Police Investigations

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.

Several violent incidents, including the shooting of a 13-year-old boy, have sparked worries of renewed gang activity in a northeast Los Angeles neighborhood where city authorities have invested many resources to combat a notorious gang. Years after a largely successful effort to clear a subgroup of the Avenues gang from Drew Street in Glassell Park, authorities say it appears that rival gangs are looking to exact revenge on, or humiliate, a once powerful and predatory enemy. "I think there's payback a little bit there," said LAPD Lt. David Kowalski, supervisor of the Northeast Division's gang unit.

David Paul Hammer was a prisoner at Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester a few years ago when he bragged to a reporter for an alternative magazine that he had received at least $176,000 from 1,500 to 2,000 people he had duped into sending him money. "The trick is making them fall in love with you through letters and on the phone," Hammer told the Los Angeles-based magazine, the Advocate.

When filmmaker Sofia Coppola set out to tell the story of the "bling ring," she wanted the movie to have an authentic, docudrama sensibility. So the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola reached out to the Los Angeles Police Department investigator who cracked the case of the starry-eyed youths from the San Fernando Valley. Four years ago, their lust for stardom and money led them to raid the homes of young Hollywood, making off with Paris Hilton's designer clothes and Lindsay Lohan's artwork.

Mark Reynolds Hughes, the wealthy 44-year-old founder of Herbalife International Inc., was found dead in his Malibu beachfront mansion Sunday morning, apparently of natural causes, a sheriff's spokesman said. Hughes, enmeshed recently in a struggle for ownership of his weight-loss and nutritional products company, was reported to have died at 11:02 a.m. at his $25-million Malibu estate at 33064 Pacific Coast Highway.

Law enforcement officials are tracking a mysterious outbreak of antiabortion violence that is not lethal but potentially more elusive than the bombings and arson attacks that have plagued abortion clinics in recent years. Between late May and early July, 19 abortion clinics--10 in central Florida, five in New Orleans and four in Houston--were squirted, sprayed or injected with butyric acid, an intensely noxious industrial chemical.

Lt. Clarence (Buzz) Harvey at first did not know what to make of the blonde 42-year-old woman who appeared at the front desk of this town's solitary police station on the morning of Sept. 18, 1986. Those in the station familiar with the downtown strip joints in nearby St. Paul might have recognized Jerry Ann Sherwood from her earlier tenure at Alary's Club Bar. Her features were still attractive, although the years had added a certain hardness and fleshiness. She had a story to tell.

When the body was found along a lonely stretch of Coast Highway last May, sheriff's investigators were sure that someone would eventually identify the victim. She had an unmistakable look: bleached-blond hair, a curved spine and a gaping hole in her mouth where four front teeth were missing. "It just seems like someone should be able to identify her," said Lt. Richard Olson of the Orange County Sheriff's Department. More than six months later, nobody has.

It all started rather innocuously, with one of those tips police say they always get about a suspicious-looking man hanging around a high school. Usually, they amount to nothing. But from that one phone call to police last month, an alleged sex scandal has begun to unfold in Burbank that, if true, could bring down a scion of one of the city's most prominent families, and possibly his 82-year-old father. Both men have been arrested on charges of paying teen-age girls for sex.

The preliminary results of an autopsy performed on actor Robert Blake's wife were sealed Monday at the request of Los Angeles police because her killer remains at large, a spokesman for the county coroner's office said. Police were concerned that their investigation would be hurt if the autopsy results became public, said Scott Carrier, the coroner's spokesman.

French investigators Thursday were trying to establish whether a gunman killed by police after a 32-hour siege had accomplices still at large or was a lone assassin acting out his own bitter agenda. They also want to determine how Mohamed Merah, 23, amassed an arsenal of weapons while reportedly under surveillance by France's intelligence services after he spent time with Islamic extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Merah, who police say confessed to gunning down seven people in a nine-day rampage and told them he was linked to a fringe Al Qaeda group, died late Thursday morning with a shot to the head after battling the French equivalent of a SWAT team.

An "explosive" scene littered a Fontana intersection after a sport utility vehicle ran a red light and slammed into two other cars, killing three brothers and an 11-year-old boy, authorities said Monday. A Chevrolet Suburban carrying the three brothers was traveling east on Baseline Avenue in Fontana on Sunday when it ran a red light at Cherry Avenue and sheared the back off a Honda sedan carrying a 40-year-old Fontana woman and her 11-year-old son, said Sgt. Billy Green of the Fontana Police Department.

Two white men were given life sentences Wednesday for the racially motivated murder of a black teenager nearly 19 years ago in a case that rocked British society and led to a major shake-up within Scotland Yard. However, the men are expected to serve far less time in prison for the killing of Stephen Lawrence, the 18-year-old who was stabbed to death while waiting for a bus in South London in April 1993. Lawrence was the victim of an unprovoked attack by thugs who shouted racial epithets as they punched and knifed him. A botched police investigation followed, undermined by what an official inquiry said was pervasive racism within the police force.

For years Norma endured her husband's physical and mental abuse. But the undocumented mother of five finally decided to call police when her 10- and 11-year-old daughters told her that their father had sexually abused them. "In that moment," said Norma, who asked that her last name not be used to protect her children, "I felt — not scared, mostly I just felt angry at myself for hiding so many things, for letting it get to that point. " She was in deportation proceedings at the time and just days away from a hearing that could have seen her removed from the country.

Police are investigating whether a twin suicide bombing at the home of a top paramilitary official that killed at least 23 people in Quetta on Wednesday is linked to the recent arrest of three top Al Qaeda operatives in the Pakistani city. Brig. Farrukh Shahzad, deputy head of the Frontier Corps paramilitary force for Baluchistan province, survived the morning attack but his wife was killed, police officials in the southern city said. More than 50 people were injured in the blasts.

Long Beach police are investigating three incidents in the last two weeks in which gay men were assaulted in or near the city's Broadway Corridor, a neighborhood known for its tight-knit gay and lesbian community. The suspect in one case has been charged with a hate crime, but the other cases are still under investigation, said police spokesman Rico Fernandez. "We don't believe any of these three are connected in any way," Fernandez said. "We just think it's a coincidence that three incidents happened relatively close to each other.

Coroner's investigators unearthed skeletal remains Wednesday from a shallow grave in Canyon Country, where the man who killed the wife of Los Lobos singer Cesar Rosas had led authorities. Forensic experts said they will conduct an autopsy and compare dental records today to determine whether the bones are those of Sandra Rosas, who was murdered by her half-brother Gabriel Gomez.

Law enforcement authorities thought a two-year undercover drug operation in the Antelope Valley would almost certainly lead them to Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Jonathan Aujay. They were wrong. As the drug investigation winds down, with several suspected drug dealers awaiting trial or sentencing in federal court, no one is closer to knowing what happened to Aujay. He is the one deputy in the 8,000-officer department who is the subject of a missing-persons case.

Santa Monica police are investigating an alleged racial incident at Santa Monica High School in which an African American student said fellow members of the wrestling team chained him to a locker and hung a noose around a brown wrestling dummy. He also told police that those teammates made racially charged remarks. Although the incident allegedly happened more than a month ago, it was reported to the Santa Monica Police Department on June 21 by the student and his mother, Victoria Gray.

Police detectives investigating the assault on San Francisco Giants fan Bryan Stow after the Dodgers' home opener are now examining a video that shows the man being confronted by a spectator inside Dodger Stadium while he is watching the game. The short, grainy video posted on the website TMZ.com was purportedly taken during the March 31 Dodgers-Giants game. Stow, a Santa Clara County paramedic, suffered brain damage when he was later attacked in a stadium parking lot by two men, authorities said.