Murder Weapon

A prosecutor has painted Timothy M. Jones, 20, as the man who set into motion the slaying of a Baltimore schoolteacher by allegedly supplying the murder weapon."

Only days before she was to be a key prosecution witness in a 2009 murder trial, a Glen Burnie woman was charged with drug and gun violations, and she may have been telling people that the gun found in her possession was the murder weapon. The revelation led to a delay in the trial of Dominic Richard Sanchez of Baltimore, which had been scheduled to start Monday, until June, at the request of Anne Arundel County prosecutors. Sanchez is charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy in the July 15, 2009, shooting of Lamont Gordon.

Nearly 100 years after Lizzie Borden was accused of savagely killing her father and stepmother in a pique over being served hot mutton soup, a forensic scientist wants to examine the victims' skulls.While a jury found Lizzie not guilty in the deaths, no one else was ever charged in the double homicide committed on the hottest day in the history of Fall River, Mass.James E. Starrs, professor of forensic sciences at George Washington University in Washington, claims the hatchet that was introduced as evidence during Lizzie Borden's trial -- and now in the custody of the Fall River Historical Society -- is not the murder weapon.

THE MARYLAND State Police want to scrap a program to collect the ballistic fingerprints of new guns sold in the state because the database hasn't helped solve crimes. Excuse the clichM-i, but the agency is jumping the gun, and legislators should resist its plea. With a National Academy of Science study on this issue expected to be completed by year's end, shutting down the Integrated Ballistics Identification System (IBIS) would be premature. Maryland and New York are the only two states collecting the unique markings left on shell casings when a gun is fired; those markings are identifiable with a particular gun. After four years and $2.6 million, Maryland has collected more than 53,000 so-called ballistic fingerprints since a 2000 law created the database.

THE MARYLAND State Police want to scrap a program to collect the ballistic fingerprints of new guns sold in the state because the database hasn't helped solve crimes. Excuse the clichM-i, but the agency is jumping the gun, and legislators should resist its plea. With a National Academy of Science study on this issue expected to be completed by year's end, shutting down the Integrated Ballistics Identification System (IBIS) would be premature. Maryland and New York are the only two states collecting the unique markings left on shell casings when a gun is fired; those markings are identifiable with a particular gun. After four years and $2.6 million, Maryland has collected more than 53,000 so-called ballistic fingerprints since a 2000 law created the database.

A Pasadena man charged with hiring a hit man to kill his fiancee for insurance money during a staged robbery pulled the trigger himself, a prosecutor said yesterday during the opening of the murder trial of Robert Dwayne Harris.Then, said Assistant State's Attorney Ahmet Hisim, the hit man did what he was ordered to do -- shot Harris in the leg and ran away as Harris' fiancee, Teresa Lynn McLeod, 27, lay dead from six gunshot wounds. Harris, 24, is charged in Baltimore Circuit Court with conspiracy, solicitation to commit murder and first-degree murder.

A 34-year-old South Baltimore man pleaded guilty yesterday to two counts of second-degree murder in the hatchet slayings almost two years ago of his mother and stepfather.Baltimore Circuit Judge John C. Themelis sentenced Dwain Harris to two consecutive 30-year prison terms for the August 1996 killings of Harold and Essie Wainright.Police found the bodies of Harold Wainright, 69, and Essie Wainright, 62, in separate second-floor rooms of their two-story rowhouse in the 1100 block of S. Hanover St., according to court records.

A 20-year-old New Jersey man was sentenced to 18 years in prison yesterday for the murder of a Glen Burnie man on New Year's morning.Shawn Rauson of Linden, N.J., pleaded guilty June 9 to second-degree murder in the shooting death of 20-year-old Robert Charles Queen Jr., of the 400 block of Darton Court."

The assassin lay hidden in a lush green honeysuckle thicket, awaiting his victim. At 12:40 a.m., 150 feet away, a powder-blue Oldsmobile pulled into the carport of the ranch-style house at 2332 Guynes St. in Jackson, Miss. Its driver stepped from the car -- his arms laden with NAACP T-shirts intended for civil-rights demonstrators.Now, the assassin was on his feet. He peered through the scope of his old Enfield rifle and squeezed the trigger. The bullet slammed into his victim's back and tore a half-dollar-sized hole through his chest.

The impressions from a crescent wrench on the murder victim. Genetic material on a soda bottle. A changing alibi. These are among key pieces of evidence the prosecution is likely to offer against Albert Gustav Givens, whose retrial in the murder of an Arnold woman began yesterday. Lawyers for Givens cautioned jurors not to be swayed by stomach-turning evidence and sympathy for the family of Marlene Kilpatrick, 55, who was killed and sexually assaulted by an assailant she knew well enough to let into her home Jan. 2, 1992.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - Describing John Allen Muhammad as a diabolical and mind- controlling killer, prosecutors told jurors yesterday that the sniper suspect turned a beat-up Chevrolet Caprice into a "war wagon" and a 17-year-old boy into an "instrument of death and destruction" to carry out the sniper attacks last fall. The prosecution and the defense needed almost five hours to deliver their closing arguments yesterday, summing up a month of testimony and evidence that has closely tied the sniper shootings to Muhammad but has not put the murder weapon - a semiautomatic Bushmaster rifle - into his hands.

LOS ANGELES - In a setback to prosecutors, a judge threw out part of the capital murder case against Robert Blake yesterday, ruling that the evidence "carries very little weight" toward proving the actor conspired with his handyman to kill his wife. Blake, 70, still faces a murder charge and a possible sentence of life in prison without parole for allegedly shooting Bonny Lee Bakley two years ago outside a Studio City restaurant where they had dined. But the dismissal of a felony charge before trial is rare and could indicate problems ahead for the prosecution, according to criminal defense lawyers who have been following the case.

A South Baltimore man was convicted last night of ramming a car into a police officer during an October 2001 chase, but he was acquitted of murder and 14 other charges. Gregory Kevin Thomas could be sentenced to 25 years in prison for hitting Southern District police Officer Adam Long with a car - throwing him 20 feet in the air and injuring him - as Long and others were pursuing Thomas in connection with a murder charge. Police believed that Thomas, 22, had killed Darryl "Tank" Dennis during a kidnapping and robbery.

FREDERICK - The prosecution and lawyers for a Pennsylvania woman on trial in the killing of two Ocean City tourists agree on a host of details, they told the jury during opening statements yesterday. They agree that Martha Crutchley, 51, and Joshua Ford, 32, were lured to an oceanfront penthouse condominium over Memorial Day weekend last year, that they were killed inside, that their dead bodies were dismembered and that their remains ended up in a Delaware landfill. The disagreement is over who committed the murders.

The impressions from a crescent wrench on the murder victim. Genetic material on a soda bottle. A changing alibi. These are among key pieces of evidence the prosecution is likely to offer against Albert Gustav Givens, whose retrial in the murder of an Arnold woman began yesterday. Lawyers for Givens cautioned jurors not to be swayed by stomach-turning evidence and sympathy for the family of Marlene Kilpatrick, 55, who was killed and sexually assaulted by an assailant she knew well enough to let into her home Jan. 2, 1992.

FAIRFAX, VA. - Court documents made public yesterday revealed that teen-aged sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo was indicted Tuesday on two counts of capital murder and one weapons charge, beginning a court process that could end with the state putting him to death. The two-page indictment accuses the 17-year-old of gunning down FBI analyst Linda Franklin, 47, on Oct. 14 in the parking lot of the Home Depot store in the Seven Corners area. The first count alleges that the slaying was an act of terrorism under a new and untested state law. Prosecutors cited allegations that Malvo and 42-year-old John Allen Muhammad, the other suspect in last fall's sniper shootings in the Washington area, asked for $10 million from the government to end the spree.

Jury selection has begun in the trial of Eugene Dale, who faces a possible death sentence if convicted in the rape and murder of a 12-year-old West Baltimore girl.Prosecutors and defense attorneys began to question prospective jurors earlier this week and were expected to continue today in the chambers of Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Elsbeth L. Bothe.The potential jurors were being screened for knowledge of the October 1988 rape and murder of 12-year-old Andrea L. Perry, who was a student at Harlem Park Junior High School.

Carroll prosecutors said they will retry Timothy Cumberland, 25, of Reisterstown, whose first-degree murder conviction in the slaying of a Westminster man was overturned last week by the Court of Special Appeals.In a one-page letter, State's Attorney Jerry F. Barnes notified the Carroll Circuit Court late Monday that he will seek to retry Mr. Cumberland in the Jan. 28, 1993, shooting death of Gregory Lamont Howard on South Center Street in Westminster.The prosecutor also sought to keep Mr. Cumberland behind bars, asking the court to hold him without bail pending the new trial.

The Carroll County woman charged with hiring a friend to kill her trucker husband this month was ordered held without bail yesterday, after she told a judge she had no involvement in the slaying. "I would like to have a chance to prove that I had nothing to do with this, so I would like to set bail," Melissa Lynn Baumgardner Shipley told a judge via closed-circuit television from the county detention center. But Carroll Senior Assistant State's Attorney David P. Daggett argued that the 32-year-old Silver Run woman should remain jailed while awaiting trial.

Concerns about the description of a possible murder weapon by the state's key eyewitness left a Howard County jury with reasonable doubt that a Jessup man was guilty of first-degree murder in a fatal hotel shooting in Columbia. The defendant, Shamal Ira Chapman, 21, was acquitted Thursday evening. Tanette McMillan, 19, testified during Chapman's eight-day trial in Howard County Circuit Court that she saw him draw a black gun that was silver on top during a chaotic birthday party at the Courtyard by Marriott on Stanford Boulevard.