The Crime Ledger: September 23, 2026

Colombo: Easter Bombers Get 220-Year Terms

Sri Lanka’s High Court sentenced fifteen men Tuesday to at least 220 years in prison each after convicting them over the April 2019 Easter Sunday bombings of churches and hotels: one of the country’s deadliest terror attacks.

The Guardian’s reporting put the death toll at 267, with almost 600 wounded; earlier wire briefs on Tuesday’s verdicts cited roughly 279 dead. A three-judge bench also ordered property confiscation. Nine of twenty-four defendants were acquitted; one of the original twenty-five charged had died before trial. The suicide bombers themselves were among the dead. Catholic priest Jude Fernando told reporters “Finally, we have justice,” while the Church continues to press claims that masterminds beyond the dock remain untried. All convicted defendants retain appeal rights; the acquitted leave without those convictions.

The Daily FT reports the Colombo Permanent High Court trial-at-bar, Judges Navaratne Marasinghe, Ramanathan Kannan and Sujeewa Nissanka, sentenced each of the fifteen to 220 years of rigorous imprisonment and ordered their assets confiscated. The Attorney General had filed more than 23,270 charges under the Prevention of Terrorism Act; 2,309 prosecution witnesses testified, and the indictment ran to nine volumes and about 8,900 pages. The Guardian reports the accused chatted and laughed during breaks and were granted a prayer break, and that the nine acquitted men hugged the others tearfully as they were separated. Pradeep Regan, who lost his 4-year-old daughter, told UCA News: “This is a good start… But we want to know who ordered them to pull the trigger too.” The Archdiocese of Colombo said the search for the masterminds goes on.

Huntsville: Second Edna Killer Executed

Ker’Sean Olajuwa Ramey, 41, was executed by lethal injection Wednesday evening at the Huntsville Unit: the second man put to death for the 2005 Edna, Texas, killings of Samuel Roberts, 24, Tiffani Peacock, 18, and Celso Lopez, 38.

AP and Texas Tribune reporting say Ramey and LeJames Norman broke into a neighbor’s home looking for cocaine, found none, and shot the three residents. Norman, who testified against Ramey and later pleaded guilty to capital murder, was executed September 16. The U.S. Supreme Court denied Ramey’s final stay application and certiorari petition Wednesday afternoon; his lawyers had argued jurors never heard mitigation about childhood abuse and poverty. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice pronounced him dead at 6:34 p.m. CDT. In a final statement he thanked fellow death-row inmates who “poured into me and showed what it means to be a man,” and apologized to his children. He was Texas’s sixth execution of 2026.