Special Archived Reports

MADISON, South Dakota – A jockstrap pulled over a student sports manager's head in a high school locker room more than 50 years ago provoked a 73-year-old South Dakota man to fatally shoot his long-ago classmate, a prosecutor said Friday.

Carl Ericsson of Watertown, who last month pleaded guilty but mentally ill to second-degree murder, was sentenced to life in prison Friday. Ericsson was charged in the Jan. 31 killing of retired Madison High School teacher and track coach Norman Johnson, who was shot twice in the face as he answered his front door.

Kenneth Meyer, the Lake County state's attorney, said Ericsson has indicated that the decades-old locker room incident led to the shootin

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A billionaire hedge-fund manager on Friday pledged to protect 90,000 acres of his Colorado ranch from further development as part of a much larger planned conservation area. The Obama administration said it would be the "largest single conservation easement" ever provided to the federal government.

The easement, which would include tax benefits for New York-based Louis Bacon, provides "the foundation for the proposed new Sangre de Cristo Conservation Area," the Interior Department announced.

Should the conservation area happen, Bacon said Friday, "I will place approximately 90,000 currently unprotected acres of the Blanca portion of Trinchera Ranch into a conservation easement."

In

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When a student who won a scholarship for African-American students walked to the stage at a Riverside, Calif., high school to pick up his award, the audience laughed nervously. The student, Jeffrey Warren, was white.

Warren, 17, a recent graduate of Riverside's King High School, won a $1,000 scholarship sponsored by Riverside's Martin Luther King Senior Citizens Club. While a cover letter to guidance counselors indicated that the award was intended only for black students, the application merely "encourage[d] African-American students to apply," according to King High School Principal Darel Hansen.

The morning after the ceremony, Warren returned the money. Since then, his story has mad

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MIDDLEBOROUGH, Mass. -- Residents in Middleborough have voted to make the foul-mouthed among them pay fines for swearing in public.

At a town meeting Monday night, residents voted 183-50 to approve a proposal from the police chief to impose a $20 fine on public profanity.

Officials insist the proposal was not intended to censor casual or private conversations, but instead to crack down on loud, profanity-laden language used by teens and other young people in the downtown area and public parks.

I'm really happy about it," Mimi Duphily, a store owner and former town selectwoman, said after the vote. "I'm sure there's going to be some fallout, but I think what we did was necessary."

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SAN FRANCISCO -- When James Lee Crummel hanged himself in his San Quentin Prison cell last month, he had been living on Death Row for almost eight years – and he was still years away from facing the executioner.

California's automatic death penalty appeals take so long that the state's 723 condemned inmates are more likely to die of old age and infirmities _or kill themselves – than be put to death.

Since capital punishment was reinstated in 1978, California has executed 13 inmates, and none since 2006. But 20 have committed suicide, including Crummel, who abducted, sexually abused and killed a 13-year-old boy on his way to school in 1979. Another 57 inmates have died of natural causes

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Multiple people were shot at an apartment complex near Auburn University during an altercation possibly precipitated by a dispute over a woman, Alabama media reported Sunday.

The shooting happened late Saturday night at the University Heights apartments, a large complex near campus where many of Auburn University's students and athletes live. Auburn police would not say how many people were struck or what their conditions were. More information was expected to be released at a press conference late Sunday morning.

Various media reports said at least one and as many as three people people died.

Two former Auburn football players and one current player were among the shooting victims

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Let's face it, high school can be tough. Now imagine going through those four years without the stability of a family, home or running water and heat. That's what 18-year-old Dawn Loggins remembers growing up. Her parents were constantly getting evicted from home after home in small-towns in North Carolina. Her step dad running from law enforcement and her mom was constantly unemployed.

The teenager had nightmares police would storm in the middle of the night to kick her family out on the streets.

That was until one day her parents decided to move to Tennessee while she living in Raleigh taking summer classes at the Governor’s School of North Carolina. She came home, they were gone. Ce

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Bob Welch, a former member of Fleetwood Mac who went on to write songs and record several hits during a solo career, died Thursday of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. He was 65.

Police spokesman Don Aaron said Welch's wife found him with a chest wound at their south Nashville home around 12:15 p.m.

Welch was a guitarist and vocalist for Fleetwood Mac from 1971 to 1974. He formed the British rock group Paris in 1976, and had hits including "Sentimental Lady" in 1977 and "Ebony Eyes" in 1978. Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham did backup vocals on "Sentimental Lady."

Aaron said Welch apparently had had health issues recently. He said

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Three men were found shot dead inside a parked vehicle a block away from the Columbia University campus in Morningside Heights Thursday evening, authorities said.

The three victims are in their 20s and 30s and were found inside a 2009 BMW parked near Claremont Avenue and West 122nd Street, police said. They appear to have been killed inside the car, as no windows in the car were shattered.

They were not believed to be affiliated with the university.

Two of the victims were found in the front seats of the car, and were shot in the head or neck; the third was found in the rear passenger seat and was shot in the left temple, according to NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.

Francisco Ortiz,

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TEMPE, Ariz. — An SUV found burning in the desert with five bodies inside was registered to the home of a missing family of five, including three children, police in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe said Tuesday.

An acquaintance of the Butwin family told police on Monday that he was concerned about them after receiving a note from James Butwin with instructions on how to operate his construction business without him, Tempe police Sgt. Jeff Glover said.

Investigators went to the Butwin home and found "suspicious and concerning" evidence, but not the Butwins, and began treating the case as a murder-suicide. The family's white Ford Expedition also was gone.

Glover declined to specify what t

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