The ultimate exoneration

This comes to us from Reuters…

A Chinese man who was supposedly hacked to death in a fight has reappeared in his hometown after 10 years, state media said, raising questions about police torture to extract a confession from the alleged killer.

Zhao Zuohai, the supposed killer, was acquitted of the crime and released by a Henan court on Saturday, state news agency Xinhua said, citing a court press conference on Sunday.

He had served 10 years of a 29-year sentence after confessing to killing Zhao Zhenshang in a hatchet fight in central China’s Henan province, the China Daily reported this weekend.

A headless body was found in a village well about a year after the fight, at which point Zhao was arrested and confessed to the killing.

The victim, Zhao Zhenshang, reappeared in the village on May 2 to seek welfare support. He had fled after the fight because he feared he had killed the now-imprisoned Zhao.

Convictions in the Chinese court system are strongly dependent on confessions, motivating police to use force to get a confession and close the case.

A series of deaths in police custody over the last year has emboldened reformers and aided a fight by the Ministry of Justice to wrest control of detention centres from the police.

The courts conducted an audit of all death penalty cases after a woman in Hubei province reappeared over a decade after her husband, She Xianglin, was jailed for her murder, in a case that also rested on his confession to police.

Relatives who maintained She’s innocence were also jailed.

The imprisoned Zhao’s brother told the local Dahe Newspaper that police had forced him to drink chili water and set off fireworks over his head to force the confession.

The imprisoned Zhao narrowly escaped being executed for the crime. His sentence was commuted from a death penalty with two years’ reprieve.

While in prison, his wife left him for another man and three of his four children were given to other families for adoption, the China Daily said.

Two heads are better than one

Thanks to the Houston Chronicle…

ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada — Authorities on Wednesday charged a Grenada man with two counts of first-degree murder after he walked into a precinct station with two severed human heads in a plastic bucket.

Police allege Steve Gory, 32, presented the severed heads of two local men to horrified officers at the Grenville police station on Monday night. He was detained immediately.

Gory, who hails from a rural village in St. Andrew parish, carried the heads from a remote area where police allege he beheaded the owner of a local tavern and a farmhand. Police found their hacked-up, headless bodies in a field.

Investigators have released scant details about the suspect, and have not discussed a possible motive for the macabre killings.

The beheadings have shocked islanders in the Caribbean country of 91,000, where crime is usually limited to less-serious offenses, such as robbery.

Gory is expected to make his first court appearance on Thursday.

Man kills wife and takes corpse to the police

This comes to us from the Arizona Republic and AZCentral.com…

A man accused of driving his wife’s corpse to Phoenix police headquarters after he stabbed the woman to death over their pending separation had struggled with her in a past incident where she threatened him with a kitchen knife, court records show.

Dwight Wesley, 58, reported the murder to police late Wednesday when he appeared, covered in blood and a knife in hand, in the lobby of headquarters at 620 W. Washington St., according to police.

Officers initially thought he was a victim, but later discovered the woman’s body in his car parked near the station.

Delores Glover, 46, died from multiple stab wounds, Phoenix police Sgt. Tommy Thompson said.

Phoenix firefighters tried to revive Glover but were unsuccessful. Wesley was booked on suspicion of murder.

Glover was driving Wesley to work when she told him she was divorcing him. Investigators said he became upset and fatally-stabbed her during an argument.

The victim has eight felony convictions since 1985, including aggravated assault and dangerous drugs, according to Maricopa County Superior Court records.

In 2007, she threatened Wesley with a knife in their home on Indian School Road. She was arrested and later convicted of possession of methamphetamine. The couple had been living together for about three months at the time, according to records.

Glover served three years of a five-year sentence for aggravated assault and possession of dangerous drugs before she was released from the Arizona Department of Corrections in 2007.

Venezuelan boxing champ hangs self in jail

Sporting news from ESPN…

Former boxing champion Edwin Valero, who gained fame for knocking out all his 27 opponents and having a tattoo of Hugo Chavez on his chest, was found dead in his jail cell Monday and police said he hanged himself after being arrested in his wife’s murder.

The former lightweight champion used his own clothes to hang himself from a bar in his cell early Monday, Venezuelan Federal Police Chief Wilmer Flores told reporters. Valero’s lawyer, Milda Mora, confirmed that Valero had committed suicide saying he used the sweat pants he was wearing.

Flores said Valero was found by another inmate, who alerted authorities in the police lockup in north-central Carabobo state. Valero still showed signs of life when they took him down, but they were unable to save him and he died about 1:30 a.m. ET, Flores said.

The 28-year-old was detained Sunday on suspicion of stabbing his wife to death. Prosecutors said Sunday night that they had planned to charge Valero in the killing.

Valero was detained after police found the body of his 24-year-old wife in a hotel in Valencia. The boxer left the hotel room and allegedly told security he had killed Jennifer Carolina Viera, Flores said.

The fighter was a household name in Venezuela and had a huge image of President Chavez tattooed on his chest along with the country’s yellow, blue and red flag.

His all-action style and 27-0 record — all by knockouts — earned him a reputation as a tough, explosive crowd-pleaser. Venezuelans called him “Inca,” alluding to an Indian warrior, while elsewhere he was called “Dinamita,” or dynamite.

The death is the third high-profile reported suicide of a former boxing champion in the past year.

Hall of Famer Alexis Arguello, the mayor of Managua, Nicaragua, was found dead at his home last July of a gunshot wound to the chest. A few weeks later, Arturo Gatti was found strangled in the Brazilian resort town of Porto de Galinhas. His wife was arrested as the prime suspect in the death, but authorities later ruled that he committed suicide — a ruling Gatti’s surviving family has disputed.

The former WBA super featherweight and WBC lightweight champion had been in trouble with the law before.

Last month, Valero was charged with harassing his wife and threatening medical personnel who treated her at a hospital in the western city of Merida. Police arrested Valero following an argument with a doctor and nurse at the hospital, where his wife was being treated for a series of injuries, including a punctured lung and broken ribs.

The Attorney General’s Office said in a statement that Valero was detained March 25 on suspicion of assaulting his wife, but his wife told a police officer her injuries were due to a fall. When the boxer arrived moments later, he forbade Viera from speaking to the police officer, and spoke threateningly to the officer, prosecutors said in a statement.

A prosecutor had asked a court to keep Valero in jail but that the judge instead allowed him to remain free under certain conditions, the Attorney General’s Office said.

Mora, his lawyer, told The Associated Press the fighter had been assigned police escorts to prevent any problems with his wife, but that he evaded them.

Jose Castillo, Valero’s manager, criticized authorities for failing to act more forcefully to prevent the killing.

“I asked the authorities not to let him out. He needed a lot of help. He was very bad in the head,” Castillo told reporters. “But they let him out. They were very permissive with him and because of that, we’re now in the middle of this tragedy.”

Mora, however, said Valero “didn’t accept the help the government gave him.”

“He was the only one responsible,” Mora said, adding that the government had arranged for Valero to attend a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program in Cuba. He had missed a flight to the island earlier this month and was scheduled to fly there soon, she said.

The fighter’s 8-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter are staying with their grandmother, she said.

Before his death, photographs showed Valero being led in handcuffs through the jail, then shielding his face by pulling down his cap.

While police suspected Valero was battering his wife, “the only person who could report it was her, and she told her family that he never hit her,” Mora said. “She wanted help for him.”

Valero also “adored his wife,” Mora said. “We were very close to him and we knew there could be this sort of outcome because when he became conscious of what he really had done, he wasn’t going to be able to bear not being close to Carolina.”

In the ring, Valero’s fists carried him from poverty to fame. He won his first 18 fights by first-round knockout, setting a record that has since been eclipsed by Tyrone Brunson. Valero last fought in February, defeating Antonio DeMarco in Monterrey, Mexico.

He was replaced as WBC lightweight champion in February after he expressed a desire to campaign in a higher weight division, WBC president Jose Sulaiman said.

Valero was involved in a motorcycle accident in 2001 that caused a cerebral hemorrhage, and because most jurisdictions refuse to license a fighter who has sustained a brain injury, he was unable to fight in the United States. The boxer wound up fighting mainly in Japan and Latin America, where he won his first title in 2006.

Valero also was charged with drunken driving in Texas, which is the primary reason he was denied a U.S. visa.

He accused the U.S. government of discrimination, saying his application wasn’t approved because of his sympathy for Chavez, a fierce critic of the U.S. government.

He appeared at times as a special guest at televised events hosted by Chavez and was lionized by Chavez supporters as a national hero, while some critics accused him of avoiding punishment for past problems due to close links to the government.

Cosmetics by Soylent green?

Beauty news from Reuters…

LIMA (Reuters) – Peruvian police said on Thursday they had broken up a gang that allegedly killed dozens of people and sold their fat to buyers who used it to make cosmetics.

Four Peruvians were arrested on suspicion of kidnapping, murder and trafficking in human fat.

The group stored the fat it collected in used soda and water bottles, which police showed reporters.

“We have people detained who have declared and stated how they murdered people with the aim being to extract their fat in rudimentary labs and sell it,” said Police Commander Angel Toldeo.

In addition to those taken into custody, police said they were searching for others who bought fat from the gang or might have worked with it.

Remains from some of the victims were found at a rural house in the region of Huanuco where the group worked, according police video.

Police said they were investigating 60 disappearances in the area that might be linked to the gang.

The investigation started this month after police heard about a shipment of fat that arrived in Lima by bus from Peru’s mountains.