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By Eric Ferkenhoff, Maurice Possley and Steve Mills, Tribune Staff Writers. January 31, 2001

Cook County prosecutors are preparing to drop charges in 12 of 13 murder cases pending against accused serial killer Gregory Clepper because laboratory tests have failed to confirm his alleged confessions, sources familiar with the case said Tuesday.

Once suspected of being the most prolific serial killer in Chicago since John Wayne Gacy--Chicago police said he admitted to killing 40 women--Clepper may now face prosecution on only one murder, according to the sources.

In some of the 12 cases that likely will be dropped, laboratory tests have excluded Clepper as a suspect. In others, investigators have developed scientific and other evidence that points to other suspects, the sources said.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) -- A man accused of killing four people in the San Joaquin Valley and suspected in as many as 20 other deaths had a long history of violence when he used drugs, a prosecutor said Tuesday in closing arguments.

San Joaquin County prosecutor Thomas Testa methodically recounted how Wesley Shermantine Jr. was known for threatening people and boasting of his violent acts while under the influence of methamphetamine.

Shermantine had even bragged he had hunted "just about everything there was to hunt, including the ultimate kill," meaning people, Testa said.

FOR three years, California cops were stumped by the case of the "Angel of Death" - a therapist who claimed he'd euthanized about 50 of his patients with a muscle-paralyzing drug.

Just when it seemed the "mercy" killer would get away with murder for lack of evidence, Los Angeles County authorities turned to the Long Island investigators who put away another "Angel of Death" more than a decade ago.

Join defense in bid to keep sealed reasons why serial killer shouldn't face death penalty

TACOMA _ Confessed serial killer Robert L. Yates Jr. and his attorneys don't want the public to see a thick file in which they list reasons why he shouldn't face the death penalty.

The file, called a "mitigation package," was prepared to convince the Pierce County prosecutor not to pursue the death penalty.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - A convicted child rapist accused of murdering four girls will stand trial in 2002, six years after their bodies were found buried on his property, Belgium's justice minister said Tuesday.

Marc Dutroux, Belgium's most notorious prisoner, is charged with murdering four girls, ages 8 to 19, whose bodies were found buried on his property in August 1996. Two others, then 12 and 14, were found alive in his basement, which had been converted into a dungeon.

Raping and Murdering the Truth - Unstripping Boston Strangler myths

Why does the search for truth in criminal cases sometimes resemble a game of three-card Monte?

The plaintiffs? An unlikely pair: The estate of Albert DeSalvo, better known to most of us as the "Boston Strangler," and the estate of Mary Sullivan, long thought to be the strangler's last victim. Both estates seek truth. The law enforcement officers seek finality.

Karla Homolka is being sent to maximum-security Ste. Anne des Plaines prison and not back to her comfy digs at Joliette, The Toronto Sun has learned.

The impending transfer back to the Montreal area comes after two of three psychiatric assessments at Saskatchewan's regional psychiatric centre recommended Homolka be detained for her full 12-year manslaughter sentence.

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SPOKANE -- A task force tracking the footsteps of confessed serial killer Robert L. Yates Jr. is planning a national conference to share its information with scores of other jurisdictions.

More than 50 police agencies -- from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Dothan, Ala. -- have expressed interest in Yates as a possible suspect in their unsolved homicides.

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Investigators label man as 'predator' who preyed on elderly women.

Michael Darnell Harris, a suspected serial killer-rapist who preyed on elderly women throughout Michigan in the early 1980s, has been linked to at least two unsolved Washtenaw County murders through DNA evidence, and is a suspect in up to 15 killings statewide, police sources said today.

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NEW YORK (AP) Bedlam erupted in a packed Manhattan courtroom Friday when a man tried to attack a serial killer just before he was sentenced to 400 years in prison for murdering three young women and raping four others.

Kee was convicted Dec. 20 of 22 crimes, including first-degree murder, second-degree murder, rape, sodomy and robbery, that he committed over about eight years, beginning in 1991.

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Spokane _ Spokane serial killer Robert L. Yates Jr. was calm Friday when he got the word in his solitary confinement cell in Tacoma.

The confessed killer of 13 people was told that he may be executed if he's convicted of killing two more in Pierce County.

Newly named Pierce County Prosecutor Gerald Horne announced his decision to seek the death penalty against Yates.

"I'll be honest with you," Horne said later. "We didn't agonize over it.

"This is a compelling case to ask for the death penalty," he said. "We may never get a more compelling case."

Horne, a former public defender from Spokane, said Yates has committed the "most outrageous" kinds of crimes.

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Police are to launch an investigation into the deaths of 62 patients of serial killer GP Harold Shipman.

Greater Manchester Police said the victims were not covered in the original murder inquiry but were among those highlighted in a report for the Department of Health last week.

The report said Shipman killed between 200 and 345 patients during his 24-year career. The figure makes him one of the world's most prolific serial killers.

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OLATHE, Kan., Posted 12:44 p.m. CST January 11, 2001 -- Attorneys for the Olathe man charged with murdering women and stuffing their bodies in barrels has subpoenaed two Topeka pathologists. The move comes with a preliminary hearing for John Robinson less than a month away. They are the first subpoenas filed by his death penalty defense attorneys.

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LONDON (Reuters) - Serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper, was quoted on Monday as saying he is now sane and that experts at Broadmoor high security hospital no longer consider him a threat to society.

Sutcliffe, 54, is held at Broadmoor after being jailed for life in 1981 for the murders of 13 women in Yorkshire, and for the attempted murder of a further seven.

"At my last Mental Health Review Tribunal, (Broadmoor's consultant psychiatrist) Dr Horne told them he no longer considered me a danger to anyone," the Daily Mirror quoted Sutcliffe as saying in a letter to a pen-pal.

"So I was pleased about that as he was so right. I now realise how ill I was all those years ago and I owe a lot to the doctors here for making me well," said Sutcliffe.

The former truck driver still received injections of anti-psychosis drugs, but the levels of medication had been levelling off in recent years, the Mirror said.

Sutcliffe, blinded in one eye three years ago after being repeatedly stabbed by a fellow prisoner, was now considered by staff to be a model inmate, the paper said.

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Miami-Dade and Broward county homicide detectives, investigating the slayings of two women, are visiting every local man arrested for soliciting a prostitute in the past year.

Kim Dietz-Livesey, 35, and Sia Demas, 21, were killed by the same person, police said. Both were prostitutes and their bodies were stuffed into suitcases and left in plain sight along public roads. They have also been linked to the same Miami motel.

Karla Homolka may want to flee Canada when she has served her full manslaughter sentence, but whether another country would agree to allow the sex killer to stay is doubtful.

Marc Labelle, Homolka's lawyer, says his client wants to forego any chance of parole and serve her full 12-year sentence, so she can move abroad after she is released. Homolka fears she would become a victim of vigilante justice in Canada if she were released on parole.

Mr. Labelle did not give an indication of where Homolka wants to live, but most countries do not formally accept foreigners with criminal records as residents.