Police Investigations

The Los Angeles County coroner's office indefinitely delayed the release of Michael Jackson's autopsy results Thursday amid signs that police investigators were trying to determine the interplay between the pop star's personal physician and other medical professionals who treated Jackson in the months leading up to his death. Word of the delay followed a meeting between officials from the L.A.

By the time homicide Det. Dennis Kilcoyne met with Diane Webb last fall to discuss the maddening search for a serial killer who has stalked South L.A. for decades, he was wide open to suggestions. Despite more than a year of chasing leads, Kilcoyne and his team of detectives were no closer to catching the man suspected of sexually assaulting and murdering at least 10 young black women.

For a generation, LAPD homicide investigators kept alive the case of 28-year-old Japanese tourist Kazumi Miura, shot in the head on a featureless side street in the shadow of a Los Angeles urban icon: downtown's four-level freeway interchange. For nearly three decades, they pursued her husband, Kazuyoshi, for the 1981 crime. But he remained beyond their reach, as Japanese authorities tried and convicted him of murder, only to see the case overturned.

As mysteries go, this one offers an intriguing trail of clues: A man who suddenly falls ill. A deadly toxin. Guns. An "anarchist-type textbook." Beyond the items found in Roger Von Bergendorff's motel room here, authorities have revealed little about how the 57-year-old ended up unconscious and in critical condition, possibly from exposure to the poisonous substance ricin. Von Bergendorff -- a graphic designer who was struggling financially -- was hospitalized on Feb.

Maybe it was memories from the murdered woman's bracelet. Or maybe it was her father's anguished plea for justice. Certainly it was the Japanese values of bushido, the samurai code that promotes a fierce sense of duty and obligation, honesty and fidelity to self, to truth, to endurance.

Child welfare investigators who entered a polygamist compound in West Texas this weekend found many pregnant teenagers and underage girls who said they were forced to marry, according to court documents unsealed Tuesday. The documents detailed the evidence that Texas officials presented to a judge to justify taking temporary state custody of more than 400 children from the YFZ Ranch, near the tiny town of Eldorado, built by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Late one night in 2003, a body was found in a scorched minivan along a Watts riverbank. The remains lay blackened and twisted in the front seat. The only recognizable parts were a Mexican cowboy-style belt buckle, a bracelet and a wad of cash in the back pocket that had somehow been spared by the blaze. Los Angeles Police Det. Mark Hahn couldn't begin to identify the dead man, let alone figure out what happened to him.

The bodies of five family members found in a San Clemente home over the weekend were dressed in black, Orange County sheriff's officials said Wednesday. But deputies do not believe the attire had anything to do with something unusual such as a cult, said Sheriff's Lt. Erin Giudice. "Nothing odd like that," Giudice said, but she added that investigators were continuing to search the home for clues, including a note or something left on a computer that could explain the deaths.

The Los Angeles Police Department has been denied nearly $500,000 in federal funds it would have received to help clear its backlog of unexamined DNA samples from crime scenes because of a bureaucratic mistake that LAPD brass blamed on a low-level administrator. When informed about the funding cut by The Times, the president of the department's civilian oversight commission and an outspoken City Council member reacted with frustration.

Los Angeles Police Commission President Anthony Pacheco on Friday ordered the panel's civilian watchdog to investigate disclosures that the LAPD's fingerprint experts have bungled cases and implicated the wrong people in crimes. Pacheco -- responding to a story in The Times on Friday -- expressed outrage that top LAPD officials had not informed his five-member board about the extent of the problems in the department's Latent Print Unit.