Accused killer says he killed Ohio couple in '77

New York (News Today) - A man who wrote about his life as a career criminal in his autobiography has confessed to a 33-year-old double homicide, authorities in Ohio said Tuesday.

Edward W. Edwards, 76, who is awaiting trial on murder charges in a separate case in Wisconsin, admitted killing a young Ohio couple in 1977, the Summit County prosecutor's office and the Norton, Ohio, police department announced in a statement.

According to police and prosecutors, Edwards said he killed William Lavaco, 21, and Judith Straub, 18. Their bodies were found in a Sterling, Ohio, park on August 8, 1977. Police said the couple had been shot point-blank in the neck with a 20-gauge shotgun.

Jeff Straub, who was 9 years old when his sister was killed, said he waited decades for this day. "After the first 10 years it was very improbable that there was ever going to be any justice in this case," Straub told CNN. "But I never completely gave up hope for Judy's sake."

Authorities said charges have not yet been filed against Edwards in the case as they are "reviewing their options" and have asked the public for help with information.

Detectives are trying to corroborate Edwards' confession, Norton Police Chief Thad Hete told CNN .

"Our investigators have taken the evidence that was retrieved from the crime scene in 1977 and are meeting with the crime lab to see if they can extract some DNA that matches that of Edwards," Hete said.

Years of not knowing who killed his sister haunted him and his family, Jeff Straub said.

"You knew the killer was out there and you didn't know where," he said. "I wondered if they could possibly be here in the same store or driving down the same street. You just wonder: Could that be the person that possibly killed my sister?"

Chief Hete said his investigation is in its earliest stages. "We're nowhere near the finish line in this case," Hete said. "His admissions and his statements will be looked at thoroughly. For peace of mind, it's imperative that we exhaust all our resources."

Edwards wrote an autobiography in 1972 titled, "Metamorphosis of a Criminal: The True Life Story of Ed Edwards." The book chronicled his criminal activities, which included robbery, theft and arson, according to police.

He is awaiting trial in Wisconsin in June for the 1980 slayings of two 19-year-olds, whose bodies were found in a cornfield, authorities said.

While Edwards is getting attention, Jeff Straub wants people to know about his sister Judy.

"This subject, he's getting a lot of publicity now and telling his side of the story, but Judy can't be here so I have to be strong and represent her ... so that she would be proud of me," Straub said.

"She was an all-American girl. She had blond hair, blue eyes, very pretty girl," Straub said. "At the funeral I remember people were lined up out the door and down the street."

"Everybody loved her, I had never heard anybody say a bad word about her," he said, adding that he "couldn't ask for a sister you could be more proud of."

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Lacrosse player killed in fight after breakup

(News Today) - A University of Virginia lacrosse player charged with killing a member of the women's lacrosse team told investigators he had a violent fight with her, according to a search warrant affidavit released Tuesday.

George Huguely, 22, was arrested hours after a roommate found Yeardly Love's body Monday morning in her off-campus apartment in Charlottesville, Virginia.

A relationship between Love, also 22, and Huguely had just ended, Charlottesville Police Det. Lisa Reeves wrote in a sworn statement used to obtain a search warrant.

"George Huguely admitted on May 3, 2010 that he was involved in an altercation with Yeardly Love and that during the course of the altercation he shook Love and her head repeatedly hit the wall," Reeves wrote.

Love had "a large bruise on the right side of her face which appears to have been caused by blunt force trauma," according to the document. She was found face-down in a pool of blood.

Love and Huguely played on their school's highly ranked lacrosse teams, which are preparing for the NCAA championship tournaments later this month.

Huguely made his first appearance before a judge on a first-degree murder charge via video from county jail Tuesday morning. His lawyer did not request bond.

"We are confident that Ms. Love's death was not intended, but an accident with a tragic outcome," defense attorney Francis Lawrence said after the hearing.

Huguely admitted to kicking open the door to Love's bedroom after he found her apartment door unlocked, according to the detective's affidavit.

Huguely, who waived his Miranda rights to not talk to police, also admitted he took her computer from her apartment, Reeves wrote. It was later found by police after he told them where he disposed of it, she said.

Police were initially called by Love's roommate, who reported "a possible alcohol overdose," Police Chief Tim Longo said.

"It was quickly apparent to them this young lady was the victim of something far worse," Longo said.

Investigators "fairly quickly" focused on Huguely, of Chevy Chase, Maryland, as a suspect, he said.

Love "suffered visible physical trauma. However, the specific cause of death is undetermined pending an autopsy," Longo said.

"That she appears now to have been murdered by another student compounds this sense of loss by suggesting that Yeardley died without comfort or consolation from those closest to her," University President John Casteen said. "We know no explanation of what appears now to have happened."

Huguely's family issued a statement Tuesday morning through his lawyer. "Grief has descended on this community as we attempt to understand what happened and why," the statement said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with those who grieve this terrible loss."

The University of Virginia's men's lacrosse squad is the top-ranked team in the nation. The women's team is ranked fourth. The championship tournaments start May 14.

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1 police officer killed, several wounded in Detroit

(News Terupdate) - A well-respected veteran Detroit, Michigan, police officer was gunned down early Monday, the first time in about five years a city officer has been killed in the line of duty, the city police chief said.

Police responded to an early Monday complaint of shots fired. They were met by someone armed with a handgun who shot at the officers when they arrived at a house, Chief Warren Evans told reporters.

The slain officer was shot several times. Four other officers and the alleged perpetrator were shot and were at a hospital, Evans said.

The four wounded officers were struck in the hands and legs. Where the suspect was shot was not disclosed.

"It's a tough time for all of us," Evans told reporters.

He didn't identify the officer, but Evans said he was a "great police officer, loved by almost everyone here."

Additional coverage from CNN affiliate WDIV

Evans said he had been on the job around 12 years and "certainly wasn't a rookie."

The slain officer leaves a widow and a 10-year-old son, officials said. Mayor Dave Bing, who met with the widow, said he apologized to her and knows she is in pain.

"I surely hope that the citizens here who know things, that can help the police department, that we need to come together as a city to stop this madness," Bing said.

Police have secured the scene and found drugs in the house, which may have been an abandoned structure.

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Religious persecution is widespread, report warns

(News Terupdate) - The numbers are shocking: 12,000 people killed in a cycle of violence between Christians and Muslims stretching back more than a decade.

The location: Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa, lying on the continent's fault line between the largely Muslim north and predominantly Christian south.

The number of people convicted and sentenced for the killings: Zero.

That's just one of many stark assessments about the level of religious persecution around the world today in a huge new report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

The report names more than two dozen countries as offenders. Some engage in what's classically thought of as religious persecution.

Egypt, for example, not only imprisons members of the Baha'i faith and members of minority Muslim sects, but also has some fired from their jobs, kicked out of universities and barred from having bank accounts, driver's licenses, even birth certificates, according to the report.

Other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, export "extremist ideology," the commission charges. But the kind of religious persecution seen in Nigeria and some other countries is "equally egregious," the report says. "Many governments fail to punish religiously motivated violence perpetrated by private actors," it says, warning that "impunity... often leads to endless cycles of sectarian violence."

It calls Nigeria "a tragic case in point," saying that in the most recent outbreak of killing in Nigeria's Jos State several months ago, 500 "men, women and children were hacked to death with machetes and then dumped into wells.

"Not a single criminal, Muslim or Christian, has been convicted and sentenced in Nigeria's ten years of religious violence," the report claims.

The commission did have limited praise for Nigeria's government, saying that when an USCRIF team went to the African nation in March, it found officials "attentive and even grateful for its concerns."

The Ministry of Justice filed 41 prosecutions while the American team was in Nigeria, the report said. Even so, the commission recommended that the United States include Nigeria on a list of 13 nations called "countries of particular concern" which engage in "severe violations of religious freedom."

CNN has reached out to the governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria for comment, but has so far not received a response to the report.

The other countries were North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Myanmar (also known as Burma) and Iraq. (Commissioners were not unanimous in including Iraq on the list.)

That's five more countries than are on the State Department's "countries of particular concern" list from its 2009 report on religious freedom. That list doesn't include Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkmenistan or Vietnam.

The list is similar to one compiled recently by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, but not identical. The Washington-based think tank put out a global survey of restrictions on religion in December. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Egypt, Myanmar/Burma, the Maldives, Eritrea, Malaysia and Brunei topped that list of countries with the most government restrictions on religion.

More than two out of three people around the world live in countries with high or very high restrictions on religion, the Pew Forum concluded.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom studied only 28 countries, but since it is a congressionally mandated body, its recommendations can have significantly more impact than those of the Pew Forum.

Designation as a "country of particular concern" can prompt concrete action from the United States, such as restrictions on arms exports or other trade.

But in reality, the government often waives or circumvents sanctions on countries of strategic importance, such as Saudi Arabia and China, a chart in the USCRIF report shows.

The commission report also has a watch list of countries which "require very close attention." That list includes Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Laos, Russia, Somalia, Tajikistan, Turkey and Venezuela.

It recommends that three other countries -- Bangladesh, Kazakhstan and Sri Lanka -- be "closely monitored."

Many of the incidents which worry the commission made international headlines in the past year, including China's crackdown on Uyghur Muslims in the west of the country, and Iran's labeling its domestic political opponents "enemies of God" -- a capital offense.

But others are ongoing problems that often attract little attention, such as Eritrea's harrassment of Orthodox Church members and Jehovah's Witnesses, or the imprisonment of Buddhists and Protestants in Vietnam.

The report also criticizes the United States government itself for not doing enough to fight the problem.

"Neither prior Democratic nor Republican administrations, nor the current administration, have been sufficiently engaged in promoting the freedom of religion or belief abroad," the commissioners charge.

The commission based its report on visits to some of the countries at issue, meetings with bodies such as the European Union and the Vatican, news reports and the findings of government agencies and international organizations ranging from the American Islamic Conference to the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society.

The paper published Thursday is the 11th annual report since the commission was established by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act.

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Report: Trainer killed by whale momentarily freed herself in struggle

Orlando, Florida (News Terupdate) - The SeaWorld trainer killed by a whale in February fought to free herself from the animal after he caught her hair, a sheriff's report said.

Dawn Brancheau, 40, was working with a whale named Tilikum on February 24 when the animal pulled her underwater in front of shocked onlookers at SeaWorld of Orlando's Shamu Stadium.

The Orange County Sheriff's Office said Wednesday that Brancheau and Tilikum interacted "nose-to-nose" when her hair floated on the water into the animal's mouth.

She briefly freed herself and tried to swim to the surface, but her efforts were thwarted when the 12,000-pound animal struck her.

An autopsy report confirms that Brancheau died of drowning and traumatic injuries.

Tilikum has been linked to two other deaths. In 1991, he and two other whales were involved in the drowning of a trainer at a Victoria, British Columbia, marine park. In 1999, Tilikum was blamed for the death of a 27-year-old man whose body was found floating in a tank at SeaWorld.

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Somalia rebels battle pirates, government troops

Mogadishu, Somalia (News Terupdate) - Islamist rebels advanced on a pirate haven in central Somalia and battled government troops in Mogadishu in a clash that killed at least 10 people, ambulance crews and a local journalist reported Sunday.

Fighters from the al Qaeda-linked militia al-Shabaab were advancing on Harardhere, the pirate stronghold on the Somali coast, a local journalist in contact with pirate sources told CNN. The pirates recently captured a boat loaded with weapons from Yemen that were intended for the militia, and had stopped paying bribes to the Islamists, said the journalist, whose identity is not being disclosed for security reasons.

The journalist said a spokesman for al-Shabaab, which is trying to topple Somalia's U.N.-backed transitional government, said the Islamists are only a few kilometers from Harardhere. The journalist reported that the pirates appeared to be retreating from Harardhere to the port town of Hobyo, Somalia with their captured ships.

No further details were immediately available, and the European Union naval force that patrols the waters off Somalia said it had no information about the situation.

U.N. reports have found that Yemen is a source for arms shipments into Somalia despite a longstanding U.N. embargo on weapons. The Yemeni government, which is battling its own al Qaeda uprising, has attempted to crack down on arms dealing within its territory but also faces an influx of Somali refugees.

The advance on Harardhere, about 430 km (270 miles) north of Mogadishu, came the same day a clash between al-Shabaab fighters and government forces left at least 10 people dead and 40 wounded, ambulance crews reported. Heavy shelling followed an attempt by government troops to ambush al-Shabaab fighters, witnesses reported.

Al-Shabaab has ties to al Qaeda and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, but it has taken control of much of Mogadishu and southern Somalia.

The fighting has escalated a long-running humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa nation, which has not had an effective central government since 1991.

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Obama meets, prays with Rev. Billy Graham

Asheville, North Carolina (News Terupdate) - President Obama prayed Sunday with the Rev. Billy Graham at Graham's mountaintop home before leaving North Carolina to attend the memorial service for 29 West Virginia coal miners killed in a recent explosion.

Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Graham at his family home, according to Graham spokesman Larry Ross. He is the 12th president, dating back to Harry Truman, to meet with the so-called "pastor to the presidents."

"I am pleased to have had President Obama in my home this afternoon," Graham said in a statement, adding that Obama sought the meeting while on vacation in Asheville for the weekend. "My son Franklin and I enjoyed a brief visit with the president, followed by a time of prayer together."

During the meeting, Ross said, Obama shared some insights about his faith and the challenges of being commander-in-chief.

"Like others before him, President Obama shared how lonely, demanding and humbling the office of president can be, and how much he appreciated the counsel of people like Mr. Graham and the prayers of so many citizens," Ross said.

The two men also discussed their love of golf and the city of Chicago, where Graham attended school and held several of his religious crusades, Ross said.

At the end, Graham presented Obama with two Bibles -- one for him and the other for first lady Michelle Obama, Ross said. The two men then prayed together, with Obama first praying for Graham and then Graham "concluded with a prayer for the president, his family and his administration," according to Ross.

Obama was "extremely gratified" that Graham made time for the meeting and private prayer, White House spokesman Bill Burton said.

The visit was a follow-up to Obama's telephone call to Graham on the evangelist's 91st birthday in November, Burton said. At that time, the two agreed to meet as soon as possible, according to Burton.

Ross told CNN the visit came together hastily after the White House officially inquired on Friday, after Obama arrived in North Carolina.

Obama and his family vacationed in Asheville over the weekend, and the first couple played tennis Sunday morning before their departure, Burton said.

The meeting with Graham came three days after the Army rescinded an invitation for Franklin Graham to speak at the Pentagon on the upcoming National Day of Prayer. The Army decision was because of controversial comments about Islam by the younger Graham.

Billy Graham's statement referred to the upcoming event without mentioning the controversy involving his son.

"As we approach the National Day of Prayer on May 6, I want to encourage Christians everywhere to pray for our president, and for all those in positions of authority, and especially for the men and women serving in our military," Graham said in the statement.

In December, Franklin Graham told CNN's Campbell Brown that "true Islam" could not be practiced in America because "you can't beat your wife, you cannot murder your children if you think they've committed adultery or something like that, which they do practice in these other countries."

Franklin Graham later tried to temper his remarks by saying that he had Muslim friends.

Last week, he said he regretted the Army's decision but stood by his comments.

"I don't like the way they treat women, the way they treat minorities. I just find it horrific. But I love the people of Islam," he said, adding some of his work has been in Muslim nations.

The Army, which oversees the National Day of Prayer ceremonies at the Pentagon, feared that if Graham spoke at the Pentagon on May 6, Islamic militants would publicize his comments, potentially fueling tensions in Muslim nations such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are deployed.

Graham's invitation was not the only controversy swirling about the National Day of Prayer this year.

Last week, a federal judge struck down as unconstitutional the 1952 law that established the day, saying it violated the ban on government-backed religion.

On Thursday, the Justice Department informed a federal appeals court that the Obama administration will appeal that decision.

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Obama pays tribute to fallen West Virginia miners

Beckley, West Virginia (News Terupdate) - President Obama paid tribute Sunday to 29 workers killed in an explosion at a West Virginia coal mine earlier this month, saying they died "in pursuit of the American dream."

"All the hard work; all the hardship; all the time spent underground; it was all for their families. ... It was all in the hopes of something better," Obama said during a memorial service for the fallen miners in Beckley, West Virginia.

Obama and Vice President Biden, who were among a group of dignitaries who spoke at the service, met with the workers' families privately before the ceremony.

In his eulogy, delivered from behind a row of 29 white crosses, Obama sought to comfort those loved ones.

"We have been mourning with you throughout these difficult days," he said. "Our hearts have been aching with you."

Biden offered similar words of comfort, saying the fallen miners "represent, what I believe is the heart and soul and spine of this nation," and adding "a nation mourns them."

The April 5 blast at the Upper Big Branch Mine was the worst U.S. mine disaster in nearly 40 years.

Obama ordered a review earlier this month and blamed mine officials for lax regulation and lack of oversight.

On Sunday, he said: "We cannot bring back the 29 men we lost. ... Our task ... is to save lives from being lost in another such tragedy. To do what must be done, individually and collectively, to assure safe conditions underground."

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, who was a constant presence during the recovery efforts at the mine, also spoke at the service, telling the crowd of mourners that it was the day "to begin the healing process."

Manchin said each of the 29 men, like their fathers and grandfathers, had not only a strong commitment to their work, but also "a deep, patriotic pride that the work they did and the energy they produced made America strong and free."

He called on Americans to "say a prayer for every coal miner working today," and to "not only thank them -- but to honor them for their work and their patriotism."

He also made a vow: "After today, we turn our focus on their legacy," he said. "I don't have the answers about why this has happened, but I promise you we will find the answers."

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, echoed that vow during his remarks at the service, saying: "We will pass legislation to meet the requirements of those answers. And we will do it for you, the miners of West Virginia and America."

"West Virginia, all of West Virginia, is in pain, and not without some anger," Rockefeller added. "But we will find our solace and bind together as a community because that is what West Virginians do."

The somber service began with Manchin accompanying families as they lay helmets on top of 29 crosses.

A photo of each of the men killed in the disaster was displayed on large screens, and the crowd applauded for each one.

The service closed on a stirring note, as one by one, each of the headlamps on the symbolic helmets were lighted while a chorus sang "This Light of Mine."

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