Tagged: Crime

We look at the challenges at balancing public safety with the rights of sex offenders.

The top financial official for the small city of Dixon, Ill., is accused of stealing more than $30 million from city coffers over the past six years. It's a staggering amount of money for the city of just 15,000 residents in northwest Illinois, and federal prosecutors allege she used the funds to finance a lavish lifestyle that included horse farms and a $2 million luxury motor home.

Federal prosecutors charged Rita Crundwell, who has been the trusted treasurer and comptroller of Dixon for close to 30 years, with fraud for allegedly misappropriating more than $30 million in city funds since 2006. FBI agents arrested the 58-year-old Crundwell on Tuesday and led her out of Dixon's City Hall in handcuffs.

Baseball star Roger Clemens goes on trial for a second time Monday on charges that he lied to a congressional committee about using steroids and human growth hormone. His trial on perjury and obstruction charges last summer ended abruptly when prosecutors mistakenly showed the jury evidence that the judge had ruled inadmissible.

Clemens won a record seven Cy Young awards during his storied pitching career, but prosecutors contend that he used steroids and human growth hormone to prolong that career.

The shootings in Greenland remain under investigation. Law enforcement say the shooter that killed Chief Michael Maloney and wounded four others was 29 year old Cullen Mutrie – who was found dead at the scene along with an unidentified woman.

Maria Cramer covers crime for the Boston Globe. She talks with All Things Considered host Brady Carlson by phone from Hampton, where she’s been looking into Cullen Mutrie’s past.

On Friday morning a hearing scheduled in the criminal copyright case of Megaupload may have implications for all kinds of companies that sell storage space in the cloud — storage space used for anything from music files to family photos, research data to movie collections. The hearing will focus on what happens when the federal government blocks access to allegedly illegal files along with clearly legal ones.

Among those affected by the hearing is Kyle Goodwin. He's building a new business taking videos of local sports teams in Cleveland. He sells highlights to family and friends of the players. He backed all his material up on a hard drive — until he had one of those bad days when everything technical goes wrong.

Since mid-February, the University of Pittsburgh has received more than 50 bomb threats, and while they've all been false alarms, they have succeeded in disrupting campus life. Tighter security measures are now in place, but the threats continue, and students are wondering how they'll be able to make up class work and prepare for final exams.

At first, sophomore Maggie Stankaitis thought the threats were a response to the unseasonably warm weather — some prankster student trying to get out of class to enjoy the sunshine. But now, dozens of bomb threats later, and with lines of students backing up to get into the student union, class and library because of the tighter security, she's changed her mind.

In Tulsa, Okla., the families of the three victims killed during a shooting rampage Friday are planning funerals. Police say William Allen, 31, Bobby Clark, 54, and Donna Fields, 49, were shot in a predominantly black neighborhood on the north side of Tulsa by two white men.

Fields was walking home after playing a game of dominoes with friends. She was called Donna, but her given name was Dannaer. Her brother Kenneth says she was named after an aunt.

For the past year, she had been living with Kenneth, his wife, Emma, and her 9-year-old niece, Mariah, in a modest ranch home — not far from where her body was found.