December 31, 2000 - Family Massacre in Tokyo - A family of four was found stabbed to death in their Tokyo home. A police spokesman declined to elaborate and did not release the victims' names, but national broadcaster NHK said police believe the four were probably murdered by robbers.

December 31, 2000 - William L. Lembcke - A 16-year-old boy was arrested in the small mountain community of Addy in northeast Washington after his parents and two siblings, ages 11 and 18, were found dead along a rural road near their home. Investigators said all four bodies were covered with snow. Police suspect that the family was shot at their home on December 23, then taken to a nearby road in the family pickup. The sheriff's office said friends and family members notified authorities after the family hadn't been seen for five days. The teen, William L. Lembcke, 16, was booked into the Stevens County Jail for the investigation of first-degree murder. According to authorities he had a juvenile record, and the family had been having problems.

December 28, 2000 - Susan Atkins - A California parole board rejected for the 10th time former Manson Family member Susan Atkins request for parole. Atkins, 52, is serving a life sentence at the California Institute for Women in Frontera for the 1969 bloody massacre of Sharon Tate and her friends by Manson followers. Denise Schmidt, a spokeswoman for the Board of Prison Terms in Sacramento, said the board denied any possible parole for at least four years in part because Atkins had refused to undergo a psychological evaluation. Atkins, who alegedly found God in prison, said that she had done everything the parole board had requested.

December 28, 2000 - Timothy McVeigh - Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh had his request to drop all appeals and get a prompt execution date granted by U.S. District Court Judge Richard Matsch in Colorado. McVeigh participated in the Denver hearing via closed-circuit television from the maximum-security prison in Terre Haute, Indiana where he is on death row. Most probably his execution date will be set for about May of 2001.

December 27, 2000 - Seven Dead in a Philadelphia Crack House - Four masked gunmen burst into a dilapidated crack house in Philadelphia and opened fire on 10 people, killing seven. Hospitalized survivors told police that four people wearing masks broke into the house after 8 p.m. and opened fire. Six men were found dead in the dining room. A woman died later at a hospital. "We know that a robbery occurred inside, but it would seem to me that you don't slaughter 10 people for a few bucks," police Captain James Brady told reporters. "I think there's a deeper motive involved than a single, straight-up robbery." Two of the Philadelphia victims were drug dealers, and a small amount of crack cocaine was found in the house, about 200 feet away from an elementary school, Deputy Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson said.

December 27, 2000 - John Mills - A Gilford, Connecticut, man with a long criminal record was charged with stabbing deaths of his aunt and two of her children. He then led police to a body that is believed to be of another neighborhood woman who had been missing since October. John Mills, 27, was arrested for the killings of 43-year-old Katherine "Kitty" Kleinkauf and two of her four children, 6-year-old Rachael Crum and 4-year-old Kyle Redway, prosecutor Kim McCabe said. The victims were stabbed a total of 30 times.

Under questioning, Mills then provided information that led police to skeletal remains on the town's fairgrounds that police believe are the remains of Mindy Elizabeth Leigh, 20. The youngster lived two houses away from Mills. They allegedly met at a neighborhood birthday party in the neighborhood ten days before her dissappearence. Court records show that Mills has been arrested 23 times and has been convicted of nine felonies in the last 10 years. Charges filed against him included possession of narcotics, larceny, burglary, forgery and criminal impersonation.

December 27, 2000 - Chinese Disco Inferno - The Chinese authorities announced that four people confessed to starting a Christmas night fire in an unlicenced nightclub in Luoyang city which killed 309 people. Investigators said that stray sparks from welding caused the fire and that one welder had been operating equipment in violation of regulations. The welder and three others - all of whom were employed by a Taiwanese businessman who had invested in the building - had been working in the basement of the building. The four men have been charged with failing to put out the fire and leaving the scene without reporting it.

December 27, 2000 - Unnamed Saudi Rampager - A Saudi man in Jiddah apparently distraught over marital problems hunted down his wife at her sister's home, where he killed her, their three daughters and seven other family members. The man later committed suicide. In all, 12 people died in rampage, including the wife's sister, her husband and their five children. The press agency did not identify the man or his victims. The rampagern then fled to the Muslim holy city of Medina, where he held two children hostage on the roof of a building and threatened to kill them if police officers got close. After officers persuaded him not to harm the children, he shot himself.

December 27, 2000 - Michael McDermott - While searching the home of workplace rampager Michael Mcdermott, police found blasting caps, bomb-making literature and three gallons of liquid nitric acid, a substance used in the manufacture nitroglycerin. In his work locker they found a semiautomatic rifle with a sniper scope and more live ammunition. Perhaps indicating his mental state leading to the rampage, McDermott quoted on his answering machine a chroniclly depressed android from the "Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy": "Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and what does it have me doing? Reduced to answering the phones. Phones. Oh, how I hate the phones. They're so depressing."

During his arraignment Mcdermott pleaded not guilty to seven counts of murder. His lawyer also noted thathe had been under psychiatric care and needed to take medication. His elderly parents attended the court hearing and commented through their lawyer that they were "devastated" by the massacre.

December 26, 2000 - Michael McDermott - Chalk this one to the IRS. A Massachussets software tester allegedly gunned down seven co-workers at their Internet consulting company because he may have been upset by a request by the IRS to garnisheed his wages to pay back taxes. Michael McDermott, 42 -- wielding a semiautomatic rifle, a shotgun and a pistol -- made his way through the offices of Edgewater Technology on the day after Christmas, leaving in his wake a stream of spent shells and the bodies of four women and three men.

December 22, 2000 - Robert Bloom - For the second time in 17 years, a Van Nuys jury has recommended the execution of Robert Bloom Jr., for the murders of his father, stepmother and 8-year-old stepsister. Bloom, who looked dazed as he heard the verdict that concluded his three-month retrial, represented himself after firing his court-appointed attorneys and dropping his insanity plea. Prosecutors called Bloom, 37, a sociopath who deserves to die for the 1982 Sun Valley murders he committed at age 18.

December 22, 2000 - Marvin Gray - A convicted killer claimed responsibility for 23 slayings and threatened in open court to kill two more - his own public defenders - unless a judge removes them from his case. "The first chance I get I'm going to do something real bad to one of them," , 46, told Denver County Court Judge Robert Patterson. "If I get a chance, I will try to kill one of them. I've killed 23 people, and I'd like to make that 24 and 25."

December 20, 2000 - Jesse James Caston - A man suspected in at least four murders was captured after barricading himself in his father's home in a standoff with police. , 35, who was featured twice on "America's Most Wanted" and was in the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List, was armed but surrendered to Lousiana authorities after negotiating by telephone with SWAT team members. Caston was wanted in the slayings of James B. Kelly, 59, and his son James M. "Bubba" Kelly, 37, who were found shot to death on a Mississippi River levee. Caston, a distant relative of the Kellys, was also sought in the April 10 slayings of his wife, Angela, and a friend of hers. Authorities said that they have no motive for the killings but that there had been friction between Caston and the Kelly family. Caston was also wanted on attempted murder charges for allegedly ambushing a pair of officers and wounding one with a shotgun.

December 20, 2000 - Arohn Kee - A New York jury convicted a serial killer-rapist in the slayings of three girls and the rapes of four others during an eight-year crime spree. Kee, 27, faces life without parole in state prison when he is sentenced January 26. Kee was charged with murdering three Harlem girls between 1991 and 1998. Four other victims, ranging in age from 13 to 15, were raped.

December 20, 2000 - Nathaniel Bar-Jonah - Police believe a missing Montana boy may have been butchered by an unstable, cannibalistic paedophile and served up to unwitting neighbours, prosecutors say. Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, 43, is accused of murdering Zachary Ramsay, ten, who disappeared in Great Falls in 1996. Prosecutors said that Bar-Jonah described in coded writing several "dishes" he prepared with a child's remains. In an affidavit, neighbours said that the accused gave them meals containing meat that had a peculiar flavour. Bar-Jonah, who has two previous convictions for kidnapping young boys in Massachusetts, was arrested last year on charges of carrying a stun gun and impersonating a police officer near a primary school.

December 20, 2000 - Martin Bryant - Australian mass murderer Martin Bryant tried to kill himself again in his maximum security cell in Hobart's Risdon Prison. He was found bleeding after trying to cut his femoral artery in the groin region and making several cuts to his inner arms with a razor blade. A doctor was called in to the prison about 9.30pm Monday to stitch Bryant's wounds.

December 18, 2000 - Francisco Assis Pereira - Rebellious inmates at a Brazilian prison shot to death Francisco Assis Pereira, Brazil's most notorious serial killers. Four other inmates were also killed. Pereira was known as the Park Maniac because he lured his victims to a city park where he raped and killed them. Pereira, a former motorcycle courier, died after an inmate opened fire with a revolver, provoking a fight with prisoners in another pavilion at the Taubate House of Custody and Psychiatric Treatment, about 80 miles outside Sao Paulo. Authorities said it was not immediately clear why Pereira and the other four inmates were killed.

December 18, 2000 - Pierre Chanal - According to French authorities army veteran and suspected serial killer Pierre Chanal may never face trial because of the interminable delays in the case against him. Investigators believe that Chanal , 52 -- described by comrades as "an archetypal warrior and man of steel" -- murdered eight young men in the 1980s. The eight vanished in or near an area in the Marne region, north-east of Paris, known as the "triangle of death". Seven of the bodies have never been found. Lawyers for Chanal have now asked an appeal court judge to throw out the case against him because of the inordinate time that has passed without authorities filing charges. Moreover, his lawyers claim, Chanal has been deprived of the opportunity to challenge DNA evidence against him or the psychological profile of him provided by the FBI. The judge will decide by the end of this month whether to drop or continue the investigation.

December 13, 2000 - Timothy McVeigh - Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh has decided to end his appeals and asked to have his execution date set within the next 120 days. McVeigh offered no explanation for his decision, but many believe he hopes to become a martyr for the patriot militia movement nationwide.

December 11, 2000 - Cornelius Devon Oliver & Troy L. Bell - A teen-ager was charged with the murders of four people found fatally shot in a Wichita home. Another man was charged with helping the teen avoid arrest. Authorities have declined to discuss possible motives or other details of the crime. The four bodies, two men and two women, ages 17 to 20, were found when a friend went to the home the morning after the murders. Cornelius Devon Oliver, 18, was charged with one count of first-degree murder and three counts of capital murder. A judge set his bond at $4 million. Troy L. Bell, 32, was charged with one count of aiding a felony for allegedly helping Oliver avoid arrest.

Beverly Robinson, whose son Jermaine Levy was among the victims, said Levy was visiting his girlfriend at her house and didn't know about problems Oliver may have had with the group. Authorities said they are investigating two other people in connection with the murders. One man was arrested last week in connection with the murders and the other is jailed in Hutchinson on unrelated drug charges.

December 9, 2000 - Abbas al-Baqer Abbas - A gunman opened fire at Muslim worshippers in Sudan who were performing their night prayers, killing 20 and wounding dozens before being shot dead by police. The attacker, Abbas al-Baqer Abbas -- identified as a member of an Islamic militant group Takfir wal Hijra -- walked onto the mosque grounds in the village of Garaffa and began firing an automatic rifle through a window at the worshippers, said Khartoum police General Osman Gaafar.

Police spokesman General Osman Yakoub Ali told reporters that four police units rushed to the al-Sunna al-Mohammediyya Mosque and shot the gunman after he refused to surrender. Twenty worshippers were killed and 33 others wounded, including a policeman. Garaffa is a village outside Omdurman, the twin city of the capital Khartoum.

December 8, 2000 - Paul Bernardo & Karla Homolka - Ontario's New Democrat leader Howard Hampton sent a letter to Toronto's mayor, Mel Lastman, urging him to block plans by a local production company to shoot a film about Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka in the city next month. "We can't stop this movie from being made, but we can stop it being made in your city with the tacit co-operation and approval of Toronto taxpayers," Hampton wrote. Word of the planned film emerged amid reports that Beverly Hills 90210 star Jason Priestley is considering an offer to play Bernardo in the movie.

In related news, a lawyer representing Karla Homolka said that the "Karla Homolka Death Pool" Internet site proves the Canadian killer was in danger of being murdered. "More and more it is obvious that there's nowhere in Canada she will be safe," lawyer Marc Labelle said. Dave Homenuck Jr., the 23 year-old creator of The Karla Homolka Death Pool Web site, said he created the site as a joke after reading a Toronto Sun story on Homolka's fears of being killed if she was paroled. The Death Pool asks Web surfers to e-mail predictions of when Homolka will die. "The winner will have eternal bragging rights and everybody else will have a nice warm feeling inside," says the pool site.

December 7, 2000 - Bilal Musa - A Jordanian man convicted of a four-year crime spree with his wife that left 12 people dead was hanged in the Swaqa Prison, 60 miles south of the Jordanian capital Amman. The convicted killer, Bilal Musa, 34, and his wife, Susan Ibrahim, 31, posed as salespeople or journalists to persuade their victims to let them into their houses, the officials said. Once inside, they killed and robbed the inhabitants. The crimes - committed in various cities between 1994 and 1998 - shocked Jordan, a conservative Muslim country with a high security level for the Middle East.

In April, Musa was convicted of 12 counts of murder and robbery. Ibrahim was convicted of being an accomplice to the murders and robberies. She was sentenced to death on one murder count, but an appeals court commuted the sentence to life in prison. The couple fled to Libya in 1998 but were arrested and extradited to Jordan in October of that year.

December 7, 2000 - Christopher Goins - A 27 year-old Virginia man convicted of killing five members of his girlfriend's family was executed by lethal injection at the Greensville Correctional Center. In 1994 Christopher Goins fatally shot the parents and three of the siblings of his pregnant 14-year-old girlfriend in the family's Richmond apartment. His girlfriend Tamika Jones and her 18-month-old sister were shot but survived the massacre. Jones lost her unborn baby in the shooting.

Goins was convicted of the murders of James Nathaniel Randolph Jr., 34; Daphne Jones, 29; and three of Daphne Jones's five children: Nicole, 9; David, 4; and Robert, 3. He was sentenced to die for the capital murder of Robert Jones and received four life terms and 73 years for the other crimes. "I just want him off this Earth," Tamika Jones, now 20 and living in California, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. "I just want him away from here so he can go to God and let God deal with it."

December 6, 2000 - Cary Stayner - Motel handyman Cary Stayner, 39, pleaded innocent in the 1999 slayings of three tourists visiting Yosemite. Stayner, who was sentenced to life in prison for the beheading of park naturalist Joie Armstrong, allegedly confessed to the slayings of the three tourist of while the FBI was questioning him in July 1999 about the Armstrong case.

November 26, 2000 - Three Executed in Japan - Japan's "most maliciously evil criminal in history," were executed by hanging by the Ministry of Justice. The three executed criminals were Kiyotaka Katsuta, 52, Takashi Miyawaki, 57, and Kunikatsu Oishi, 55. Katsuta gained the "most evil" title thanks to his slaughter of eight people in a decade-long rampage of robbery and murder during the '70s and '80s. Miyawaki viciously murdered his ex-wife's family and Oishi stabbed to death a family over a stolen hose clamp. Katsuta and Miyawaki were executed in the Nagoya Detention Center, while Oishi's state-sanctioned killing took place at the Fukuoka Detention Center.

Katsuta was the best known of the three criminals executed. A former firefighter, he began his bloodthirsty killing spree with the 1972 strangling and robbery of a Kyoto hostess. Over the following five years, Katsuta killed another four women. He then turned his attention toward men, gunning down a Kobe labor fund worker in 1977 with a pistol he stole from a police officer. Three years later, he shot and killed the owner of a supermarket in Nagoya. His final murder victim was a laborer on the Meishin Expressway, who Katsuta shot in 1982. Katsuta was overpowered by police officers in the parking lot of a Nagoya bank while he threatened another man at gunpoint in a 1982 botched hold-up.

November 26, 2000 - Robert Lee Yates Jr. - The Spokane serial killer task force asked to use the Army Guard's helicopters to check out 70 sites recorded in a Global Positioning System device owned by confessed killer and former helicopter pilot Robert L. Yates Jr. The sites were logged on to a Magellan 2000 GPS computer device that was found by detectives during a search of Yates' South Hill home after his arrest. Sergeant Cal Walker, who commands the task force, hopes task force detectives can personally visit the sites "to see what Mr. Yates saw when he recorded these locations."

November 26, 2000 - Cary Stayner - In an emotional apology, 39-year-old Cary Stayner begged forgiveness from the family of Joie Armstrong, the 26-year-old naturalist he attacked and decapitated. "I wish I didn"t do this terrible thing," a sobbing Stayner told the federal court before sentence was passed "I gave into terrible dark dreams that I tried to subdue." Stayner agreed to a plea deal in September to avoid a possible death sentence for the Armstrong murder, which was prosecuted in federal court because it occurred in a national park. Speaking directly to the naturalist family, a teary-eyed Stayner said: "I'm sorry. I wish I could tell you why... I don't even know myself. I wish Joie was here, but she isn't. I am so sorry."

November 22, 2000 - Wesley Shermantine Jr. - The trial of suspected serial killer Wesley Shermantine Jr. began in Santa Clara with the prosecutor painting a picture of a ruthless predator running rampant throughout the Bay area. Shermantine, 34, is charged with killing three people in the 1980s and a woman in 1998, though only two of the bodies have been found. Prosecutors told the jury that they believe Shermantine may have killed as many as 20 more people, disposing of their bodies in mine shafts, remote hill sides and buried underneath a trailer park. "There are no fingerprints, no eyewitnesses, no smoking gun," prosecutor Thomas Testa said in opening statements. "It's all in the details."

November 22, 2000 - Jihad Hassan Moukalled - A Michigan man suffocated his three children and shoot his pregnant wife before killing himself over gambling debts surpasing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Jihad Hassan Moukalled, 42, scribbled a suicide note found on the kitchen counter of their two-story suburban saying: "I never ever had a bad intent toward anyone. I think that I was gripped by the hope of 'one more shot.' I did not know how else to escape what I got myself into. It is over."

November 21, 2000 - Craig Godineaux & John Taylor - New York prosecutors say they need more time to decide if they will seek the death penalty for two suspects in May's horrific Wendy's massacre. In a surprising development, defense attorneys said on that one of the suspects, 30-year-old Craig Godineaux, is mentally retarded and, under law, cannot face death if convicted. The latest developments mean it will be another 60 days before prosecutors decide whether they will seek the death penalty. During that time, the defense will have to come up with evidence that Godineaux was mentally retarded prior to his 18th birthday, according to prosecutors.

November 20, 2000 - Mohammad Adam Omar - Yemeni court convicted a Sudanese morgue assistant of killing two women and sentenced him to death. Mohammad Adam Omar was found guilty of killing the two women while he was working at Sanaa University's medical school morgue. The court ordered that Omar be executed by firing squad in the main square of the medical school. The court also ordered Omar to pay each of the victims' families 5 million riyals ($41,600) and ordered that two lecture halls in the school be named after the victims - Noor Aziz and Hoson al-Hamdani. While in custody, Omar confessed to killing 16 women in Yemen, then recanted, saying he only killed two.

November 20, 2000 - Kristen Gilbert - Prosecutors said in court that Angel of Death nurse Kristen Gilbert murdered four patients at a veterans hospital because she liked the thrill of medical emergencies and wanted to impress her boyfriend. Gilbert, 33, of Setauket, N.Y., is accused of four murders and three attempts at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Northampton.

November 18, 2000 - Possible Denver Serial Killer - Two more bodies have been found in the LoDo section of Denver sparking new fears of a serial killer and maybe even one or more copycat killers are at work. The two bodies discovered near Union Station had been beheaded. Police launched a massive investigation into what may be the sixth and seventh unsolved murders of homeless men in downtown Denver in recent weeks and called the FBI for help in profiling the possible serial killer.

November 16, 2000 - Patrick Baxter - A White Plains, New York, man was charged with three sex murders going back to 1987 after investigators used cutting-edge DNA technology to link him to the crimes. Longtime suspect Patrick Baxter, 31, was accused of killing a 14-year-old girl in 1987, a 19-year-old woman in 1988 and a 25-year-old woman in 1990. At the time of the killings police were unable to test DNA evidence from semen recovered at each crime scene because the samples were too small. New DNA analysis tools enabled Westchester County detectives to match the two cases. Then the DA's office obtained a court order for a DNA sample from Baxter who was already serving a prison term for reckless endangerment and possession of stolen property. Police officials said in June that the DNA linked Baxter to two of the killings, but he was not charged at that time. A positive match was later made to the 1988 killing, leading to the triple indictment.

November 15, 2000 - Mike Braxhoofden - The killer of three Irishmen in Holland who, after pumping bullets into his victims, helped to carve them up and burn their bodies has been sentenced to 18 years in prison. A bewildering lenient sentence for three murders, Mike Braxhoofden, 23, will only have to serve 11 1/2 years of his sentence. His accomplice, Ronald van Bommel, 20, who stabbed the bodies of the three men, was jailed for 10 years but is expected to be freed within six to seven.The victims -- Vincent Costello, 29, and his brother, Morgan, 20, and Damien Monahan, 24 -- were murdered in the apartment they shared with their killers in Scheveningen last April.

The judges justified the liniency of the sentences citing the "unimaginable" amount of drugs involved, the young age of the perpetrators and the view of experts that it was highly unlikely they would commit such barbaric and macabre crimes again. The spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office, Kitty Nooy, said after the verdicts that they were "hideous" crimes. She confirmed that they had expected more severe punishment than that imposed. The state prosecutor now has 14 days in which to decide to appeal the verdicts on the grounds that the punishment was not severe enough. "It was certainly one of the most horrific murders I have come across. The three judges in the case wanted to impress that these were terrible murders. But they believe these young men should be given another chance to show they can do better. The circumstances of the crime were rather exceptional. I know it is very difficult for the families in Ireland to accept."

November 14, 2000 - Jay Scott Ballinger - Serial arsonist and self-professed "missionary of Lucifer," Jay Scott Ballinger, was sentenced to 42 and a 1/2 years in prison for burning 26 churches in eight states. Ballinger, 38, of Yorktown, Indianapolis, was also ordered to pay $3.6 million in restitution after pleading guilty to 29 charges, including 20 counts of damaging religious property. Ballinger, who during the 1990's subcontracted other individuals to do the devil's work, still faces federal charges in Georgia for five church fires in 1998 and 1999, including one that killed a firefighter.

November 12, 2000 - Karen Lee Huster - A woman wanted in Oregon for the slaying of her 10-year-old daughter has been arrested for the murder of her roommate after human remains were found in the freezer of their Los Angeles apartment. Karen Lee Huster, 41, was booked for investigation of murder and was being held in the jail ward of the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center with superficial self-inflicted injuries. Police were called to the apartment she shared with an unidentified 73-year-old roommate after his niece found the body parts in the fridge.

Huster is wanted in Oregon for the disappearance of her daughter who was last seen at a wedding in the Cedar Mill area August 31, 1996. Her father, Michael Huster, who was divorcing Karen at the time and was living in California, reported Elisabeth missing December 23, 1996, after learning that she had not gone into fifth grade that fall. Apparently Karen had kept him from talking to his daughter for nearly six months before he reported her disappearence.

November 11, 2000 - Robert Lee Yates - The wife of serial killer Robert L. Yates Jr. said she asked her husband why he killed 13 women. "I said, 'Do you know why you killed these women?'" Linda Yates recalled in an interview aired on NBC. "And how you could have done this, and still be married to me?" Yates did not answer. However, in court, his lawyer tried to blame his mania on a neighbor who sexually molested him as a young boy.

November 11, 2000 - Peter Rollack- The leader of the New York street gang "Sex, Money and Murder" (SMM) was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder of six people and drug trafficking charges in three states. Peter Rollack, 26, pleaded guilty in January to murdering or ordering the murders of six people, attempting to murder a seventh and conspiring to kill two others who were eventually slain by members of his gang.

Rollack, who was the subject of a couple rap songs by Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz, had been indicted along with 10 others in 1998 for the murders and for trafficking in cocaine and crack in New York, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. According to prosecutors Rollack was not only willing to commit murders, but seemed to relish them, bragging about them to anyone who would listen. He often talked about the murders he committed as 'wet T-shirt contests,' referring to the victim's clothes being soaked with blood after being shot.

November 11, 2000 - Cary Stayner - Lawyers for Cary Stayner are appealing the judge's decision to unseal documents containing portions of Stayner's interrogation by FBI agents after his arrest in July 1999. The information, they say, could jeopardize Stayner's right to a fair trial in the state murder case in which he is charged with the deaths of three Yosemite tourists. Stayner, 39, pleaded guilty to the beheading of Yosemite naturalist Joie Ruth Armstrong in exchange for life in prison. However he is still facing a possible death sentence in in Mariposa County for the killings of Carole and Julie Sund and Silvina Pelosso.

November 11, 2000 - Three Dead in Miami - Three people met in a Miami apartment to talk over a debt and all ended dead in an aparent murder suicide. The debtor, Ines Moya, 60, is believed to have been shot to death by his creditor, Ricardo Hernandez, 74, who also shot his neighbor, Reinerio Hernandez, 69, before turning the gun onto himself. Police allegedly found the gun still in Ricardo Hernandez hand when they found the bodies. Police believe Hernandez planned the killing Moya and himself because they found several handwritten suicide notes in his apartment. "In most of the notes, he complained about money owed to him by several people," police spokesman Delrish Moss said. "He also apologized for what he was about to do, blaming those that owed him money." It is unclear why his neighbor was present at the meeting and why Hernandez killed him.

November 9, 2000 - Possible Serial Killer in Siberia - Police of the Altai region in southwestern Siberia are searching for a serial killer responsible for the murders of five female applicants to the Altai Technical University and someother women. The five students were kidnapped between June 26 and August 15. Two other women -- the mothers of the five university applicants -- have also been reported missing.

November 7, 2000 - Human Remains in Adelaide - Australian police said they would continue searching an old house in Adelaide after skeletons of three babies were found under the floorboards. Police said the remains found under the house are more than 50 years old. They said forensic tests were under way to determine how old the babies were when they died and how long they had been buried. Police dismissed speculation that the find could solve one of Australia's most mysterious crimes, the 1966 disappearance of three children -- Jane, Arna and Grant Beaumont -- from an Adelaide beachside suburb. Trevor Terrell, the owner of the house, found the remains while he was doing renovations. "I pulled up the carpet when I saw a kind of trapdoor in the corner of the room next to the fireplace," he told The Advertiser newspaper. "Then I saw what I thought were old crab shells, but they were skulls. They'd been wrapped in wallpaper and there was something like an old knitting needle holding it together."

November 5, 2000 - Richard W. Hamilton - Authorities believe marital tensions led a Virginia man to kill his wife, two young children and himself and setting their suburban home on fire. Fairfax County police officially identified the dead as Richard W. Hamilton Jr., 47; his wife, Bene M. Svitavsky, 46; and their two children, Kathryn Hamilton, 8, and Sara Hamilton, 6. A gun was found at the scene, and police are investigating the deaths as a triple murder-suicide. Sources close to the investigation confirmed that marital difficulties appeared to be the primary motive for the familicide but further specifics were not known. Friends who knew of the marital stress said there were no indications that Hamilton could have taken the lives of his entire family.

November 5, 2000 - Harvey Rader - Sheriff's search-and-rescue team members descended to the bottom of a 100-foot mine shaft in the Antelope Valley searching for the bodies of seven San Fernando Valley residents missing for 18 years. The case involves four members of a Northridge family who disappeared in 1982.

Harvey Rader, a former Reseda car dealer, has been tried three times in the deaths of Sol Salomon, his wife, Elaine, their 9-year-old son, Mitchell, and Elaine Salomon's daughter, Michalle, 15. Rader was acquitted in 1992 after two mistrials. But in an earlier statement to police, Rader's cousin said he helped Rader bury the family in the desert near Acton. Over the years authorities have periodically searched for the bodies in the high desert hills. "We've never been satisfied with our search of the area," said Det. Dennis P. Kilcoyne of the Los Angeles Police Department's robbery-homicide division, which is leading the investigation. "We've been out here dozens of times" since 1982. Police said Rader is a suspect in the 1982 disappearance and presumed deaths of Peter and Joan Davis of Granada Hills and Ron Adeeb of Burbank. Authorities believe all the cases stemmed from business disputes.

November 4, 2000 - Six Hacked to Death in Malaysia - An unemployed man in the Malaysian town of Miri hacked to death six people -- including his mother, nephew, neighbour and three children -- with a Samurai sword before being overpowered by an angry mob. Locals believe the frenzied killing was triggered by the dead mother's refusal to give money to her son. The attack started out of the blue after neighbours say they heard Chang Yee Long, 30, shout outside his home: "I cannot stand it any more. I have to hack them."

Long allegedly rushed inside the house and attacked his mother, nephew and two children she was babysitting. It happened so quickly his brother sleeping upstairs heard nothing. Then he ran to his neighbour's house where he slashed her and her five-month old grandson to death and badly injured her husband. He tried to escape in a car, but crashed nearby. At that point a crowd of villagers closed in on him and attacked him to prevent his escape.

November 4, 2000 - Four Dead in Istanbul - A primary school bus driver in Turkey killed three colleagues and then turned his gun on himself during a row about the overcrowding of their buses. The shootings created panic among children and teachers at the school in Istanbul. Parents rushed to the school after hearing about the incident. The children were then sent home. Turkey's Anatolia news agency reported that the gunman, Metin Alkan, 59, had a long-standing disagreement with fellow drivers over the number of pupils allocated to their buses.

The morning of the shooting Alkan entered the drivers' room in the school in Kadikoy, on Istanbul's Asian side, and opened fire indiscriminately. Alkan then went out to the school playground and shot himself in the head. He died later in hospital. Three other people were injured in the incident and one of them was in a serious condition.

November 3, 2000 - Kristen Gilbert - Prosecutors in Springfield want more tests on tissue samples of four veterans allegedly killed by a former nurse. In court documents prosecutors said they were asking the FBI to perform additional tests. Thirty-two-year-old Kristen Gilbert is accused of killing four patients at a Northampton veterans hospital by injecting them with adrenaline, which made their hearts beat out of control. Prosecutors said she did it to gain attention for responding to a crisis. Defense lawyers say the patients died of natural causes, or drugs Gilbert didn't control. Gilbert faces the death penalty if convicted.

November 3, 2000 - Familicide in Virginia - A man, woman and two young girls were found dead with gunshot wounds to the chest inside a fire-damaged suburban house in what police said was a possible murder-suicide. Sgt. Donald Amos of the Herndon, Virginia, police department would not say whether authorities had found a suicide note, a gun or if they had reason to believe the house's occupants had any problems. Police would not confirm that the four were all members of the same family. Identification of the victims was withheld so next of kin could be notified.

November 3, 2000 - Reinaldo Rivera - Suspected serial killer Reinaldo Rivera entered not guilty pleas to a capital murder charge and 13 other charges including rape, aggravated assault and aggravated sodomy. Rivera, 37, stood completely still in Richmond County Superior Court as Judge Albert M. Pickett read through each of the 14 charges lodged against him, including a murder charge for the September 9, 2000, death of Marni Glista, a 21-year-old Fort Gordon soldier attacked in her Augusta home. The arraignment and initial hearing in Richmond County Superior Court were the first of the specialized pretrial hearings that must be held in every case in which prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty.

November 3, 2000 - John Duffy & David Mulcahy - A convicted serial rapist and murderer described how he and his best friend from childhood would hunt for victims throughout London. "We would have balaclavas and knives," John Duffy, 41, said. "We used to call it hunting. We did it as a bit of a joke. A bit of a game." Duffy, who was jailed for a minimum of 30 years in 1988 for murdering Alison Day, 19, and Maartje Tamboezer, 15, testified at the trial of 41-year-old David Mulcahy that between 1982 and 1986 they hunted down and raped 15 women, killing three of them. Mulcahy, of Chalk Farm, north London, has denied all charges.

November 1, 2000 - James Hicks - Maine's Penobscot County grand jury formally charged confessed killer James Hicks with the murders of Jerilyn Towers and Lynn Willette. Though a longtime suspect Hicks was never charged with their deaths because of lack of evidence. That is until he was handed a 55-year sentence in Texas and confessed to their killings and led authorities to their bodies in exchange for serving his time in Maine rather than Texas.

November 1, 2000 - Murder Suicide in Japan - Four people, including two small children, were found dead in a house in Komatsushima, Tokushima Prefecture, in what police believe was a murder-suicide. A 62-year-old woman was found hanged, while her 34-year-old daughter, 6-year-old grandson and 3-year-old granddaughter were found collapsed on the floor. The daughter suffered head injuries from an assault, police said, adding they found a bloodstained hammer at the scene. Since there were no signs of a break-in, police believe the grandmother took her own life after killing her daughter and grandchildren.

November 1, 2000 - Possible Anchorage Serial Killer - In their continuing efforts to solve a two-year-old string of homicides of mostly Native women on Anchorage streets, police started posting their own reward posters, offering $20,000 for information leading to the arrest and indictment of a suspect or suspects. The cash comes from a project by the Alaska Native Justice Center to raise reward money from Native corporations and other donors.

November 1, 2000 - Robert L. Yates - Though having admitted to 13 murders in Spokane, Walla Walla and Skagit counties, Robert Lee Yates pleaded innocent to two murder charges in Pierce County Superior Court in Tacoma. Explaining his innocent plea is the fact that Pierce County prosecutors rejected being part of Yates' plea bargain that spared him the death penalty for the 13 other killings. If found guilty of the murders Melinda Mercer and Connie Ellis the former helicopter army pilot could be sentenced to death. Pierce County Superior Court Judge John McCarthy, who will preside over Yates' Tacoma trial, ordered Yates held without bail in the Pierce County Jail pending a pretrial hearing Nov. 16.

November 1, 2000 - Tommy Lynn Sells - Convicted killer Tommy Lynn Sells who has admitted to committing 13 murders across the country during the past two decades, has started talking to police about a 14th possible killing. Thomas Brose, 40, an acquaintance of Sells on the carnival circuit who was found shot to death in his motor home at the Maria Motel on April 15, 1998. "I showed him a picture (of Brose). He told me he remembers the guy from the carnival and thinks he killed him right after he killed the Perez girl," said Lt. Larry Pope of the Val Verde County Sheriff's Department.

"He said, 'I know I killed him. I just don't remember having a gun when I was up in San Antonio,'" Pope said. Sells earlier told police he killed 9-year-old Mary Bea Perez on April 18, 1998. Mary Bea disappeared from Market Square while celebrating Fiesta with her family. Her body was found a week later in Alazan Creek just west of downtown.

September-October 2000 - Morgue Archives - Previous entries to the Morgue Archives.