Crime Scene

Russian devil-worshipers slay, eat teens

Freaky story of the day comes from Russia, where members of a Satanic cult are believed to have killed four teens in the most horrific of ways:

Cops say they made the teens get drunk, then they stabbed each victim 666 times, burned them alive, cut off their body parts and ate them. Holy moly.

A photo of three of the four victims -- described as Goths who were lured by the cult's leader -- is at left.  They're all 16 or 17.

This happened in a rural region called Yaroslavl, about 300 miles northeast of Moscow. Eight people have been arrested, and the Sun tabloid has all the freaky-deaky details.

Murder suspect goes berserk in court

A Miami-Dade murder suspect made the cable-news highlight reel today with an unprovoked outburst in bond court.

Mitchell Lee Simpson, 20, was denied bond after being charged in connection with the shooting death of a 16-year-old Homestead boy last month. Investigators say the teen was robbed of his gold-chain necklace before being shot.

That's a picture of Simpson on the left, decking the defendant behind him in court. Mitchell punched the guy in the face and dragged him to the ground before officers pulled him away. The other man was not seriously injured, and the attack appeared to be unprovoked, according to WFOR-CBS 4, which captured it on video.   

Maybe Mitchell was less than excited at the prospect of going back to prison. He was just released in March from a one-year stint in the slammer for burglary.

Mall shootings on the rise?

People used to view malls as safe places -- large public venues protected from the dangers of street crime.

I wonder if South Florida's recent mall shootings will make people reconsider that notion.

Today's Herald includes stories about an attempted murder-suicide at the Aventura Mall that left the shooter dead and a woman badly injured, and about a still-unsolved double murder at the Boca Raton Town Center.

The facts of the Aventura and Boca Raton cases seem different -- police believe the Aventura shooter knew his victim, but the Boca shootings appear to be more random -- but the terror of mall violence is present in both, just as it was at a recent Omaha mall shooting that left nine people dead.

After the Omaha shooting in December, CNN ran a piece about how violence crimes in malls are disrupting retail sales.

But what do shoppers think? Can we make malls safer? Should we? Weigh in with your comments.