Colorado
Suburban woman pleads guilty in terror case
DENVER (AP) - A 19-year-old suburban Denver woman who federal authorities say intended to wage jihad despite their repeated attempts to stop her pleaded guilty Wednesday to trying to help the Islamic State militant group in Syria under a plea deal that requires her to help authorities find others with the same intentions.
Shannon Conley, appearing in a striped jail jumpsuit and a brown and black headscarf, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. She said nothing except noting that she understood the plea and its ramifications.
The agreement says she must cooperate with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies and provide information about other people in Colorado and elsewhere looking to help terrorists abroad. If she cooperates, prosecutors have promise to ask for a reduction in her sentence but the decision would ultimately would be up to a judge.
Conley was arrested in April while trying to board a flight at Denver International Airport that she hoped would ultimately get her to Syria, authorities said. She was charged with trying to help a terrorist organization and could face up to five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine.
The trained nurse's aide from Arvada, Colorado, told agents from the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force that if she couldn't fight with the Islamic State group, she hoped to use her nursing skills to help the extremists, according to court documents.
In several meetings over eight months, FBI agents repeatedly tried to discourage Conley, suggesting she explore humanitarian work instead.
But Conley, a Muslim convert whose traditional headscarf stood out in her suburban neighborhood, told them she planned to marry a suitor she met online, a man she believed was Tunisian and fought with the Islamic State group, which controls parts of Syria and Iraq.
FBI agents encouraged Conley's parents to talk to her about finding more moderate beliefs. Her father refused to let her marry her suitor and then discovered a one-way airline ticket to Turkey with her name on it.
Authorities have said they are still investigating the suitor, identified in court documents only as Y.M.
South Carolina
Dad charged with murder in death of his 5 children
LEXINGTON, S.C. (AP) - A South Carolina man killed his five children, ages 1 to 8, then dumped their bodies wrapped in trash bags in a secluded clearing along a rural road in Alabama, authorities said Wednesday.
Timothy Ray Jones Jr., 32, will be charged with five counts of murder, and officials believe he acted alone, Acting Sheriff Lewis McCarty of Lexington County said. Authorities think all five children were killed at the same time, but they said they don't yet know how or why. Autopsies are scheduled to begin Thursday.
Jones was stopped at a traffic checkpoint in Mississippi on Saturday and he was acting strangely, authorities said. A deputy spotted bleach, blood and children's clothes in his Cadillac Escalade, authorities said. It would be another three days before the children's bodies were discovered.
Jones was taken into custody and charged with drunken driving. When authorities ran his license plate, they discovered Jones and his five children had been reported missing by their mother, authorities said.
On Tuesday, Jones began cooperating and led authorities to the bodies off a dirt road in central Alabama and they discovered the bodies.
The children were last seen Aug. 28.
The case has unfolded over the past two weeks, covering five states and about 700 miles in what the sheriff called a "logistical nightmare."
New York
DA OKs hearing on evidence in sex abuse case
MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) - Prosecutors have agreed to an evidence hearing in a 1980s sex abuse case that was the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary.
The Nassau County district attorney's office said Wednesday it's confident Jesse Friedman's conviction will be upheld.
His lawyers say witnesses were coached to lie. The hearing has not yet been scheduled.
The case was the topic of the film "Capturing the Friedmans."
Friedman and his father pleaded guilty in 1988 to abusing 13 children taking computer classes at their Great Neck home. Friedman later said he accepted the deal to avoid a life sentence. He was released from prison in 2001 and has fought to clear his name since.
Friedman is also suing District Attorney Kathleen Rice for defamation. Her spokesman calls the lawsuit meritless.
Florida
Judge denies man a new trial in murder case
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) - A judge denied a new trial for a Miami man convicted of murdering a University of Florida student in a fit of jealous rage.
Lawyers for 20-year-old Pedro Bravo requested a new trial Tuesday after statements by an attorney for Bravo's onetime cellmate Michael Angelo, a key prosecution witness.
Angelo's attorney Margaret Stack said State Attorney Bill Cervone called her seeking information about where Bravo had buried the body of 18-year-old Christian Aguilar.
The Gainesville Sun reports Cervone denied asking Stack for Angelo's help, saying she called him with the information.
Bravo's attorney Michael Ruppert asked for a new trial, saying he would have used that information at trial. The request was denied.
Bravo is in prison for life without parole after a jury found him guilty of Aguilar's murder.
Georgia
Prosecutors rest in trial of three peanut producers
ALBANY, Ga. (AP) - Federal prosecutors have rested their case in the trial of three peanut producers charged in a deadly national salmonella outbreak traced to a rural Georgia plant.
Prosecutors spent more than a month calling witnesses before they rested Wednesday in the U.S. District Court trial of former Peanut Corporation of America owner Stewart Parnell, his brother, Michael Parnell, and the plant's former quality assurance manager, Mary Wilkerson.
Stewart Parnell's lead attorney told the judge he plans to call no defense witnesses. Defense lawyers for the other two said they will present witnesses. The trial began Aug. 1.
The Parnell brothers are charged with shipping contaminated peanuts and covering up positive salmonella tests. Wilkerson is charged with obstructing justice. Nine Americans died and 714 got sick in the outbreak five years ago.
