DETROIT - Proof, a member of rap group D12 and a close friend of Eminem, was shot to death early Tuesday at a nightclub along Eight Mile, the road made famous by the 2002 film that starred Eminem and in which Proof had a bit part.

The death of Proof - real name Deshaun Holton - was confirmed by Dennis Dennehy, the publicist for D12's label, Interscope Records, as well as by Detroit police spokesman James Tate.

"Memorial service arrangements are still being made, and his friends and family would appreciate privacy during this difficult time," Dennehy said in a statement.

Eminem and Proof, 32, seldom were seen in public without each other. Proof was the best man at Eminem's wedding in January, and they have been close friends since before Eminem became a superstar.

The video for the Eminem song "Like Toy Soldiers" shows Eminem pacing a hospital hallway as doctors try to revive Proof, who has been shot. Later, Eminem attends Proof's funeral as the song's lyrics lament the escalation in violence between rappers.

It was Proof's idea to form D12, a six-member Detroit-based rap group that counts Eminem among its members.

D12 has been around since the mid-1990s, when the members met at Detroit's Hip-Hop Shop, a clothing store by day/hip-hop club by night.

Proof's family members gathered at a home on Detroit's northwest side after hearing the news of his death. The residential street in front of the two-story home was lined with vehicles, and people hugged each other on the sidewalk.

Proof was shot inside a small bar in a strip of businesses along Eight Mile, which is the dividing line between Detroit and its northern suburbs. Tate said two people were shot in the head - one fatally. He said an argument at the C.C.C. nightclub escalated into gunshots.

The other victim - a 35-year-old man - was listed in critical condition, Tate said.

Wende Berry, a spokeswoman for St. John Health System, said Proof was dead on arrival at St. John Conner Creek, an outpatient treatment facility. Berry confirmed that he had a gunshot wound.

Police said shots were fired inside the bar around 4:30 a.m. after an argument between two parties. By the time officers arrived, both of the injured men had been taken from the bar in private vehicles, Tate said.

Evidence technicians and detectives remained inside the bar Tuesday morning. A spot of blood was on the street in front of the tavern, and police marked shell casings in a parking lot across the street.

Patrol officers said the bar is a frequent source of problems on the city's east side. Tate said police have taken 18 incident reports there since 1996. The latest was a vice raid in December in which six tickets were issued, most involving minors possessing or drinking alcohol.

The bar, he said, was legal, but was operating outside of its licensed hours.

Another member of Eminem's inner circle - rapper Obie Trice - was shot while driving on a Detroit-area highway in December.

Riding on Eminem's stardom, D12's debut album, 2001's "Devil's Night," sold more than 4 million copies. Its most recent release was 2004's "D12 World." Like Eminem's songs, D12's lyrics are humorous but often laced with profanity.

Proof also made a solo album called "Searching for Jerry Garcia."

Proof's Web site was updated Tuesday to include a picture of the tattooed rapper with the words "RIP Proof."

Associated Press Writer David Runk in Detroit contributed to this report.

On the Net:

http://www.bigproof.com

Police arrest Italy's reputed No. 1 Mafia boss after more than 40 years on run

PALERMO, Sicily (AP) - Italy's reputed No. 1 Mafia boss was arrested Tuesday at a farmhouse in the Sicilian countryside after frustrating investigators' efforts to catch him during more than 40 years on the run, the Interior Ministry said.

Bernardo Provenzano, Italy's most wanted man, is believed to have taken over the Sicilian Mafia after the 1993 arrest of former boss Salvatore "Toto" Riina in Palermo.

"Bastard! Murderer!" a crowd shouted as black-hooded policemen took the elderly man out of a sedan and rushed him into the courtyard of a police building in Palermo. The gray-haired Provenzano, wearing a windbreaker and tinted glasses, glanced aside at one point but made no audible comment.

A Palermo police spokesman, Agent Daniele Macaluso, said Provenzano had been arrested in the morning near Corleone, the Sicilian town made famous in the "Godfather" movies. He was then driven to Palermo, 37 miles north of Corleone.

He was being questioned by anti-Mafia prosecutors in police offices, but was saying little, answering only questions about his identity, the Italian news agency ANSA reported from Palermo.

Interior Ministry Undersecretary Alfredo Mantovano described Provenzano as "the most important person from Cosa Nostra" after Riina, the so-called "boss of bosses" who was also arrested after years as a fugitive. He called the arrest "an important step forward … for the entire nation."

Prosecutors describe Provenzano as a man who helped Cosa Nostra increasingly spread its tentacles into the lucrative world of public works contracts in Sicily, turning the Mafia into more of a white-collar industry of illegal activity less dependent on traditional revenue-making operations like drug trafficking and extortion rackets.

Provenzano, on the run since 1963, has proven an elusive target.

Turncoats have told investigators in recent years that he avoided capture for so long by sleeping in different farmhouses across the island every few nights and by giving orders with handwritten notes, not trusting cell phone conversations for fear they are monitored by police.

Authorities were also hampered in their hunt for him because their last photo of Provenzano dated back nearly 50 years. However, personnel at a clinic in southern France where Provenzano is believed to have been treated for prostate problems under a false name a few years ago helped police to create a new composite sketch.

Italy's top anti-Mafia prosecutor, Piero Grasso, who for years as Palermo's chief prosecutor had personally led the hunt for Provenzano, said on RAI radio that he felt "great satisfaction, great emotion" at the arrest.

As recently as last month, Provenzano's former lawyer was quoted as telling an Italian newspaper that he was dead.

"I think he's dead, and has been dead for several years," Salvatore Traina was quoted as telling the Rome-based daily La Repubblica. "They have looked for him everywhere, they have looked intensely for years but they can't find him. This must mean something."

Former Palermo Mayor Leoluca Orlando praised police and prosecutors. News of the arrest prompted similar praise from many politicians, including President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

Lawsuit filed over response to Detroit boy's 911 call; attorney says problem was not isolated case

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (AP) - A boy who was scolded by a 911 operator while trying to get help for his dying mother is not the only Detroit resident whose emergency call wasn't taken seriously by a dispatcher, the boy's lawyer said.

In a series of calls in January 2005, a 911 operator questioned the sanity of a Detroit woman who reported she had been shot in the head. An emergency crew didn't arrive until after the woman called her son in Minnesota and got him to call for help, attorney Geoffrey Fieger said.

Fieger played tapes of the woman's phone calls Monday as he announced a wrongful-death lawsuit against two unnamed dispatchers in the case of 6-year-old Robert Turner, whose mother died Feb. 20 before police arrived.

He said also represents the other woman, Lorraine Hayes, who he said became paralyzed as a result of her injuries. She sued Detroit dispatchers in October.

In her first call, Lorraine Hayes calmly asked for an ambulance, gave her address and said she had been shot in the head. The operator asked if she was male or female and Hayes stumbled, first saying she was male and then correcting herself.

After some more questions, the operator asked: "Are you a mental patient?"

"My body is numb. I'm getting ready to die," Hayes said at one point.

The operator said she did not believe Hayes would be able to call if she was shot in the head and told her she would get in trouble if she was making a false report.

"I called for help, and it wasn't coming, and I just knew I was gonna die," Hayes said at a news conference Tuesday. "And the things that she said to me - I just couldn't believe that that would come out of a human being's mouth."

Detroit's 911 service receives about 2 million calls a year, said police spokesman James Tate. A large portion of them are pranks or non-emergency situations for which 911 should not be used, he said.

Detroit police have said they are investigating the 911 response in Sherrill Turner's death. The two operators who took her young son's calls will remain on the job while an internal investigation is conducted, Detroit Police spokesman James Tate said.

Albert Garrett, president of Michigan Council 25 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said the union supports a full investigation.

"The investigation should not be limited to the conduct of this particular operator," he said in a statement. "It should also examine the systemic problems in the 911 emergency system, including understaffing, lack of training and inadequate supervision, which may have contributed to Sherrill Turner's heartbreaking death."

The lawsuit filed on Turner's son's behalf does not name an amount. It also does not name the city because state law prohibits it, however Fieger, best known for defending assisted-suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian, said the city should be liable for its employees.

Robert, then 5, was alone with his mother when she collapsed in the bedroom.

He called 911 and told the operator that his mother had passed out, but the operator asked to speak with an adult.

When he called back about three hours later, he repeated that his mother had passed out. Another operator said: "You shouldn't be playing on the phone." Later, she said: "Now put her on the phone before I send the police out there to knock on the door and you gonna be in trouble."

Police eventually arrived at the house after the second call, but Sherrill Turner was dead. An ambulance never came.

British man accused of killing wife and baby pleads not guilty

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) - A British man accused of killing his wife and infant daughter in their Massachusetts home and then fleeing the country pleaded not guilty Tuesday to murder.

Neil Entwistle, 27, is charged with two counts of murder and firearms charges in the Jan. 20 slayings of his wife, Rachel, 27, and their daughter, Lillian Rose, who would have turned 1 on Sunday.

Prosecutors also released new details Tuesday about troubles in the Entwistles' marriage and inconsistencies in stories that Neil Entwistle told about the killings.

According to documents filed by prosecutors, Entwistle's computer records showed an exchange of e-mails with a woman he found through a Web site called "Adult Friend Finder." He told the woman he was in a relationship "but looking for a bit more fun in the bedroom" and "a very discreet relationship just for fun."

Prosecutors have said Entwistle shot his wife and daughter after racking up tens of thousands of dollars in debts that his wife apparently didn't know about.

Entwistle allegedly told a state police detective that he found the bodies of his wife and daughter when he returned to the Hopkinton home they had rented after running errands. He said he drove 50 miles to his father-in-law's house to get a gun so he could kill himself but couldn't get inside the house and decided to go home to England to be with his parents.

In England, Entwistle told friends a different story, according to a summary filed by prosecutors Tuesday.

Entwistle allegedly said he drove to his mother-in-law's work place, told her he had found the bodies, and then gathered with his wife's family in Carver to "mourn the news." He said he "began to feel left out" and went straight to his parents' home in Worksop, England, according to the summary.

Prosecutors said they have evidence that Entwistle rented a car when arrived in England, spent a night in a hotel and drove almost 800 miles before going to his parents' home.

According to investigators, Entwistle had also done research online about ways to kill people and how to commit suicide. Investigators say he may have planned a murder-suicide but couldn't go through with it after killing his wife and daughter.

In court Tuesday, he stood silent as his lawyer asked the judge to enter a not guilty plea to all counts, including murder and weapons charges.

Rachel Entwistle's mother and stepfather, Priscilla and Joseph Matterazzo, and about a dozen friends and family members watched the short proceedings.

"They miss Rachel and Lillian Rose every minute of every day," said family spokesman Joseph Flaherty. "It doesn't bring them any comfort to see him standing there and know that their daughter and granddaughter are gone."

Superior Court Judge Peter Lauriat set a goal of starting the trial by April 2007. If convicted, he faces a mandatory life sentence; Massachusetts does not have a death penalty.

Death toll in India trade fair blaze rises to 52

MEERUT, India (AP) - The death toll from a devastating blaze at a trade fair in northern India rose Tuesday to 52, as angry crowds demanded that those responsible for the fire be brought to justice.

At least 200 people were injured by the flames or trampled Monday as the fire swept through giant exhibition tents at a consumer electronics show in the town of Meerut, about 250 miles from Lucknow, the capital of the Uttar Pradesh state.

Angry crowds gathered at the scene Tuesday, blocking a vehicle carrying a local official to demand increased compensation for relatives of those killed and the injured, and for the government to track down those responsible for the blaze.

The state government Tuesday announced an investigation into the cause of the fire.

"There could have been negligence on the part of the administration," said R.M. Srivastava, a senior official in the state Home Ministry. "The probe will determine whether it was negligence or just an accident."

Police had issued arrest warrants for the organizers of the fair, but they had disappeared, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

It was not immediately clear what caused the blaze, although a local politician, Laxmikant Bajpai, told the TV station Headlines Today that it may have started when plastic sheeting hanging over an air conditioning unit caught fire. Other officials said the fire may have been sparked by a short circuit.

Several people died overnight from their wounds, bringing the death toll up to 52, said R.M. Srivastava, a senior official in the state Home Ministry.

The state government has announced compensation of $4,500 per person killed and up to $1,120 for each person injured.

Witnesses described a horrific scene, with injured people screaming, three enormous tents destroyed, and rescuers pulling out corpse after corpse.

"Dead bodies are strewn around, most of them are charred beyond recognition. The bodies were dumped into trucks, jeeps and ambulances and taken away from the public glare," said Prakash Arya, a witness reached on his cell phone.

Authorities said most of the corpses were found near the exits. "Apparently some people were knocked down and crushed in the stampede as they rushed to get out of the inferno," said Rajiv Sabharwal, senior police superintendent for the town.

"I ran for my life," said Mahendra Singh, a shop owner who escaped with minor burns.

Some of the bodies were charred beyond recognition but police had confirmed the identities of 38 bodies on Tuesday, Sabharwal said.

While police scoured the ruins, desperate relatives went from hospital to hospital, looking for missing family members. TV video showed dozens of people also standing outside the mortuary holding pictures of friends and relatives.

Trade fairs, where manufacturers and traders set up stalls to exhibit their wares to consumers and other businesses, are common in India. They are normally held in elaborate cloth tents set up over interconnected bamboo poles - and often with little regard for safety regulations.

New exhibition of Anne Frank letters shows a different side of wartime diarist

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - Any father of a headstrong 14-year-old girl might recognize the words: "Just leave me alone, if you don't want me to stop trusting you for good."

The furious letter from Anne Frank to her father, Otto, was written nearly two years after the Frank family locked itself into a concealed apartment to escape deportation by the Nazi army occupying the Netherlands.

Never displayed before, the two-page letter in Anne's careful script is part of an exhibition of letters, postcards and family notes - with ink stains, water spots and ragged edges - which opens Wednesday at the Amsterdam Historical Museum.

In the diary she wrote in hiding - which her father recovered after the war - Anne quotes from the angry letter she wrote in May 1944 and says her father told her he would burn it. He never did, and it went to the National Institute for War Documentation after he died in 1980.

"If only you knew how much I used to cry at night, how despondent and unhappy I was, how lonely I felt, you'd understand my wanting to go upstairs," she wrote after Otto forbade her to spend time alone in the attic with the young boy with whom the Franks shared the hiding place.

"I want to go my own way, to follow the path that seems right to me. Don't think of me as a 14-year-old, since all these troubles have made me older. I won't regret my actions. I'll behave the way I think I should."

"That letter hit me the most," said curator Wouter van der Sluis. "It's not just a letter. It's a declaration of independence toward her father."

He said reading it was like "bringing something back from Bergen-Belsen," the concentration camp where Anne died of typhus in 1945. "A lost life could have been a very special life."

The hidden apartment in the back of the warehouse on Prinsengracht street is one of Amsterdam's most popular museums. It conveys the fear and misery of Dutch Jews during the Holocaust and how one girl with a bright mind and creative pen survived in hiding for 25 months.

More than 100,000 Jews - 70 percent of the community in the Netherlands - were deported to camps after the German occupied the country in May 1940. Most died in gas chambers and were among the 6 million Jewish victims of Nazi genocide. The Franks, along with the Van Pels family and another man who lived in the Prinsengracht "secret annex," were betrayed by an unknown informant and arrested in August 1944.

The exhibition, "Anne Frank: Her Life in Letters," which closes Sept. 3, shifts the focus to a younger Anne. It includes Otto's photo albums, showing a middle-class prewar family, and the notebooks of friends in which Anne wrote birthday poems.

At age 7, she wrote a short note for "Grandma's Day," a holiday she apparently invented when her grandmother, visiting from Switzerland, had to stay with a neighbor for lack of space. Anne slipped the note into an envelope on which she drew a small stamp in the corner.

Some of the exhibited letters have been available to scholars, but Van der Sluis said new ones shed light on some aspects of her prewar life. Her reference in one letter to Jewish lessons led researchers to conclude "she was more Jewish in her upbringing than we thought," he said.

They also found that "she was an ambitious girl." She wrote often about skating lessons and her desire to match the skills of her professional cousin in Switzerland.

It is the first time the letters have been collected in one place for public display. They include all but a few of the surviving letters Anne is known to have written. Van der Sluis said the idea of an exhibition began to take shape after the death of Otto Frank's second wife five years ago.

Before going into hiding, she seldom wrote about the tightening restrictions on Dutch Jews, but a foretaste of the gathering disaster sometimes appeared in her otherwise cheerful, chatty notes.

"I haven't had much chance to get brown because we are not allowed in the swimming bath," she wrote in June 1941. "That's a great shame, but there's nothing I can do about it."

Stunned neighbors say chief suspect in biker slayings was 'always respectful'

IONA, Ontario (AP) - The Bandido biker accused of killing eight fellow motorcycle enthusiasts once belonged to another gang called the Loners - a fitting description of his personality, according to residents.

The mostly farming families in Iona and other nearby townships - each with a few hundred residents - were still stunned Tuesday by the kind of violence usually reserved for big cities.

Although they accepted that their neighbor, Wayne Kellestine, was a member of the outlawed Bandidos gang, they found it hard to believe he killed the men who were found slain in a field not far from his home Saturday.

Kellestine and four others stand accused in the worst mass murder in Ontario history.

"Even if he is a Bandido, he was the nicest man, always respectful," said Iona resident Kim Baum, who helps out at the Holland House restaurant, where Kellestine sometimes stopped for coffee or a beer with his Bandido comrades.

"They never talked about deals when they were in here; I told him that in the beginning, that he could not talk about his deals in here, and he respected that," said Marty Angenent, the owner of the Holland House. "We don't treat him like an outcast here."

Murray and Brenda Silcox, owners of a general goods store in the farming community of only 300 people, said few knew the suspects or the victims.

"It's like somebody else's world dropped on ours," Brenda Silcox said. "It would be different if it were your neighbor, or somebody you know."

Those arrested and charged with eight counts of first-degree murder were Kellestine, 56, and Eric Niessen, 45; Kerry Morris, 56; Frank Mather, 32; and Brett Gardiner, 21.

The victims were identified as Victim Jamie Flanz, 37; George Jesso, 52; George Kriarakis, 28; John Muscedere, 48; Luis Manny Raposo, 41; Francesco Salerajno, 43; Paul Sinopoli, 30; and Michael Trotta, 31. All were from Ontario.

Police said they believe the slayings were part of an "internal cleansing" of the motorcycle gang. The eight dead men were original members of the Loners, another motorcycle gang from southern Ontario whose members eventually defected to the Hells Angels.

A few holdouts, Kellestine included, went on to create the Ontario Bandidos, calling themselves the "No Surrender Crew."

A motto on the gang's Canadian Web site says: "We are the people your parents warned you about." When you enter the site, a short bandit donning a large sombrero cackles loudly as he shoots off his gun and a motorcycle revs up in the background.

The Toronto Star quoted an unidentified source as saying the killings were due to the refusal of five of the victims to follow orders to go to Winnipeg to carry out enforcement and connect with other bikers. The men were called to a meeting place in the Shedden area where they were killed, the newspaper quoted the source as saying.

Police sought to assure residents that the biker wars that terrorized Montreal in the early 1990s - claiming some 160 lives - has not found a new battlefield in the rural Ontario community that grows mostly soybean and corn, about 90 miles northeast of Detroit.

The rural area has had problems with motorcycle gangs in the past, but is generally considered low-crime compared to other parts of Canada, in particular Quebec, where biker violence is more common.

"It's not uncommon for organized crime groups, bikers or anyone else to eliminate some of their members. There are disputes off all kinds, power struggles," law enforcement consultant Chris Mathers said.

Investigators were expanding their search for evidence Tuesday in the ditches that run parallel to Highway 401 near Shedden, where the bodies were found. Forensics experts in white sterile suits also were going through Kellestine's farmhouse, where neighbors say he lived with his girlfriend and 6-year-old daughter.

Kellestine was the only member of the Bandidos among those arrested for the killings. The one-time head of another motorcycle club called the Annihilators, he was charged in 1991 with shooting a fellow biker, but the charges were dropped when the victim refused to talk with police.

In July 2002, he pleaded guilty to 22 weapons charges and served two years in jail.

On the Net:

Canadian Bandidos site: www.bandidosmc.ca

Old asylums become new haunts for home-seekers

DANVERS, Mass. (AP) - In real estate, not even spooky trumps location.

Across the nation, former state hospitals for the mentally ill - with dated names like "lunatic asylum" - are being converted into homes.

Even the ominous Danvers State Hospital, once described as "the scariest building in the world" and a favorite destination of ghost-hunting thrill-seekers, soon will be home to laptop-toting latte drinkers.

"There's obviously a lot of notoriety associated with the site," said Scott Dale, a vice president at AvalonBay Communities Inc., which is constructing 497 luxury apartments and condominiums. "We think at the end of the day, that will be helpful."

No units are on the market yet, but Dale expressed confidence that occupancy won't by hurt by the property's jaded past, including a cemetery with some unmarked graves - one reminder of the sad history of treatment of the mentally ill.

The formula has been successful elsewhere.

Six hundred would-be buyers signed up for the first 60 homes built at the site of the former Dammasch State Hospital, a $500 million project in Wilsonville, Ore., 20 miles south of Portland, city officials said.

In Traverse City, Mich., developers of a former asylum overlooking Lake Michigan have down payments in hand from buyers looking for condos, and a waiting list should those buyers bow out.

Rents at the 500-unit Octagon, the former New York City Lunatic Asylum on Manhattan's Roosevelt Island, are 10 percent higher than expected, developer Bruce Becker said. Studio apartments in the $170 million development start at $1,700.

"It certainly still has a slight mystery to it, but I wouldn't say scary or haunted," said Rebecca Shaw, who is moving with her boyfriend into a one-bedroom unit at the Octagon next month.

Built in 1841, the asylum later became a hospital, which closed in 1955. Trailblazing journalist Nellie Bly spent time undercover at the asylum and wrote in 1887 that it was a "human rat trap."

Shaw, who grew up on Roosevelt Island, recalled bicycling and roller-skating on the grounds.

"At that time it was weeds and bushes, overgrown plant life, which made it really cool," the 30-year-old social worker said. "For kids, that was part of the appeal, it was scary and spooky. When you get older you decipher what's real and what isn't."

What's real: parking space, short commute.

"For my work, I need to be close to the city. And the price is right for this point in my life," Shaw said.

The housing boom led developers to former mills, old schoolhouses, and now state hospitals. The mentally ill in the past were thought to benefit from bucolic settings. The Danvers facility, opened in 1878 as the State Lunatic Hospital, is atop a large hill overlooking the North Shore, and its 75 acres featured paths and working farms.

Eventually, many facilities closed and were left vacant as treatment moved away from overcrowded institutions in favor of smaller group homes.

Dale, the developer at Danvers, said AvalonBay is creating a "campus-like environment" with a swimming pool, WiFi cafe and fitness center. Rents will start around $1,400 for a one-bedroom, and about half-a-million dollars for a condo.

AvalonBay, since buying the property for $18 million late last year, has taken over security. In the past five years, Massachusetts State Police charged 150 people and issued warnings to an additional 450 people for trespassing, said spokesman Trooper Thomas R. Ryan.

Today, there's not much left for thrill-seekers. The main building is being renovated into 61 condos, but dozens of other structures are being bulldozed - over the objection of local preservationists.

"This is probably the worst preservation catastrophe that's ever happened in the town," said Richard Trask, Danvers' town archivist since the Nixon administration.

Trask - who calls the "Disneyfication" of the original complex unappealing - was among four activists and a local preservation group which unsuccessfully sued to stop AvalonBay.

Toby Fisher, executive director of the Massachusetts chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness said he's glad to see Danvers go.

"The buildings are a little on the dreary side to say the least," he said. "Thank goodness there are better forms of treatment."

Still, developers can be sensitive. Web sites for the projects in New York, Oregon and Michigan make little or no mention of their properties' past use as asylums.

The Oregon project, named The Villebois to emulate the feel of European villages, will have townhouses starting at around $250,000. And just as a dose of precaution, developers called in help before work started.

"They had a psychic friend of theirs go through it and bless the spirits they thought were still hanging around," said Wilsonville Mayor Charlotte Lehan.

On the Net:

http://www.octagonnyc.com/

http://www.thevillagetc.com/

http://www.villebois.net/

http://www.avalonbay.com/splash/splash.cfm

Couple get prison terms for letting toddlers die in scalding bathwater

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) - A couple who were in a drug-induced stupor while their two young children died in a bathroom flooded with scalding water were sent to prison Tuesday. - David Maldonado, 32, who left the hot water running, was sentenced to five to 15 years. Luz Arroyo, 26, drew 16 months to four years behind bars.

"This was a particularly horrific crime that resulted in the deaths of two innocent children," District Attorney Janet DiFiore said in a statement.

Elijaha Santana, a month short of his third birthday, and David Maldonado Jr., who was nearly 2, died on July 29. They suffered hyperthermia and third-degree burns at their home in Yonkers.

The pattern of burns showed Elijaha tried to stand on his tiptoes to avoid the hot water as it spilled out of the bathtub, prosecutors said.

Investigators said the bathroom door was damaged and difficult to open, and the youngsters fell unconscious as the room filled with steam.

The boys' deaths contributed to demands for better tracking of children in dangerous households. The caseworker assigned to the family was fired.

Maldonado pleaded guilty in January to manslaughter. Arroyo pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide.

Woman pleads guilty to fatally slashing baby for revenge

BOSTON (AP) - A woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to slashing the throat of her roommate's 9-month-old baby and leaving him to bleed to death in retaliation for being asked to move out.

Natalie Rodriguez, 23, of Chelsea, had faced first-degree murder charges but pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and kidnapping in the December 2002 death of Xavier Antonio Miranda.

Under the plea deal, she could be released from prison in 29 years.

Rodriguez had known Xavier's mother, Giselle Colon, since childhood. After Rodriguez lost her job at a Social Security office, she moved in with Colon, authorities said. But family members said the arrangement didn't work out: Rodriguez frequently drank, often became belligerent, and did not pay rent.

Eventually, the family asked her to leave, and the deadline for doing so was the day she killed the baby, prosecutors said.

Rodriguez admitted in the plea deal to taking the baby from his crib, slashing his throat and then leaving him by a trash can near a neighbor's driveway.

Nine pounds of heroin seized in East San Jose

SAN JOSE (AP) - Police seized nine pounds of heroin worth $1.2 million from a home in East San Jose over the weekend. - Several people were arrested in the raid, which took place over the weekend. Officials declined to give the address of house, or the exact number or names of the people arrested, citing an ongoing investigation.

Police moved in on the residence after receiving an anonymous tip.

Authorities said they also seized payment records for more than 100 pounds of heroin and vehicles that were used to smuggle the drug into the country from Mexico.

Teen reported abducted at gunpoint from small Kansas town

INDEPENDENCE, Kan. (AP) - A 16-year-old girl was reportedly abducted at gunpoint from a small southeast Kansas town early Tuesday and forced into a van that was seen headed toward Oklahoma, authorities said. - Kansas and Oklahoma authorities were searching for the white van and the girl, Kelsey Stelting, after state officials issued an Amber Alert.

According to Independence police, the blonde teenager was forced into the van about 6:30 a.m. at her home in Independence. The van was seen headed south on U.S. 75 toward Oklahoma. Independence police declined to release further details.

Independence, a town of about 9,800 residents, is 75 miles north of Tulsa, Okla.

On the Net:

Kansas Bureau of Investigation Amber Alert: http://www.ksamber.org

Thief who tried to sell paintings back to same gallery sentenced

REDWOOD CITY (AP) - A woman who helped steal three expensive oil paintings and mistakenly tried to sell them back to the gallery that reported them missing was sentenced to three years in prison, prosecutors said.

Deanna Joao, 47, of South San Francisco pleaded no contest Tuesday in San Mateo County Superior Court to commercial burglary and cocaine possession.

Joao and two others - Derek Hanson, 45, of South San Francisco and Jeffrey Harp, 33 of San Francisco - were arrested Dec. 11 after arriving at the Sense Fine Art Gallery in Menlo Park to have the art appraised.

The abstract pieces had been stolen two weeks earlier along with the gallery's van in San Francisco. The gallery estimated the paintings were worth about $50,000.

The paintings by Stephen Foss were so unique the thieves were directed back to the Sense gallery when they tried to sell them. The gallery is the exclusive agent for Foss' works.

Harp pleaded no contest in March to receiving stolen property and was sentenced to 16 months in prison.

Hanson missed a court hearing while free on bail and was re-arrested March 31 on a $500,000 warrant, police said. A hearing is scheduled for April 12.

Village People 'cop' arrested again in Bay Area

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The original policeman from the disco hitmakers The Village People is in trouble with the law - again. - Victor Edward Willis, 54, was back in court Monday in San Mateo County where a judge decided there's enough evidence for him to face trial on drug-related charges.

Willis, who's being held without bail in the Redwood City jail, has three cases pending against him, according to prosecutor Morly Pitt.

The first involves two felony charges, a probation violation and possession of cocaine, to which he's pleaded no contest, Pitt said. Sentencing on those charges is pending.

In the second, Willis pleaded no contest to cocaine possession and being a felon in possession of a gun. He was facing a maximum 16 months in state prison, but he failed to show up twice for a sentencing hearing last December.

Then, Willis was stopped again by police on March 26, for what began as a traffic violation, Pitt said. He and his passenger, Stacy Brandt, 40, who told police she's a prostitute, both were arrested. Brandt pleaded no contest to possession of narcotics and was sentenced to 60 days in jail and three years' probation.

Willis was charged with possession of cocaine, possession of drug paraphernalia and providing false information to police for alleging using a fake name. He has not entered a plea in that case and he's due back in court next Tuesday when the cases will be consolidated. He will return to court again April 25 "when a judge will figure out what we're going to do with Mr. Willis," Pitt said.

A call to Willis' lawyer wasn't immediately returned.

He also has a prior drug conviction from about 15 years ago, Pitt said, which makes Willis ineligible for a drug treatment diversion program.

He left the Village People in 1979, according to the band's Web site.

Talk host fired after soliciting hit of comedian Jillette

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A radio talk show host was fired after offering to pay a listener to kill comedian-magician Penn Jillette for racy comments about Mother Teresa.

John London said he was fired over the weekend from CBS-owned KIFR-FM along with producer Dennis Cruz and sports reporter Chris Townsend for comments made on the air last Wednesday.

London said he was being sarcastic when he offered $5,000 to kill Jillette.

"If he suffers, I'll make it $7,000," London said, according to Cruz.

Jillette, one-half of the Penn & Teller comedy-magic team, said on his syndicated talk show preceding London's that the deceased Catholic icon was a fraud who set up refuges for dying people for "sexual kicks."

Jillette said hotel heiress Paris Hilton was morally superior to the late nun.

"I was sickened by it," London said. "What he said wasn't satire. He raped her morally, when she couldn't respond."

The station does not comment on personnel matters, said spokesman Michael Coates. The station's Web site made no reference to the firing but it removed "John London's Inferno" from its lineup.