Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 37
The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City now says there's no timetable for the repeatedly delayed release of a report on priests accused of sexual misconduct with minors. The church "miscalculated" how long reviewing the files of past and current priests would take, archdiocese spokeswoman Diane Clay said Monday. The archdiocese hired the Oklahoma-based law firm of McAfee and Taft to produce the report, including an analysis scrutinizing how the archdiocese responded to past allegations of abuse. "They're really trying to be as thorough and...
DALLAS (AP) — A Texas prosecutor said Friday that investigators have linked more than 60 killings in at least 14 states to a 79-year-old California inmate who may be the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history. Ector County District Attorney Bobby Bland said Samuel Little continues to cooperate with investigators from around the country who interrogate him in prison about cold case killings dating back to the 1970s. Among those who spoke to him were investigators from Ohio, where Little grew up and where he's suspected of killing at l...
HOUSTON (AP) — A Boeing 767 cargo jetliner heading to Houston with three people aboard disintegrated after crashing Saturday into a bay east of the city, according to a Texas sheriff. Witnesses told emergency personnel that the twin-engine plane "went in nose first," leaving a debris field three-quarters of a mile long in Trinity Bay, Chambers County Sheriff Brian Hawthorne said. "It's probably a crash that nobody would survive," he said, referring to the scene as "total devastation." The cargo plane made a steep descent shortly before 12:45 p....
DALLAS (AP) — Catholic leaders in Texas on Thursday identified 286 priests and others accused of sexually abusing children, a number that represents one of the largest collections of names to be released since an explosive grand jury report last year in Pennsylvania. Fourteen dioceses in Texas named those credibly accused of abuse. The only diocese not to provide names, Fort Worth, did so more than a decade ago and then provided an updated accounting in October. There are only a handful of states where every diocese has released names and m...
DALLAS (AP) — Researchers say a pack of wild canines found frolicking near the beaches of the Texas Gulf Coast carries a substantial amount of red wolf genes, a surprising discovery because the animal was declared extinct in the wild nearly 40 years ago. The finding has led wildlife biologists and others to develop a new understanding that the red wolf DNA is remarkably resilient after decades of human hunting, loss of habitat and other factors had led the animal to near decimation. "Overall, it's incredibly rare to rediscover animals in a regi...
DALLAS (AP) — A 78-year-old prisoner who says he killed about 90 people over nearly four decades as he moved around the country pleaded guilty to murder Thursday in the 1994 strangulation of a Texas woman. Samuel Little entered his plea in the West Texas city of Odessa, where the body of Denise Christie Brothers was discovered in a vacant lot about a month after she disappeared. He received another life prison term, Ector County District Attorney Bobby Bland said in a statement. "Due to the efforts of law enforcement agencies from around the c...
DALLAS (AP) — A 78-year-old inmate who says he killed about 90 people as he moved around the country for nearly four decades offered his confessions as a bargaining chip to be moved from a California prison, authorities say. The FBI said in a statement Tuesday that Samuel Little offered the deal in exchange for being moved from California State Prison in Los Angeles County, but it didn't say why he requested the transfer, where he asked to go or whether his offer was accepted. It did say that Little, who is in poor health and relies on a w...
DALLAS (AP) — A man convicted of three California murders and long suspected in numerous other deaths now claims he was involved in about 90 killings nationwide spanning nearly four decades, and investigators already have corroborated about a third of those, a Texas prosecutor said Thursday. Ector County District Attorney Bobby Bland said 78-year-old Samuel Little was booked into jail this week following his indictment in the 1994 death of a Texas woman. Investigations are ongoing, but Little has provided details in more than 90 deaths d...
DALLAS (AP) — All 15 Catholic dioceses in Texas will release early next year the names of clergy who have been "credibly accused" of sexual abuse of a minor, the Diocese of Dallas said in a statement Wednesday. Texas bishops decided last month to release the lists of names by Jan. 31 as part of their effort "to protect children from sexual abuse" while promoting "healing and a restoration of trust" in the church, the statement said . Dallas Bishop Edward Burns said the investigation constitutes a "major project" because it will include all 1,32...
DALLAS (AP) — A storm system dumped record amounts of rain in parts of Oklahoma and caused flooding in Texas, including in the Dallas area, where floodwaters swept a man from a bridge to his death near the University of Texas' campus in nearby Arlington. "(A) witness ... stated that the victim was swept under a bridge by rushing waters," shortly before midnight Friday, according to Arlington Fire Department Lt. Mike Joiner. The man's body was found a few hours later. His name hasn't been released. The Dallas Fire Department said at least 15 p...
DALLAS (AP) — Dallas police swiftly admitted that a white officer who shot a black man in his own apartment last week had made a mistake. They expressed contrition, turned the case over to independent investigators and reached out to the victim's family. That proactive approach appeared to tamp down anger in the community in the first few days after the killing on Sept. 6. There have been protests but not large-scale unrest since the death of Botham Jean, a native of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia who went to a Christian university in A...
DALLAS (AP) — A growing number of Texas ranchers and farmers are trimming their livestock, or selling them altogether, as the persistent drought has eliminated water supplies and forage for the animals. The U.S. Drought Monitor shows that 45 percent of Texas is contending with drought conditions that are severe or worse. Ranchers describe land bare of grass, bales of hay either too expensive or hard to come by, and stock tanks that have long run dry. Josh Blanek, with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service in Tom Green County, says ranchers a...
DALLAS (AP) — Authorities didn't search for a Texas man who cut off his ankle monitor in violation of parole terms until a week later when he was linked to a violent rampage that included three shooting deaths over four days, according to state and county officials. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice said Jose Gilberto Rodriguez, 46, was among more than 500 parolees with a violent history living in the Houston area and facing an active arrest warrant for violating terms of parole. Rodriguez removed his ankle monitor on July 5, more t...
DALLAS (AP) — A former trainer who worked alongside imprisoned ex-sports doctor Larry Nassar at the famed Karolyi gymnastics ranch in Texas was charged Friday with sexual assault. But prosecutors said there wasn't evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the couple who ran the facility, former national team coordinators Bela and Martha Karolyi. A grand jury indicted former trainer Debra Van Horn on one count of second-degree sexual assault of a child, making her the first person other than Nassar to be charged in direct connection with his a...
DALLAS (AP) — The gunman accused of opening fire at a Dallas home improvement store — killing one police officer and critically injuring two others — was initially detained because he was acting suspiciously and may have tried to steal from the store, an arrest warrant revealed Wednesday. An off-duty officer who was working a part-time job at the Home Depot store in the north of the city learned Armando Luis Juarez, 29, had an outstanding felony warrant after he was detained by store officials for suspected shoplifting, according to the arres...
DALLAS (AP) — A nurse who has been charged with murder intentionally caused stroke-like injuries to seven patients at a Texas heart hospital, leading to the death of two and serious injuries to the others, according to an arrest warrant. William George Davis, 34, is seen on security video entering patients' rooms at the hospital on the campus of Christus Trinity Mother Frances Health System in Tyler, the warrant alleges. He leaves a short time later and then the patients suffered "unexpected medical emergencies." Davis, a registered nurse, w...
DALLAS (AP) — One of the designers of a massive Kansas water park slide that decapitated a 10-year-old boy has been arrested in Texas, federal authorities said Tuesday. Trent Touchstone, chief deputy with the U.S. Marshals Service in Dallas, said 72-year-old John Timothy Schooley was met by agents at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport as he arrived Monday on a flight from China. Schooley was being held without bond at the Dallas County jail after being arraigned on charges that include second-degree murder, according to Dallas County s...
The family of the man suspected of planting the bombs this month that killed two people and injured four others in the Texas capital expressed shock, saying they don't know what could have motivated him. "I mean this is coming from nowhere. We just don't know what. I don't know how many ways to say it but everyone is caught off guard by this so, yeah I don't know. I don't know. I mean I don't know," Mike Courtney, the uncle of 23-year-old Mark Anthony Conditt, said Wednesday. Authorities say Conditt blew himself up in a motel parking lot...
DALLAS (AP) — Natural gas service was shut down Thursday to thousands of Dallas homes following a series of leaks that has brought repeated evacuations in the wake of a house explosion that killed a 12-year-old girl. Gas service will be discontinued for up to three weeks to about 2,800 homes northwest of downtown as gas lines are replaced and other work is done by more than 120 Atmos Energy crews, authorities said at a news conference. Dallas-based Atmos, the country's largest natural gas distributor, will compensate residents who choose to s...
DALLAS (AP) — A 16-year-old student shot a classmate in the neck and abdomen at a Texas high school before firing at another student and missing, prosecutors said Wednesday. Details of the attack at Italy High School, south of Dallas, were recounted during a juvenile court hearing for the boy accused in the attack. He's charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Authorities haven't released his name because he's a juvenile. He appeared in court in Waxahachie wearing handcuffs and orange jail garb, accompanied by f...
DALLAS (AP) — The father of a 3-year-old girl whose body was found in a culvert near their suburban Dallas home about a year after she was adopted from an Indian orphanage was indicted Friday on capital murder. Wesley Mathews, 37, was also charged in Dallas County with abandoning a child and tampering with evidence. Prosecutors said the capital murder charge, which could carry the death penalty, was filed after an autopsy determined his daughter died from "homicidal violence." The child, Sherin Mathews, disappeared in early October, sparking a...
DALLAS (AP) — A small plane piloted by an Oklahoma doctor who disappeared while flying to collect a disabled dog in Texas is believed to have settled thousands of feet below the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. Coast Guard said a day after announcing it had ended its search. Authorities lost sight of Dr. Bill Kinsinger Jan. 3 as his plane moved toward the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Coast Guard air and seacraft and two Mexican naval ships searched for the 55-year-old pilot for five days, covering about 23,000 square miles (59,570 square k...
DALLAS (AP) — A doctor volunteering for a dog rescue operation who failed to land his small plane at an airport in Central Texas as planned and was later tracked by fighter jets flying over the Gulf of Mexico appeared unresponsive and may have been suffering from a lack of oxygen, officials said Thursday. The Coast Guard identified the pilot of the Cirrus SR22T as Dr. Bill Kinsinger, who took off from Wiley Post Airport in Oklahoma City on Wednesday after filing a flight plan to land in Georgetown, Texas, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north o...
DALLAS (AP) — A 3-year-old girl whose body was found in a culvert near her suburban Dallas home little more than a year after she was adopted from an Indian orphanage died from "homicidal violence," according to autopsy findings released Wednesday. Steven Kurtz with the Dallas County medical examiner's office said Sherin Mathews was a victim of homicide but that he couldn't provide any other details from the autopsy at this point. The Texas attorney general's office must decide whether the full report can be released to the public, he said. P...
DALLAS (AP) — Investigators believe a border patrol agent who died in West Texas after suffering extensive injuries to his head and body may have fallen down a 14-foot (4-meter) culvert, and his partner, who radioed for help, has no memory of what happened, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation. FBI spokeswoman Jeanette Harper said in a statement Monday that both agents were found late Saturday night in a culvert near Van Horn and that both had traumatic head injuries. Harper said Rogelio Martinez died early S...
