Court proceedings for Bustamante—a 15-year-old who confessed to what authorities characterize as the premeditated slaughter of a 9-year-old neighbor, then led them to the hidden corpse—have so far focused on how she will be tried and where she will live. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the options are limited:

Missouri's nationally respected juvenile justice system has no secure place to put a 15-year-old girl accused of a violent murder.

It's a system that was built for boys.

"This is real different for all of us," said Bill Heberle, deputy director of the Division of Youth Services. At Bustamante's certification hearing, Heberle testified that the state doesn't have a secure facility—meaning one with fences and locked gates—for girls.

... "We simply don't receive that many young girls that are committed to us for a heinous crime," Heberle said. "Our girls tend to be more violent toward themselves."

Bustamante certainly has exhibited violence toward herself, including a suicide attempt two years ago. While the Missouri juvenile justice system tries to puzzle out what to do with an alleged female thrill killer, the internet is busy rubbernecking at Alyssa's exuberant "Jackass stunt" videos, wherein she imitates the exuberantly male MTV series of yore. Bustamante's YouTube account has been the source of much commotion—it was there that she listed "killing people" as a "hobby," and the Associated Press described a video clip in which where Bustamante shocks herself on an electric fence, then coaxes her brothers into doing the same. At the time, the clip was thought to be lost to the black hole of disabled YouTube accounts. But, like everything unfortunate on the internet, it has miraculously found its way back to the limelight:

An internet archivist reposted several of Bustamante's videos—which range from Good Charlotte tributes to swimming pool splash-a-thons with her brothers—and Gawker commenter TheLemon posted it here, which means we just crowdsourced a murder investigation?

LeDuff's story today on the murder of a witness to another murder unfolds like a single strand of an unceasing web of violence, drugs, and urban hopelessness; by the time LeDuff's finished, he's detailed two gun murders, a man beaten to death in a nightclub, the vagaries of Detroit's biggest crack gang, multiple crime witnesses terrified for their own lives, an old man beaten and robbed, and one informant convinced the prosecutor of the case he's informing on is going to get him killed. And vice versa!

"Me and my family's dead, know what I'm saying? I mean, the first witness got killed," he shouted. "The prosecutor's desperate for a case but they can't even use that tape. I could have been lying. It's hearsay. If they subpoena me, I ain't saying s—-. I'm taking the Fifth. Who's gonna protect me? BMF runs the streets. I'm f——— dead. I ain't going out without a gun battle. I promise. There's gonna be a war."

The prosecutor wears a bulletproof vest, btw. Detroit: Jesus Christ, what the fuck. Read the whole story. And the upshot of this piece of journalism: LeDuff tells us he's taking precautions with his family. "Let me just say they're staying elsewhere." [Pic: Flickr]

When the attack first happened in October of 2008, there was speculation that Pressly's role as an Ann Coulter-like figure in W might have had something to do with it. Turns out, no:

In various confessions made to the police, Mr. Vance said he went to Ms. Pressly's neighborhood looking to steal laptop computers. After entering her home through a Dutch door she left open for her dogs, Mr. Johnson said, Mr. Vance found the computer he sought - and Ms. Pressly.

Curtis Vance, the 29 year-old killer (pictured), is now facing the death penalty.
[Pic via]

• Nouriel Roubini likes to rock the party.
• JFK blown away, what else did Mad Men have to say about how crazy it was that things were different in the early '60s?
• We endorsed not voting for Mike Bloomberg and, to be fair, a majority of New Yorkers took our advice, one way or another.
• Jay Leno maybe wants to go back to late night. No one knew that Tucker Max had a movie out, besides Hamilton.
• Old people at a newspaper were punching each other. It was kinda awesome. Then someone from Yelp tried to punch someone else from Yelp, and it was not as awesome.
• Sarah Palin really wanted to give a terrible speech full of "gonnas" and stuff, on election day, last year.
• Google stole maps! And they know everything about you!
• Gossip Girl and The City are shows about girls who gossip and live in the city.
• Oh no, some newspaper reporters missed out on the heartwarming story of a baseball team buying themselves a special prize.
• Dead clubs: still dead.
• Hey, an attempt to put the civil rights of a minority group to a popular vote failed, this week. Crazy.
• Whoops, we forgot to ask permission before reprinting emails between journalists and Eliot Spitzer's press office.
• Tom Cruise can control things with his mind. His mind and his arms and hands and legs and stuff. But mostly his mind.
• Are you exploiting your child enough? Or is a child exploiting you?
• Project Runway continues to suffer from boring challenges, terrible and inconsistent judging, and impossibly bland contestants. On the plus side: those ads for that movie with Ashton Kutcher and Catwoman.
• Levi Johnston is worried that his penis—which he plans on displaying in a pretend internet magazine—is not large enough to be presented in a pretend internet magazine.
• Swine flu attacked an adorable kitty cat! And also Rudy Giuliani gave it to a ferret.
• Spanx: still a thing.
• Top Chef had Fabio on it, yay!
• Oliver Zahm: he is French and he takes pictures of naked ladies and he goes to parties.
• Michele Bachmann attempted to lead a band of insurrectionists to take over the Capitol, where she is an elected legislator.
• Let's paint, exercise, and ride a private jet with a Silicon Valley performance artist/charlatan.
• Have you caught "Tardy For the Party" fever???
• Nidal Hasan, a military psychologist, shot dozens of people at an Army base, before a hero cop (a civilian and a woman) shot him. The shooter reportedly fulfilled all of the right-wing's demented deathporn fantasies.
• Glenn Beck's appendix attempted to burst from his stomach and free itself from his toxic body, but doctors kept the famous crazy person alive. Some people asked some questions about all of this!

Back in August, six lab workers drank coffee from the same coffee machine, and each fell ill almost immediately. One even passed out. They were all treated at the hospital. Investigators found that the coffee had been spiked with sodium azide, a preservative used in the labs that oh by the way is deadly. This news didn't come out until yesterday, when the Boston Herald broke the story. But hey, maybe this was just some sort of accident thing?

"An accident? Sodium azide is a poison," said David M. Benjamin, a toxicologist and Chestnut Hill-based clinical pharmacologist. "Absolutely not."

Whoa, okay, excuse us! Not everyone here is a toxicologist, Mr. Benjamin. Harvard is still being weirdly tight-lipped about the investigation of, ahem, Attempted Murder Most Foul. For PR reasons, doubtlessly—they saw what happened at Yale in the Annie Le case. Although they do note they're "installing more security cameras" in the medical school. So if you med students are gonna fuck there, fuck quick.
[Pic via]

The FBI file, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, shows that the FBI launched an investigation into a murder-for-hire plot against Marshall's son, who was battling with Smith over his father's money, in 2000. Agents interviewed Smith, who "began crying and denied ever making such plans," according to the records. They also apparently tapped her telephone conversations and searched her home, confiscating a handgun, a knife, and "for reasons that were not explained, a black and orange hat described as ''Dr. Seuss.'"

In the end, they didn't find enough evidence to make a case, the investigation was called off, and Smith got her Dr. Seuss hat back. The younger Marshall died of natural causes in 2006. Or did he?

• Tila Tequila's life's been a bit hectic as of late, but we had no idea how hard she was taking it all: she's been tweeting about taking her own life because "God spoke to me and told me I am needed up there." Oh boy... Tequila also wrote that a friend stopped her from doing the deed, but she plans on doing it in two weeks. Someone help this woman. [Ace]
  
  
• A man in a thong manhandled Kate Moss at Simon Cowell's birthday and all she got for the trouble was an angry boyfriend. [Page Six]
  
  
• Tyler Perry admitted on his website that he was sexually abused as a child. No punchline there. [NYDN]
  
  
• Katie "Jordan" Price's sexy fighter boyfriend Alex Reid enjoys dressing up in women's clothing. Yes, seriously. [Mirror]
  
  
• After 22-years of strutting her stuff, Claudia Schiffer says she'll retire from the catwalk. But don't worry, she insists she'll still model for print ads, the poor dear. [The Sun]
  
  
• Guns N' Roses are being sued by some musicians who claim the band stole tracks for Chinese Democracy. If Axl and company really did steal the tracks, that's sad: it took the band about a million years to make. [NYDN]
  
  
• Police found what they're calling a suicide note penned by Ryan Jenkins, the reality star who killed himself after being accused of killing his wife, Jasmine Fiore. The note makes not mention of Fiore. [People]
  
  
• Brian Littrell, who's in a bygone band called the Backstreet Boys, has swine flu. [Us]
  
  
• Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes temporarily moved to Boston and no one cares. [MSNBC]
  
  
• Nicole Richie was hospitalized after a minor car accident. She'll be fine. [People]
  
  
• The security surrounding Michael Jackson's tomb has been "scaled back." Grave robbers, start your pillaging! [TMZ]
  
  
• President Obama never picks Democratic Sen. Bob Casey for his basketball team. See? He doesn't play partisan games. [Page Six]
  
  
• Mad Men actor Bryan Batt's marrying his boyfriend. How fabulous! [Perez]
  
  
• Lars von Trier's new movie, Antichrist, will give you a seizure and send you straight to hell. [Page Six]

First, here's what happened: Albert was leaving his high school last Thursday when two rival gangs — one called "The Ville" for their neighborhood — approached the area, all macho and shit. Two guys from the nameless gang attacked Albert with a wooden railroad plank, called a tie, and then, for some reason, five guys from the rival gang got in on the action. One man, 19-year-old Silvanus Shannon, admitted that he stomped — fucking stomped — on this poor kid's head. It's all very disturbing. (I watched it, for this post, and really wish I hadn't. There's an audible crack of Albert's skull. Here's a link, although I don't recommend it.)

This being the 21st century, a bystander video taped the whole thing and then gave it to Albert's family, the police and a local Fox channel. Because that's what you do with sensational video, you give it to the media, which will have a field day with the brutal details. It all sounds so familiar, but perhaps this case will be a bit different.

Yes, videotaped beatings have become common place. Just earlier this month there was that video of a white teen getting beaten on the school bus by teens some described as a bunch of black racists. (And Obama wants kids to spend more time in school? As if.) Albert's case differs, though, because this is a death, not some talking point.

This is a video of someone losing their life. Poof. It's gone. And there are dozens of people cheering on the action. If you don't believe in Kitty Genovese — girl stabbed on the street, disputed newspaper stories say no one helped, social scientists had a field day — maybe you should now. People are watching the attack and then we're watching them watch.

But could it be that people should watch this? Should this become standard viewing so that everyday folk understand man's appallingly violent underbelly? Or maybe we've all become too aware and can no longer be bothered to feel the weight of that unsettling realization. Would it be naive to hope that's not the case?

As for the camerawoman herself: we're torn between finding her a bit culpable (at one point she says "get closer") and being thankful her morbid, but very human, fascination with violence and technological prowess got the (alleged) attackers on tape. That's some 21st century justice right there.

CNN:

Highlights, too? Awesome! CBS, Fox News, the Daily News, the New York Post all ran some variation of the AP report, some of them with their own contributions.

The Daily Beast fucking loved this story. They used it to take the opportunity to trot out crime statistics in the form of lists they compiled for the Top 25 Safest and Most Dangerous (!!!) Colleges in America. Did you go to one? Do you want to go to one? So, naturally, this:

There's almost an air of disappointment to it, like their news cycle might end? Goddamn. American media loves themselves a good murder. Just look to Rebecca Rosenberg's grisly (and incorrect) detailing of it in the New York Post.

And yeah, I know, I know: (1) obviously, (2) first stone, etc, and (3) you're making it worse by writing about it, you self-righteous prick. All of which are true accusations you can aim my way. So, media issues: they're complex.

I'm just over this story. And sensationalized murder stories, period. They're just depressing, and they seem outdated, and we only hear about the ones that instill some kind of fear in us. Which is nothing like these two guys getting killed today in Chicago. Or this kid, who was beaten to death. Or these two, killed in the Valley last night. Yes: Le's murder was especially sad because of the proximity to the wedding date. It was shocking because she went to Yale, where America's future rich and successful go. But we're not gonna read about anyone else's funerals.

And really: we've come far. There's gotta be something better to make worse than it already is.

Here is a video of various popular television news show hosts and elected officials—well, Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann (R-MN)—explaining that the census was part of a plot to round up patriotic Americans and place them in internment camps.

Also included: a fun amateur short-film in which a young man in fatigues aims an assault rifle at a census taker. The best part is when the crazy patriot holds up his handy copy of the Constitution, which explains that you only have to answer one question from the census taker and if they try to ask anymore you are free to shoot them.

Authories have not yet declared Sparkman's death a homicide, Oviously, there is a hell of a lot we don't know about the case, and we are actually leaning toward "killed by meth producers" instead of politically motivated domestic terror, but it is still worth pointing out that these people in this video are insane.

She was born to middle-class alcoholics. She dropped out of school at 18, moved to San Francisco, and become a stripper. In the late-'60s, she met Manson, who renamed her Sadie Mae Glutz.

After the murders of Gary Hinman, Sharon Tate, Steven Parent, Jay Sebring, Wojchiech Frtykowski, and Abigail Folger, most of the Manson family was picked up for auto theft charges. While in prison, Atkins supposedly bragged of killing Tate to cellmates, who promptly turned her in.

At the trial, a remorseless Atkins confessed to stabbing Tate over and over again. Prosecutors say Atkins is the one who wrote "PIG" on the front door of Sharon Tate 's home, in Tate's blood. (Tex Watson took credit for all the murders in his post-born again memoir.)

She died of brain cancer. She is perhaps survived by a son, Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz, whose whereabouts remain unknown.

Yesterday Essex House employee Derrick Praileau was charged with strangling and stabbing a woman in her Essex House condo. But whoa, the NYDN says somebody who appears on a TV show was only a single floor away!

Makenzie [Vega] - who plays Julianna Margulies' daughter in the drama [The Good Wife] about an unfaithful politicianthat debuts tonight - thinks she spoke with Derrick Praileau.

He came to her apartment to help her find her lost iPhone, and her apartment is just one floor above the scene of the crime! Had Derrick Praileau inexplicably snapped while looking for the iPhone, or chosen to break through the ceiling after his first crime in search of another, more famous, victim, this tragedy could have been even greater.

But hey, private equity guys are still schmoozing journalists at Essex House and Ahmadinejad's still planning to speak there, so the PR battle's been won.
[Pic: CarbonNYC's Flickr]

NYP reporter Rebecca Rosenberg's story yesterday was, without a doubt, the grossest, most vivid depiction yet of the crime scene:

Accused murderer Ray Clark was so desperate to hide his heinous handiwork that he allegedly broke the bones and mangled the body of a strangled Yale grad student to fit it through a wall opening the size of a computer screen, The Post has learned.
"He just crushed her in there. She was like mush — she was so smashed up you couldn't recognize her," said a source

The story makes pretty specific statements on the condition of the body, presumably thanks to a police source. But now the New Haven police say it's false:

State's Attorney Michael Dearington asked the New Haven Police Department to clarify the inaccuracy, which he said was picked up by other media outlets.
"This information is false and this myth must be dispelled at the request of the state's attorney," said New Haven Police Chief James Lewis.

Rosenberg's bylines show she's a hard worker who's been on the Le story since before we even knew she was murdered. Somebody's obviously feeding her lurid info. But it's hard to see why the police would go to the trouble of denying it unless it was actually false. It's possible that her story does have a grain of truth, but that it got hyped up by the Post's editing process so much that it was rendered false.

Or maybe they just print whatever?
[Pic: AP]

"Calif. horrorcore rapper suspected of killing 4," says the AP headline. This is technically true, although a more accurate headline might have been "Calif. adolescent without any good hobbies snaps," or "MYSPACE KILLS." McCroskey, a 20 year-old kid from California, is suspected of killing four people in Virginia—including a pastor and a college professor. He apparently went to visit the pastor's daughter after meeting her on Myspace.

On McCroskey's MySpace page, someone who goes by Ragdoll, which friends identified as Emma Niederbrock, wrote several messages to McCroskey. In a post dated Sept. 7, Niederbrock says she is excited for McCroskey's visit to her house.
"The next time you check your myspace, YOULL BE AT MY HOUSE!" the post reads.

Urgh. And here, direct from Syko Sam's Myspace page, he describes how hip hop culture drove him to kill:

Syko Sam is a new musican in the underground and only been rapping for a few months now. As a new artist I feel that I already have some talent in this scene but will only get better as time will do its job. Syko Sam has been a fan of the Horrorcore/Wicked Shit genre since 1999 so therefor as a huge fan of the music I wanted to contribute to the genre to give to those fans of the genre as well as making it for myself to explore my creative side, thus Syko Sam being born.

Rap music takes only a few months to drive troubled teenagers to murder. Also the internet does, too. Parents, take heed.

The latest victim of the nation's descent into madness is Andree Bejjani, a 44-year old real estate executive from Dubai. She's been working in good old New York since August and staying at the Essex House. If you've heard of it, that's because it boasts a celebrated clientele, like Ms. Angelina and Sam Jackson.

That said, one would hope the place would be secure, but that's not the case: Andree was found dead Saturday with a knife sticking out of her neck and sweatpants tied around her neck. Not a very pleasant image.

But, there is what could be good news: cops arrested 29-year old Derrick Praileau for the murder. Relieved? Well, don't be: he's the hotel's housekeeping manager. Cops say he used his access card to get into Bejjani's room. Creepy.

Even the highest ivory towers, where our leaders and celebrities live and work, have been infiltrated by the nation's insanity. No one is safe. America, we're doomed.

Image via Diego_3336's flickr.

Various news outlets have been turning up scooplets for a week now. Investigators reportedly say that Clark sent Le a text message the day she went missing, asking to meet her to discuss work issues. Later, as police were searching the lab building for Le's body, Clark reportedly aroused their suspicion when an investigator saw him hastily "trying to hide lab cleaning equipment that they discovered contained blood spatters." They also say that lab swipe card records show Clark moving around to several different rooms where he normally would not go around the time of the crime (including the room where Le was found). The DNA match—if true—would seem incredibly incriminating.

Reported DNA Match [Hartford Courant]

[The] final piece that led to his arrest Thursday morning was the discovery that evidence in the ceiling and in the crawl space where Le's body was found contained the DNA of both Le and Clark, according to the law enforcement official who spoke to The Courant on the condition of anonymity.

The Green Pen [NYDN]

Clark did not want to be just some guy who cleans mouse cages, so he distinguished himself by always signing in for work with a pen that used green ink. Every day, including the day of the killing.

Investigators believe he dropped the pen at the scene and was unable to retrieve it after it fell into a crevice.

An Accomplice?

We would take this one with a large grain of salt at this point, since all the evidence of it is the following, from today's NYP—and this bit of news would be everywhere if it was solid. So take it for what it's worth.

The Yale lab technician busted yesterday in the murder of brilliant grad student Annie Le may have had help hiding her body — and there could be another arrest, it was reported last night.

Cops are interrogating another employee who works in the lab where Raymond Clark allegedly killed Le, sources told Hartford TV station WTIC/Fox61.

[Pic: AP]