On March 27, Bangladeshi doctors amputated the leg of Limon Hossain, a 16-year-old student, four days after he was shot during a raid by the Rapid Action Battalion , Bangladesh's elite security force. Almost everyday since, Hossain's name has made headlines in Bangladesh, becoming a symbol of accusations that the governments paramilitary force acts as judge, jury and executioner in its official mission to clean up this south Asian nation of crime and corruption. "RAB is misusing ...

The aging bosses seated at the defense table in the packed federal courtroom in lower Manhattan look harmless enough to be spectators at a Sunday-after noon boccie game. Anthony Salerno, 75, the reputed head of the Genovese crime family, sits aloof and alone, his left eye red and swollen from surgery. White-haired Anthony Corallo, 73, the alleged Lucchese family chief, is casual in a cardigan and sport shirt. Carmine Persico, 53, is the balding, baggy-eyed showman of ...

A second witness in the Donovan probe is murdered In most ways it was a rather standard gangland slaying. The victim was driving his 1977 Lincoln Continental through The Bronx in New York City one evening last week when a passenger in the car suddenly placed a .38-cal. pistol to the back of his head and fired a single shot. The Continental swung out of control and smashed into a parked car. The assassin jumped out and climbed into a ...

Corrections and Clarification Appended: February 19, 2008Lawrence King, an eighth grader who identified as gay and wore makeup and nail polish, was 15 when he was declared brain dead on Feb. 13. The day before, he had been shot in the head in an Oxnard, Calif., classroom full of students. Police have charged a sweet-faced boy called Brandon McInerney, 14, with first-degree murder and with a hate crime. According to the Los Angeles Times and KTLA, ...

For a woman dying of cancer, Terry Sanborn didn't seem to suffer. She and her unemployed husband Stephen lived on Medicaid and $512 a month in Social Security in a quiet blue-collar cul-de-sac in tiny Bangor, Maine. But they managed to pay $78,000 in cash for that roomy house at the bottom of Hershey Avenue, with a swing set in the backyard. They forked over an additional $17,000 for a Ford Econoline van. Not until drug agents raided the place ...

The saying goes that life imitates art. But that's the last thing you want when you write crime fiction. You never want to see the things you write about mirrored back to you in real life.

It has been 20 years since best-selling crime writer Patricia Cornwell began work on her first novel in the series chronicling the cases of forensic analyst Dr. Kay Scarpetta.

Tracy Rodriguez of Houston, Texas, is not a trained private investigator or police officer. But with a gentle tap on her iPhone screen, the mother of three can access information revealing the sex offenders who live within a 10-mile radius of where her children practice sports or watch movies. The information, provided by an iPhone app called Offender Locator, helps Rodriguez make more informed choices, she says. When the app pops open on her phone, there is an eerie sketch ...

Police found nine human heads and nine headless bodies in the Mexican state of Guerrero on Sunday, and some of the remains were of soldiers, officials said. The heads were found in Chilpancingo, the state's capital, and the bodies were found at a different location in Chilpancingo, officials said. Information on whether the heads belonged to the bodies wasn't available. Police identified eight soldiers and one high-ranking former police officer among the victims, Zeferino Torre-Blanca, governor of Guerrero ...

A French filmmaker who recently finished a documentary about a violent street gang in El Salvador was found shot dead in the town of Tonacatepeque, about 10 miles northeast of the capital city of San Salvador, authorities said. Christian Poveda, 52, was shot at least four times in the face, according to local reports. Poveda's documentary, "La Vida Loca," which follows the lives of members of the Mara 18 street gang, had been screened at a handful of film festivals ...