Careless spit gives police the evidence they need
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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Police tailing a murder suspect saw him spit in a parking lot, giving them DNA evidence they needed to arrest him in connection with the slaying of a waitress two years earlier.
Robert Eric Denney, 19, faces trial in July in the 1998 death of Corey Parker, who was stabbed 84 times. Denney and Parker were neighbors.
DNA tests concluded that Denney's saliva matched hair and blood at the victim's apartment, according to police records obtained this week by The Florida Times-Union.
Denney apparently suspected police were watching him and became meticulous about withholding possible physical evidence, but detectives saw Denney spit outside his employer's door. Police swabbed up the spittle and had it tested.
Cruetzfeldt-Jakob disease claims two in Colorado
DENVER - Two patients died at a Colorado hospital this year from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a fatal brain-wasting ailment.
There is concern other patients may have been exposed to the disease, believed to be the human form of "mad-cow disease," a hospital spokeswoman said yesterday.
The spokeswoman at Exempla St. Joseph Hospital said at least six other patients might have been exposed to CJD through surgical instruments used while treating the two patients who died.
About two cases of CJD are reported in Colorado every year.
Daughter, 43, will be tried as juvenile in '71 slaying
NEWARK, N.J. - A 43-year-old woman who admitted shooting her mother to death in 1971 will be tried in juvenile court.
Susan Marie Watson was 14 when she killed her mother, Maylon Johnson, with a single gunshot to the chest.
Watson confessed in 1998. A judge dismissed a juvenile murder charge in 1999, saying he thought Watson had been rehabilitated. An appellate court ruled last year that the judge must first determine Watson's guilt or innocence.
Ruling clears way for trial of White House suspect
WASHINGTON - A federal judge ruled yesterday that a man charged with firing two shots outside the White House does not have to face a mental evaluation, clearing the way for him to be brought to trial.
Robert Pickett, 48, of Evansville, Ind., has pleaded not guilty to assault on a federal officer and to weapons charges stemming from the Feb. 7 incident just outside the White House fence. He remains in the D.C. jail.
Pickett was shot by a uniformed U.S. Secret Service officer when he allegedly pointed a handgun toward shrubbery where other officers were concealed.
Man sought in death of woman during surgery
MIAMI - South Florida police searched yesterday for a man suspected of accidentally killing a woman during underground plastic surgery to enlarge her buttocks.
Vera Lawrence, a 53-year-old employee in Miami-Dade County's community-development division, died Tuesday in a local hospital after being injected in the buttocks with either silicon or collagen, said police in a Fort Lauderdale suburb.
Investigators learned from witnesses that she had been injected with a foreign substance by a man who had left her apartment before police arrived.