Jurors convict two men of first-degree murder in shooting death near Delray Beach

 A jury convicted two men of first-degree murder Tuesday in connection with the 2007 shooting death of John Blazevige, whose body was found outside his still idling pick-up truck near Delray Beach. It took three days for jurors to return the verdicts against Michael Marquardt and Louis Baccari at the end of the week-long trial. At times they seemed entrenched into two separate camps, but in the end they made the unanimous decision to return the convictions on murder and armed robbery for each man. "We were surprised, and disappointed," Baccari's defense attorney Andrew Strecker said. "We thought for sure it would have been a hung jury." More puzzling, Strecker said, were the jury's findings in their verdict. For example, they found that Baccari, the alleged triggerman, had not used...

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Hells Angel arrested in killing of fellow gang member

  Ending a four-month-long manhunt, San Jose police arrested -- without incident -- a Hells Angel wanted for the murder of a fellow Angel in the middle of a funeral. The 38-year-old suspect, Steve Ruiz, is suspected of shooting fellow Angel Steve Tausan to death Oct. 15 at San Jose's Oak Hill Cemetery. Ruiz, who had been on the run for months, was caught Saturday evening at a motel in Fremont. "We're relieved to have him off the streets," said Sgt. Jason Dwyer during a Sunday news conference at police headquarters. "This was a difficult case for investigators to solve." Ruiz's arrest is the latest chapter in a series of bizarre and violent chain-reaction episodes involving the Hells Angels, a legendary outlaw motorcycle gang originally formed in 1948 in Fontana. In September, San...

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Mongols Motorcycle Gang Member Convicted of Murdering President of San Francisco Hells Angels

 federal jury found Christopher Bryan Ablett, a/k/a “Stoney,” a member of the Modesto Chapter of the Mongols outlaw motorcycle gang, guilty of all four felonies with which he was charged including murder in aid of racketeering, assault with a deadly weapon in aid of racketeering, using a firearm during a crime of violence, and using a firearm causing murder during a crime of violence, United States Attorney Melinda Haag announced. The charges stemmed from the defendant’s gang-related murder of Mark “Papa” Guardado, the president of the San Francisco Chapter of the Hells Angels, on September 2, 2008, at 24th Street and Treat Avenue in the Mission District of San Francisco. Evidence at trial showed that Ablett traveled to San Francisco to visit a friend. He was armed with a foot-long military...

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American 'illegals' in Mexico

 When Jessica departed the US early in 2011, she left a country where illegal immigration is rarely off the political agenda. Little did she imagine she herself would become an 'alien' - in Mexico. She came to Puerto Vallarta, a tourist resort on the Pacific coast, to work legally for a Mexican company. She took a second job to earn extra money, first in an internet cafe and then a restaurant. Fines for overstayers But her employers - also Americans - never filled in the paperwork to make her second job legal. "I insisted, but they told me it wasn't necessary, that they would pay me in cash every night and it was fine," she tells the BBC. "It was clearly illegal for me to work there, but I did not take the authorities in Mexico seriously. My employers then found themselves in legal...

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2 Dead, 5 Wounded In Chicago Drive-by Shooting

Police in Chicago are investigating a drive-by shooting that killed two people and left five others wounded. Police officials say the shooting happened just before 7 p.m. Sunday outside a liquor store on the city's South Side. Police say a vehicle pulled up outside the store and someone inside the vehicle opened fire on a crowd of people outside. Authorities say 19-year-old Jamal Harris died inside the store, while 61-year-old Gregory Glinsey was found dead outside. Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford says both men suffered multiple gunshot wounds. Police officials say the five surviving victims were all teen-age boys. Four were treated for their wounds and released, while a 14-year-old boy who was shot in the stomach remains hospitaliz...

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Fatal Detroit shooting of baby gang-related, police say

 Diamond Salter said she was asleep in her west-side home early Monday morning when shots rang out. As her son, Delric Miller IV, dozed nearby on a living room couch, bullets pierced windows and walls, striking the 9-month-old. "I grabbed my baby and wrapped him up in a blanket … and ran in the basement," said Salter, 19, who also has a one-year-old daughter who was staying with a relative. "I thought he was asleep because that's how I left him. I thought he was alive … I started feeling for him, and he wouldn't wake up." Someone fired 37 rounds from an AK-47 assault rifle at about 4:30 a.m. into the home in the 8400 block of Greenview Avenue, near Tireman. Police Chief Ralph Godbee said the shooting was gang-related. Godbee said police have details about the shooting he didn't want...

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Inmate Massacre Highlights Mexico Jail Corruption

 Nine guards have confessed to helping Zetas drug gangsters escape from prison before other Zetas slaughtered 44 rival inmates, a state official said late Monday, underlining the enormous corruption inside Mexico's overcrowded, underfunded prisons. The top officials and as many as 18 guards at the Apodaca prison in northern Mexico had been detained under suspicion that they may have helped 30 Zetas escape during the confusion of a riot early Sunday in which 44 members of the rival Gulf cartel were bludgeoned and knifed to death. Nuevo Leon state public security spokesman Jorge Domene Zambrano said nine of the guards confessed to aiding the escape. He said it appeared the breakout happened before the deadly fight. The massacre in this northern state was one of the worst prison killings...

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Dead gangster's assets seized

 Anti-mafia authorities impounded real estate, automobiles and financial assets from Domenico Campisi, who was shot dead last June in an ambush in the southern Calabria region. He was 44 years old. Campisi was a member of the 'Ndrangheta crime network based in Calabria, considered Italy's most violent and wealthy mafia groups. It was reportedly one of the first time police went after assets of a deceased mafio...

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U.S. Ordered to Pay $1 Million to Family of Man Murdered by Gangster Whitey Bulger

 The federal government went too far in shielding an FBI informant from the 1970s through the 1990s, not only tipping him off about state and local police investigations, but even covering up his involvement in several murders. Last week a three-judge panel of the First Circuit Appeals Court in Boston ruled that the family of one of those murder victims, Louis Litif, who was murdered by Boston organized crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger in 1980, was entitled to government compensation of $1.15 million.   Litif, a bookmaker facing murder charges, offered to help the Boston police with a drug conspiracy case against Bulger, who was already secretly informing on the rival Patriarca crime family to the FBI. About three weeks after his offer, Litif was found dead in the trunk of his car....

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NYC authorities hunt for leader of Folk Nation gang blamed for bloodshed

 It’s one of the more colorful street gang names around: Six Tre Outlaw Gangsta Disciples Folk Nation — or Folk Nation, for short. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn allege that a particularly violent faction of the gang was behind at least four murders, three attempted murders and other mayhem that harmed innocent bystanders and terrorized the Ebbets Field Apartments housing complex, located where the storied ballpark once stood. 0 Comments Weigh InCorrections? inShare ( FBI / Associated Press ) - In this undated photo provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Devon Rodney is shown. Wanted by the FBI, Rodney is the leader of the Brooklyn, N.Y. based Folk Nation gang, which they say is responsible for a series for armed robberies and shootings. A day after announcing charges...

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Hubert Green, who ran a crew of about 40 street-level dealers in southeast Scarborough, supplying them with cocaine to sell and guns to arm themselves.

Meet Otis Wood, a churchgoing family man.Then there is Hubert Green, who ran a crew of about 40 street-level dealers in southeast Scarborough, supplying them with cocaine to sell and guns to arm themselves.They are the same, remorseful man, his sentencing hearing in Superior Court was told Friday.“I take responsibility for breaking the law and I know I must be punished,” read a statement dictated by Wood and read out in court by his lawyer, Rudy Koch.The dual identities began when Wood came to Canada from Jamaica as a visitor in 1999, using the ID of a friend, Hubert Green. While ordered deported as Green, he applied for landed immigrant status as Wood.The 40-year-old is the latest person to plead guilty to charges stemming from Project Fusion, a multi-million-dollar wiretap investigation...

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A 31-year-old man who spent more than half his life in a Montreal street gang is set to be released within days on a sentence he received after shooting a rival inside a West Island strip club.

 On March 3, 2008, Luders Jeanty - by his own admission, a member of a Montreal street gang since he was 14 - walked into Cabaret Bazaz on Gouin Blvd. W., near Sunnybrooke Blvd., in Pierrefonds, and opened fire on a man who had argued with three of his friends earlier that night.The trio, including a prolific drug dealer in the West Island, had been ordered out of the bar after the argument but returned a short while later with Jeanty.Eight people were standing or seated less than two metres from the victim when Jeanty shot him; the man suffered superficial wounds despite being struck in the chest, neck and one ear.Montreal police arrested Jeanty in July 2008. A search of his home turned up the revolver used to shoot the victim, a man with ties to a different gang.Jeanty was charged with...

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top Bonanno gangster whose daughters hit the big-time with the “Mob Wives” reality show was all smiles at his arraignment Tuesday.

PIOTR SIKORA/VH1Anthony Graziano's daughter, Renee (far r.)  is a star on  “Mob Wives,”  but Dad says the show's no problem in their relationship.Anthony (TG) GrazianoHIS LIFE may be a soap opera, but a top Bonanno gangster whose daughters hit the big-time with the “Mob Wives” reality show was all smiles at his arraignment Tuesday.Reputed capo Anthony (TG) Graziano pleaded not guilty to extortion charges based on secret tapes recorded last year by his turncoat ex-son-in-law Hector Pagan.Pagan was married to Graziano’s daughter Renee, who stars in the VH1 show conceived by her sister Jennifer.Graziano, 71, waved to wife Veronica...

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