Crime Time

1-year-old dies in hot car, mother faces charges

A 22-year-old mother who works as a waitress at a Phoenix area Hooters restaurant has been booked into Maricopa County jail and faces a felony negligent homicide charge after her 1-year-old son was found dead, locked inside her hot car at the restaurant's parking lot.

Police say the woman, Ashly Duchene, right, usually drops the boy off at a day-care center on her way to work, but failed to do so on Tuesday. Temperatures in Phoenix hit nearly 90 degrees Tuesday.

-- Lance Murray

911 call captures daughters' wild ride with drunken dad

Here's a gripping television report from Albuquerque television station KOB about two hysterical daughters using a cell phone to call 911, trying to get their drunken father to slow down as he speeds along a New Mexico highway. He reaches speeds of around 100 mph during the call, during which a 911 operator tries to calm the girls. Click the video player to hear the 911 tape.

-- Lance Murray

Man held on intoxication manslaughter charge

Felipe Molina Escobedo, 44, of Dallas, right, is being held at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center in Dallas, accused of intoxication manslaughter in the traffic death Monday of a Garland man.

He is being held on a $25,000 bond.

Manuel G. Trevino, 47, was identified by the Dallas County medical examiner's office.

Police said Trevino was killed Monday in collision between his motorcycle and the pickup truck driven by Escobedo. Trevino died 12 days away from his 48th birthday, according to records.

The incident was reported at 4:42 p.m. near the intersection of Munger Boulevard and Columbia Avenue, about a mile north of Fair Park, police said.

Trevino was riding a motorcycle east on Columbia when a gray Chevrolet S-10 pickup struck him, said Lt. Vernon Hale, police spokesman.

Hale said the driver of the pickup, later identified as Escobedo, "attempted to flee the scene and was apprehended by several good Samaritans 4-5 blocks away."

"The driver," he added, "was held by citizens until police arrived."

-- Bill Miller

Girl's body washes ashore in plastic storage box

Authorities in Galveston are trying to determine the identity and cause of death of a 3- to 5-year-old girl whose remains washed ashore inside a plastic storage box Monday night.

The body was decomposed, but an initial autopsy determined that she had at least one skull fracture. The girl was blonde and wore a matching pink pullover top and broom skirt.

Officials are seeking help from anyone who might have information about her identity.

-- Lance Murray

Doomed woman: Online ad "seemed kind of strange"

A 24-year-old Minnesota woman who was shot to death after she answered an online advertisement for a nanny told her roommate that the person who placed the ad "seemed kind of strange," but went to meet that person in Savage, Minn., anyway.

Katherine Ann Olson thought she would be meeting a woman or a couple who had placed the ad on craigslist.com, an online classified advertising site. Instead, police say, she met Michael John Anderson. Police have charged Anderson, 19, with shooting Olson in the back and stuffing her body in the trunk of her car. The car, with her body still in the trunk, was later discovered abandoned at a park.

-- Lance Murray

Man in office cubicle accidentally shoots himself

It wasn't just another day at the office for one worker at a Lake Worth insurance company who, police say took his gun to work.

As he sat in his cubicle, the .45-caliber pistol that was in his jacket pocket fired.

The bullet passed through both his legs and lodged into the wall of a co-worker's cubicle. He was taken to the hospital for treatment of his wounds and police say they'll wait until he's recovered to decide whether charges will be filed.

--Alex Branch

Police hope science IDs woman slain 30 years ago

She was killed along with her full-term fetus, dismembered, stuffed into three suitcases and then thrown off a bridge toward the river below near Weatherly, Pa.

The suitcases missed the river and two of them cracked open on impact.

Police never could identify the woman and have never solved the crime that happened in December 1976. Known only as "Beth Doe," she was buried along with the baby. But now, officials have exhumed the bodies of the woman and her child, hoping that modern DNA testing and forensic methods will help solve the mystery. Read about the case here.

-- Lance Murray

A tale of heads that caused quite a buzz

Many unusual news items cross our desk each day, but few have caused as much comment in the newsroom as today's story about 20 human heads being found in the back of a tractor-trailer rig during a traffic stop by Royse City police at 2:30 a.m. Sunday.

The heads were part of a shipment of medical supplies and equipment from Fort Worth back to the Little Rock, Ark., company that provided them for medical instruction. Everything was on the up-and-up and it was a legal, documented shipment.

Only goes to show, though, that police can encounter nearly anything on a dark road in the middle of the night while enforcing the speed laws. Staff writer Bill Miller reports that Royse City Police Lt. Jim Baker hopes people will keep the incident in perspective.

"I'm trying to keep this from becoming a Halloween story," he told Miller.

-- Lance Murray

Teen charged in slaying of woman who answered online ad

A Minnesota teenager has been charged with second-degree murder in connection with the shooting death of a woman who had answered an online classified advertisement for a nanny.

Katherine Anne Olson, 24, of Minneapolis, was shot in the back at the home of Michael John Anderson, 19, in Savage, Minn., where she had gone in response to an ad on craigslist.com. Her body was found in the trunk of her car, which had been abandoned at a park just blocks from Anderson's house.

Anderson says he was present when she was killed, but he says he was slain by a friend "who thought it would be funny."

-- Lance Murray

Sans pants, this burglar was easy for cops to find

Keep your pants on! That's good advice, especially if you're a burglar.

But an intruder in West Bend, Wis., lost his britches during a scuffle with a homeowner and that made it easy for police to nab him. All they had to do was find the guy in the tall grass wearing a hoodie and red boxer shorts.

-- Lance Murray