Lawyers in Ohio football rape case want trial moved

(Reuters) – Attorneys for two Ohio teenage football players accused of raping a 16-year-old student have asked that the trial be moved because potential witnesses are afraid to come forward in defense of the boys, one of the lawyers said on Monday.

Walter Madison, the attorney for one of the accused rapists, Ma’lik Richmon, said social media efforts to bring the alleged rape into the national spotlight have led to an atmosphere of intimidation and coercion.

“This has a chilling effect on witnesses who could come forward to be part of this process so my client can get a fair and full proceeding,” he told Reuters. “So, we’re left without the opportunity to make our case. That’s pretty serious.”

Richmond and Trenton Mays, both 16 and members of the Steubenville High School football team, are charged with raping a 16-year-old fellow student at a party last August.

The two students are set to be tried as juveniles in February in Steubenville, a city of 19,000 about 40 miles west of Pittsburgh.

Madison said his client’s mother has had to change her cell phone number multiple times due to threats and harassment.

Last week, the online activist group Anonymous made public a picture allegedly of the rape victim, being carried by her wrists and ankles by two young men, and of a video that showed several other young men joking about an alleged assault.

Madison said that Richmond is not seen in the video.

A county sheriff under fire for how he has handled the high school rape investigation faced down a crowd of protestors on Saturday and said no new charges will be brought against anyone involved in the case.

Activists say there had been a cover-up by local officials to protect the integrity of the high school’s football program.

Meanwhile, a petition to the White House calling for the two rape suspects to be tried as adults reached 25,000 signatures Monday, the threshold required to receive a response from the Obama Administration.

Moving the case to the adult court system would allow for a jury trial and a more severe penalty, the petition says.

“This is a serious offense and this needs to be an example for everyone that this type of behavior should not, and will not be tolerated in our society,” it says.

The petition, created December 25, more than doubled its number of supporters overnight. It had 11,000 signatures on Sunday.

It was submitted to the White House through its online petition website, We The People. Now that it has the required 25,000 signatures, the Obama Administration will give an official statement at some point in the future. The petition has no legal impact.

(Editing by Paul Thomasch and Andrew Hay)

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Bethenny Frankel: I Feel Like a Failure After Divorce

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By Maggie Coughlan

01/09/2013 at 10:55 AM EST

Bethenny Frankel (left) and Ellen DeGeneres

Michael Rozman/Warner Bros.

Bethenny Frankel documented her marriage to Jason Hoppy on television – and now she's opening up about her divorce on television, too.

"I can't just only be on reality TV and show everything when it's fairy princess, fairytale, and then not take my hits when I have to," she says on Wednesday's The Ellen DeGeneres Show. "Just going through something personal you have so many different emotions, and I feel like a bit of a disappointment to all of you. And, I feel like a failure."

"You are not a disappointment. You are not a failure," DeGeneres says.

"I feel like a failure. I really put it out there. I wanted the fairytale," Frankel responds. "I thought I had it. And [daughter] Bryn is my fairytale ... Love is everywhere. It's the road and you're on it. It has peaks and valleys, and that's what it is, but I don't know how people go through this because this is excruciating."

News of the split between the Skinnygirl mogul, 42, and Hoppy first broke just before the holidays with Frankel releasing a statement. "It brings me great sadness to say that Jason and I are separating. This was an extremely difficult decision that as a woman and a mother, I have to accept as the best choice for our family," she said at the time.

Frankel then filed divorce papers in early January.

The couple married in 2010 and are parents to daughter Bryn, 2½.

As for her decision to divorce, Frankel tells DeGeneres she "wanted to rip the Band-Aid off" so she could "start to heal," but that she struggles with what lies ahead.

"You know everything and one day you don't know. So I'm scared. I'm older. And I want to be able to say to people ... It's about what I do now ... I never thought I'd be a role model but I think to some people I am or have been," she says.

"This is an important time because it's about what I do next. How I handle myself now with grace, with dignity. Now is the time that matters."

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.

Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.

"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.

But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.

Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.

The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.

Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.

Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.

But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.

Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.

Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.

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Judge weeps at "Dating Game" serial killer's 'horrific acts'

California serial killer Rodney Alcala was sentenced to additional prison time in New York for the murders of two more women, a case that brought a veteran judge to tears during the hearing.

Alcala, who is already on death row in California for the murders of four women and a girl, pleaded guilty in December to the 1971 murder of Cornelia Crilley and the 1977 murder of Ellen Hover, both in New York. On Monday, New York Supreme Court Judge Bonnie Wittner handed down a sentence of 25 years to life in prison, the Wall Street Journal reported.

"This kind of case is something I've never experienced, hope to never again. I just want to say I hope these families find some peace and solace for these inexplicably brutal and horrific acts," Wittner said, according to the Journal.

PHOTOS: California serial killers

Wittner then dissolved into tears. "As I said, in 30 years I've never had a case like this," she said.

Alcala raped and strangled Crilley, a 23-year-old TWA flight attendant, inside her Upper East Side apartment in 1971. Six years later, he killed Hover, also 23 and living in Manhattan. Her body was found in Westchester County, not far from her family's estate. 

The Journal reported that many in attendance at Monday's sentencing wore stickers bearing the black-and-white photograph that initially appeared in stories about Crilley's death. "Cornelia Always in Our Hearts," the stickers read.

Crilley's sister, Katie Stigell, spoke to the court, using most of her time talking about her sister, who "was in her prime" and "wouldn't hurt anybody." But Stigell also had words for Alcala.

"Mr. Alcala, I want you to know you broke my parents' hearts," Stigell said. "They never really recovered."

Hover's stepsisters declined to appear in court. Instead, prosecutor Alex Spiro read a letter on their behalf, the Journal reported.

"Ellen was a sweet, kind, generous, compassionate, loving and beautiful young woman. She chose to see the good in everyone she met because she had a huge and open heart," the letter read. "Her senseless murder irreparably damaged our family."

Alcala, a self-styled playboy who once appeared on "The Dating Game" TV match-making show, spent much of the 1970s eluding police by changing identities and locales. He has been behind bars since 1979, when he was arrested in the death of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe of Huntington Beach.

Twice he was sent to death row for murder, but both convictions were overturned on appeal. In February 2010, he was convicted again for Samsoe's murder and for the murders of four women in Los Angeles County. He is now awaiting execution.

At a news conference after Monday's hearing, Manhattan Dist. Atty. Cyrus Vance said Alcala would be returned to California, where he is appealing his death-penalty conviction. Should that conviction be overturned, Vance said, Alcala would return to New York for his sentence.

The extent of Alcala's crimes were revealed as a task force formed by the Los Angeles Police Department and other agencies that was examining cold cases tied him to slayings across Southern California. New York police had long considered Alcala a suspect in the slayings of Crilley and Hover and had taken impressions of his teeth in 2003. Alcala had lived in New York periodically between 1968 and 1977. 

During that period, Crilley was found raped and strangled with her nylon stockings in her Manhattan apartment. Around that time, Alcala was working at a summer camp for girls in New Hampshire, authorities said.

Hover went missing in July 1977 and her body was discovered the following year. Before she disappeared, she had written the name "John Berger" in a planner, a name police believe Alcala used as an alias while in New York.

The Southern California killings began just a few months later.

THE ALCALA CASE: A TIMELINE

---

1972 — Alcala is convicted in the 1968 rape and beating of an 8-year-old girl.

Nov. 10, 1977 — The body of 18-year-old Jill Barcomb is found in the Hollywood Hills. She had been sexually assaulted, bludgeoned and strangled with a pair of blue pants.

Dec. 16, 1977 — Georgia Wixted, 27, is found beaten to death at her home in Malibu. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled.

1978 — Alcala appears in an episode of “The Dating Game” as Bachelor No. 1.

June 24, 1978 — Charlotte Lamb, a 32-year-old legal secretary from Santa Monica, is found in the laundry room of an El Segundo apartment complex. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled with a shoelace. 

June 14, 1979 — Jill Parenteau, 21, of Burbank is found strangled on the floor of her Burbank apartment.

June 20, 1979 – Robin Samsoe, 12, disappears near the Huntington Beach Pier. Her body is found 12 days later in the Sierra Madre foothills.

July 24, 1979 — Rodney James Alcala, an unemployed photographer, is arrested at his parents’ Monterey Park home.

September 1980 – Alcala is convicted of the 1978 rape of a 15-year-old Riverside girl and sentenced to nine years in state prison.

June 20, 1980 — Orange County Superior Court Judge Philip E. Schwab sentences Alcala to death after he is convicted of Samsoe's murder.

July 11, 1980 — The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office files murder, burglary and sexual assault charges against Alcala in the slaying of Parenteau.

April 15, 1981 — The L.A. district attorney’s office tells a judge that prosecution of Alcala in the Parenteau case could not proceed because a key witness admitted that he had committed perjury in another case.

Aug. 23, 1984 — The state Supreme Court reversed Alcala’s murder conviction in connection with Samsoe, ruling that the jury was improperly told about Alcala’s prior sex crimes.

June 20, 1986 — For the second time, Alcala is convicted for Samsoe’s murder and sentenced to death in Orange County Superior Court.

Dec. 31, 1992 — The California Supreme Court unanimously upholds Alcala’s death sentence.

April 2, 2001 — A federal appellate court overturns Alcala’s death sentence in the Samsoe case, ruling that the Superior Court judge precluded the defense from presenting evidence “material to significant issues.”

June 5, 2003 — The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office files murder charges against Alcala alleging that he killed Wixted during a burglary and rape.

Sept. 19, 2005 — Additional murder charges are filed against Alcala in connection to the deaths of Barcomb, Wixted and Lamb.

Jan. 11, 2010 — Alcala’s trial for the five murders begins. He represents himself.

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Photo: Convicted serial killer Rodney Alcala appears in a New York courtroom on Monday, where he was sentenced for two murders in the 1970s. Credit: David Handschuh / Associated Press

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Chemical Weapons Showdown With Syria Led to Rare Accord

Muzaffar Salman/Reuters

The violence in Syria continued on Monday. Above, Syrians went to the aid of a man who was wounded when a missile hit the al-Mashhad district of Aleppo.

WASHINGTON — In the last days of November, Israel’s top military commanders called the Pentagon to discuss troubling intelligence that was showing up on satellite imagery: Syrian troops appeared to be mixing chemicals at two storage sites, probably the deadly nerve gas sarin, and filling dozens of 500-pounds bombs that could be loaded on airplanes.

Within hours President Obama was notified, and the alarm grew over the weekend, as the munitions were loaded onto vehicles near Syrian air bases. In briefings, administration officials were told that if Syria’s increasingly desperate president, Bashar al-Assad, ordered the weapons to be used, they could be airborne in less than two hours — too fast for the United States to act, in all likelihood.

What followed next, officials said, was a remarkable show of international cooperation over a civil war in which the United States, Arab states, Russia and China have almost never agreed on a common course of action.

The combination of a public warning by Mr. Obama and more sharply worded private messages sent to the Syrian leader and his military commanders through Russia and others, including Iraq, Turkey and possibly Jordan, stopped the chemical mixing and the bomb preparation. A week later Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said the worst fears were over — for the time being.

But concern remains that Mr. Assad could now use the weapons produced that week at any moment. American and European officials say that while a crisis was averted in that week from late November to early December, they are by no means resting easy.

“I think the Russians understood this is the one thing that could get us to intervene in the war,” one senior defense official said last week. “What Assad understood, and whether that understanding changes if he gets cornered in the next few months, that’s anyone’s guess.”

While chemical weapons are technically considered a “weapon of mass destruction” — along with biological and nuclear weapons — in fact they are hard to use and hard to deliver. Whether an attack is effective can depend on the winds and the terrain. Sometimes attacks are hard to detect, even after the fact. Syrian forces could employ them in a village or a neighborhood, some officials say, and it would take time for the outside world to know.

But the scare a month ago has renewed debate about whether the West should help the Syrian opposition destroy Mr. Assad’s air force, which he would need to deliver those 500-pound bombs.

The chemical munitions are still in storage areas that are near or on Syrian air bases, ready for deployment on short notice, officials said.

The Obama administration and other governments have said little in public about the chemical weapons movements, in part because of concern about compromising sources of intelligence about the activities of Mr. Assad’s forces. This account is based on interviews with more than half a dozen military, intelligence and diplomatic officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the intelligence matters involved.

The head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, warned in a confidential assessment last month that the weapons could now be deployed four to six hours after orders were issued, and that Mr. Assad had a special adviser at his side who oversaw control of the weapons, the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported. Some American and other allied officials, however, said in interviews that the sarin-laden bombs could be loaded on planes and airborne in less than two hours.

“Let’s just say right now, it would be a relatively easy thing to load this quickly onto aircraft,” said one Western diplomat.

How the United States and Israel, along with Arab states, would respond remains a mystery. American and allied officials have talked vaguely of having developed “contingency plans” in case they decided to intervene in an effort to neutralize the chemical weapons, a task that the Pentagon estimates would require upward of 75,000 troops. But there have been no evident signs of preparations for any such effort.

The United States military has quietly sent a task force of more than 150 planners and other specialists to Jordan to help the armed forces there, among other things, prepare for the possibility that Syria will lose control of its chemical weapons.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was reported to have traveled to Jordan in recent weeks, and the Israeli news media have said the topic of discussion was how to deal with Syrian weapons if it appeared that they could be transferred to Lebanon, where Hezbollah could lob them over the border to Israel. But the plans, to the extent they exist, remain secret.

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Disney joins JAKKS, LA billionaire to bring toys to life

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Walt Disney toys are sold around the world. Now, children can find them in the cloud as well.

The media giant is teaming up with toy company JAKKS Pacific and Patrick Soon-Shiong, Los Angeles’ wealthiest person, on a new line of toys – with a nifty technological twist designed to link the goodies that kids lug home from the store with Disney’s stable of well-known animated characters.

“DreamPlay“, developed by Soon-Shiong’s NantWorks company, and JAKKS works via an app that can be downloaded on Apple Inc devices like the iPad, or smartphones and tablets running Google Inc Android software. When a device’s camera is trained on any toy specifically designed to work with DreamPlay, it triggers one of thousands of preset animations that appear on the device’s screen and seem to be unfolding in the real world.

With viewers’ eyes locked on the tablet or smartphone screen, fairies appear to glide in and out of buildings, animated critters start playing musical instruments, mythical characters prance on a toy piano’s keyboard.

Disney, which licensed its characters to DreamPlay, and its partners hope that children will take to the new approach, which is intended to extend and expand the life of the toy. But it remains to be seen if the concept will prove to be more than a novelty, and be able to arrest a child’s infamously short attention span.

The three will demo their concept on Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but Reuters got a sneak peak at the technology on Monday.

In a showroom in the 20th floor of a Santa Monica, Calif. building, visitors to JAKKS’ demonstration are treated to an animated version of Sebastian – the red Jamaican crab from Disney’s “Little Mermaid” movie – who pops up onscreen on an iPad seconds after the tablet’s camera is trained on a real-life set of toy bongo drums.

The animated crab pounces on the drums and proceeds to bang out a calypso song onscreen, with both Sebastian and the physical drum set appearing together as if the two shared the same cartoon.

REAL, VIRTUAL INTERACTION

DreamPlay allows not just Sebastian, but also Tinker Bell and a host of other well-loved Disney characters to “interact” virtually with specially made toys via image-recognition software. The software was developed by Soon-Shiong, a former cancer surgeon who created drugs to fight diabetes and breast cancer and then sold the companies that produced them for $ 8.6 billion.

Soon-Shiong teamed with JAKKS, a $ 678 million-a-year toy maker and licensee of toys based on the Princess line of dolls, Marvel action figures and other Disney toys, among others.

The technology works via the “cloud” – images and video clips stored on remote servers that are streamed to kids’ mobiles when the app recognizes a particular item.

“It’s a tremendous way to combine great technology and Disney’s magical story telling to extend the time a child can play with a toy,” said Bob Chapek, president of Disney’s consumer products unit. “Kids find out that playing with their toy doesn’t end when they get it home.”

Since taking over in 2011, Chapek has repositioned Disney’s consumer product unit to expand its use of technology with its toys. DreamPlay is the first of what Chapek says are other products that will twin technology with familiar Disney toys, although he won’t name them.

Down the road, Disney may explore new business models, including selling subscriptions to content created specifically to be used with a particular toy, said Chapek.

The market is hardly certain for a product that requires a child to hold up a phone or tablet, and peer through it to play with a toy that’s stationary. Will children want to see Rapunzel endlessly dancing on the keys of a piano or Rosetta, a fairy from Disney’s “Tinker Bell” movies, fly in and out of a cottage?

“The technology may be great, but no one has proven to me yet that a kid will sit in front of an iPhone or iPad instead of playing with a toy that’s right in front of him,” said Sean McGowan, a toy analyst with Needham & Co who downgraded JAKKS to hold in September along with other toy companies, and then downgraded JAKKS to underperform in October.

JAKKS intends to begin selling DreamPlay versions of toys from the Disney Princess line in October. It will then expand its offerings next year, with international sales starting in 2014, said Stephen Berman, JAKKS President and CEO.

DreamPlay toys will be “a couple of dollars” costlier than the regular version, he says.

Target stores and Toys R Us are among the U.S. retailers who will carry the DreamPlay line, Berman says. Top-Toy, the giant Nordic retailer, has also signed on, while Beijing Hualian Group, which operates supermarkets and department stores across China, is coming onboard as well.

“Kids don’t own iPhones or iPads but they all know how to use them,” says Berman. “Kids have so much more imagination than we do. Imagine recording a bunch of the videos and giving the kid an iPad to play with them on a trip to see the grandparents.”

JAKKS will ramp up marketing for the DreamPlay line, said Berman. DreamPlay toys will be prominently displayed at all the partner-retailers, he added, and shoppers will be encouraged to use their smartphones to view them.

Those that aim smartphones at a boxed Tinker Bell, for instance, may get a start as the fairy from “Peter Pan” literally soars out of the box, leaving an empty package behind.

“Technology can help people live better, work better, play better,” said Soon-Shiong as he showed off the line of toys. “This is the way they will play better.”

(Reporting By Ronald Grover; Edited By Edwin Chan)

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Larry Hagman's J.R. Ewing Will Be Honored with Dallas Funeral Episode

TV Watch

By Andrea Billups

01/08/2013 at 10:15 AM EST

Patrick Duffy and Larry Hagman

Ramey

The late Larry Hagman will not be forgotten when Dallas returns to television on Jan. 28.

Hagman, who shot to fame as the show's star patriarch oil baron, J.R. Ewing, will be honored in upcoming episodes this season, including a funeral, set for the series' March 11 episode, EW.com reports.

The actor passed away on Nov. 23 at 81 from cancer, forcing the show's producers to make significant changes to the storyline, even as they mourned the show's longtime villain who was also a great friend. Extra scenes with J.R. that had previously been cut were put back in for episode 6, said executive producer Cynthia Cidre, who had to explain to viewers as she wrote future episodes why the key character was absent.

The tribute show will include many faces from the original Dallas series, which premiered in 1978, Cidre said. "It will be funny and appropriate to J.R., but it will also be sad because his family loved him," she said. "As do the fans."

His castmates continue to remember him and the indelible mark he left on the show over the decades. Patrick Duffy, who plays J.R.'s brother Bobby, said he and costar Linda Gray hold hands often on set for support and to remember their friend fondly.

"I'll reach over and just hold her hand for a while. As she will for me," Duffy told EW.com. "We just sit and smile and think, 'Gosh, that guy was our friend for 35 years. How lucky are we?'"

Hagman, a Texas native who had been married to his wife Maj Axelsson since 1954, will remain on the production's call sheets for the rest of the year as tribute. His Airstream trailer will also remain on set with a sign that says: "No. 1 is on hold."

Duffy said all of it was fitting: "This is the house that Hagman built."

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.

Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.

"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.

But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.

Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.

The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.

Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.

Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.

But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.

Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.

Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.

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Serial killer stalked, killed 3 young mothers at bars, LAPD says

Authorities on Monday announced the arrest of a 72-year-old man who they allege is a serial killer responsible for the slayings of at least three women in Los Angeles in the 1980s.

Officials would not elaborate on the backgrounds of the
victims but said all three had children.

Los Angeles Police Department detectives allege that Samuel Little preyed on women in downtown and Central L.A., meeting some at bars before strangling them and dumping their bodies.

Police identified the victims as Carol Alford, 41, found dead on July
13, 1987; Audrey Nelson, 35, whose body was discovered Aug. 14, 1989;
and Guadalupe Apodaca, 46, found Sept. 2, 1989. Their bodies were
discovered in the Central Avenue-Alameda Street corridor, just south of
downtown.

Police allege that Little met women while cruising in his car or in bars.

If the allegations are true, it would mark the discovery of yet another serial killer operating in L.A. during the 1980s. Two years ago, the LAPD arrested a man they said was the notorious “Grim Sleeper,” allegedly responsible for at least 10 slayings in South L.A.

Little has been extradited to California from Kentucky, where he was taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals Service in early September on an unrelated criminal warrant, LAPD officials said. He was charged Monday by the L.A. County district attorney's office with three murder counts and special circumstances for multiple murder.

LAPD detectives Mitzi Roberts and Rick Jackson, who investigated the case, said there is DNA evidence linking Little to the Los Angeles slayings but would not elaborate, citing the ongoing investigation. Roberts and Jackson spent months crisscrossing the country following Little’s path.

Sources said they interviewed four women who said they survived attacks by Little and that they might testify in court.

Little has a long criminal record, dating to the 1950s. Detectives said they believe he committed thefts during the day to make money to finance his bar-hopping.

“It was theft by day and murder by night,” Jackson said.

Little, who also went under the name Samuel McDowell, committed crimes in 24 states but served relatively little time in state prison or county jail, the detectives said. In the early 1980s, he was accused of a two murders and two attempted murders in the Gainesville, Fla., and Pascagoula, Miss., areas.

Little was acquitted by a Florida jury in the strangulation death of Patricia Ann Mount, 26, whose body was discovered Sept. 12, 1982.

He was never brought to trial in the Mississippi cases, which include the strangulation death of Melinda LaPree, 24, on Sept., 14 1982. That case has been reopened by the Pascagoula Police Department in light of new evidence, authorities said.

Little moved from the South to California in the mid-1980s, moving first to San Diego.

He served more than two years in state prison after being convicted of assault and false imprisonment of two San Diego women in separate cases, police said. Shortly after being paroled, he moved to Los Angeles.

Little was being held in Wasco State Prison after being extradited and could not be reached for comment.

The LAPD is now working with other jurisdictions to determine whether Little might be a suspect in additional killings.

“If any law enforcement agencies have similar killings that occurred between 1960 and the present, they should contact LAPD cold case detectives,” Roberts said.

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Photo: Samuel Little. Credit: Los Angeles Police Department

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Supporters Back Strike at Newspaper in China

James Pomfret/Reuters

Demonstrators gathered outside the headquarters of Southern Weekly newspaper Monday in Guangzhou, China.

BEIJING — Hundreds of people gathered outside the headquarters of a newspaper office in southern China on Monday to show their support for journalists who had declared a strike to protest what they called overbearing censorship by provincial propaganda officials.

The journalists, who work for Southern Weekend, a relatively liberal newspaper that has come under increasing pressure from officials in recent years, also received support on the Internet from celebrities and well-known commentators.

“Hoping for a spring in this harsh winter,” Li Bingbing, an actress, said to her 19 million followers on a microblog account. Yao Chen, an actress with more than 31 million followers, cited a quotation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Russian Nobel laureate and dissident: “One word of truth outweighs the whole world.”

Many of the people who showed up Monday at the newspaper offices in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, carried banners with slogans and white and yellow chrysanthemums, a flower that symbolizes mourning. One banner read: “Get rid of censorship. The Chinese people want freedom.” Police officers watched the protesters without immediately taking any harsh actions.

The angry journalists at Southern Weekend have been calling for the removal of Tuo Zhen, the top propaganda official in Guangdong, whom the journalists blame for overseeing a change in a New Year’s editorial that ran last week and was supposed to have called for greater respect for rights enshrined in the constitution under the headline “China’s Dream, the Dream of Constitutionalism,” according to the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong. The editorial went through layers of changes and ultimately became one praising the current political system, in which the Communist Party exercises authority over all aspects of governance.

A well-known entrepreneur, Hung Huang, said on her microblog that the actions of a local official had “destroyed, overnight, all the credibility the country’s top leadership had labored to re-establish since the 18th Party Congress,” the November gathering in Beijing that was the climax of the leadership transition.

One journalist for Southern Weekend said Monday afternoon that negotiations between the various parties had been scheduled later in the day, but there were no results from any talks as of Monday evening.

It was unclear how many employees in the newsroom had heeded the calls for a strike. It appeared Sunday that many of Southern Weekend’s reporters had declared themselves on strike. A local journalist who went by the newspaper’s Beijing office on Monday said the building appeared to be open but quiet. One employee told the journalist that the people there were not on strike. Dozens of supporters showed up outside the building at various times, some carrying signs and flowers.

The conflict was exacerbated Sunday night by top editors at the newspaper, who posted a message on the publication’s official microblog saying that the New Year’s editorial had been written with the consent of editors at the newspaper.

According to an account from a newspaper employee posted online on Monday, that statement was made after pressure was exerted on the top editors by Yang Jian, the head of the party committee at Southern Media, the parent company that runs Southern Weekend and other publications. Southern Weekend’s editor in chief, Huang Can, then pressured an employee to give up the official microblog password so the statement could be posted on the microblog.

Neither Mr. Yang nor Mr. Huang could be reached for comment Monday.

Some political analysts have said the conflict raises questions about whether the central government, led by Xi Jinping, the new party chief, will support the idea of a more open media by moving to support the protesting journalists. In his first trip outside Beijing, Mr. Xi traveled to Guangdong and praised the market-oriented economic policies put in place by Deng Xiaoping, the former supreme leader. But more recently, Mr. Xi has said that China must respect its socialist roots.

Resolving the Southern Weekend tensions could also be a test for Hu Chunhua, the new party chief in Guangdong and a potential candidate to succeed Mr. Xi as the leader of China in a decade. Mr. Hu’s predecessor, Wang Yang, was regarded by many Western political analysts as being a “reformer,” but he presided over a tightening of media freedoms in the province and specifically over Southern Media.

On Monday, People’s Daily, the party’s mouthpiece, ran a signed commentary that referred to a recent meeting of propaganda officials in Beijing and said propaganda officials should “follow the rhythm of the times” and help the authorities establish a “pragmatic and open-minded image.” Some people have interpreted that as support for officials in adopting a more enlightened approach in dealing with the news media.

But Global Times, a populist newspaper, ran a scathing editorial that said Southern Weekend was merely a newspaper and should not challenge the system.

“Even in the West, mainstream media would not choose to openly pick a fight with the government,” the editorial said. Xinhua, the state news agency, published the editorial online.

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting. Mia Li and Shi Da and contributed research.

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