Free Republic

In many ways, though, what drove Cromwell was his burning religious passion. Around 1630, when his financial woes were at their worst, he went through a dramatic religious conversion, becoming convinced that God had marked him out for eternal salvation. ‘Oh, have I lived in and loved darkness and hated the light,’ he wrote a few years later. ‘I was a chief, the chief of sinners . . . I hated godliness; yet God had mercy upon me. O the riches of His mercy!’ But Cromwell was not merely exceptionally religious. He belonged to a particular religious group — the Puritans —...

TORONTO—As Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip waved to the crowd after a 2005 visit, a tall, fit officer stood next to them. He saluted the royal couple, and flew them home to Britain. Now that same elite Canadian pilot, Colonel Russell Williams, stands charged with the murder of two women, the sexual assault of two others and 82 break-ins, during which he often stole women's panties.

Investigators are trying to find about 50 women who were photographed decades ago by a man now on death row for murdering two aspiring models in the early 1980s, authorities said Tuesday. Detectives are investigating whether the women were raped or killed between 1975 and 1984 by William Richard Bradford, said Los Angeles County sheriff's officials. They posted photos of the women on a department Web site in the hope that the public could help account for them.

Thomas Dee "Zoo Man" Huskey once told authorities he killed four women. Lawyers may debate it. Historians may reflect on it. But it now appears a jury will never decide it. The state Supreme Court on Monday let stand a June lower court decision that guts the case against Knox County's first and only accused serial killer. "It's over," defense attorney Herbert S. Moncier said. Co-counsel Gregory P. Isaacs added, "Finally - justice." A strict reading of the judgment filed by the state Court of Criminal Appeals in June would seem to back up the two attorneys' contention that the...

PORT COQUITLAM, B.C. -- Police found remains of five of the 15 women Robert Pickton is accused of killing in their search of the pig farm he owns with his siblings, a defense lawyer said. Reading from an affidavit that complains the prosecution has given the defense insufficient information, lawyer Marilyn Sandford on Monday provided some of the first public details of the case against Pickton, 53, who faces 15 first-degree murder charges. A painstaking search of two properties - the pig farm on Dominion Avenue and a nearby plot where Pickton and his brother ran a party house known...