This week in crime...
As police arrested 39-year-old Kham Tu Ly at a department store on suspicion of stuffing nearly $500 worth of merchandise in her clothing, she apparently nodded ("the signal") to her 9-year-old son, who began to cry and scream: Shoplifting suspect used son as aide, police charge. Looks like they'd obviously rehearsed this one before.
Last year, Victor K. Han's wife drove the family minivan off a cliff at Bear Mountain State Park, killing herself and injuring their two children. This week, Han pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child, acknowledging the he knew that his wife, Hejin Han, was contemplating suicide when he left her and their children in the car at the cliff: Plea Deal for Man Whose Wife Drove Off Cliff
Lina Sinha, the former principal of a Manhattan private school was convicted of having sex with one of her students in a classroom when he was about 13 and she was about 30: Jury Convicts Ex-Principal of Having Sex With Student. She faces up to seven years in prison on each of the two most serious counts of which she was convicted—sodomy, or oral sex with the student, who is now a 24-year-old police officer, and bribing a witness to induce him not to testify. Is it me, or do we hear about this type of thing happening waaay too often these days?
This week, Florida authorities busted a major prostitution ring being run out of local massage parlors: Prostitution Ring Run Out Of Massage Parlors. The investigation involved ten different locations in Orange and Seminole counties, this time bringing down the alleged ringleader, 42-year-old Li Ping Ding. The story notes that in addition to Ding, authorities said they arrested 15 of her employees for prostitution or practicing massage without a license. At the moment, the license thing looks like the least of their problems.
In Chicago, bail was set at $3 million for Jae Harrell, charged with bludgeoning and strangling his mother, then dumping her body in a car along the Eisenhower Expressway last weekend: $3 million bail in death of woman found on Ike. Harrell is charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of Ruth Harrell, 59, his widowed mother with whom he lived.
Police say a women and baby found dead in an apartment in Westminster, CA appear to have been stabbed to death: Stabbing probably killed woman, baby. The bodies, which had likely decayed inside the apartment for days or weeks, were badly decomposed and unidentifiable, but the woman appears to be Vietnamese and in her 30s, and the baby, a Vietnamese girl who looked to be only months old.
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