Cocaine cake a ‘joke in bad taste’

A former police officer who murdered nine people during a 1986 crime spree has been executed after his lawyers’ last-minute appeals were rejected.

At least 13 people have died and three million were left without power after violent storms pummelled the eastern United States.

A California prison panel today denied parole to mass murderer Charles Manson in his 12th bid for freedom.

Texas inmates who are set to be executed will no longer get their choice of last meals, a change prison officials made after a prominent state senator became miffed over an expansive request from a man condemned for a notorious dragging death.

Police were using helicopters and dogs to search for three convicted murderers who escaped from a northwest Arizona prison, kidnapped two semi-truck drivers at gunpoint and used the big rig to flee.

The execution of a convicted killer from Puerto Rico took 34 minutes – twice as long as normal – because officials botched the insertion of the needles that delivered the lethal chemicals, a medical examiner said today.

THE US Supreme Court, in an abortion case of relatively narrow scope, cleared the way yesterday for a Missouri prison inmate to terminate her pregnancy.

AS looters filled the streets and shots rang out, the city’s overmatched police knew that whatever other endeavours Hurricane Katrina had brought to a halt, crime wasn’t one of them.

One inmate was killed and 13 others were hurt in Oklahoma when a gang-related melee broke out in the gymnasium of a privately-run prison, with inmates flailing away with softball bats and other weapons.

Police have arrested a man alleged to have been plotting to kidnap US talk-show host David Letterman’s young son and nanny from his Montana home.

AN arrest warrant was issued for the ex-wife of rapper Eminem, a day after she failed to return to a court-ordered drug treatment programme in Michigan.

An arrest warrant was issued for the ex-wife of rapper Eminem, a day after she failed to return to a court-ordered drug treatment programme in Michigan.

A fire broke out at a prison administrative centre in Siberia killing five people and injuring 12, emergency officials said.

Angelo Buono, whose gruesome killing of young Los Angeles women in the 1970s earned him the nickname “Hillside Strangler”, has died in prison, corrections officials said.