffered the stroke April 16 while in his office at the Pastoral Center. "Bishop Flores is grateful for all who have been praying for his recovery to good health," Callahan said.

The FBI has been brought in to help investigate a cache of explosives — grenades, blasting caps and fuse igniters — found in a backpack under a bridge in Placentia on Monday. Orange County bomb squad officials were brought in after the backpack was discovered about 8:50 a.m. Monday by people working in a drainage ditch, Orange County sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said. After cordoning off the area, bomb technicians detonated the contents of the backpack, including six grenades, blasting caps, fuse igniters and blasting powder.

A San Clemente man who poured ammonia and rubbed raw eggs on women as part of a “spiritual cleansing” ritual has been convicted of rape and other sexual assault charges and could be sentenced to up to 75 years in prison. Alberto Flores Ramirez, 36, was accused of luring two women to a Santa Ana motel where he performed a “spiritual cleansing” ritual that he said would rid them of their negative energy and improve their loves lives. One of the women sought his help in getting her children safely to California from Mexico, the Orange County district attorney's office said.

DNA technology has helped link a Washington state man to the slaying of his estranged wife 25 years ago in Orange County, prosecutors said Thursday. William Gregory Mordick, 62, of Spokane is scheduled to be arraigned today on a count of murder with the special circumstance of murder for financial gain. If convicted, he faces life without the possibility of parole. Mordick is accused of driving to the Anaheim Hills home of his estranged wife, Katherine, on Jan. 22, 1983, and slashing her throat.

When Reed Royalty endorsed Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen's reelection campaign last month, he praised her for seeking to reduce pension benefits for sheriff's deputies "that may be unconstitutional." It was a logical comment for Royalty, an advocate of low taxes and limited government who is president of the Orange County Taxpayers Assn.

Orange County will soon join Dallas in the limelight of a television series. The success of the new series, however, will not be measured in Nielsen ratings but in the yen it can attract; the show is targeted for Japanese businessmen. The three-hour, three-part series portraying Orange County's business and investment potential is scheduled to air early this summer in Los Angeles on Channel 18's Japan News Magazine and later on two major networks in Japan.

For weeks now, Tony Everfield has been planning a June vacation with his three children to Disneyland. But after watching two nights of rioting across Los Angeles on the television, Everfield was racked Friday by second thoughts. "I don't want my kids involved in seeing the violence," said the Oakland chef. "Los Angeles was a beautiful city. It just looks awful from what I've seen on the news. It will frighten the hell out of you.

Some were born and raised here. Others--such as the U.S. Olympic water polo teams--took up residence in Orange County while training for the 2000 Olympics.

After flat-lining twice on the operating table, Pastor Joe Sabolick figured the worst chapter of his life was over. But when he returned to his office at Calvary Chapel of Laguna Beach a few weeks later, the locks had been changed -- and his handpicked church board, including his older brother, had fired him amid allegations that he embezzled money and was "fixated" on the wife and daughter of an assistant pastor.

A man who allegedly used Facebook to try to recruit a 17-year-old girl for prostitution has been charged with human trafficking, Orange County prosecutors said. Dwight Lamith Garris, 34, allegedly believed he had befriended a minor, but he was actually communicating with an undercover Anaheim police officer, the Orange County district attorney's office said Monday in a statement. Garris, a Palmdale resident, tried to recruit the girl over a period of about eight days in early April to work as a prostitute and to recruit other sex workers for him, according to the statement.

The father of a man accused of raping and killing four women in Orange County said he doesn't believe his son is capable of carrying out the attacks. Dean Gordon said the family is embarrassed and trying to cope with the accusations. "He's been charged with something that is very serious," Dean Gordon said. "I'm devastated but I don't think my son is capable of that. " Steven Dean Gordon, 45, and Franc Cano, 27, are charged with the rape and murder of four women who disappeared in Orange County since last fall.

Murder and rape charges were filed Monday against two registered sex offenders accused of killing four women who vanished from the streets of Orange County. Franc Cano, 27, and Steven Dean Gordon, 45, were formally charged Monday with murder in the commission of rape and lying in wait, accusations that would make them subject to the death penalty. Both have prior convictions, and have done time in prison for sex crimes against a child under the age of 14. The two transients were arrested Friday in an industrial area of Anaheim, not far from the trash-sorting facility where the body of 21-year-old Jarrae Nykkole Estepp was found last month on a conveyor belt.

Two transients arrested in Orange County on suspicion of killing four women were registered sex offenders who were required to wear electronic monitoring devices and check in with police every 30 days, according to law enforcement authorities and court records. Franc Cano, 27, and Steven Dean Gordon, 45, were arrested Friday evening in an industrial part of Anaheim, just blocks from the trash-sorting center where the body of one victim, Jarrae Nykkole Estepp, 21, was found last month.

It was a lone F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet that produced the sonic boom Wednesday that produced the rumbling so intense some Los Angeles and Orange County residents insisted it was an earthquake. The confirmation Thursday from the U.S. Navy came as some questioned that the rumbling came from an aircraft, while others suggested it was a test of the fabled Aurora spy plane. “It's maddening these things draw up these conspiracy theories,” said Peter Merlin, an aerospace historian and an author on military and experimental aircraft.

 Ted Mullen, who was a successful high school football coach for 18 years at Villa Park, Irvine University, Santa Ana Foothill and Anaheim, died on Friday morning. He was 81. He won two Southern Section titles and was inducted into the Southern Section Hall of Fame in 2013. Mullen is survived by his daughter, Jodi. Funeral arrangements are pending. Eric.sondheimer@latimes.com  

"OC Rules" is scratched out and painted over with "Crown Town" along the "Alley of Hell," a back street near Paseo Grande and 6th Street that bears the scars of gang rhetoric. On the alley's walls and fences, Corona's well-established Latino gangs constantly hurl spray-painted insults in a war of words with imperialistic homeboys from Orange County interested in annexing more turf.

It was just past midnight on March 3, 1938, when Edna Wisser gingerly walked into her daughter's bedroom to wake her up, and to show her what nature looks like on a bender. "Mother woke me up sometime in the darkness of the night," said Marion Harvey, now 78, an Anaheim High senior at the time. "Very calmly, she said: 'I want you to look outside your bedroom window, because something is happening that you will never see again.' " She was right.

 Curtis Godin, the former baseball player turned 100-meter runner for Santa Ana Mater Dei, set the Orange County record for fastest 100 meters on Thursday in a dual meet against St. John Bosco, running 10.42 seconds. Sophomore Sean McGrew of St. John Bosco ran 10.70. St. John Bosco's Matt Katnik set a school record in the discus at 168 feet, 10 inches. He also won the shot put at 60 1/4. Mater Dei's Malik McMorris recorded a season-best of 58 feet in the shot put.   Eric.sondheimer@latimes.com  

One of the former Fullerton police officers acquitted in the beating death of Kelly Thomas now wants immunity from possible federal prosecution before he speaks with lawyers in a pending wrongful-death suit. Manuel Ramos, a former city patrolman who was accused of murder in the 2011 death of the homeless man, is set to be deposed April 15 in a wrongful-death suit filed by Thomas' father. But federal prosecutors are also looking into Thomas' death, though the U.S. Justice Department has not said whether it would try to prosecute Ramos or any of the other former officers in the beating case.