Crime Scene

The New Jersey State Police and the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office are investigating the discovery of human remains in Buena Vista Township. While executing a search warrant Friday at a Buena Vista home, state police officers found the human remains, said state police spokesman Sgt. Brian Polite. No arrests have been made in connection with the discovery. "The information gathered thus far establishes that there is no imminent danger to local residents," according to a statement from the Atlantic County Prosecutor's office.

WASHINGTON - In the fictional world of television police dramas, a few quick clicks on a computer lead investigators to the owner of a gun recovered at a bloody crime scene. Before the first commercial, the TV detectives are on the trail of the suspect. Reality is a world away. There is no national database of guns. Not of who owns them, how many are sold annually, or even how many exist. Federal law bars the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from keeping track of guns.

Orders From Berlin By Simon Tolkien Minotaur Book. 309 pp. $25.99   Simon Tolkien's latest novel is the third he has written featuring English policeman William Trave. In the first two, set mostly in the late 1950s, Trave is an inspector in the Oxford police department. This new one, though, takes place nearly 20 years earlier, during the London Blitz, and Trave is just another young cop, transferred from Oxford to London, and, in addition to being the assistant to Deputy Chief Inspector John Quaid, has weekend civil defense duties.

Planning on buying a house this year? If you're even slightly squeamish, get ready to do some extra detective work. If the property was the site of a bloody crime, the seller does not have to divulge that scrap of information. In a decision handed down last week, a panel of Pennsylvania Superior Court judges reaffirmed that the sordid reputation of a home - no matter how gruesome - does not count as a "material defect" and does not have to be disclosed to a buyer. "The fact that a murder once occurred in a house falls into that category of home-buyer concerns best left to caveat emptor " - let the buyer beware - the appeals court wrote.

"THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE" makes the sardonic point that exoneration rarely gets the same frenzied publicity as conviction, and takes a small step toward redress. Its documentary subjects are the five boys-turned-men (Yusef Salaam, Korey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Antron McCray) railroaded in 1989 for the beating and rape of the so-called Central Park jogger, and of course there is much shame to be conferred in this story on police and prosecutors. They buried evidence, coerced confessions, and proceeded with prosecution even when it must have been obvious to them (the DNA didn't match)

NEW YORK - The man charged with killing a 6-year-old New York City boy who infamously vanished in 1979 pleaded not guilty Wednesday as his lawyer insisted his confession to police was false. Pedro Hernandez, 51, wore a gray sweat suit and answered "not guilty" at the hearing in the case of Etan Patz, whose disappearance helped spawn the movement to publicize cases of missing children nationwide. "My client had no motive and no history," defense attorney Harvey Fishbein said outside court.

LOS ANGELES - The bodies of four people who had been shot to death were found face-down Sunday outside a suburban Southern California home that apparently served as an unlicensed boarding house, authorities said. Los Angeles police were seeking a motive for the attacks at the house in Northridge, in the San Fernando Valley. Lt. Terri Brinkmeyer said a 911 call led police to the large house around 4:30 a.m. Homicide detectives were at the scene collecting evidence at the house, which was blocked off by a large fence.

JOHANNESBURG - South African police may have altered evidence and planted weapons after they shot dead 34 striking miners near Lonmin's Marikana mines in August, according to photographic evidence presented at a commission of inquiry into the killings. Photographs taken by police the night after the shootings show more weapons by the dead bodies than there were in photographs taken immediately after the violence on Aug. 16. Thousands of miners had gathered at hills in Marikana about 58 miles northwest of Johannesburg where 34 miners were shot dead by police and 78 wounded in the worst state violence since the end of apartheid in 1994.

FOR THREE DAYS, Raghunandan "Ragu" Yandamuri seemed the most caring of friends. After someone killed Satyavathi Venna and kidnapped her 10-month-old granddaughter, Saanvi, from the family's King of Prussia apartment Monday, Yandamuri attended a candlelight vigil and helped create and distribute fliers offering a reward for the baby's safe return. To show support for the family, he even visited the Upper Merion Police Department, where Saanvi's parents, Venkata Venna and Chenchu Latha Punuru, camped out with investigators, desperately waiting for any word of their missing infant.