Free Republic

A Texas man got 10 years' probation for offering to strangle a suicidal Wisconsin woman whom he met over the Internet, lawyers said on Friday. Frank Manuel, 55, pleaded guilty to attempted murder, and was ordered by State District Judge Carol Davies on Thursday to submit to a psychiatric evaluation and stay away from the Internet. Houston police arrested Manuel in January, after a woman he met in a suicide chat group reported his offer to strangle her during sex, then bury her in a grave in a state forest with a rose on her chest. The woman, with investigators...

Doctor still at work after hiring hitman State takes slow steps to revoke license Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle Medical Writer A Houston doctor sentenced in a murder-for-hire plot earlier this year is continuing to practice medicine while state regulators fight to revoke his license. May 2003 -- more than a year after his trial -- is the earliest that Dr. Armando Sanchez could lose his license under the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners' much-criticized disciplinary process. Sanchez practices general and occupational medicine at Clinica Azteca at 900 Wayside. Sanchez, 47, was arrested and charged in October 2000 with solicitation...

$12 Million in Fake Checks Are Seized U.S. Customs agents have arrested a Jordanian-born man who was allegedly carrying $12 million in false cashier's checks, alarming counterterrorism officials who said the suspect may have been trained in al Qaeda terrorist camps in Afghanistan.U.S. officials said the name of Omar Shishani, 47, who was detained Wednesday as he arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport from Indonesia, appears on a watch list of people trained in Afghanistan by al Qaeda. Shishani's name turned up in documents captured in Afghanistan, sources said."It has really alarmed a lot of people that al Qaeda may be...

<p>MURFREESBORO — A Rutherford County grand jury has indicted a woman on charges of using poisonous spiders and a hit man to try to kill her husband, police said. Teresa L. Rivera, 37, was indicted on charges of solicitation of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder. She is to be arraigned today.</p>

The two deaths of Mary Morris Days apart, killings linked by names leave families pondering connection By ROMA KHANNA Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle Over the course of five days in October 2000, two women, both mothers, both named Mary Morris, were reported missing and later found slain. One was burned so severely that tooth fragments were the only remains that confirmed her identity. The other was beaten and shot once in the head. Both women were left dead in their cars and found by strangers. More than a year and a half later, both killings remain unsolved. Authorities are skeptical...