Sandusky found guilty on sex abuse charges

A jury found former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky guilty on 45 of 48 child sex abuse charges on Friday, ending a trial that rocked U.S. college football and renewed attention on pedophilia in America.

Sandusky, 68, faces potentially hundreds of years in prison for molesting 10 boys over 15 years. He was escorted immediately out of the courthouse in handcuffs and taken into an awaiting sheriff's cruiser.

A large crowd that gathered outside the Centre County Courthouse in central Pennsylvania broke into cheers upon learning of the news.

One of the victims who had testified burst into tears as the verdict was read. Sandusky, meanwhile, stood and faced the foreman and appeared expressionless, tucking his hands into his pockets.

His wife, Dottie, sitting behind him, showed no emotion.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly praised the eight victims, all now adults, who came forward to testify in the two-week trial that featured graphic sexual detail of Sandusky's abuse.

"Who would believe a kid?" Kelly said. "The answer is, ‘We here in Bellefonte, Pa., will believe a kid. ... A jury of 12 people in Bellefonte, Pa., most definitely would and did believe a kid."

She praised the victims for their courage to speak "not only to the jury and a packed courtroom ... but also the entire world."

Defense attorney Joe Amendola said he was examining the grounds for an appeal.

"They're devastated," Amendola said of Sandusky's relatives, "but they've been devastated ever since these charges came to light."

The decision came after 21 hours of deliberation over two days by a jury of seven women and five men. Nine of the 16 jurors and alternates had ties to Pennsylvania State University, and the final days of the trial drew large crowds to the courthouse in central Pennsylvania.

The case cast a pall over a university community known as Happy Valley and cost legendary head coach Joe Paterno his job after a half-century career in which he won more games than any major college coach. Paterno died of lung cancer two months later at age 85.

Sandusky, the defensive genius behind Paterno who helped give Penn State its nickname of Linebacker U, faced 48 counts of sexual abuse of 10 boys over a 15-year period, sometimes at Penn State facilities. The jury convicted him of 25 felonies and 20 misdemeanors.

The conviction came on the same day another landmark child sex abuse case was decided in Pennsylvania. A jury in Philadelphia found Monsignor William Lynn guilty of one count of endangering the welfare of a child, making him the first senior U.S. Roman Catholic Church official to be convicted for covering up child sex abuse.

The Sandusky case tore at the Penn State community that revolves around a football program generating tens of millions of dollars in profit each year.

Former athletic director Tim Curley and former finance official Gary Schultz have been charged with perjury and failing to alert authorities to one act of sexual abuse by Sandusky. A trial date has not been set in that case.

A shocking new revelation hit shortly after jury deliberations began on Thursday when a lawyer for Matt Sandusky, the coach's adopted son, said Matt Sandusky had met with prosecutors to tell them he had been sexually abused by the former coach. Matt Sandusky, 33, was adopted after living with Sandusky and his wife Dottie as a foster child.

The Centre Country grand jury indictment of Sandusky on November 5 set off a firestorm that led Penn State trustees to fire university president Graham Spanier and Paterno, who was faulted for failing to more forcefully intervene when he learned of the accusations years earlier.

The November 9 firing was a humiliating way for Paterno to end his career, and it prompted student demonstrations in support of their beloved "JoePa."

"The community owes a measure of gratitude to the jurors for their diligent service," said a statement from the Paterno family. "Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the victims and their families.

A former Penn State assistant coach, Mike McQueary, told the jury he had seen Sandusky abusing a young boy in a football locker room in 2001. He reported the incident to Paterno and campus authorities but neither police nor child protection services were informed.

Prosecutors accuse Sandusky of abusing at least three more victims after that incident.

As the Sandusky shockwaves spread, sex abuse hotlines and lawyers saw a surge in calls and emails.

To defend himself against the media onslaught, Sandusky gave an interview to NBC in November that was a public relations disaster. He only haltingly denied he was sexually attracted to young boys and admitted to horseplay and showering with them.

Summer Solstice

Hot enough for you? With a fearsome heat wave moving from the Midwest to the Eastern Seaboard, we hardly need a reminder that summer is upon us.

But we have one anyhow. The summer solstice -- the astronomical beginning of summer in the Northern Hemisphere -- takes place at 7:09 p.m. ET on June 20. That makes this the longest day of the year north of the equator. From now until December, the days gradually get shorter, though not immediately cooler.

We are already told the U.S. has had the warmest spring since record-keeping began in the 19th century. Today there are heat warnings for 13 states, with highs in the upper 90s in New York, Boston and Washington, D.C., and heat indexes higher than 100 for cities that include Philadelphia and Raleigh.

"You're talking about almost 15 degrees above normal," said Kristin Kline, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Mount Holly, N.J.

Jesse James Hollywood found guilty of murder, kidnapping

A Santa Barbara today jury found Jesse James Hollywood guilty of first-degree murder and kidnapping for ordering the slaying of Nicholas Markowitz.

The jury concluded that Hollywood was the ringleader of a group of mostly teenage suburban drug users who, when trying to collect a $1,200 debt from Ben Markowitz, kidnapped and later killed his younger stepbrother, Nicholas. After holding the 15-year-old for a few days, Hollywood decided he didn't want to face charges related to the abduction; planning he'd never be found, Nicholas was walked into a park, shot and buried. Hollywood himself was not at the scene when the murder occurred.

If the crime sounds familiar, that's because it was the basis for the 2006 film "Alpha Dog," starring Emile Hirsch as the Hollywood-esque character and Justin Timberlake.

This was the fourth trial in the case. Each of the other defendants has been convicted; one has been released after serving time, another has been sentenced to life in prison, and the man who pulled the trigger is on death row. Hollywood evaded capture by California authorities and lived as a fugitive in Brazil for four years before his 2005 apprehension.

Some of the most compelling coverage of the trial has come from Natasha Vargas-Cooper, who grew up with Nicholas Markowitz in West Hills and has been writing about her memories and the proceedings for The Awl. From her posts there:

I grew up with Nick Markowitz. We had a three-day hand-holding affair the summer of 7th grade. He was a part of my tight circle of goofy theater kid friends who were transformed into a traumatized fraternity after his murder....

Nick was lanky, awkward, and emotional. I remember giving him several tight hugs during our friendship while he would sob because he was distraught. Nick was handsome and funny but he never fit in, though he was eager to.

As we got older, Nick became increasingly out of sorts with the dorky drama crowd. He became more shy, more conscious of the high school pecking order. His older step-brother Ben, a thug in the neighborhood, was letting Nick kick around with his group of friends more frequently. Ben’s friends were a cluster of older, small-time drug dealers. I imagine it was difficult for Nick to alternate between drinking with tattooed twenty-year-olds to staying after school so he could practice mime with a bunch of 13-year-old thespians.

So by the end of freshmen year, Nick had dropped out of drama. I felt betrayed that he chose a group of dope-slanging outsiders over us. I snubbed him when he greeted me with a huge smile...
[District Attorney] Lynn asked how much force Hollywood used when he pinned [Nick Markowitz] against a tree, while his previously-convicted accomplices William Skidmore and Jesse Rugge punched Nick in the stomach before they threw him in the van.

Hollywood explained that he had to use a significant amount of strength because “Nick is taller than me."

“Nick was taller than you. He was taller than you, Mr. Hollywood,” Lynn said...

Whatever humanizing counter-narrative Hollywood was expected to create while telling a story that we have waited to hear for nearly a decade—well, none of it materialized.

summer nelson

An Idaho woman face charges that she had sex with a 14-year-old boy that she was hired to watch in August 2007.

KXLY-TV reported Tuesday that 28-year-old Summer Nelson, of Post Falls, was charged Monday with four counts of lewd conduct with a child.

Court records say Nelson was a friend of the boy's mother. Police say the abuse was reported in December 2008, after the boy's mother grew suspicious of Nelson's attention Nelson toward the boy.

Investigators say Nelson told the boy's siblings that she was in love with their brother. Detectives say Nelson and the boy had at least four sexual encounters.

Nelson remains held in Kootenai County Jail on $50,000 bond. It was not immediately known whether she had a lawyer.

Slain SC serial killing suspect had long rap sheet

GAFFNEY, S.C. – The serial killer who terrorized a South Carolina community by shooting five people to death before police killed him Monday was a career criminal paroled just two months ago, authorities said.

Patrick Burris, 41, was shot to death by officers investigating a burglary complaint at a home in Gastonia, N.C., 30 miles from where the killing spree started June 27. Ballistics tests showed his gun matched the one used to kill residents in and around Gaffney over six days last week, said State Law Enforcement Division Chief Reggie Lloyd.

Investigators did not have an address for Burris. While evidence left no doubt he was the killer, they still had no idea why he did it.

"He was unpredictable. He was scary. He was weird," said SLED Deputy Director Neil Dolan.

Burris had a long rap sheet filled with convictions for larceny, forgery and breaking and entering in states across the Southeast, includingFlorida, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland. He had been paroled from a North Carolina prison in April after serving nearly eight years for felony breaking and entering and larceny.

"Look at this," Lloyd said, waving a stapled copy of Burris' criminal record. "This is like 25 pages. At some point the criminal justice system is going to need to explain why this suspect was out on the street."

Gaffney farmer Sam Howell, 61, was among dozens of people from Cherokee County who came to the news conference where authorities identified Burris.

"My prayers were answered. He got what he deserved," Howell said. "He scared the hell out of everyone. I guess we can feel better but we've lost some of our innocence."

The mystery ended in Gastonia early Monday after Mike and Terry Valentine called police to report a suspicious sport utility vehicle in their neighborhood.

They were on edge because the Gaffney serial killer was just a short drive away.

They watched two people who sometimes visit the neighboring home get out of the vehicle, followed by a third man who matched the description of the killer: tall, heavyset, unshaven and wearing a baseball cap. The man appeared to be very drunk, Mike Valentine said.

When officers went inside, Terri Valentine said she heard someone yell "put it down" and heard a gunshot.

Then "bam, bam, bam, bam. Next thing I know, all of Gaston County was here," she said.

Gaston County police said the other two people were in custody, but did not indicate whether they were facing charges.

The Gaffney killings happened in a 10-mile area over six days. Peach farmer Kline Cash, 63, was killed June 27 and 83-year-old Hazel Linder and her daughter, 50-year-old Gena Linder Parker, were found bound and shot in the older woman's home four days later. The next day, Stephen Tyler and his 15-year-old daughter Abby were found shot in their family's furniture store.

The investigation isn't over, and Cherokee County Sheriff Bill Blanton said investigators will trace the suspect's recent activities and trying to figure out if he has killed other people in other places.

"Now we have someone we can focus on," Blanton said.

He said he hopes the arrest calms the fears of 54,000 people in the county 50 miles west of Charlotte, N.C., known for its peach orchards and mills.

"We feel the victims' pain," Blanton said. "This isn't over. We're just changing gears."

U.S., Russia agree to missile cuts, but tensions remain

MOSCOW — Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev on Monday agreed to cut up to a third of the nuclear warheads in their strategic arsenals, but acknowledged that disagreements linger about a proposed U.S. missile defense shield.

Obama and Medvedev stressed that the proposal marked a turn away from the post-Cold War lows of the past few years.

In addition to the conversation about nuclear weapons, Russia said that it would begin allowing the U.S. to ship arms for Afghanistanthrough the country. Russia and the U.S. also are resuming military-to-military cooperation, a process suspended after the Russia - Georgia war last summer.

Speaking to reporters during Obama's first trip here as president, both men said that they were determined to put the tensions of recent years behind them.

"It is not a simple job, because the backlog of problems is quite impressive," Medvedev said.

Obama said relations have "suffered from a sense of drift," but he and Medvedev were "committed to leaving behind the suspicion and the rivalry of the past."

The recent past includes Russia's invasion of one U.S. ally — Georgia — in August and suspension of gas supplies to another — Ukraine — in January.

The two men, dressed in dark suits and red ties, smiled at each other several times during their news conference in an ornate Kremlin hall, and each nodded frequently in agreement as the other spoke.

The presidents said they'll instruct their negotiators to agree on new limits for strategic, or long-range, warheads to between 1,500 and 1,675 by extending the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which is set to expire in December.

Although the numbers were framed as major news, the figures weren't far from those discussed in recent months. When Obama and Medvedev met in London in April, they said they were aiming for levels below those set by a 2002 treaty that called for 1,700 to 2,200 warheads by 2012. The U.S. is now thought to have about 2,200 deployed strategic warheads and Russia more than 2,700.

The announcement was "a modest step" in the right direction, said Morton Halperin , a former adviser on arms control in the Clinton, Nixon and Johnson administrations. It's "the right way to begin" a new relationship, he said.

For one afternoon in Moscow — a capital used to acrimonious exchange with the U.S. — observers on both sides of the political divide were pleased with the news.

"The new deal is not a breakthrough," said Andrei Kortunov, the president of the New Eurasia Foundation , a Western-leaning research organization in Moscow , "but we have to admit that, at the moment, it is very important to create positively developing relations."

Vyacheslov Igrunov, who heads a government-friendly research organization in Moscow , the Institute of Humanitarian and Political Studies , said the treaty "may be insufficient, but the very fact of making a new deal, a step forward, should not be underestimated."

One cloud over arms control is the split between the U.S. and Russia over a missile defense system the Bush administration proposed in Poland and the Czech Republic .

The U.S. maintains that such a system could counter at most a small number of missiles fired from Iran orNorth Korea , not a Russian onslaught.

"There is no scenario from our perspective in which this missile defense system would provide any protection against a mighty Russian arsenal," Obama said Monday.

The Kremlin maintains that any anti-missile system close to Russian borders might be expanded to the point that it could counter Russia's nuclear force.

Obama, who's been skeptical about missile defense in the past, said he hoped to convince the Russian leadership otherwise, but added that, "It's going to take some hard work because it requires breaking down long-standing suspicions."

In a joint statement issued later, the two leaders agreed to some modest steps to bridge the gap. They said they would take steps to set up a data exchange center leading to a missile-launch notification system.

In addition, the statement said, experts from each country will conduct a joint review of "the entire spectrum of means at our disposal that allow us to cooperate on monitoring the development of missile programs around the world" — raising the question of whether Russia would be willing to integrate into an American missile defense web.

Gleb Pavlovsky , an analyst in Moscow who's close to the Kremlin, said that the progress with START is encouraging, but Russian leadership remains very cautious about American designs, despite Obama administration rhetoric about building stronger ties.

"This is a sphere of testing the intentions of the United States and their ability to make deals," said Pavlovsky, who has a large picture of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on one wall of his office, and one of Karl Marx on the other. "The question is what is expected of us? Do they want us to adopt the American agenda as our own? Or do they want to reach a mutual agenda?"

For the Americans, there is equal uncertainty, much of it swirling around the question of whether the reformist posture at times taken by Medvedev is authentic. The Russian president has said that he wants to move against corruption in his country, and toward a more open government that cooperates on a wide range of issues with the U.S.

Putin, widely regarded as the most powerful man in Russia , has struck a harder line, lashing out against the West repeatedly during his eight year presidency and in the past year as prime minister.

In an interview with the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta published Monday, Obama said that, "I agree withPresident Medvedev when he said that 'Freedom is better than the absence of freedom.' So, I see no reason why we cannot aspire together to strengthen democracy, human rights, and the rule of law as part of our 'reset.'"

The setting of the interview was symbolic: Novaya Gazeta has carried articles critical of the Russian government and four of its reporters have been murdered.

It remains to be seen, however, whether this will be the start of a new, more stable relationship between Washington and Moscow .

"It's like reading tea leaves or trying to figure out which way the wind is blowing . . . I think the answer is we're not going to know for a long time," said Sarah Mendelson , a senior Russian expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies . "I think there are people in and around the Kremlin who want to see a new and different relationship with the U.S. And I'm sure there are people who don't."

Mendelson, who helped organize a summit this week for U.S. and Russian civil society leaders in Moscow , said that even the hint of an opening is worth pursuing.

"We have a unique moment and we'd be silly not to try to take advantage of it," she said.