A 7-year-old boy accused of being a spy was hanged by Taliban militants, according to published reports Thursday.

The child was allegedly put on trial by the militant group and later found guilty of working for Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s government, reports the Daily Mail.

Karzai called the act a “crime against humanity.”

“I don’t think there’s a crime bigger than that that even the most inhuman forces on earth can commit,” Karzai said.

The child was publicly hanged in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand province, a local official told The Associated Press.

“A 7-year-old boy cannot be a spy,” Karzai added. “A 7-year-old boy cannot be anything but a seven-year-old boy, and therefore hanging or shooting to kill a seven-year-old boy… is a crime against humanity.”

Violence is on the rise in June as the U.S. prepares a major summertime operation to cleanse the region of Taliban commanders.

At least 17 U.S. service members have been killed in the past four days, including four Americans who died Wednesday when insurgents in Helmand province’s Sangin district – one of the most volatile in the country and where the 7-year-old boy was hanged – shot down a NATO helicopter.

As news of the hanging unfolded, the war-torn country was hit with further tragedy as a suicide bomber hit a wedding party, killing at least 40 and severely wounding more than 70 people.

Several children were among the dead and wounded. Bits of flesh and severed limbs covered the site.

A Taliban spokesman denied responsibility for the deadly attack.

The governor of the province rejected the denial.

“The Taliban are doing two things at once,” Gov. Tooryalai Wesa said.

“On one side they target people who are in favor of the government, then at the same time they don’t want people to know their real face.”

A U.S. cage fighter ripped out the heart of his training partner while he was still alive after becoming convinced he was possessed by the devil, it was alleged today.

Jarrod Wyatt also cut out Taylor Powell’s tongue and ripped off most of his face in a brutal assault that police said looked like a scene from a horror film, officers said.

They claim they found the 26-year-old standing naked over his friend’s body with parts, including an eyeball, strewn around the blood splattered room in Klamath, California.

Wyatt allegedly told police he had drunk a cup of tea spiked with hallucinogenic mushrooms and became convinced Powell was possessed.

According to an autopsy Powell, 21, bled to death after his heart was ripped out.

The coroner said Powell had been alive when the organ was ripped out after his chest had been sliced open with a knife.

Wyatt told the police he thrown the heart into a fire along with other organs that he had removed from the body, it was claimed.

He allegedly told investigators he cooked the body parts because he was fearful Powell was still alive and he ‘needed to stop the Devil’.

Police had been called to the grisly scene after a third friend had witnessed a sudden mood change in Wyatt after they had all ingested wild mushroom tea.

Justin Davis told police he returned to the flat to find Wyatt naked and covered from head to toe in blood.

He noticed an eyeball lying in the middle of the floor and saw Powell’s mutilated body.

A lawyer representing Wyatt has claimed the wild mushrooms caused him to act in such a violent way and had not control over his actions.

‘My client was trying to silence the devil,’ said James Fallman.

‘I think he was having a psychotic fit based on the mushrooms he had.’

Wyatt has been charged with first degree murder and torture.

Prosecutors added the torture charge as Powell was still alive when his heart was removed.

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — A 9-year-old charged with killing his father and another man has been offered a plea deal that would spare him any jail time, his attorney said Thursday.

“We aren’t going to sign him up for prison,” defense attorney Benjamin Brewer said. “We would never do that.”

Brewer declined to offer specifics, including what plea the boy could enter and whether it would involve the two counts of premeditated murder he faces. A change of plea hearing was scheduled for Feb. 19, but Brewer said his client must still accept the deal.

“We believe this agreement addresses any potential needs out there as well as secures he does not get messed up going to juvenile corrections, or adult prison for that manner,” Brewer said.

Prosecutors could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

The boy was arrested and charged after authorities said he used a .22-caliber rifle Nov. 5 to kill his father, 29-year-old Vincent Romero, and 39-year-old Timothy Romans, a co-worker of Romero’s who lived with the family in St. Johns. The boy, 8 years old at the time of the shooting, has been in and out of juvenile custody since his arrest.

A spokesman for the Romans family, John Andreas, hasn’t objected to the boy receiving treatment, but he said Thursday that the boy should be jailed until he’s at least 18.

Romans’ two daughters weep over their father’s grave each weekend on the San Carlos Apache reservation, and anxiety attacks awaken Romans’ wife at night, he said.

The boy, who has pleaded not guilty, acknowledged in a videotaped police interview that he shot the men. He told police that he had been spanked five times the night before the shootings because he didn’t bring home some papers from school. While in custody, he told a state Child Protective Services worker that his 1,000th spanking would be his last, according to police reports.

The defense argued that the boy was illegally questioned without an attorney or relative present, and prosecutors said they would not show the video in court unless the boy testified and contradicted his statements.

Brewer said the deal was drafted by prosecutors. He wouldn’t discuss what could happen to the boy if he accepts the plea, but said a juvenile who is tried in court could be put on probation, go to a foster home or be sent to a home for treatment.

In late November, prosecutors wrote in court documents that a plea deal had been offered to the boy that would resolve the charges in juvenile court. That deal was contingent on the results of mental health evaluations.

A defense-nominated expert later indicated the boy’s age and intelligence level meant he wouldn’t be fit for a trial. Two experts who evaluated the boy are still scheduled to testify on Feb. 27.

Prosecutors drafted the latest plea agreement, and Brewer said Thursday that attorneys began discussing it about a month ago. The discussions led to two delays of a hearing on a request by prosecutors to drop one of the murder charges against the boy before the request was vacated Thursday.

Defense attorneys were in a tight spot. If Apache County Superior Court Judge Michael Roca granted the prosecution’s request, it would have allowed prosecutors to refile the charge when the boy is older and try him as an adult.

Brewer said he didn’t want to risk having a charge looming in the future and the boy not receiving any treatment. Brewer said attorneys were dealing with a number of unknowns in a case that didn’t seem to have any guidelines.

“Sure we could have went to trial and potentially won, but that’s a heck of the roll of the dice,” he said.

PATNA, India – A teenage Indian boy was thrashed, paraded through the streets with his head shaved and then thrown under a train for daring to write a love letter to a girl from a different caste, police said Thursday.

Manish Kumar, 15, was kidnapped by members of the rival caste on his way to school and was killed as his mother begged for mercy, police in the impoverished eastern state of Bihar said.

One man has been arrested and a policeman suspended.

The victim’s mother, Lalit Devi, told police she had watched “helplessly” as the wheels of the train passed over her son.

“The accused persons killed the boy for writing a love letter to the girl of the same village,” superintendent of police in Kaimur district, Rajesh Kumar, told Reuters by telephone.

Police said the girl belonged to a washerman community, considered a lower caste, whereas the boy came from the slightly higher dairymen Yadav community.

Love across caste lines is often violently opposed, especially in rural northern India, and it is not uncommon for outraged families to kill to “save the family honor.”

A husband who hacked his wife to death with a meat cleaver in fury over her Facebook entry was jailed for a minimum of 14 years at the Old Bailey today.

Wayne Forrester, 34, drank alcohol and took cocaine before driving 15 miles to the family home to attack wife Emma as she lay in bed.

The couple had separated four days before the murder in February and Forrester later told police he had been provoked by his wife changing her marital status to “single” on her Facebook entry, the court heard.

Forrester, a HGV driver, admitted murder in February this year in New Addington, near Croydon.

Emma was found in a pool of blood after neighbours were woken at 6.30am by her screams. Near her body was a large kitchen knife and in another room a blood-soaked meat cleaver.

Jailing him for life, the Common Serjeant of London Brian Barker QC said: “Your wife ended the relationship. Your reaction was one of anger and resentment.

“There is no possible excuse or justification.

“This is a tragic killing of a young woman and what you have done has called untold anguish.”

The court heard that the Forresters had a “volatile and unstable marriage characterised by periods of separation and reconciliation”.

Alex Lewis, prosecuting, said that while Forrester was in and out of work and cared little for family life, his wife took two jobs to make ends meet.

Her parents supported the pair financially and moved home closer to them to help their daughter.

Four days before the murder Forrester moved out of the family home to stay with his sister in Paddington. He repeatedly called home and threatened to kill her.

Ms Lewis said: “He was angry about an entry on Facebook he said made him look like a fool as she had advertised her marital status as single. He accused her of having an affair.”

Forrester drove to Croydon armed with the knife and meat cleaver and forced the front door open. After neighbours called 999 he emerged from the house covered in blood and holding a carton of juice.

When the police arrived he held his arms out for handcuffs and told them: “Who called you? My wife is in there. I killed her.”

Inside the house they found Mrs Forrester’s body with a large wound in her neck. Two bannister rails had been broken off and there were clumps of long brown hair outside the bedroom.

She had multiple wounds to her neck and head and defence wounds to her arms showing she had fought to ward off the blows.

Forrester later handed detectives a prepared statement in which he said: “She forced me out of the family home and posted messages on the internet website telling everybody she had left me and was interested in meeting other men.”

He went on: “The whole incident seemed a blur. I felt I was watching somebody else attacking Emma.”

In an impact statement the victim’s sister Eliza Rothery said the family had been devastated by the murder.

Peter Dahlsen, defending, said Forrester felt “a deeply held remorse”.

KAUHAJOKI, Finland (AP) – A masked gunman whose violent YouTube postings prompted police to question him a day ago opened fire Tuesday at his trade school in western Finland, killing ten people before shooting himself in the head.

Witnesses said panic broke out as the gunman, dressed in black and carrying a large bag, entered the school in Kauhajoki and started firing in a classroom where students were taking an exam. The shootings began just before 11 a.m. local time (0800GMT), as about 150 students were at the Kauhajoki School of Hospitality, 180 miles (300 kilometers) northwest of Helsinki.

“I heard several dozen rounds of shots, in other words it was an automatic pistol,” school janitor Jukka Forsberg told Finnish broadcaster YLE. “I saw some female students who were wailing and moaning and one managed to escape out the back door.”

The gunman had been questioned only Monday by police about YouTube postings in which he is seen firing a handgun, but he was released because there was no legal reason to hold him, Interior Minister Anne Holmlund said.

Police spokesman Jari Neulaniemi said the attacker walked into the school armed with a .22-caliber pistol and some kind of explosive devices that were used to start a fire. He killed 10 people, some of whom were burned beyond recognition, Neulaniemi said. The big bag apparently contained the explosives.

It was Finland’s second school massacre in less than a year and the two attacks had eerie similarities. Both gunmen posted violent clips on YouTube prior to the massacres, both were fascinated by the 1999 Columbine school shootings in Colorado, both attacked their own schools and both died after shooting themselves in the head.

Macclesfield, N.C. — A 13-year-old boy who was tied to a tree two nights this week died Thursday, and his father and stepmother have been charged with murder, authorities said Friday.

Brice Brian McMillan, 41, and Sandra Elizabeth McMillan, 36, both of 1110 Felton Farm Road in Macclesfield, have been charged with first-degree murder and felony child abuse. They were being held Friday in the Edgecombe County Detention Center without bond.

Deputies were called to the Felton Farm Road residence Thursday afternoon to assist paramedics with an unresponsive teen. The boy’s father told deputies he had tied the teen to a tree outside the home Tuesday night because he was being disobedient and other disciplinary actions had failed.

The father said he untied the boy Wednesday morning and allowed him back into the house, but he was tied to the tree a second time that night when he started acting up again. The boy remained tied up until his stepmother found him unconscious at about 4:30 p.m. Thursday, authorities said.

The father was performing CPR on the teen when paramedics arrived at the house, said John Dwight Jefferson, of the Pinetops Rescue Squad.

The teen, who was identified as Tyler Gene McMillan, was in cardiac arrest and was taken to Heritage Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Jefferson said.

“People are people. When it happens, you still always ask the same question – why?” Jefferson said.

Edgecombe County Sheriff James Knight said the boy’s wrists and ankles were bound with plastic ties and that he was also tied to the tree with some other material. Although a rope was seen dangling from a tree in the yard outside the house Friday, he wouldn’t confirm whether that was used to tie the boy.

Investigators found bruises on the boy’s wrists and ankles, Knight said, declining to comment on whether other marks were found on his body.

A 7-year-old and a 9-year-old who live in the McMillan home have been placed in the custody of the Department of Social Services, authorities said.

Tyler McMillan’s mother, Michelle “Mickey” Sasser McMillan, died of cancer several years ago.

Carolyn Pollard, who lives across the road from the McMillans, said the family moved to the area about three months ago from Florida. The children were homeschooled, and the family kept to themselves, she said.

“I was devastated. I did not believe that had taken place,” Pollard said. “I never did see any kind of abuse, and that’s why I’m shocked with it.”

The McMillans first court appearance is scheduled for Monday.

For more on the HSX KIDS Fundcast please visit their blog here.

The two gas stations had rivaled for years. They stood across an intersection from each other on Fort Street in Detroit, where even a penny’s difference was enough to lure customers.

And so came the price war: One station dropped a cent or two, and the other grudgingly followed.

But the seemingly petty back-and-forth escalated Friday, ending with a fatal bullet in BP station owner Jawad Bazzi’s head over what police say was a 3-cent difference in the cost of regular gas.

“It’s crazy,” said a red-eyed Hafed Bazzi, the victim’s nephew. “There had been conflicts before but never like this.”

Here’s what police said happened:

The Marathon station on Fort near Springwells dropped its price to $2.93. That angered Jawad Bazzi, whose regular gas was priced at $2.96.

Bazzi walked across the street with a couple of employees to confront the Marathon owner and his posse.

The groups argued, then began throwing punches. One of Bazzi’s employees hit a Marathon employee with a baseball bat, injuring him.

That’s when the Marathon owner grabbed a handgun and fired three or four times. Bazzi, 45, of Dearborn Heights was shot in the head.

The Marathon owner, whose name wasn’t released Friday, was arrested. He’s identified as a 51-year-old Warren man.

Police at the scene said the handgun was recovered. Those involved in the fight were being interviewed.

After the 10:15 a.m. shooting, more than a dozen of Bazzi’s relatives filled the BP parking lot, hugging each other and glaring at the Marathon station, which was surrounded by police tape and investigators.

They called the gas industry a cutthroat business. One man, his shirt spotted with blood, shielded his face as he climbed into an SUV and was driven away.

Police said they fear retaliation from the BP employees against the Marathon employees, but an evening gathering led by Mohammed Ali Barro, a scholar in the local Islamic community, preached peace at an impromptu memorial service at Byblos Banquets in Dearborn.

Speaking in Arabic, he read from the Quran and told more than 100 of Bazzi’s friends and family members to be patient.

“There’s so many good things to say about Jawad, it’s hard to begin,” said Hafed Bazzi, who is Lebanese. “He made many pledges to mosques and churches.

“I remember as I was growing up, he said that’s what every capable businessman should do.”

Jawad Bazzi had four children, his family said. His wife and other female family members gathered at a relative’s house in Dearborn to mourn.

Hafed Bazzi said his uncle was an area businessman for 30 years. He’d owned the BP since 1994, he said.

Bazzi’s funeral will come quickly, possibly as early as today, his nephew said. He said he expects 1,000 people to attend the service at the Islamic Center of America at 19500 Ford in Dearborn.

“It’s a close community,” he said.

Police said they’re still investigating the case. It hadn’t been turned over yet to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office to determine what, if any, charges would be filed.

After the shooting, with the competing station closed, BP’s price per gallon increased to $3.09 for regular.

MEXICO CITY (AP) – An aspiring horror novelist was arrested after police discovered his girlfriend’s torso in his closet, a leg in the refrigerator and bones in a cereal box, a city prosecutors’ spokesman said Thursday.

Jose Luis Calva told police he had boiled some of his girlfriend’s flesh but that he hadn’t eaten it, the spokesman said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the case.

Calva told police he was a writer and poet—officers found the draft of a novel titled “Cannibalistic Instincts,” he said.

Investigators were trying to determine if chunks of fried meat found in a pan in the apartment were human, the spokesman said.

Police came to Calva’s apartment Monday after neighbors reported a fetid smell. They discovered the dismembered body of his girlfriend Alejandra Galeana in a closet, the spokesman said. A leg and pieces of an arm were in a refrigerator and there were bones inside a cereal box.

The family of Galeana, a 30-year-old pharmacy clerk, reported her missing on Friday and told police of her relationship with Calva, the official said.

Calva is being investigated in the killings of two other women, including an ex-girlfriend, also a pharmacy worker, whose dismembered body was found in 2004, and an unidentified prostitute who was killed earlier this year.

Calva tried to run from police to avoid arrest, but was struck by a car and was still hospitalized on Thursday

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian who says he murdered at least 60 people told a court on Wednesday that he collected the souls of his victims after falling in love with killing.

Branded the “chessboard murderer” by Russian newspapers because he wanted to fill the 64 squares of a chessboard with a coin for each murder, Alexander Pichushkin said he preferred to select victims he knew.

“I tried to collect their spirits, their souls,” he said. “I felt no emotion when I killed them.”

Pichushkin is charged with 49 murders but says he killed at least 11 more.

He killed his first victim, a friend, in 1992, an experience he said was like first love: “You never forget it.” He killed an average of one victim a month from 2002 onwards, once taking three lives in 10 days.

Listening just meters away from the cage holding Pichushkin was Vera Konobaltsayeva, the elderly mother of one of his victims.

She raised her hand to ask how and why her son, Andrei, had perished in December 2001. But Pichushkin, a 33-year-old former supermarket worker, could give no clear explanation.

“We went for a walk, we drank vodka, we chatted. Then when he was drunk … I threw him in the well,” he said. “Your son, he felt no trauma.”

Konobaltsayeva wept quietly.

Prosecutors say he lured most of his victims to secluded parts of Moscow’s Bitsevsky Park. Some had their skulls smashed with a hammer. Other victims were strangled, drowned in a sewage pit or thrown off balconies.

If convicted, Pichushkin could be Russia’s most prolific serial killer. Andrei Chikatilo, the “Rostov Ripper”, was convicted in 1992 and executed in 1994 for raping, butchering and in some cases eating as many as 52 people.

Pichushkin’s trial is expected to be lengthy, with testimony scheduled from at least 41 relatives of the alleged victims and another 98 witnesses.

“I have lots of time to answer questions. But I’m very tired — my bed is not very comfortable,” Pichushkin said.

NEW YORK — A peacock that roamed into the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant was attacked by a man who vilified the bird as a vampire, animal-control authorities said.

Beaten so fiercely that most of his tail feathers fell out, the bird was euthanized, said Richard Gentles, a spokesman for the city’s Center for Animal Care and Control.

“It’s just unbelievable that someone would do something to a poor, defenseless animal and do it in such a cruel fashion,” he said.

The peacock, a male several years old, wandered into a Burger King parking lot in the New York borough of Staten Island and perched on a car hood Thursday morning. Charmed employees were feeding him bread when the man appeared.

He seized the iridescent bird by the neck, hurled it to the ground and started kicking and stomping the creature, said worker Felicia Finnegan, 19.

“He was going crazy,” she said.

Asked what he was doing, she said, the attacker explained, “‘I’m killing a vampire!’”

Employees called police, but the man ran when he saw them. Authorities were looking for the attacker, described as in his teens or early 20s.

It was not clear how the bird made his way to the Burger King, but a Staten Island resident who raises peacocks said he had given some to a person who lives near the restaurant.

In what was a poorly thought through prank or an eerie forewarning, someone apparently reported the death of Chris Benoit’s wife on Wikipedia — the online open source encyclopedia — more than 14 hours before police discovered her body, along with her son’s and husband’s, at the pro wrestler’s Fayette County home.

An anonymous user edited the biography of the wrestler on Monday at 12:01 a.m., said Sandra Ordonez, communication manager for the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the encyclopedia.

Authorities discovered the bodies at the Benoit’s Green Meadow Lane home that afternoon, at 2:30 p.m.

The Monday morning posting said: “Chris Benoit was replaced by Johnny Nitro for the [ECW] Extreme Championship Wrestling Championship match at Vengeance, as Benoit was not there due to personal issues, stemming from the death of his wife Nancy.”

Adding to the mystery, the anonymous poster used a computer whose internet protocol, or IP, address was traced to Stamford, Conn., where the headquarters for Benoit’s employer, for World Wrestling Entertainment, is located.

Investigators think Benoit, 40, killed his wife Friday and his 7-year-old son Daniel Saturday. He placed Bibles next to their bodies, authorities say. Sometime Sunday he hanged himself using a weight-machine pulley.

The posting now raises questions of who, if anyone, knew about the deaths and if so, when.

“We are looking at that, trying to track down the IP address,” said Fayette Sheriff’s Lt. Tammy Pope in a statement to WAGA-TV. “It’s either true or it’s a hoax.”

Anyone can post and edit content on the Web encyclopedia. Further more, an IP address, which is a unique set of numbers that every machine connected to the Internet carries, does not necessarily have to be broadcast from where it is registered.

The IP address from which the 12:01 a.m. addition was made had been flagged for “vandalizing” other Wikipedia entries in the past, ABC News reported.

Earlier this month, the same IP user also edited a post about WWE wrestler Chavo Guerrero Jr., a close friend of Benoit’s who reportedly was the recipient of at least one of the text messages Benoit sent over the weekend before the discovery of the bodies.

In that edit, the IP user took out a damaging description of Guerrero from the post, ABC News said.

Wikipedia does recruit volunteer editors who troll the entries to ensure that facts within posts are properly attributed.

According to a timeline posted on Wikinews, which is the news source of the nonprofit foundation, within an hour of the 12:01 post, the edit had been changed with the comment: “Need a reliable source. Saying that his wife died is a pretty big statement, you need to back it up with something.”

Another hour went by. Then a second anonymous edit, using what appears to be an Australian Internet service provider, added the attribution: “according to several pro wrestling websites.”

Again, the edit was changed after 20 minutes with the comment: “Saying ‘several pro wrestling websites’ is still not reliable information.”

The posting was brought to the attention of the foundation, based in St. Petersburg, Fla., and an employee left a message with Fayetteville authorities about 11 a.m. Tuesday.

“We provided the IP address, and I guess they were investigating,” Ordonez said.

The Chris Benoit entry, updated hundreds of times this week, has now been “locked” to prevent further edits by posters.

New details about the killings emerged Wednesday.

Daniel appeared to have been killed in a chokehold because he had internal neck injuries but no visible bruises, according to Scott Ballard, district attorney for Fayette County.

Nancy Benoit, 43, had bruises on her back and stomach, indicating her husband had his knee in her back as he pulled on a cord that was around her neck.

Benoit killed himself by wrapping a cord around his neck that was attached to a weight machine. He released the weights — about 240 pounds — to cause strangulation, Ballard said.

During the weekend, Benoit made groggy calls to co-workers and left text messages, according to the WWE.

On Saturday, he said he was delayed in catching his flight to an event in Beaumont, Texas, because of family health issues, the WWE said. In one call he said “I love you” to a co-worker, who called it “out of context,” the organization said.

In other calls, Benoit said his wife and son were sick with food poisoning and that they had gone to the hospital, WWE said.

On Sunday, Benoit sent text messages to friends from his cellphone and his wife’s cellphone. The last text message was sent at 3:58 a.m. Sunday, according to WWE.

The WWE lawyer tried to get inside the mind of the wrestling star to explain why he would kill his child.

“The time gap between the death of Nancy and the time he was with this child, it doesn’t take much to figure out what was going on in his mind,” McDevitt said. “The mother can’t take care of [Daniel], he’d killed her. He was going to jail. There was nobody left to take care of this little boy.”

McDevitt could not find any other explanation why Benoit would take Daniel’s life. The boy adored his father and had his pictures in his room, McDevitt said.

Also Wednesday, Benoit’s longtime physician, Dr. Phil Astin, said he had prescribed testosterone for the wrestler in the past but would not say what, if any, medications he prescribed the day of their meeting.

“He was in my office on Friday to stop by just to see my staff,” Astin, of Carrollton, said. “He certainly didn’t show any signs of any distress or rage or anything.”

That the violence went on for an extended period indicates it was not a “roid rage” sparked by steroid use, according to WWE and others.

Toxicology results from Benoit’s autopsy won’t be available for weeks.

Benoit received drug deliveries from a Florida business that sold steroids, human growth hormone and testosterone, according to the Albany County, N.Y., district attorney’s office, which is investigating the business, MedXLife.com.

“This gentleman may have had other significant mental health problems,” said Gary Yesalis, an epidemiologist at Penn State University. “The death of Benoit and his family wasn’t spontaneous. I don’t see steroids had much if anything to do with this.”

At the gate and stacked stone wall at the family’s 8-acre home, flowers, stuffed animals and wrestling figurines were left by fans.

And so were notes.

One was written by a child in pencil on lined notebook paper. “I will miss you, we will always love you,” it says. “I left you my [toy] wrestler. See you in heaven.”

Staff writers Mike Morris, Kathy Jefcoats and Bill Hendricks, researchers Sharon Gaus and Nisa Asokan and The Associated Press contributed to this article.

(Chris Benoit, left, pictured with also deceased friend Eddie Guerrero at Wrestlemania 20)

ATLANTA (AP) – Pro wrestler Chris Benoit strangled his wife and smothered his son before hanging himself in his weight room, a law enforcement official close to the investigation told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Authorities also said they are investigating whether steroids may have been a factor in the deaths of Benoit, his wife and their 7-year-old son. Steroid abuse has been linked to depression, paranoia, and aggressive behavior or angry outbursts known as “roid rage.”

“We don’t know yet. That’s one of the things we’ll be looking at,” said Fayette County District Attorney Scott Ballard. He said test results may not be back for weeks.

Autopsies were scheduled Tuesday by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Authorities were investigating the deaths at a secluded Fayette County home as a murder-suicide and were not seeking any suspects. The official who described the manner of death spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information was to be released at a news conference later Tuesday.

Investigators believe Benoit (pronounced ben-WAH) killed his wife, 43- year-old Nancy, and son Daniel during the weekend and then himself Monday. The bodies were found Monday afternoon in three separate rooms of the house, off a gravel road about two miles from the Whitewater Country Club.

Fayette County Coroner C.J. Mowell did not return calls seeking comment. The answering service for his funeral home said he was out of town.

Asked about the condition of the interior of the house, sheriff’s Sgt. Keith Whiteside said investigators found “nothing really out of the ordinary.” He said Benoit was found in the home’s weight room, his wife in an office and the son in an upstairs bedroom.

Neighbors said the Benoits led a low-key lifestyle.

“We would see Chris walking in his yard from time to time. He wasn’t rude, but he wasn’t really outwardly warm,” said Alaina Jones, who lives across the street.

Jimmy Baswell, who was Benoit’s driver for more than five years, placed a white wreath at the Benoits’ gate. “They always seemed like they were the happiest people,” he said.

World Wrestling Entertainment said on its Web site that it asked authorities to check on Benoit and his family after being alerted by friends who received “several curious text messages sent by Benoit early Sunday morning.”

The WWE, based in Stamford, Conn., said authorities asked that it not release further information on the deaths.

Benoit, born in Montreal, was a former world heavyweight champion, Intercontinental champion and held several tag-team titles. His names in the ring included “The Canadian Crippler.”

“WWE extends its sincerest thoughts and prayers to the Benoit family’s relatives and loved ones in this time of tragedy,” the company said in a statement on its Web site.

“He was like a family member to me, and everyone in my family is taking it real hard,” said fellow Canadian Bret Hart, a five-time champion with the World Wrestling Federation. The federation has since changed its name to World Wrestling Entertainment.

Benoit had maintained a home in metro Atlanta from the time he wrestled for the defunct World Championship Wrestling. The Fayette County Tax Assessors Office lists the value of the house, situated on more than 8.5 acres, at nearly $900,000.

The WWE canceled its live “Monday Night RAW” card in Corpus Christi, Texas, and USA Network aired a three-hour tribute to Benoit in place of the scheduled wrestling telecast.

Benoit’s wife managed several wrestlers and went by the stage name “Woman.” They met when her then-husband drew up a script that had them involved in a relationship as part of a story line on World Championship Wrestling, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Benoit has two other children from a prior relationship.

I had a dream last night (the second night in a row of what could be considered nightmare-like) that Elf was more like he was when I first met him. Considerably more dark and perhaps evil. He and his friend Elody were trying to kill me by trapping my house and yard. There were explosives and guns, but in the end, it was a hand to hand fight which I was stabbed.

Suffice to say, it has not improved my state of mind.

UPDATE: Elf called just now. We’re going to try and hang out some tonight. I’d hate to think that everything is related to him. That’s just horrible. But it is reasonable to understand having been disassociated with someone so important to me for pretty much a month can have additional bad effects overall.

UPDATE 2: I’ve decided to change when we hang out to Friday afternoon. I told him that I wanna spend some quality time with him since it’d been about a month. Maybe that’s what my problem actually is — not taking control like a good seme should. (I mean about everything, not just this.)

A man cut off his own head with a chainsaw after stabbing his 70-year-old father to death in their apartment in the German city of Cologne, police said.

The body of the offender, 24, was found headless when police raced to the apartment after an emergency call, apparently from the dying father, had been broken off in mid-sentence.

Alf Willwacher, a senior prosecutor, said an electric chainsaw was next to the son’s body.

“We do not believe any third party was involved,” he said.

Neighbours said the father and son had been reclusive since the death of the mother, allegedly by suicide, several years ago.

NEW YORK (AP) – With a backlash developing against the media for airing sickening pictures from Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui, Fox News Channel said Thursday it would stop and other networks said they would severely limit their use.

NBC News was the recipient Wednesday of Cho’s package of rambling, hate-filled video and written messages, with several pictures of him posing with a gun. Contents began airing on “Nightly News,” and its rivals quickly used them, too.

Family members of victims canceled plans to appear on NBC’s “Today” show Thursday because they “were very upset” with the network for showing the pictures, “Today” host Meredith Vieira said.

Virginia State Police Col. Steve Flaherty—who praised NBC Wednesday for coming to authorities first with the package—said Thursday he was disappointed with what the network showed.

“I just hate that a lot of people not used to seeing that type of image had to see it,” he said.

NBC said the material was aired because it helped to answer the question of why Cho killed 32 people and himself on the Virginia Tech campus Monday.

“The decision to run this video was reached by virtually every news organization in the world, as evidenced by coverage on television, on Web sites and in newspapers,” NBC said in a statement. “We have covered this story—and our unique role in it—with extreme sensitivity, underscored by our devoted efforts to remember and honor the victims and heroes of this tragic incident.”

NBC and its MSNBC cable outlet will “severely limit” use of these pictures going forward, “Today” host Matt Lauer said, a restriction echoed by ABC News. At both CBS News and CNN, producers will need explicit approval from their bosses to use them going forward.

Fox News announced on the air late Thursday morning that it would no longer air Cho’s material, saying “sometimes you change your mind.”

These decisions, of course, came more than 12 hours after the pictures became available, after they already made their impact. The news cycle dictates they would be used less, anyway.

“It has value as breaking news,” said ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider, “but then becomes practically pornographic as it is just repeated ad nauseam.”

Jon Klein, president of CNN U.S., said the decision to air it was a tough call.

“As breaking news, it’s pertinent to our understanding of why this was done,” he said. “Then, once the public has seen the material and digested it, then it’s fair to say, `How much should we be showing it?’ I think it’s to the credit of news organizations that they are dialing back.”

The package that arrived yesterday at NBC headquarters in New York was almost immediately flagged as suspicious, because it had been mailed from Blacksburg, Va., and bore the return name A. Ishmael.

Last night, the anchor of “The NBC Nightly News,” Brian Williams, called the materials a “multimedia manifesto” and said they were mailed by Cho Seung-Hui, who has been identified as the killer of 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus.

NBC executives had no explanation for why the network was singled out to receive the package, and nothing in the materials explained the action. Nothing on the envelope or in the package cited a specific individual at NBC.

The arrival in the mailroom set in motion intense decision making, much of it directed by Steve Capus, president of NBC News.

An NBC security officer, Brian Patton, opened the package, a large-size Express Mail envelope. The package had been intended to arrive in one day, but the address was wrong. Instead of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, it was “30 Rockefeller Ave.,” and the ZIP code was wrong.

Mr. Capus said Mr. Patton and everyone else at NBC who handled the original materials wore gloves. Mr. Capus did not see the contents until after copies had been made.

“I first learned of it just before noon,” he said.

He and others at NBC saw that the envelope had been mailed from a post office in Blacksburg at 9:01 a.m. on Monday, putting Mr. Cho’s visit to the post office within the two hours between the first two killings in a dormitory and the later mass attacks in a classroom building.

NBC quickly contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the state police in Virginia. Officials from the New York field office of the F.B.I. went to Rockefeller Center to pick up the originals.

Mr. Capus described the contents as one DVD disc and 23 pages of a preformatted document file with text and photographs interspersed. NBC showed many of the photos on its newscast. In the pictures, Mr. Cho poses with guns or other weapons like a knife and a hammer.

Mr. Capus said the written material was dominated by “threats and gibberish.”

“It was incredibly difficult to follow,” he added.

He said the on-camera statements were much the same. In one section, Mr. Cho referred to the gunmen in 1999 at Columbine High School in Colorado.

Nowhere did Mr. Cho refer to specific people or specific acts, Mr. Capus said. The student did not admit the killings in the dormitory and did not say he was about to go on a shooting rampage.

The details of dealing with law enforcement and trying to decide what could be used on television accounted for NBC’s not covering the story until Mr. Williams’s newscast, Mr. Capus said.

In an interview last night on MSNBC, Mr. Williams said NBC had been concerned about the sensitivities of broadcasting as much of the material as it did.

“This was a sick business tonight, going on the air with this,” he said.

Seung-Hui Cho, the student who killed 32 people and then himself yesterday, left a long and “disturbing” note in his dorm room at Virginia Tech, say law enforcement sources.

He also wrote at least two violent plays for an English course that worried his professor and several classmates.

Sources have now described the note, which runs several pages, as beginning in the present tense and then shifting to the past. It contains rhetoric explaining Cho’s actions and says, “You caused me to do this,” the sources told ABC News.

Lucinda Roy, a co-director of the creative writing program at Virginia Tech, taught Cho in a poetry class in fall of 2005 and later worked with him one-on-one after she became concerned about his behavior and themes in his writings.

Roy spoke outside her home Tuesday afternoon, saying that there was nothing explicit in Cho’s writings, but that threats were there under the surface.

“There was some concern about him,” Rude told the Associated Press. “Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it’s creative or if they’re describing things, if they’re imagining things or just how real it might be. But we’re all alert to not ignore things like this.”

She said she notified authorities about Cho, but said she was told that there would be too many legal hurdles to intervene. She said she asked him to go to counseling, but he never went.

Roy described Cho as a student who wore sunglasses indoors to mask his face, and said he hardly ever spoke.

One play, called “Richard McBeef,” describes a 13-year-old boy who accuses his stepfather of pedophilia, and ends with the boy’s death. In the play, titled “Richard McBeef,” the boy talks of killing his stepfather.

In another, called “Mr. Brownstone,” three high-school students face an abusive teacher.

“I wanna kill him,” says one character.

“I wanna watch him bleed like the way he made us kids bleed,” says another.

Parents of a Virginia Tech student expressed outrage Monday at what they call an inadequate response by college brass to the worst mass-murder shooting in American history.

John and Jennifer Shourds of Lovettsville, Va. demanded the immediate firings of University President Charles Steger and Virginia Tech Campus Police Chief W.R. Flinchum who he said “screwed up” the handling of separate shooting incidents that left 33 students dead, including the shooter.

“My God, if someone shoots somebody there should be an immediate lockdown of the campus,” said John Shourds. “They totally blew it. The president blew it, campus police blew it.”

The Shourds said they received a phone call from their daughter, Alexandra, a freshman at the college in Blacksburg, who was unsure of how to handle a vague university e-mail received around 9:20 a.m. regarding the first shooting incident that happened at the West Ambler Johnston Hall around 7:15 a.m. Later, it was learned that a lone gunman entered that hall, two buildings away from Alexandra’s dorm, and opened fire, killing two people.

Shourds said the e-mail left no detailed information of how the students should proceed and didn’t call for a campus lockdown. There were no public safety announcements or warnings before the second shooting at Norris Hall that killed 30 people.

John Shourd said he told his daughter to stay put and avoid her 10 a.m. class until the university sent more information.

At about 9:50 a.m., Alexandra Shourds told her father a subsequent e-mail was sent to students instructed them to stay put and not go anywhere. An e-mail announcing the cancellation of classes for the day didn’t come until 10:16 a.m., said John Shourds.

He said many lives could have been saved had the school locked down the campus immediately after the first shooting.

“A lockdown may have not have stopped the killing but it could have lessened the tragedy,” said Shourds.

At a press conference, Steger said authorities believed that the shooting at the dorm was a domestic dispute and mistakenly thought the gunman had fled the campus and defended the university’s handling of the tragedy.

“We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur,” Steger said. “We can only make decisions based on the information you had on the time. You don’t have hours to reflect on it.”

Shourds said he believes the school delayed the call to lock down the school because there was only approximately two weeks left until the end of the semester.

John Shourds was at Washington, D.C.’s Dulles airport dropping another daughter off for her flight back to college at Michigan State University when he got the first call from Alexandra.

Since that call, Shourds said he and his family have felt anger, fear and indignation over the day’s events. The Shourds have been trying to contact their daughter as much as possible and John Shourds said they would have been on their way to see Alexandra had they had any success in booking hotels in the Blacksburg area.

He said no apology or excuse will meet his satisfaction without the ouster of the university’s top officials. He wasn’t pleased with the Steger’s comments after the incident, either.

“I hold this president completely accountable,” said Shourds. “They are cowards. They can’t come out and say they made a mistake.”

>> 33 dead, including gunman.

>> 29 wounded

>> Asked why the campus, which has more than 26,000 students, was not shut down after the first shooting, Flinchum responded that police received information that “it was an isolated event to that building and the decision was made not to cancel classes at that time.”

Steger added, “We had some reason to believe the shooter had left campus.”

>> Amie Steele, editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, said one of her reporters at the dormitory reported “mass chaos.”

The reporter said there were “lots of students running around, going crazy, and the police officers were trying to settle everyone down and keep everything under control,” according to Steele.

BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) – A gunman opened fire in a Virginia Tech dorm and then, two hours later, in a classroom across campus Monday, killing at least 30 people and wounding more than two dozen in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history, government officials told The Associated Press. The gunman was killed, bringing the death toll to 31.

“Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions,” said Virginia Tech president Charles Steger. “The university is shocked and indeed horrified.”

It was not immediately clear whether the gunman was shot by police or took his own life. His name was not released, and investigators offered no motive for the attack. It was not known if the gunman was a student.

The shootings spread panic and confusion on campus, with students complaining that the university did not warn them about the first burst of gunfire until more than two hours later.

Witnesses reporting students jumping out the windows of a classroom building to escape the gunfire. SWAT team members with helmets, flak jackets and assault rifles swarmed over the campus. Students and faculty members carried out some of the wounded themselves, without waiting for ambulances to arrive.

The massacre took place at opposite sides of the 2,600-acre campus, beginning at about 7:15 a.m. at West Ambler Johnston, a coed dormitory that houses 895 people, and continuing at least two hours later at Norris Hall, an engineering building about a half-mile away, authorities said.

Police said they were still investigating the shooting at the dorm when they got word of gunfire at the classroom building.

Some students bitterly questioned why the gunman was able to strike a second time, two hours after the bloodshed began.

“What happened today this was ridiculous. And I don’t know what happened or what was going through this guy’s mind,” student Jason Piatt told CNN. “But I’m pretty outraged and I’ll say on the record I’m pretty outraged that someone died in a shooting in a dorm at 7 o’clock in the morning and the first e-mail about it—no mention of locking down campus, no mention of canceling classes—they just mention that they’re investigating a shooting two hours later at 9:22.”

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Two 10-year-olds in Daytona Beach, Fla., are accused of attacking a homeless man who was hospitalized after a piece of concrete was smashed into his face, according to police.

Daytona Beach police charged the two 10-year-olds, whose names were not released, and another teen, Jeremy Woods, of Daytona Beach, with aggravated battery after the three threw rocks at two homeless men in a neighborhood near Ridgewood Avenue, Daytona Beach police said.

According to police, the boys pushed John D’Amico, 58, into a concrete block wall. D’Amico fell and one of the 10-year-olds smashed a piece of concrete into his face, police said.

D’Amico was transported to Halifax Medical Center with a serious head wound, police said.

CALGARY – A court will begin hearing grisly details today about the slaying of a local family that was linked to rumours of vampirism.

The preliminary hearing for accused triple-killer Jeremy Allen Steinke is scheduled to run until Thursday in provincial court.

Steinke, 24, faces three counts of first-degree murder after Marc and Debra Richardson and their eight-year-old son Jacob were found slain inside their home April 23, 2006.

A co-accused, a girl who was 12 at the time, faces the same charges. She has pleaded not guilty for her trial in June.

For the slain family’s grieving relatives, who say they are being kept in the dark, the start of court proceedings is a relief. “The sooner we get this behind us and the court is settled, it will get easier,” said Marc’s father, Art Richardson.

The Richardson family was the picture of middle-class suburbia in southern Alberta’s heartland.

The disturbing age disparity of the two accused, who friends say were dating, and odd claims that Steinke believed he was a 300-year-old werewolf made headlines around the world.

The revelation of the couple’s personal Internet profiles on Nexopia and vampirefreaks — which featured Steinke’s gruesome poetry and a photo of the girl posing with a pistol — added more twists to the story.

This week’s preliminary hearing — which will determine if there is enough evidence to proceed to trial — is sure to stir up painful memories in the city of 56,000, police said.

“It’s going to be pretty traumatic, especially for the families,” said Staff Sgt. Rick Wigle of the Police Service.

Even seasoned investigators tasked with collecting evidence from the triple homicide inside the otherwise tidy house were not immune to the horror.

“It was a pretty gruesome crime scene,” said Wigle, adding counselling was provided to officers.

Nearly a year later, the city of Medicine Hat’s mayor said the community has rallied.

“I truly believe it was a tragic aberration. A family destroyed like that and the people left behind. We were in the media spotlight for quite a little while,” said Mayor Garth Vallely.

“I think the community has accepted it now and wants to let the justice system take its course.”

HOUSTON — A 19-year-old Texas A&M University student was killed by her ex-boyfriend, who then dismembered and burned her body on a patio grill, authorities said Saturday.

Investigators say Timothy Wayne Shepherd, 27, confessed Wednesday to strangling Tynesha Stewart because he was angry she had begun a new relationship. Shepherd, who is charged with murder, is being held on $250,000 bond.

“We have determined through this investigation that the defendant dismembered Tynesha Stewart and . . . he burned the body parts,” Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas said. “There are no remaining body parts.”

The announcement Saturday ended a debate in the Houston area about whether law-enforcement officials should launch a massive and expensive search of the area’s overflowing landfills in hopes of finding Stewart’s remains.

Officials first thought that the body had been disposed in a large commercial trash bin that had since been emptied.

Sheriff’s investigators had decided against launching a costly and time-consuming search for Stewart’s remains, angering her family and friends. Complaints from activists and lawmakers prompted Thomas to get emergency approval to spend up to $500,000 for a search.

Thomas said he knew, but could not disclose, that there were no body parts to find. He said investigators were unable to release that information to the public or to Stewart’s family because of the investigation. Stewart’s family has since been advised, and understands why there will be no search, Thomas said.

Stewart, a college freshman from Houston, was last seen with Shepherd on March 15 while she was home for spring break visiting her mother. Friends have said Stewart and Shepherd quit dating at the beginning of this school year.

Shepherd’s attorney, Chip Lewis, has not returned calls for comment. Thomas said Stewart’s family has asked for privacy and will not respond to calls from the media.

Authorities did not give any more details about how they believe the slaying occurred, but said nothing remains of Stewart. Although human remains generally require extremely high temperatures to destroy, he would not discuss how he believed the body could be burned to nothing.