A couple accused of trying to extort money from missing Madeleine McCann’s parents have been arrested at a hideaway in Portugal. Italian Danilo Chemello and his Portuguese girlfriend Aurora Pereira Vaz hit the headlines in 2007 after being seized in southern Spain over the alleged bid to get their hands on a £2.5 million reward offered for information on Madeleine’s whereabouts. The case never came to trial despite lurid reports about their past and the discovery of newspaper cuttings about Madeleine in their luxury home in Sotogrande, southern Spain.

When celebrated conductor Robert King was convicted of sexually abusing choir boys, the court heard his career was ‘devastated’. Yet just four years after being released from jail, the musical director and Hollywood film score producer is back at the top of his profession – and has seemingly been given the Royal seal of approval. The convicted sex offender is set to headline a concert at an event for Prince Charles’s charity, Music in Country Churches, with his choral group The King’s Consort. The move has caused outrage among concert-goers and child abuse charities.

The man arrested for the murders said ”No one deserved what happened.” 22-year old Amos Wells of Fort Worth Texas walked into the Forest Hill Police Department and turned himself in for the fatal shootings of his pregnant girlfriend, Chanice Renee Reed, 21; her mother Annette Carroll Reed, 39; and her brother, Eddie McCuin, 10.

Nigeria — Islamic militants attacked a boarding school before dawn Saturday, dousing a dormitory in fuel and lighting it ablaze as students slept, survivors said. At least 30 people were killed in the deadliest attack yet on schools in Nigeria’s embattled northeast. Authorities blamed the violence on Boko Haram, a radical group whose name means “Western education is sacrilege.” The militants have been behind a series of recent attacks on schools in the region, including one in which gunmen opened fire on children taking exams in a classroom.

An alert was issued at 4:30 p.m. July 4 that a boy was reported abducted in Spotsylvania County. The FBI, Virginia State Police and the Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office are asking for the public’s help finding a young boy who a witness said was kicking and screaming while being forced into a van on the Fourth of July. At 1:40 p.m. Thursday, the Spotsylvania County 911 center received a call from a witness reporting an abduction in progress at Holleybrooke Drive in the county, said Capt. Jeff Pearce of the Sheriff’s Office.

Mary Leanne Webb knew something was happening to her babies. In court Wednesday, the Smithfield woman recalled seeing the bruises on the twins’ faces and arms and the burn on one of the 4-month-olds’ feet. She said she questioned her boyfriend in early 2012 about the injuries and even took pictures to possibly show the girls’ doctor. But when Robert Molinski told her he was innocent, she didn’t press the matter. A few weeks later, Piper was dead and Ella was seriously injured.

The parents of murdered toddler James Bulger expressed outrage last night that one of his killers is to be freed again. Denise Fergus and Ralph Bulger said they were ‘filled with terror’ by the decision to grant parole to Jon Venables, 30. The child killer, who was controversially released from his life sentence in 2001 with a new taxpayer-funded identity, was sent back to jail three years ago after being caught with depraved images of children as young as two on his computer.

MARYVILLE, Mo. — A guilty verdict and a self-imposed death sentence unfolded in a Nodaway County Courtroom. Steve Parsons was standing trial last week charged with the sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl. When the jury came back with a guilty verdict, authorities say White made a shocking decision with a room full of witnesses. After a three-day trial and less than six hours of deliberations– 48-year-old Steve Parsons sat in front of a jury of his peers and was found not guilty of forcible sodomy, but guilty of statutory sodomy.

Toddler Tortured, Murdered by Mother’s Boyfriend A three-year-old girl died after suffering ‘indescribable atrocities’ allegedly at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend which included a skull fracture, bite marks, burns, trauma to her genitals and swollen eyes.  Carroll Bumgarner-Ramos, 29, from Willimantic, Connecticut, has been charged with first-degree assault and risk of injury. More serious charges […]

TEXAS — A little “angel” found murdered under a tarp in a quiet suburban Texas neighborhood has been named as six-year-old Alanna Gallagher. She was discovered by kids a mile from her home in Saginaw, Fort Worth, on Monday night – hours after she went missing. Stripped naked — apart from purple underwear — her killer had bound her hands and feet before tying a plastic bag over her head. The tarp containing her corpse was then dumped in the middle of an intersection, tightly sealed with a belt.

TEMPE, AZ – A $6,000 reward is being offered for information regarding the disappearance of Adrienne Salinas, an Arizona college student who has been missing for over a week, CBS affiliate KPHO reports. Salinas was last heard from in the early hours of June 15 after she and her roommates hosted a party at their apartment in Tempe. Police say the teen was last heard from around 4:30 a.m. that day when she called a friend to say she was coming over, the station reports.

DURANGO, Colorado — Teams looking for a 13-year-old boy last seen in November during a visit with his father have found his remains in southwest Colorado, La Plata County sheriff’s officials said Thursday. Authorities said Wednesday that a five-day search for signs of Dylan Redwine ended with the teams finding several undisclosed items. Some of the items included bones, they said Thursday. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation told La Plata County sheriff’s officials Thursday that testing indicated the remains were Dylan’s.

In the last year, there have been more than a dozen hazing incidents around the country involving high school boys who have sodomized other boys with foreign objects, reports Bloomberg. Over 40 boys have been reported victims. Most have been younger students. There’s a dearth of data concerning the size and scope of the national boy-on-boy anal hazing problem. Astonishingly, though, a study published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence has claimed that nearly 10 percent of high school males report suffering some form of sexual assault including, in some cases, forced oral sex or rape.

CINCINNATI — An Ohio woman blamed diet supplements after police accused her of filming herself sexually abusing her young daughter and emailing the videos to others, police records showed Monday. The 32-year-old was indicted Monday on multiple charges, including rape and pandering. If convicted, she faces life in prison. She did not yet have an attorney.