The Crime Ledger: October 13, 2026

Waterford, Ireland: Waterford Arson Kills Parents and Two Children in Birchwood

A man, a woman and two of their children died and two more children were critically injured when their home on Birch Avenue in the Birchwood estate, on the outskirts of Waterford City, was deliberately set on fire before dawn on Tuesday, Oct. 13, gardaí said, according to the BBC and the Munster Express. Gardaí have opened a murder investigation. Chief Superintendent Anthony Pettit told reporters police believe the house “was attacked by a person or persons unknown and that the fire was started deliberately.”

Waterford Fire Service was alerted at 5:13 a.m. and found a well-developed fire in the two-storey house; crews removed a number of casualties before putting it out and handing the scene over to gardaí. The house has been declared a crime scene and is being examined by the Garda Technical Bureau. The four bodies have been removed and post-mortem examinations will be carried out at a local hospital. An incident room is running at Waterford Garda Station under a senior investigating officer, and family liaison officers have been appointed. No arrest had been announced as of Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 13.

Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan called it a “brutal and heinous act” and said those responsible would “face the full rigour of the law.” Taoiseach Micheál Martin called it “a very worrying and deeply disturbing situation.” The city council opened a support hub at the Butler Community Centre in St. John’s Park. Gardaí are asking anyone who was near Birch Avenue in the early hours of Oct. 13 to call Waterford Garda Station on 051 305300 or the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111. Update: The four victims were named; see The Crime Ledger: October 14, 2026. Update: Two people were arrested; see The Crime Ledger: October 15, 2026.

Buffalo, New York: Jury Selection Opens in Payton Gendron Federal Death Penalty Trial

Jury selection began on Tuesday, Oct. 13, in the federal trial of Payton Gendron, who killed 10 Black people at the Tops Friendly Markets supermarket in East Buffalo on May 14, 2022, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty, Univision reported. The selection process could run more than a month. Gendron, of Conklin, New York, is already serving life without parole after pleading guilty in November 2022 to murder and state domestic terrorism motivated by hate. The federal indictment returned in July 2022 has 27 counts, including 10 hate crimes resulting in death and others covering the attempted murder of survivors, and firearms counts. He pleaded not guilty to those charges, and the Justice Department said in January 2024 it would seek death.

Federal investigators say the then 18-year-old planned the attack for months, chose the store for its concentration of Black shoppers, scouted it beforehand and drew a plan of its interior. Shortly after 2:30 p.m. he arrived in camouflage and body armour with a semi-automatic rifle and a helmet camera, shot people in the parking lot and then inside, and livestreamed it. The rifle bore racist slogans and references to the “great replacement” conspiracy theory. The dead included shoppers, an armed security guard and a church deacon who helped people carry groceries; three more were wounded. On Monday, the day before jury selection, his lawyers moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing “the petit jury pool fails to reflect a fair and reasonable cross section of the community resulting in continued systemic under-representation of African Americans in the Western District of New York’s jury lists,” WKBW reported. Prosecutors say he fired 60 shots before Buffalo police took him into custody. A 2025 bid to move the trial out of Buffalo was denied.

Brussels: Brussels Police Officer Shot Dead Tracking Carjacked Car in Jette

A plainclothes member of the Brussels police Brigade Anti-Agression was shot in the head and killed in Jette shortly after midnight on Tuesday, Oct. 13, while scouting a car stolen in a violent carjacking hours earlier, Brussels prosecutor Julien Moinil said, as reported by RTL Info. Several people were arrested and several weapons were found on the ground at the scene. L’Avenir named the officer only as Nordine.

Moinil laid out the timeline. At 11:10 p.m. on Monday, police in western Walloon Brabant were called to Tubize, where a driver said three or four armed men had taken his car. Using the plate he gave and ANPR cameras, police tracked the car onto the Brussels ring and through several Brussels communes, and the Brussels zone’s anti-aggression brigade found it parked on a street in Jette, which L’Avenir identified as rue Honoré Longtin. Two teams set up surveillance at a distance while the officer, described by Moinil as “particularly experienced,” walked up alone to reconnoitre, a routine method, the prosecutor said.

When his colleagues heard nothing, they went to check and found him unconscious on the pavement near the stolen car. He died shortly afterwards. The autopsy, already completed, confirmed a single projectile wound to the head. L’Avenir reported that three weapons were found in the suspects’ car. In a separate shooting on rue Wiertz in Ixelles the same night, another person was killed; prosecutors have not linked the two cases. Interior Minister Bernard Quintin said he was “profoundly shaken.” Those arrested have not been named and are presumed innocent.

Aubagne, France: Aubagne School Shooting Goes to Anti-Terror Prosecutors

France’s national anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office (PNAT) said on Tuesday, Oct. 13, that it has taken over the investigation into Monday’s shooting at the Joseph-Lakanal middle school in Aubagne, where a 14-year-old pupil opened fire with a hunting rifle and wounded the head of the school and a teacher, HuffPost France and Reuters reported. Investigators are now examining attempted murders in connection with a terrorist enterprise, terrorist criminal conspiracy and weapons offences.

“The first investigations, notably the examination of the minor’s digital devices, point to probable adherence to the True Crime Community (TCC) movement,” and to the attack being part of that ideology, the PNAT said in a statement quoted by Le Parisien. It described the TCC as “an ecosystem of online communities that glorifies the perpetrators of mass killings.” The boy, a ninth grade pupil at the school, was disarmed by the school’s senior education adviser and arrested. Reuters reported both victims were lightly wounded. His father and mother were also taken into custody to establish how he came to have the weapon, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said. The boy has not been named and remains in custody; the PNAT said more details would follow when that custody ends.

This case continues from The Crime Ledger: October 12, 2026. Update: The boy was ordered held in pre-trial detention and denies intent to kill; see The Crime Ledger: October 14, 2026. Update: A second boy, 13, was detained over contact with the shooter; see The Crime Ledger: October 15, 2026.

Charlotte, North Carolina: Mary Collins Killers Get Life Without Parole in Charlotte

A Mecklenburg County jury on Monday, Oct. 12, convicted Lavi Pham and James “Jimmy” Salerno of first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping and concealment of death in the 2020 killing of Mary Collins, 20, and Judge Karen Eady-Williams sentenced both to life without parole, The Charlotte Observer reported via Yahoo. They got additional maximum terms of more than eight years for kidnapping and about seven and a half years for concealment.

Collins, who had lifelong speech and developmental delays, took an Uber to Pham’s apartment at the Yards at NoDa at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 28, 2020, and was never seen by her family again. Prosecutors said Pham, her ex-boyfriend, lured her there in a threesome scheme with his new girlfriend, Kelly Lavery, and that the group used alcohol and drugs including cocaine and Xanax over the weekend. When she refused to take part, according to testimony, she was killed. She was stabbed 133 times in the bathtub. Police followed a tip to the unit and found her wrapped in duct tape inside a mattress; she had been dead four days.

America Diehl, whose own accessory charge is pending, testified that Lavery hit Collins with a Fireball bottle and stabbed her, and that Pham and Salerno said they raped and stabbed her too and threatened to do the same to Diehl if she did not help clean up. Both men admitted hiding the body but denied killing her. “I did not kill Mary Collins,” Pham told the judge. Lavery pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2022 and is serving up to 32 years. “This is the most evil, most heinous, most cruel” case of her career, the judge said.

Boston: Matthew Farwell Trial Hears First Witness on Sandra Birchmore

Prosecutors called their first witness on Tuesday, Oct. 13, in the federal trial of former Stoughton police officer Matthew Farwell, 40, accused of killing Sandra Birchmore, 23, and causing the death of her unborn child in February 2021, the Boston Herald reported from the courtroom. Stoughton police detective Heather Cheever told the jury of 10 men and six women she met Birchmore in 2013, when Birchmore was 15 and in the department’s Explorer program. She learned of the death through a police group chat. “I was upset, beside myself because I didn’t believe it,” Cheever said. “She never expressed to me that she was suicidal.”

Jurors watched video of Farwell entering Birchmore’s apartment building in a mask and hood on the night she died. Cheever said she never saw him wear a mask at work, even though department protocol required it during the pandemic, and that she had not known Farwell was tutoring Birchmore one on one at the local library. On cross examination, defence lawyer Joanne Daley pressed Cheever on how well she really knew Birchmore and tried to raise Farwell’s twin brother William, also a Stoughton officer, whom the defence says had a relationship with her, prompting a sidebar.

The Norfolk District Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute after a State Police investigation and the medical examiner found the death was a suicide, but a federal grand jury indicted Farwell in 2024 on a charge of killing a witness or victim. Prosecutors say he killed her and staged the scene; Farwell says she took her own life. Farwell, who denies the charge, is presumed innocent.

This case continues from The Crime Ledger: October 9, 2026. Update: The lead state investigator testified; see The Crime Ledger: October 15, 2026.

Nassau County, New York: Prosecutors Lay Out Motive in “Peaches” Tanya Jackson Killing

Nassau County prosecutors have laid out their theory of motive against Andrew Dykes, 67, a former Tennessee state highway patrolman from Ruskin, Florida, charged with second-degree murder in the 1997 death of Tanya Jackson, 26, a Gulf War veteran once known as “Peaches” in the Gilgo Beach investigation, Newsday reported on Monday, Oct. 12. In a brief opposing a defence motion to dismiss, prosecutor Ania Pulaski wrote that Jackson repeatedly confronted Dykes’s wife about their affair “in the hopes that [Dykes] would leave his wife for her.”

Jackson’s partial remains were found stuffed in a Rubbermaid container in Hempstead Lake State Park on June 28, 1997. More of her remains and the body of their 2-year-old daughter, Tatiana Dykes, were found in Jones Beach State Park in 2011. Detectives long believed she could be a Gilgo Beach serial killer victim, and called her Jane Doe No. 3, or “Peaches,” for a heart-shaped peach tattoo. Genetic testing identified mother and child in 2023. Dykes is named as the child’s father on her birth certificate, and DNA from a vaginal swab taken from Jackson matched him, Newsday reported. He has not been charged in the child’s death.

The two met in the Army in the mid-1990s at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, where she was a medical technician and he an instructor; he was married with children. A friend told the grand jury Jackson left the hospital after their daughter’s birth in Texas and drove the baby to New York to follow him. Prosecutors say he never reported her missing. The defence argues a secretly recorded interview broke Florida’s all-party consent law. Dykes has pleaded not guilty, is held in the Nassau County jail, and is presumed innocent.

Nashville, Tennessee: Christa Pike 911 Calls Logged as “False Call”

Newly released 911 recordings show emergency help for Christa Pike was held up for about half an hour after Tennessee failed to execute her on Sept. 30, because dispatchers were told the call from the execution chamber was false, Yahoo News reported on Tuesday, Oct. 13. The first call came at 8:40 p.m., about an hour after the execution began, but the caller could not give a code needed to verify it. At 9:03 p.m. a dispatcher said: “Per supervisors here at the DEC (Department of Emergency Communications) we have been informed it is a false call. There is no medical assistance needed at Riverbend Prison.” Only around 9:11 p.m. did prison officials confirm the emergency and let first responders through the gates.

Pike, 50, survived two doses of pentobarbital and was taken from Riverbend Maximum Security Institution to hospital in critical condition, where she stayed unconscious until Oct. 8. Her lawyers said both arms were “swollen, burned, and blistered” when she arrived. They announced on Oct. 10 that she had been discharged and returned to the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, where she has been held for more than 30 years. At an Oct. 8 hearing, a lawyer for the state declined to say whether Tennessee might try to execute her again. Gov. Bill Lee has suspended the state’s one remaining execution this year and ordered a third party review, and Correction Commissioner Frank Strada is stepping down at the end of October. Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for murdering her classmate Colleen Slemmer.

This case continues from The Crime Ledger: October 11, 2026.

Incheon, South Korea: Man on Ankle Monitor Stabs Eight at Incheon Mall

Eight people were stabbed at a commercial building in Incheon at about 1:40 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 13, by a man police say swung a weapon as he rode the escalator from a supermarket on the second basement floor up to a second-floor dining area, China Daily reported, citing Yonhap. Shop owners and shoppers subdued him, and police arrested him. The suspect was wearing an electronic ankle monitor, which he must wear until 2029 after serving four years in prison for attempted murder, broadcaster YTN reported; the South China Morning Post said that conviction dated to 2015.

The victims are two women in their 20s, a man in his 30s, four people in their 40s and a woman in her 50s, according to the local fire authority. One of the women in her 20s went into cardiac arrest and was in surgery. An emergency medical post was set up on the building’s first floor. Police are investigating the motive. The suspect has not been named and is presumed innocent.

Burlington, Vermont: Burlington Husband Charged in Flashlight Killing Before Three Children

Bal Khadka, 44, now faces a charge of second-degree murder after his wife died of head injuries Burlington police say he inflicted with a large flashlight, WCAX and NBC5 reported. Multiple 911 calls came in just before 6 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 10, reporting a fight at an apartment on South Champlain Street. Officers found the woman unresponsive in a bed with substantial head injuries, and the fire department took her to the University of Vermont Medical Center. Police said three children were present during the attack.

She died on Sunday evening, Oct. 11; WCAX later identified her as Lila. Detectives then filed an affidavit to raise the original attempted murder charge to second-degree murder. At his arraignment on Tuesday, Oct. 13, Khadka pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and child cruelty and was held without bail, WCAX reported. None of the allegations has been tested in court, and he is presumed innocent.

Vail, Arizona: Vail Husband Arrested in Killing of Pregnant Wife

A 911 caller who identified himself as Joseph Clark told dispatchers he had killed his wife, Noelle, after years of electrical torture, according to an interim complaint in Pima County Justice Court reported by the Arizona Daily Star. Deputies reached the family home southeast of Tucson, near South Houghton and East Sahuarita roads, at about 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 9. Clark, 49, was outside and was detained without incident. Noelle Clark, 39, who was pregnant, was found dead in the garage under a blanket with obvious head trauma.

The complaint says investigators also found tire marks on her arms and a deep gash in the middle of her chest. A trail of blood led from the garage to the upstairs bedroom of the couple’s two young children, who were in the house; there deputies found a pool of blood and a bloody knife. The children were not hurt and are with the Arizona Department of Child Safety. The sheriff’s department first said she appeared to have been shot, then said Monday the investigation showed several types of trauma. Investigators noted Clark had no visible injuries consistent with electrocution.

Clark was arrested on suspicion of two counts of second-degree murder and is held in the Pima County jail on a $1 million bond. He has no criminal history in Pima County, but his ex-wife alleged in their 2009 divorce filings that he threatened her with a shotgun. The husband has not been convicted of anything and is presumed innocent.

Fujian, China: China Sentences Three Wei Clan Scam Leaders to Death

Two courts in China’s Fujian province on Tuesday, Oct. 13, sentenced Wei Huairen, Chen Dawei and Liao Jingfang to death for their roles in the “Wei family criminal gang,” which ran scam compounds in Myanmar’s Kokang region, CBS News and Bastille Post reported. Wei Qingtao, Kang Min and Xiong Hengxing got life terms, and 55 other members were jailed for between three years and three months and 24 years, with fines, property confiscation and deportation. The verdicts are first-instance rulings.

The Quanzhou Intermediate People’s Court said the gang’s crimes included drug trafficking, organising prostitution, running illegal casinos, telecom fraud and the murder of at least two Chinese citizens, and that its operations took in more than 12.2 billion yuan ($1.8 billion). Wei Huairen, a leader, was convicted of murder among other crimes. State broadcaster CCTV called the clan the “most violent criminal force in northern Myanmar” and said it ran 14 large-scale scam compounds. Wei Huairen used his post on the Kokang Border Guard Force to promote relatives into key military jobs and groomed his nephew Chen Dawei as the family’s military successor, Bastille Post reported. The Wei family is the third of Kokang’s “four families” to face Chinese courts, after the Ming and Bai families.

Sudogda, Russia: Four Charged in Sudogda Beating Death of Woman, 21

Four people, a 39-year-old mother of several children, her daughters aged 20 and 17, and the older daughter’s 20-year-old boyfriend from Yaroslavl, have been charged with the murder of a 21-year-old woman in Sudogda, Vladimir Oblast, Russia’s Investigative Committee said, according to 6TV. They were arrested outside the region, in the Belgorod and Yaroslavl oblasts. The victim’s name has not been released.

Investigators say the 20-year-old met the victim at work and invited her to a drinking session at a flat on Proletarskaya Street on Oct. 6. Old jealousy over the victim’s past attention to her boyfriend resurfaced, and an argument turned into a beating. “During the conflict, the four participants took turns inflicting multiple blows on the victim with their hands, feet and pieces of furniture,” said Yevgenia Gorina, senior aide to the head of the regional Investigative Committee.

When they saw she was dead, investigators say, they shaved her head, took her body to the forest, cleaned the flat, sold her belongings to pay for travel, and left the region. Her body, with signs of violent death, was found on Oct. 8 in woodland near Byakova Street. The accused 17-year-old has not been named. All four are presumed innocent.

London: Supreme Court Hears Peter Farquhar Murder Appeal

Five justices of the UK Supreme Court heard the prosecution’s appeal on Tuesday, Oct. 13, over the quashed murder conviction of Benjamin Field for the death of Peter Farquhar, 69, Cool FM reported. The Court of Appeal threw out the conviction on April 16, 2026, ruling the jury was misdirected on causation, and ordered a retrial that is on hold until this appeal is decided. Lord Reed, Lord Hamblen, Lord Leggatt, Lord Stephens and Lady Simler must decide whether the trial judge’s directions were right in law and whether the 2007 House of Lords ruling in R v Kennedy (No 2), on when a victim’s own acts break the chain of causation, should be reconsidered.

Farquhar’s cleaner found him dead on a sofa at his home on Oct. 26, 2015. He appeared to have drunk himself to death, and the evidence was that the sedative Dalmane and whisky probably killed him. Prosecutors alleged Field, who pretended to be in a loving relationship with him and persuaded him to change his will in Field’s favour, killed him by giving him alcohol, Dalmane or both, or by smothering him. Field was sentenced at Oxford Crown Court on Oct. 18, 2019, to life with a minimum of 32 years. In its written case, the prosecution says he covertly drugged Farquhar over years; Field’s lawyers say the prosecution is relying on “moral disapproval” to get around the autonomy principles in Kennedy. Three domestic abuse groups have intervened.

Bristol, England: Bristol Student Accused of Stabbing Housemate 30 Times

Zack Coughlan, 23, a robotics student at the University of the West of England, lay in wait in black clothing, a mask and gloves and stabbed his housemate Jamie Collins, 21, 30 times in the garden of their home in Filton, South Gloucestershire, shortly before 6 p.m. on April 8, prosecutors told a jury at Bristol Crown Court, The Guardian and The Tab reported. Coughlan accepts he killed Collins but denies murder, saying he lost his self-control.

Prosecutor Adam Vaitilingam KC said Coughlan rode off on Collins’s bike, dumped it at a nearby retail park, bought a change of clothes and threw his bloodstained clothing into a pond. He was back at the house at about 9 p.m., put a pizza in the oven and played online games with friends. At about 2 a.m., eight hours after the attack, he called 999, saying he had just found his friend’s body. On the recording played to jurors he sobs, “My friend’s been stabbed,” and says Collins was “not breathing” and his “body was hard” as the call handler talks him through CPR.

The attack was caught on CCTV installed at the house, which Coughlan himself showed officers, who first treated him as a witness. He had hand injuries he blamed on a fall while climbing trees. Prosecutors say his phone data matched the attacker’s movements and his blood was found on Collins’s bike. Both were final-year students; Coughlan owned the house, and there had been disagreements over whether he was charging Collins too much rent, the court heard. The trial continues.

Sun City, Arizona: George Crater Re-Arrested After Sun City Murder Verdict Voided

A judge last week threw out George Crater’s conviction for murdering his Sun City tenant, Thomas Galatola, 70, ruling that an investigation into a detective’s misconduct was never disclosed to the defence, and Crater was re-arrested on the same charges, ABC15 reported on Monday, Oct. 12. The dismissal was without prejudice, so the charges could be refiled. He is back in jail on a $1 million cash-only bond.

Court documents say Galatola had fallen behind on rent and Crater flew in from Washington state in 2024 to “confront the renter about not paying rent.” Galatola told police the next day that Crater tied him up, beat him, cut his palm open and said, “You’ll be dead this afternoon.” Crater allegedly sent photos of Galatola after the assault to relatives and to his boss, who reported it. Soon after giving his statement, Galatola had trouble walking, was taken to hospital and died of a cerebral hematoma. A jury convicted Crater in April.

The detective, former Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office detective Juan Ruiz, testified while under internal investigation over violations including fitting red and blue emergency lights to his own car and using them to avoid traffic consequences. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said it learned of that investigation only on April 23, the day after the verdict. Ruiz has been a Goodyear police officer since July 14, 2025. Crater is presumed innocent.

Berkeley, California: Judge Expunges David Xu Cadmium Poisoning Felony

A judge on Monday, Oct. 12, granted David Xu’s request to expunge his felony conviction for poisoning a co-worker’s water bottle with cadmium, over prosecutors’ objections, ABC7 News reported. The engineer he poisoned, Rong Yuan, spoke publicly for the first time on Tuesday. “I don’t think he deserves a second chance,” she said.

Starting in 2017, Yuan suffered vomiting, hair loss and other symptoms that doctors could not explain for more than two years. Her mother noticed a strange smell from her water bottle, and when cleaning it did not help, Yuan set up a small camera at her desk. It recorded Xu pouring a substance into the bottle. Tests identified cadmium, and a water sample held cadmium at 3.5 million times the federal level, according to a report reviewed by ABC7. Yuan and her parents all tested positive, likely because they cooked with water from the bottle. Xu was charged with premeditated attempted murder in 2019, then pleaded guilty to poisoning in a plea deal and got two years of probation.

Yuan still does not know why he targeted her. She said she asked for $500,000 in restitution and received $7,000, and that she can work only part time nearly a decade later. “Poisoning is not something like you suddenly got angry and lose control. It’s planned,” she said.

Brisbane: Rajwinder Singh Appeals Toyah Cordingley Murder Conviction

Rajwinder Singh, 42, the former Innisfail nurse serving life for the 2018 murder of Toyah Cordingley, had his appeal against conviction and sentence heard in the Queensland Court of Appeal in Brisbane on Tuesday, Oct. 13, ABC News and 7NEWS reported. The court reserved its decision, which could take several weeks.

Cordingley, 24, was stabbed and had her throat cut while walking her dog on Wangetti Beach, north of Cairns, on Oct. 21, 2018. Her father found her body in a shallow sand grave after she failed to come home. Singh left Australia for India the day after the killing, leaving his family behind, and was arrested in New Delhi more than four years later and extradited in 2022. His first trial ended in a hung jury in March 2025. A retrial jury in Cairns convicted him in December, and he was sentenced to life with a non-parole period of 25 years, five years above the statutory minimum. A DNA sample from a stick at the scene was 3.7 billion times more likely to have come from Singh than anyone else, the court heard at trial.

His barrister, Saul Holt KC, argued the trial judge, Justice Lincoln Crowley, wrongly discharged juror 5 after a note from another juror 12 days in said he was “conducting his own investigation” and was biased against police. Holt said the judge kept the rest of the panel without asking what lay behind the note, so no one tested whether outside material had reached the jury room. “What was in that note could not be accepted without further inquiry. Something needed to be done,” he said.

Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island: Crown Drops 1988 Byron Carr Murder Case in Charlottetown

All charges in the cold-case killing of Prince Edward Island teacher Byron Carr were withdrawn on Tuesday, Oct. 13, after Charlottetown police told prosecutors that “a substantial portion of the physical evidence” could not be located, CBC News and SaltWire reported. The accused, Todd Joseph Irving, 59, who previously went by the surname Gallant, had pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and interfering with human remains. A four-week jury trial had been scheduled to start Nov. 24.

Carr, 36, was found in the bedroom of his Charlottetown home on Nov. 11, 1988, strangled with a towel and with multiple stab wounds. Over the decades police built what they believed was the killer’s DNA profile, released a sketch of a male person of interest, and published a photo of underwear found at the scene that held male and female DNA. Genetic genealogy led to the arrest, announced in January 2024, about 35 years after the killing.

The Crown said the lost items included key exhibits central to the prosecution, and a police review raised further concerns about the identification, continuity and record keeping of what remained, leaving no reasonable likelihood of conviction. It has ordered police to conduct a comprehensive review of how the evidence was lost. “It’s obviously tremendously disappointing,” Crown Attorney Chris White told CBC after the brief hearing in P.E.I. Supreme Court. The Crown acknowledged that Carr’s family would be denied the closure a trial might have given them.

Shakopee, Minnesota: Shakopee Employee, 18, Charged With Murder of Boss

Emilio Vallejo Ortiz, 18, of Brooklyn Center, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of a 53-year-old Shakopee man found on Oct. 4 in weeds off a trail in Wilkie Park, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday and reported by KSTP. The man had dried blood on his face and signs he had been dragged. Near the trail investigators found a large pool of blood, drag marks, three spent 9 mm casings and one live 9 mm round. The autopsy found four gunshot wounds and ruled the death a homicide.

Officers located the man’s phone about 130 feet north of the body by using phone data and calling it until they heard it ringing in dense vegetation. He had reported a break-in at his apartment on Oct. 3. Neighbors told officers a younger employee sometimes stayed with him, and a relative said the victim let that employee drive his 2023 Ford Raptor. Police later found the Raptor in an apartment lot in Brooklyn Center, about 1.1 miles from Vallejo Ortiz’s address, and a key for it in a desk with his personal documents, the complaint says.

Vallejo Ortiz first told detectives the man dropped him off in Brooklyn Center on the afternoon of Oct. 3 and denied driving the truck that weekend. Menards video from Burnsville, the complaint says, shows him driving the Raptor at about 5:15 p.m. that day with the victim in the passenger seat; the two went in, bought a lock and left at about 5:32 p.m. No gun had been found as of the filing despite searches with gun-sniffing dogs and mowing. Vallejo Ortiz is presumed innocent.

Key Largo, Florida: Dylan Lamb Gets Life for Key Largo Resort Killing

Circuit Judge James Morgan on Oct. 9 sentenced Dylan Cody Lamb, 35, to life in prison without parole for murdering a woman at a Key Largo resort in April 2025, Keys Weekly reported on Monday, Oct. 12. He also got two concurrent five-year terms, for false imprisonment and for altering, destroying or concealing evidence, plus $22,829.13 in costs. Five of the six jurors who convicted him came back to watch the sentencing.

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office began investigating on April 7, 2025, after the woman’s family could not reach her. Her car was found at the resort, and crime scene detectives found her body hidden in a closet beneath a water heater in a room Lamb had occupied. He was arrested the next day with her credit card tucked into his wallet. After giving conflicting accounts, he admitted blocking the doorway with his body when she tried to leave, striking her during the confrontation, and later finding she was not breathing. The medical examiner ruled she died of blunt force trauma to the head and neck.

Instead of calling 911, Lamb tried to clean the room, packed bloodied linens, her phone and her belongings into trash bags, and moved to another room at the resort, leaving her body behind. Hotel staff threw the bags out without knowing what they were, and they could never be recovered. “He may have believed he could clean away the evidence and hide the truth, but he could not escape accountability,” Chief Assistant State Attorney Joseph Mansfield said.

Hong Kong: Kai Tak Helper Charged With Murder of Woman, 93

Hong Kong police on Tuesday, Oct. 13, laid a holding charge of murder against a 52-year-old foreign domestic helper over the death of the 93-year-old woman she cared for, RTHK reported. She is due in Kwun Tong Magistrates’ Courts on Wednesday. Both lived in a public housing flat at Tak Long Estate in Kai Tak.

Police said the helper went to her building’s security guard for help on Sunday morning, saying the woman was unresponsive, and the woman was declared dead within an hour of reaching hospital. Video footage seized on Monday showed the woman was attacked several times from 8 a.m. that day, police said, with the helper allegedly striking her about 20 times with bare hands to the neck, head and face. The helper has not been named and is presumed innocent.

This case continues from The Crime Ledger: October 12, 2026.

Yong Peng, Malaysia: Prosecutors Weigh Case in Irene Sofiya School Killing

Johor police are waiting for prosecutors to decide how to proceed against a 16-year-old male student held as the primary suspect in the killing of 16-year-old Irene Sofiya Mohd Khairool Faisal, state police chief Datuk Ab Rahaman Arsad said on Tuesday, Oct. 13, Malay Mail and The Vibes reported. Investigation papers went to the Johor prosecution director’s office on Oct. 9. “Since the primary suspect is underage, the matter requires a more detailed and careful consideration,” Ab Rahaman said, adding that police hoped for instructions before the boy’s extended remand runs out this week.

Irene Sofiya, a Form Four student, was found unconscious and covered in blood in a school hall in Yong Peng at 5:50 p.m. on Oct. 3 and was later pronounced dead. Police believe she was struck with a blunt object. The boy was arrested on Oct. 4 and remanded for six days, then for six more. Last week police seized a 96-centimetre metal bar and a bloodstained sports shirt for the investigation under Section 302 of the Penal Code, which covers murder. Investigators believe the motive was resentment over her rejection of his advances and her relationship with his close friend, Malay Mail reported. The boy has not been charged and is presumed innocent. Update: A classmate, 16, was charged with murder; see The Crime Ledger: October 15, 2026.

Semenyih, Malaysia: Four Charged Over Semenyih Durian Seller Murder

Four men were charged in the Bandar Baru Bangi Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, Oct. 13, over the murder of durian seller Mulialisman Nordi, 34, whose body was found buried in Semenyih last month, The Vibes reported. Asrul Siwi, 32, and Amirul Maamur Rosli, 27, are jointly charged with three people still at large with murdering him at Batu 28, Sungai Lalang, in Ulu Semenyih between Sept. 24 and 25. Amri Rizani Darus, 36, and Indonesian national Rijal Haryono, 47, are charged with abetting the murder by helping transport the victim and helping sharpen a hoe at the same place and time.

Both charges carry the death penalty or 30 to 40 years in prison, with at least 12 strokes of the cane if death is not imposed. No pleas were taken because murder is tried in the High Court. None of the four had a lawyer. Magistrate Saira Banu Mohamed Ashrof Raja denied bail and set Dec. 1 for mention. Media reports on Sept. 29 said he was believed to have been abducted by a group in a Honda car from a car workshop at Ampang Waterfront in Ampang Jaya before his body was found buried. All four are presumed innocent.

Naju, South Korea: Naju Couple Murder Suspect to Be Publicly Named

South Jeolla Provincial Police will post the name, age and mug shot of a 52-year-old man accused of tying up and killing an acquaintance couple in their 60s at their home in Naju on its website from Wednesday, Oct. 14, through Nov. 13, Seoul Economic Daily reported on Tuesday, Oct. 13. A disclosure review committee cited the brutality of the crime and the public interest. The suspect, identified so far only by the surname placeholder A, did not object. It is only the second such disclosure by the provincial agency, after Park Dae-sung, who killed a high school girl in Suncheon in 2024.

He is accused of killing the couple between 9:28 p.m. and 11:57 p.m. on Oct. 5 and then withdrawing about 6 million won ($4,200) from an account in a victim’s name. They were found the next afternoon with their hands and feet bound, Chosun Biz reported. Police upgraded the charge from murder to robbery resulting in death, and a court issued an arrest warrant on Oct. 9, citing flight risk. Until a court rules, the suspect is presumed innocent. Update: The suspect was named; see The Crime Ledger: October 14, 2026.

Thiruvananthapuram, India: Caretaker Arrested in Karamana Koodathil Family Deaths

Kerala’s District Crime Branch has arrested Raveendran, longtime caretaker of the wealthy Koodathil family of Karamana, as the prime accused in the 2017 killing of heir Jayamadhavan Nair, Kerala Kaumudi reported on Tuesday, Oct. 13. He was arrested after being summoned for questioning, the Thiruvananthapuram city police commissioner said. Seven members of the family, which owned property worth more than 5 billion rupees, died over 15 years: Gopinatha Pillai, his wife Sumukhiyamma, their children Jayabalakrishnan, Jayaprakash and Jayashree, and cousins Unnikrishnan Nair and Jayamadhavan Nair.

After the deaths, Raveendran and his relatives allegedly took control of the properties through a gift deed, and investigators found the will behind it was forged, the report said. Raveendran had said Jayamadhavan Nair was found unconscious at the ancestral home on April 2, 2017, and taken to the medical college hospital in an autorickshaw, where he was declared dead. Investigators led by Crime Branch ACP M.K. Sulfikkar found that account false: an autorickshaw belonging to a distant friend was called even though one was available next door. The post-mortem had suggested a head injury from a fall from bed, but forensic reports and bloodstains in the house pointed to murder. Raveendran is presumed innocent.

Morena, India: Fugitive in 2023 Morena Massacre of Six Caught

Ahmedabad Crime Branch officers have arrested Ramsingh Dhir Singh Tomar, wanted for three years in the shooting deaths of six members of one family in Lepa village, Morena district, Madhya Pradesh, Dainik Bhaskar English reported on Monday, Oct. 12. After a seven-day operation he was found in a warehouse in Gurugram, Haryana. A reward of ₹30,000 had been offered for information leading to his arrest.

On the morning of May 5, 2023, three women and three men from the same family were shot dead in Lepa. Police say the family, by then living in Ahmedabad, had been called back to the village on the promise of a settlement in a long-running feud between two groups. The dead were Gajendra Singh Badlu Singh Tomar, his sons Satyaprakash Singh and Sanju Singh, and Madhudevi, Babli Devi and Keshkali Devi. Nine people were booked for murder and Arms Act offences at Sihonia police station. Local police say the attack avenged the killing of two people from the other side, among them the accused’s father and uncle, in 2010. Tomar is presumed innocent.

Islamabad: Islamabad Man Arrested Over Chatbot Plan to Kill Ex-Girlfriend

Pakistan’s National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) in Islamabad has arrested a man accused of using the AI chatbot Claude to seek ideas for killing his former girlfriend, ProPakistani and The Current reported on Tuesday, Oct. 13. The agency registered a First Information Report after an inquiry into statements expressing an intention to kill a former partner. The FIR says he sought information and ideas on “murder methods”; the NCCIA’s own statement named Claude as the tool.

An agency official said the allegations are still under investigation and the legal process would establish the facts. The NCCIA has not said what communications it examined. Its announcement concerns the user’s alleged conduct, not any confirmed role by the chatbot in a crime, ProPakistani noted. The man has not been named and is presumed innocent.

Aktobe, Kazakhstan: Aktobe Woman Stabbed to Death on Camera, Man Held

Police in Aktobe have detained a 28-year-old man from Atyrau on suspicion of murdering a 35-year-old woman he knew, after street camera footage of the attack spread on social media, Tengrinews and Ulysmedia reported on Tuesday, Oct. 13. The killing happened on the evening of Oct. 10 on Satpayev Street, Shyndyk reported.

The video shows the woman sitting on a bench when a young man approaches. They talk briefly, and she gets up and tries to leave. He follows, pulls something from his back pocket, stabs her in the back and drags her limp body out of frame, Tengrinews reported. The regional police department said she suffered several stab wounds in a conflict between the two and died at the scene. He has been placed in a temporary detention facility and a murder case opened. The motive is unknown. Neither has been named, and he is presumed innocent.

Adana, Turkey: Ten Jailed Over Killing of Adana Jeweller Zahir Cız

A Turkish court has jailed pending trial 10 people over the killing of Adana jeweller Zahir Cız, 66, including the alleged gunman, a 22-year-old identified as Osman A., who police say was hiding in a Kuşadası hotel while preparing to cross by jet ski to the Greek island of Samos, Afyon Türkeli and Kayseri Haber reported on Tuesday, Oct. 13.

Police say that on Oct. 4 a gunman fired about eight shots at Cız as he sat outside his business below his home in the Reşatbey neighbourhood of Seyhan. Cız was hit in the head and died in hospital; a 29-year-old man with him was hit in the abdomen and is in good condition. Homicide detectives identified the shooter from security cameras. Police say Osman A. was already a fugitive with 18 years of final prison sentences for wounding and theft, took the order to kill from contacts abroad of the “Bayğaralar” crime group, and was promised a way out of the country. Investigators say one of the group’s leaders, Fırat Çelik, threatened Cız on a video call about two years ago.

Detectives traced his escape over about 2,000 km of city surveillance and camera footage: by his own motorcycle to a house in İsmetpaşa, by taxi to an orange grove in Söğütlü, then through safe houses in Küçükdikili and Demetevler before he was put on an intercity bus to Aydın. Officers raided the Kuşadası hotel and caught him after a short chase. Nine people accused of helping him hide were detained in simultaneous raids, and all 10 were jailed by the court. They are presumed innocent.

This case continues from The Crime Ledger: October 11, 2026.

Menidi, Greece: Menidi Son Arrested in Beating Death of Mother, 89

A 62-year-old man was arrested on a charge of intentional homicide after his 89-year-old mother was found dead in the detached house they shared on Souliou Street in Menidi, north of Athens, in the early hours of Monday, Oct. 12, Efsyn and other Greek outlets reported. He was due to be taken before a prosecutor at the Evelpidon courts on Tuesday.

According to the reports, the woman’s 69-year-old nephew called police shortly after 1:30 a.m. because he heard shouting from the house. At about 2 a.m. neighbours said the son was calling for help and asking for an ambulance. Officers found her dead with scratches and bruises on her face and neck, and signs of a struggle in the room. The son told police two unknown men broke in, restrained him and attacked his mother. Police found no sign of forced entry and said he contradicted himself under questioning, so he was first brought in and then arrested.

Initial forensic findings put her death at around 6 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 11, hours before the calls, and found head and chest injuries, with death attributed to asphyxia, Efsyn reported. Neighbours alleged he had abused his mother. He reportedly had a past drug case and struggled with addiction and mental health problems. The son has not been tried and is presumed innocent.

Lille, France: Son Arrested After Mother Killed in Lille Fives Home

A 37-year-old man was arrested at Lille’s railway station on the evening of Monday, Oct. 12, hours after his mother, 71, was killed and his father, 73, seriously injured in their home in the Fives district, Lille prosecutor Samuel Finielz said, according to BFMTV and Sud Ouest. The attack happened in the early afternoon. The father was found conscious in the home.

“The initial findings establish the criminal nature of the events,” Finielz said. The son was detained by the interdepartmental national police directorate and placed in police custody on suspicion of homicide and attempted homicide of a parent. He had not been charged as of Tuesday and is presumed innocent.

It is the second such killing in the Lille metropolitan area in a week. In Roubaix, an 80-year-old woman was killed in her home by her 58-year-old son, who admitted it and has been charged with murder, BFMTV reported.

Turin, Italy: Chieri Engineer on Trial Over Car Attack on Ex-Partner

A 52-year-old engineer from Chieri is on trial in Turin for attempted murder, stalking and family mistreatment of the woman he separated from in 2024, and the woman’s daughter, now 18, testified against him on Monday, Oct. 12, TorinoToday reported. He is barred from approaching his former partner.

Prosecutors say that in summer 2024 he first hit the woman’s parents “with kicks and punches,” then, “without waiting for the police to arrive,” got into his car and started it. She climbed into the passenger compartment, and he allegedly drove off at high speed, “zigzagging vigorously to throw her out.” She escaped with minor injuries. “Death did not occur for reasons beyond the will of the culprit,” investigators wrote in the charge sheet. The carabinieri arrested him that summer. Prosecutors also say that two years ago he threw petrol and paint at her, and that insults and threats were daily.

In court, the daughter described him as a short-tempered man who made her read Pirandello from childhood. “In fifth grade, he forced me to read ‘One, No One and One Hundred Thousand,’” she said. “If he got angry, sometimes he broke my phone. He must have smashed seven in all.” She said he walked into the bathroom without knocking and called her names after seeing her hug a boyfriend. “I hated weekends because I had to stay home with him. Going to school was a relief for me.” In a twist, the former partner has also been sent to trial for stalking him: prosecutors say she threatened to report him, copied his phone data and trashed his flat. The trial resumes in November. Both are presumed innocent.

Marbella, Spain: Marbella Ambush Murder Trial Set for Fourth Attempt

Málaga Provincial Court will try for a fourth time this month to seat a jury and try three men over a 2019 ambush in Marbella that left one man dead and another paralysed, Sur in English reported on Tuesday, Oct. 13. The trial was first postponed in November 2025, then collapsed in April 2026 when one of the main defendants was attacked twice in 24 hours. If nothing else happens, jury selection is set for Oct. 19, with hearings running until Oct. 22.

Prosecutors say that on Nov. 15, 2019, two Romanian defendants lured two Moroccan men to a house in the Alvarito Playa development. One of the accused shot the first man in the chest with a .38 calibre revolver, killing him instantly, and the second shot the other man in the abdomen, shoulder and leg. The survivor spent 153 days in intensive care and is permanently paraplegic. The state is seeking a total of 114 years for the three on charges of murder, attempted murder, illegal weapons possession and membership in a criminal organisation. Private prosecutors for the victims’ families call it a vuelco, a violent rip-off of drugs or cash, name a Spanish defendant as the mastermind, and want reviewable life terms for all three. His lawyers say he was only a go-between paid a €4,500 commission.

Early on April 13, the 35-year-old defendant said two hooded men on e-scooters stabbed him in the back with a syringe at the Los Prados industrial estate. He went to court that morning after hospital treatment, and the judge delayed jury selection by a day. At 9 p.m. he was shot in the shoulder and ankle at a property in Zalea, near Pizarra, and the trial was suspended. All three defendants are presumed innocent.

Normandy, France: Forensic Expert Tests Landru Stove Dust for Victims

French forensic pathologist Philippe Charlier said on Tuesday, Oct. 13, that he is analysing ash and dust scraped from a cast iron stove attributed to serial killer Henri Désiré Landru, which broadcaster Laurent Ruquier keeps at his home in Normandy, Femme Actuelle reported. Landru seduced women, robbed and killed them, and was convicted of 11 murders and guillotined at Versailles in 1922. Investigators said he burned the bodies in his stove. Ruquier, who wrote a 2005 play about Landru, said in 2023 that a friend bought it at a flea market with “a little certificate.”

Charlier told France 2’s Télématin he visited Ruquier’s house in the Calvados last summer and took samples of the residue still inside, which “are perhaps the remains of Landru’s victims.” Holding the clear pouch of samples on air, he said: “It’s literally a crime scene. You may have about ten people in little pieces in this plastic bag.” He said results should come within weeks, but that telling human bone residue from animal remains is extremely difficult.

Mukachevo, Ukraine: Mukachevo Stairwell Murder Ends in Life Sentence After Nine Years

The Mukachevo City and District Court on Oct. 9 sentenced a man to life in prison for murdering 21-year-old Mykhailo with particular cruelty, ending a case that ran through hundreds of hearings and three cassation reviews by Ukraine’s Supreme Court, UA.News reported on Tuesday, Oct. 13. The man is not named in the report.

On Jan. 5, 2018, the attacker stabbed and slashed Mykhailo at least 21 times in the stairwell of an apartment building in Mukachevo, according to facts established by the court. Forensic experts found all the wounds were inflicted while he was alive. He died of blood loss and shock, and his mother found his body. The family’s lawyer, Kateryna Chekhunova, said the motive was jealousy: Mykhailo had started dating the attacker’s ex-girlfriend, and the attacker had stalked the couple, “pointedly played with a knife” where they spent time, and searched for Mykhailo’s address under a false name.

He was first sentenced to life in November 2018. The Lviv Court of Appeals overturned that in 2019, and a retrial gave him 15 years after reclassifying the crime as murder without particular cruelty. The Supreme Court then sent the case back three times, the last in February 2024, citing failure to follow its instructions and violations of the right to a defence, before the new life sentence.

Kempton Park, South Africa: Three in Court Over Murdered Runner Tsontso Moselakgomo’s Smartwatch

Three men appeared in the Kempton Park Magistrate’s Court on Monday, Oct. 12, over the Garmin Venu smartwatch of murdered runner Elizabeth “Tsontso” Moselakgomo, 38, but none is charged with her murder, Daily Maverick and The Citizen reported. Kenneth Chibuzor faces charges under the Second-Hand Goods Act, money laundering and theft, with alternative counts of possessing or receiving stolen property. Stephen Mahlakwane Sekhukhune and Danial Anthony Moat face money laundering and theft, with the same alternatives.

The National Prosecuting Authority’s Magaboke Mohlatlole said the watch was acquired less than 24 hours after she was last seen. The state alleges Chibuzor, who ran a second-hand goods shop in Kempton Park, bought it for R900 from an unidentified person without recording the seller’s identity or the transaction as the law requires, and sold it to Sekhukhune on Sept. 10. Sekhukhune allegedly registered it to his Gmail account after her profile and settings had been erased, then sold it to Moat for R4,000.

Moselakgomo left her Kempton Park home for a run on Sept. 9. Her eight-year-old daughter raised the alarm when she did not come home. Her body was found on Sept. 12 behind a hotel on York Street, Rhodesfield. She was the sixth of 12 women reported murdered in Ekurhuleni since July, and a SAPS task team is investigating the killings, Daily Maverick reported. The three accused are presumed innocent.

Mdantsane, South Africa: Zolani Tete Murder Case Postponed as Police Hunt Fifth Suspect

The case against four men accused of shooting former two-division world boxing champion Zolani “Last Born” Tete was postponed to Dec. 8 in the Mdantsane Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, Oct. 13, to give investigators more time while police search for a fifth suspect who has not been arrested, EWN reported. The four face charges including murder, attempted murder and unlicensed possession of a firearm.

Tete, 38, was shot outside his home in Mdantsane in August as he arrived with his girlfriend, who was wounded and survived, the Daily Dispatch reported. The state alleges Uzuzole Goqwana, 22, masterminded the attack and that Sinebhongo Qase, 28, acted as an intermediary. Both were denied bail in September after the court found they had not shown exceptional circumstances; the other two co-accused abandoned their bail applications, so all four remain in custody. All are presumed innocent.

Hermosillo, Mexico: Hermosillo Vitamin Drip Doctor Ordered to Trial Over Eight Deaths

A Sonora criminal judge has ordered physician Jesús Maximiano Verduzco Soto to stand trial for culpable homicide over the deaths of eight people who received so-called vitamin drips at his Hermosillo clinic between March and April 2026, Rafael Acuña Griego, president of the state Supreme Court of Justice, said on Monday, Oct. 12, according to Infobae and SDP Noticias. He stays in pretrial detention in Cereso No. 1 in Hermosillo, and the judge gave the parties three months of supplementary investigation. If convicted of the non-intentional offence, he faces roughly 10 to 12 years in prison.

The case opened on March 30 after the deaths of Jesús and Sebastián, a father and son who died within a short time of each other after the treatment. A day later the authorities seized the clinic in colonia Jesús García along with records, drugs and medical supplies, some showing irregularities. The clinic advertised regenerative and homeopathic medicine, though federal health authorities said he held no such specialty. Investigators found he mixed the infusions in front of patients in prefilled syringes, without gloves and on non-sterile surfaces, and sold doses for 500 to 1,000 pesos at the clinic and in private homes, Infobae reported. “My sister was burning up inside; the autopsy showed her liver and kidneys were completely damaged,” said Diego Figueroa, brother of one of the dead.

The doctor was a fugitive for six months, with a 500,000-peso reward on him and a federal injunction that stalled his arrest for months. He surrendered on Oct. 5, citing his own health problems, on his lawyers’ advice. The doctor has not been convicted and is presumed innocent.

Lima, Peru: Florencio Varela Triple Murder Suspect Arrested in Lima

Luis Alan Valverde Rodríguez, 40, uncle of Tony Janzen Valverde Victoriano, known as “Pequeño J,” was arrested in Lima on Monday, Oct. 12, wanted on national and international warrants over the triple murder of Brenda del Castillo, Morena Verdi and Lara Gutiérrez in Florencio Varela, Buenos Aires province, on Sept. 19, 2025, El Doce and Infocielo reported. Interpol Lima officers found him near a Compartamos bank branch on Avenida Las Torres in Huachipa after a surveillance operation. He had been living as Miguel Gerardo Celestino Timaná, according to both outlets. Argentina’s security minister, Alejandra Monteoliva, confirmed the arrest, and Argentina has requested his extradition.

He is known by the aliases “Papá” and “Serranasho.” Prosecutors accuse him of repeated aggravated homicide, with aggravating factors of joint planning, cruelty, treachery and gender violence. Investigators believe he held a leadership role in the drug organisation behind the killings, and say he was recognised on security camera footage connected to the place where the three young women were taken, tortured and killed. In Peru he was arrested in 2013 as the alleged leader of “Los Injertos de Nuevo Jerusalén,” an extortion ring, and served time in El Milagro prison in 2007 and 2020, El Doce reported. None of that has been proven in the Argentine case, and the presumption of innocence applies.

Rio de Janeiro: Fugitive Arrested in Guaratiba Torture Killing of Boy, 14

Rio’s Capital Homicide Division and the Civil Police intelligence unit arrested Miguel Ferreira Salvo on Tuesday, Oct. 13, on a preventive detention warrant for qualified homicide and concealment of a corpse in the killing of 14-year-old Ronaldo Henrique Souza Peixoto in Guaratiba, G1 reported. Police say Salvo was among the men who tortured three teenagers in March as they were leaving the César Maia community, which is controlled by the Comando Vermelho faction.

Police say armed men stopped the boys and the torturers received the faction’s permission to kill them. Two escaped. Ronaldo’s dismembered body was found after two days of searching. Investigators have identified Diogo Paixão Barbosa, Miguel Ferreira Salvo, Victor Tavares Vieira and Jonata da Silva Ramos as suspects in the killing. Police describe César Maia as one of the Comando Vermelho’s main bases for expanding into the city’s West and Southwest zones and link people based there to the March 2025 murder of civil police officer João Pedro Marquini. Salvo is presumed innocent.

São José dos Campos, Brazil: Suspect Arrested in São José dos Campos Stabbing of Tatimara

José Menegildo Gomes, 49, a cleaning assistant, was arrested in the act on Monday, Oct. 12, after his partner, Tatimara Pereira da Silva, 33, was stabbed to death at their home in the Vila Tesouro neighbourhood in the east of São José dos Campos, G1 and Band reported. Military police were called over an argument between a couple on Rua Projetada and found her inside with multiple knife wounds; SAMU paramedics confirmed her death. A neighbour saw a man leave the house, and officers found him in a square about two blocks away.

Military police said he confessed to them, saying he struck her two or three times with a knife after an argument driven by jealousy and social media posts. In his formal interview he stayed silent. Delegate Christielle Colombo of the Women’s Defence Police Station told Band Vale he had been convicted by a jury of killing a former partner, at a time when the crime was still classed as homicide rather than femicide; G1 reported the 14-year sentence for qualified homicide stemmed from a 2005 case and was completed in 2019. “So this is the second femicide committed by the perpetrator,” Colombo said. Police asked a judge to convert his arrest to preventive detention, with a custody hearing expected Tuesday. The suspect has not been tried for her death and is presumed innocent.

Tocoa, Honduras: Ex-Mayor Sent to Trial Over Juan López Murder

A Honduran court for organized crime, environment and corruption cases has sent former Tocoa mayor Adán Fúnez and businessmen Juan Ángel Ramos Gallegos and Héctor Eduardo Méndez Perdomo to an oral and public trial on charges of murder and criminal association over the killing of environmental defender and former town councillor Juan Antonio López, the judiciary announced on Monday, Oct. 12, according to Infobae and Nodal. Prosecutors accuse the three of being the intellectual authors of the murder, which happened in Tocoa, Colón, on Sept. 14, 2024. The trial will be held before the national sentencing court in Tegucigalpa.

The prosecution’s evidence includes analysis of wiretaps and phone traffic records. Fúnez was arrested with the other two in May 2026 and is under house arrest, after a court in July replaced his pretrial detention. López was known for denouncing threats to the rivers and protected forests around Tocoa. Three men accused of carrying out the shooting, Óscar Alexi Guardado Alvarenga, Daniel Antonio Juárez Torres and Lenin Adonis Cruz Munguía, face a separate oral trial, Infobae reported. All six are presumed innocent.

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