FUNERAL HOME CHIEF ADMITS KILLING AND THEN BURYING WIFE
DEBARY, Fla. (AP) -- A funeral home director fatally stabbed his wife after she threatened to leave him, then buried her with a woman whose family held a closed-casket service, police said Friday.Mark Villella confessed after detectives told him they were going to exhume the grave, said Gary Davidson, a spokesman for the Volusia County Sheriff's Office.
Authorities were tipped to the crime when Exelee Louise Villella's sister called with worries, saying the last time she talked with her sister on Aug. 5, the couple was in the midst of an argument.
Her co-workers also raised suspicions, because the usually jealous Villella, who called every morning to check on his wife, did not call on Aug. 6.
UNION URGES BOEING WORKERS TO ACCEPT CONTRACT OFFER
SEATTLE (AP) -- The Machinists union is urging its 44,000 Boeing Co. workers to accept the company's new contract offer, which one union official called the best in the aerospace industry.
After months of strike threats, Boeing officials relented on two of the most contentious issues -- job security and a company plan to end overtime pay for weekend work.
"We believe this contract is the best contract in the aerospace industry," Bill Johnson, president of Machinists District Lodge 751, told union members Saturday morning. Though he added, "I wish we could have negotiated better language on job security."
KEVORKIAN IS TRANSFERRED TO MEDIUM-SECURITY PRISON
KINCHELOE, Mich. (AP) -- Dr. Jack Kevorkian was transferred Friday from a maximum-security prison to a medium-security one, given the convicted killer's successful adjustment to life behind bars, prison officials said.
Without fanfare, Kevorkian was moved from the Oaks Correctional Facility in Eastlake to the Kinross Correctional Facility in this Upper Peninsula community.
The retired pathologist has served five months of his 10- to 25-year sentence for his second-degree murder conviction in last year's injection death of a Lou Gehrig's disease patient.
Kevorkian, 71, won't be eligible for parole until May 2007.
MURDER-SUICIDE SUSPECTED AFTER 5 FOUND SLAIN IN L.A.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Five people were found fatally shot late Friday in what investigators suspect was a murder-suicide sparked by a domestic dispute.
Officers received a report of gunfire about 8:30 p.m. and arrived to find two women and three men dead in a Koreatown apartment, Lt. Sharyn Buck said. The women were believed to be in their 20s, but the men's ages were unknown.
"We're pretty sure it's a murder-suicide," she said. "There are witnesses saying that the wife and husband were having a dispute. She had come back today -- apparently had moved out."
YOSEMITE MURDER SUSPECT WON'T GIVE BLOOD SAMPLES
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) -- A handyman charged with beheading a Yosemite National Park naturalist and suspected in the deaths of three tourists is refusing to give samples of his blood, hair and saliva.
Cary Stayner's lawyer filed papers in federal court Thursday saying prosecutors should not be allowed to obtain the samples without a search warrant and have not provided evidence that such a warrant is justified.
Prosecutors requested the samples but have not sought a search warrant.
Investigators said Stayner admitted killing Armstrong July 21 and also confessed to killing Carol Sund, her daughter Julie Sund and friend Silvina Pelosso.
MAYOR RESCUES LAST BROTHEL IN NEVADA CITY FROM CLOSURE
ELY, Nev. (AP) -- Only one brothel remains where there used to be a row three blocks long here, and a bitterly divided City Council voted to shut that one, too. Then the mayor stepped up and rescued the Stardust Ranch.
Mayor Robert Miller vetoed a 3-2 City Council vote on Thursday to ban prostitution. He said he thought brothels provided a place for safe sex.
Supporters of the brothel cited the tourists it brought in and the money spent by the women who work at the Stardust Ranch, all that's left of the old "line" of brothels in the city of 5,000.
"I can't recall one instance in all those years of the "line" giving us one instance of trouble," said Sunny Martin, 86. "But TV and the computer can bring filth right into your house."
SUSPECT IN TRAIN STABBING REMOVED FROM BUS DAY BEFORE
CLEVELAND (AP) -- A man charged with stabbing three people on an Amtrak train had been removed from a bus by Illinois State Police a day earlier after complaining that other passengers were threatening him with a gun.
When the officers searched Aaron Hall for weapons, they found a pocketknife with a 2 1/2-inch blade, Illinois State Police Master Sgt. Lincoln Hampton said. Police believe the same weapon was later used in Thursday's attack on the train.
Hall, 41, of Ontario, Calif., is accused of stabbing two conductors and a passenger as they tried to subdue him on the Lake Shore Limited run from Chicago to New York. Two of the men remained hospitalized Friday.
SERGEANT FACES 25 COUNTS OF SEXUAL MISCONDUCT
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- An Army drill sergeant was placed on administrative duty and charged with 25 counts of sexual misconduct and other improper conduct with 25 female recruits, a post spokesman said Friday.
The military's equivalent of a grand jury, an Article 32 board, is continuing to investigate the allegations against Sgt. 1st Class Yoosuf Asad, who works at Fort Jackson, spokesman Doug Cook said.
All the women, who started training June 30, were assigned to Asad's platoon, Cook said. One of the recruits complained to another drill sergeant Aug. 20, prompting the investigation.
NEW YORKERS URGED TO WATCH FOR 'DEPRAVED' BIRD KILLER
NEW YORK (AP) -- The city's parks commissioner has urged New Yorkers to be on the lookout for a "depraved" suspect who has been killing pigeons, sparrows and ducks by lacing bird food or bread crumbs with a toxic chemical.
Officials said that more than 80 birds have died at the hands of the culprit in recent weeks -- most of them in Central Park. State wildlife experts confirmed the birds ingested Carbofuran, a pesticide that has no legitimate use in Manhattan.
Parks Commissioner Henry Stern called the poisonings an outrage and "surely the work of a depraved mind."
OLDEST LIVING U.S. MARINE DIES IN N.J. HOME AT 107
TENAFLY, N.J. (AP) -- Joseph Gold, the nation's oldest living Marine and one of the few remaining World War I veterans, has died. He was 107.
Gold died Wednesday of pneumonia at a Tenafly nursing home, his son said.
Gold, who served with the American Expeditionary Force in the Battle of Belleau Wood in June, 1918, was one of two servicemen to receive France's Legion of Honor award last month.
At his request, Gold was buried Friday to the trumpeting of taps and a Marine honor guard.
BOATERS RESCUE PILOT WHOSE PLANE DOVE INTO LAKE
CHICAGO (AP) -- A pilot whose plane dove into Lake Michigan after the engine stalled Saturday was rescued by a passing sailboat crew who threw him a buoy and motor boat passengers who pulled him aboard.
Phillip Edling, 57, made a distress call to Chicago's Meigs Field about 9 a.m., saying his single-engine Piper Cherokee had stalled and he couldn't restart it, U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Howard McCarthy said.