Serial Crime

Police on Friday continued searching for an increasingly violent suspect who robbed four women on four consecutive days in downtown Long Beach's upscale arts district and stabbed two of them multiple times in broad daylight. "We're working very hard to apprehend this suspect," said Long Beach Police Department spokeswoman Nicole Avalos. "In the first two robberies, no one was harmed. But in the last two, the victims were cut with a sharp object."

Facing a potential life sentence in federal prison, a former Los Angeles police officer who was the admitted mastermind of a home invasion robbery gang apologized for his crimes Monday, telling a federal judge, "I became something that I despised." In a somewhat rambling, emotional address made moments before he was sentenced, Ruben Palomares told U.S. District Court Judge Gary A.

Seemingly defiant to the end, a former Los Angeles police officer convicted of participating in a home invasion-style robbery ring declined Monday to address a federal judge moments before sentencing, an opportunity many defendants use to plead for leniency. William Ferguson, a 35-year-old father of three, stood silently with his hands chained at his waist as U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess sentenced him to 102 years in federal prison.

Serial burglar Ignacio Pena Del Rio gave up his tools of the trade, and on Tuesday had six months shaved off his prison sentence. Pena Del Rio, known as one of Los Angeles' most industrious and prolific cat burglars until his arrest in 2006, agreed to authorities' unusual request. He starred in a 70-minute video in which he disclosed all his techniques for a Los Angeles Police Department training video.

A Beverly Hills fashion designer, once touted as a future star of the catwalks, was found guilty Thursday of sexually assaulting seven girls and young women, capping a two-month trial that offered a sordid portrait of the fashion world. The jury of six men and six women deliberated for seven days before finding Anand Jon Alexander guilty of one count of rape and 15 counts of sexual assault and other charges.

A Roman Catholic cardinal in Mexico said he warned Cardinal Roger M. Mahony in 1987 about a priest then seeking employment with the Los Angeles Archdiocese, who was later charged with molesting eight boys before fleeing back to Mexico, court documents said. Father Nicolas Aguilar, 64, continued to work as a priest in Mexico, where the abuse allegedly continued, according to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles last year accusing the cardinals of conspiring to conceal the priest's conduct.

In the five months leading up to the 40,000-acre Esperanza fire that killed five federal firefighters in October, investigators in Riverside County were on the hunt for a serial arsonist they believed was responsible for more than 50 fires in the San Gorgonio Pass. They posted surveillance cameras on telephone poles in remote areas and strategized about how to catch the person.

A Laguna Beach retiree has been arrested on suspicion of arson in connection with up to 10 fires in the city, police said Saturday. Witnesses saw Graysen Langille, 56, near at least nine of the fires, they said. Langille set fire to trash cans, wood pallets and paper at various times and places, police said. The fires caused no injuries, and damage was minor, authorities said.

A Lake Forest man was charged Wednesday with the sexual assault of three women after encountering them in Orange County bars, authorities said. Sekayi Rudo White, 29, is accused of meeting a 19-year-old woman in December 2005 at Fox Sports Grill at the Irvine Spectrum. White apparently offered to drive her home because she had been drinking. When he arrived at her apartment, authorities said, White raped her.

A 53-year-old woman testified Wednesday that in 2002, accused serial killer Chester Turner grabbed her by the neck, dragged her behind a trash bin in a dimly lighted parking lot and raped her for nearly two hours. Maria Martinez was homeless at the time of the attack in the skid row area of Los Angeles. Turner pleaded no contest to rape and sexual penetration by a foreign object that year.