I think her name was Dawn Cruikshank. She had a step-father, or perhaps it was her own father; whatever, who sexually abused her. Maybe there was a younger sister involved too. So this guy pulls his car into the garage of the house one day, and she's waiting for him with a shotgun or something and she blows his head off.
She got twenty years and I've occasionally wondered "where/how is she now?"
Another big story involved the infamous Schenectady police. Some officers picked up a woman for drunk-and-disorderly. One of the salient details was that her blouse or jacket was torn open in the scuffle and the police did not give her any assistance in covering herself up.
While she was waiting in a jail cell, one of the policemen forced her to perform oral sex on him.
She did not swallow the semen. She saved it and spit it out into a folded paper drinking cup. It was that evidence that led to the prosecution and imprisonment of that officer for sexual assault.
Again, I sometimes wonder where she is now; same for that officer. Over thirty years have now gone by.
Another story: About two weeks after a nasty snowstorm, passing drivers notice a car that had driven off the Northway. Melting snow allowed it to be exposed. The bodies of an elderly man and woman, husband and wife, were found in it.
Back to now or thereabouts:
Lin Hao, nine years old, leading the Chinese Olympic team into the stadium during opening ceremonies, accompanied by the somewhat taller Yao Ming. Hao was in school when the recent Sichuan earthquake destroyed everything around him.
After crawling out of the wreckage he went back in and retrieved one of his schoolmates. After that, he went in and got out another. When asked why he performed these acts of heroism, he said that it was part of his responsibility. He was the hall monitor, he explained.
