Woman found guilty in cut-from-womb killing
Woman found guilty in cut-from-womb killing
WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) — A woman accused of killing her pregnant friend three months after her own miscarriage was convicted Wednesday of beating and strangling the friend, then cutting the baby from her womb and passing the child off as her daughter.
Julie Corey sobbed as a Worcester Superior Court jury found her guilty of the 2009 murder of 23-year-old Darlene Haynes. The jurors deliberated for 10 hours during two days. Sentencing was scheduled for Tuesday.
Prosecutors said Haynes was eight months pregnant when Corey attacked her and cut the baby out of her body. They told the jury Corey had been pregnant, too, but had a miscarriage three months earlier and told her boyfriend and family that Haynes’ baby was her own.
“It’s probably the most horrific case this office has ever seen in terms of facts,” District Attorney Joseph Early Jr. said in a statement after the verdict was handed down. “This woman was killed for her baby.”
Corey, 39, did not testify during the trial.
“I feel comfortable that justice was done for Darlene,” Haynes’ uncle, Karl Whitney, of Palmer, told the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
He said he feels sorry for Corey’s family.
“I just can’t imagine going through something like that with one of my children.”
Father of TV sketch comedy Sid Caesar dies
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Milton Berle was the funnyman whose pioneering presence in the nation’s living rooms earned him the title Mr. Television.
But Berle echoed the past. His wildly popular wisecracks and cavorting were repurposed from his burlesque days for the new miracle of TV.
Sid Caesar was different. Arriving on Berle’s heels in 1949, Caesar was the future of TV comedy — a future that was evergreen and, with his death Wednesday at age 91, is certain to survive him.
To put it simply: Caesar invented TV sketch comedy and gave it stature as a funhouse mirror of the everyday.
To do it, Caesar gathered a dream team of fellow performers and writers — among them Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon and Woody Allen — whose own impact on comedy will likewise be lasting.
“From my vantage point,” said Reiner, “which was sometimes no further than an inch from his face, and one time nose on nose, he was inarguably the greatest pantomimist, monologist and single sketch comedian who ever worked in television.”
“He was one of the truly great comedians of my time, and one of the finest privileges I’ve had in my entire career was that I was able to work for him,” Allen said.
Ex-New Orleans mayor convicted of taking bribes
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, best remembered for his impassioned pleas for help after the levees broke during Hurricane Katrina, was convicted Wednesday of accepting bribes in exchange for helping businessmen secure millions of dollars in city work, including after the devastating storm.
The federal jury found Nagin guilty of 20 of 21 counts against him, involving a string of crimes before and after the storm.
Sentencing was set for June 11. U.S. District Judge Helen Berrigan ordered his bond be modified to provide for “additional conditions of electronic monitoring and home confinement.”
The Democrat, who left office in 2010 after eight years, was indicted in January 2013 on charges he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from businessmen who wanted work from the city or Nagin’s support for various projects.