Murder

A New York man wanted for murder was stopped by police after a fixed license plate reader on Interstate 95 in Baltimore County alerted authorities to his location. Keith Howard, 63, of Astoria, N.Y., was stopped by a Maryland Transportation Authority officer after a license plate reader near the Fort McHenry Tunnel detected his license plate Oct. 10, said transportation authority spokesman Sgt. Jonathan Green. Howard's vehicle had been flagged by New York authorities, who identified him as a suspect in stabbing death of his tenant, Karla Shah Boguwalski, 39, on Oct. 2, according to The New York Daily News, which first reported the story.

A 38-year-old Baltimore man has been charged in the murder of a 32-year-old city HIV outreach worker who he said he met on an online dating site, after being taken into custody Saturday driving her vehicle with blood stains on his clothes. Monte Carter told detectives that he had been doing heroin and cocaine for days, driving around the city in Jennifer Conyers' 2004 Ford Mustang and using her ATM card to buy things that could be traded for more drugs, according to charging documents.

A convicted killer who recently confessed to murdering a Baltimore doctor in Memphis 13 years ago pleaded guilty to the crime Wednesday in Tennessee state court and was sentenced to life in prison, according to the Shelby County District Attorney's Office. Dale Mardis, a 57-year-old former gun dealer, admitted bludgeoning Dr. Henry Ackerman, whom he knew from gun shows, in June 1998 after they argued over a debt. The confession was revealed during a federal hearing last week in Tennessee, during which Mardis was sentenced to life in prison for a separate, racially motivated murder.

A year ago Saturday, Evelyn Scott-Palmer returned home from picking up her lunch to find her husband lying unresponsive on the cellar floor. Sterling Palmer, 78, had suffered multiple stab wounds. He died that day, and family members say they have not been able to find closure because his murder remains unsolved. "I miss him," Scott-Palmer said. "He was my best friend. " Now family and friends are hoping the offer of a $4,000 reward will draw new attention to the case and yield tips that could help find the killer.

T here is certainly no shortage of cop books. That's why when I decided to collaborate with Kelvin Sewell a former Baltimore city homicide detective, on “Why Do We Kill?” (out now) we decided to start the book with an underlying question that gets beyond the mere phenomena of violent crime and into the realm of why it occurs so regularly in Baltimore. The idea was to offer the reader more than a series of grisly tales. Instead we wanted to provide some context.

A 28-year-old man was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder in the Dec. 30 fatal shooting of 31-year-old Sir Keith English Queen Jones, according to Anne Arundel County police said. Police said Carroll Leon Johnson, 28, of no fixed address, was arrested around 7 a.m. Tuesday near Oak Manor Drive in Glen Burnie. Court records indicate Johnson was ordered held without bail. Police had been called to the parking lot of Dietrich's Tavern in Glen Burnie around 5:21 p.m. Dec. 30 for a shooting, and found Jones suffering from gunshot wounds.

A Baltimore man was sentenced Friday for his role in the death of a witness in a bank fraud investigation. Frank Marfo, 28, received life in prison after being convicted of murder, gun, and fraud conspiracy charges. The victim, 19-year-old Isaiah Callaway, had been accused of working for Marfo and his partner, Tavon Davis, 25, who had concocted a scheme to hire homeless men to steal rent checks and deposit them in fake bank accounts, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Callaway was arrested by Baltimore County Police opening one of the bank accounts and was later killed on Davis' orders, fearing Callaway would cooperate with the police, officials said.

The wife of a man found stabbed in an Odenton home last year has been arrested in his murder, police said. Donna Mills Wood, 38, turned herself in at the Western District police station at approximately 4 p.m. Thursday. She was charged with the fatal stabbing of Jerome Vorden Wood, 45, inside a residence on the 100 block of Pine Cove Avenue Nov. 6, 2012. Police were called to the scene for a reported suicide and found Jerome Wood with injuries to his upper body. He died that day, and investigators later determined that he had been stabbed and ruled his death a homicide.

A teenager pleaded guilty Friday to sexually assaulting and then murdering his teacher at the troubled Cheltenham Youth Facility when he was 13. He was sentenced to 85 years in prison. Brian Lee Wonsom, now 15, hung his head during the hearing before Prince George's County Circuit Judge Toni E. Clark, who told him that "at this juncture in your life, you are not fit to live in our society. " The teen also admitted to attempted murder of a neighbor in an unrelated break-in. Wonsom was accused of killing and sexually assaulting 65-year-old Cheltenham instructor Hannah E. Wheeling of Bel Air on Feb. 17, 2010.

A jury acquitted one man and prosecutors dropped charges against another in the 2010 murder of a 73-year-old Hampden cab driver who was beaten to death with a tire iron, the State's Attorney's Office confirmed. Mark Cheshire, a spokesman for city prosecutors, confirmed that a jury had acquitted Gary Latham, 29, on all charges, and based on that prosecutors dropped charges against a second man, Bobby Wisner, 31.  Additional information was not immediately available Tuesday evening.  When police charged Wisner, they wrote in charging documents that 73-year-old John Sandy had identified his attacker as "Bobby,"  who he said was the brother of a man who lived with him. He slipped into a coma, but eventually woke up and identified Wisner from a photo lineup.