Family Friend

The school counselor, teaching a class on "Good Touch, Bad Touch" in December 1990 warned the female students about the things child molesters do. "Eddie did that," a 9-year-old girl shouted. The counselor then met privately with the girl, who said Edward Lord, 31, of 28th Street near Tasker, a friend of her parents, had forced her to have sex with him on several occasions. "This man violated the trust the parents placed in him when they left their daughter in his care," said Assistant District Attorney Yvonne Ruiz yesterday, after a jury convicted Lord of rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and corrupting the morals of a minor.

AMID the familiar music of the ice-cream man, kids playing in the street and the other sounds of summer in and around Philadelphia, many people brought along a couple of friends to keep them company on nights when they went out to sit on their steps or in their backyards. Harry Kalas and Richie Ashburn dropped into the neighborhood each night and on Sunday afternoons, giving folks a couple of hours of baseball and conversation. Though it's played without a clock, much of baseball lends itself to time and conversation.

A Chester County man was convicted yesterday of robbing a family friend of $14,500 that the friend had been saving to return to Puerto Rico and buy a house there. After deliberating for about 12 hours over two days, the Chester County Court jury convicted Domingo Negron Jr., 27, of stealing the money that Guillermo Rivera, 54, had saved over seven years working as an assistant cook in a Kennett Square mushroom camp. "I knew him since he was born," Rivera testified Wednesday through an interpreter.

A California man charged with molesting the daughter of an Abington couple while visiting them over the last two Christmas seasons faces a preliminary hearing today in Glenside District Court. Abington police arrested James Sheehan "Jimmy" Dean, 48, of Cypress, Calif., before a Christmas Eve service Monday and charged him with aggravated indecent assault and two counts each of indecent assault and corrupting minors. He is being held in the Montgomery County Correctional Facility after failing to post $500,000 cash bail.

Rich and Sue Petrone knew from the red hair. That was their son, Daniel Rohrbough, lying on the ground outside the entrance to the school that bloody Tuesday. He almost got away. The quiet, 15-year-old sophomore had been shot in the back as he was running from the school after holding the door for some 80 other escaping students. While other families counted the anxious hours, the Petrones knew Danny wasn't coming home. That night, Sue Petrone went into the room of her only son and gathered up his dirty laundry, said family friend Jim Riss.

The Rhawnhurst couple considered Karl Margulies, 61, a trusted friend. So they allowed Margulies to care for their 12-year-old son while they went bowling Wednesday evenings from January through March 1998. On each occasion, Margulies sexually molested the boy repeatedly, Assistant District Attorney Christopher Mallios said yesterday. The boy, now 13, said the assaults began on Jan. 12, when Margulies came into his bedroom while he was "watching my favorite cartoon. It happened every Wednesday night.

There was sadness, and there were regrets. Cory Erving's oldest brother, Cheo, 27, apologized for sometimes setting a bad example for his younger sibling. "You looked up to me," Cheo said to his absent brother. "I apologize for some of the things I showed you that were not the right things. " His sister, Jazmin, 23, sobbed as she talked about "the only little brother I had. " "I took Cory's life for granted," another brother, Julius III, 26, said. "I promise I won't take anyone else's life for granted.

The pool of blood, now dried and cracked, remained on the hardwood dining-room floor as family and friends prayed, burned incense, and made offerings of food to the spirit of 72-year-old Ty Nguyen. They gathered in her white clapboard house in Pennsauken to console one another, make arrangements for her funeral today, and prepare to fly her body home to Vietnam. And they expressed bewilderment that someone would savagely beat the woman to death. Her body was found Monday around 1 p.m. by a woman, identified by authorities only as a tenant.

They went back from whence they came. John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, were returned to the misty sea off of Martha's Vineyard yesterday, their ashes cast into the choppy waters during a mournful ceremony near where they were killed in a violent plane crash six days ago. Into a southeasterly wind, blowing better than 12 knots, the Coast Guard cutter Sanibel ferried members of the victims' families past...

Slain taxicab driver Hafiz Sarfaraz was just trying to work hard to support his family. The All City Taxi employee was finishing his nightshift about 12:30 a.m. Wednesday when he was shot multiple times in West Philadelphia, family friends said. He was pronounced dead an hour later at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, according to police. "It doesn't make any sense," said Alex Friedman, manager of All City Taxi. "We're all mourning for our fellow driver and business associate.

In a brief, searing, and politically charged ceremony outside City Hall on Tuesday afternoon, grieving families, heartsick friends, city officials, and union leaders gathered to mourn the deaths of three firefighters. Under the heat and glare of an intense sun, the crowd gathered for half an hour, sharing sorrow and indignation. Initially, the event was organized to mark the first anniversary of a warehouse fire in Kensington that killed Lt. Robert Neary and firefighter Daniel Sweeney.

AUSTIN L. HOGAN liked to kick back on the rooftop deck of his Society Hill condominium overlooking the Delaware River and burn through books at a scary pace. "He would devour a book in an hour and a half," said his wife, Margaret Leyden. "It was frightening. " Not only books but newspapers, local, national and even international, would fall into the maw of his insatiable greed for information and amusement. And he often would turn from the printed page to his Kindle. "He read everything," his wife said.

Bailey O'Neill liked Granny Smith apples, the high dive, and flying kites on the beach. He was excited, he told his mother, to be confirmed later this month at Collingdale's St. Joseph Church. He followed the Flyers and the Phillies and served as best man at his grandfather's wedding. He scored the highest math grade in his class at Darby Township School. In the schoolyard there two months ago, Bailey's nose was broken when he was punched during a fight with two other boys. His parents said he had been the target of bullying, an allegation that has drawn national attention.

CHICAGO - Hundreds of mourners and dignitaries, including first lady Michelle Obama, packed the funeral Saturday for a Chicago honor student whose killing catapulted her into the nation's debate over gun violence. Yet one speaker after another remembered Hadiya Pendleton, 15, not so much as a symbol but as a best friend, an excellent student, and a girl with a bright smile and big personality. They said she was a typical teen who wanted to borrow her friends' clothes and who never left home without her lip gloss.

For the 15th year in a row, Haddonfield will usher in the new year with a family-friendly First Night celebration Monday. The 2012 version offers events ranging from rock music to a magic show, from historical reenactors to fireworks. More than a dozen sites on or near Kings Highway will host events, starting at 6. Many of the shows are for children, including several musical performances and the magic act. Shuttles will stop every 15 minutes at each venue. Admission to all indoor activities costs $15, the price of a First Night button, which may be purchased in advance or on Monday.

  Parental Guidance is an engaging comedy that bridges multiple generation gaps, making it that rare movie that grandparents, their kids, and their kids can enjoy. Directed with more warmth than art by Andy Fickman, the film is just endearing enough to forgive it its contrivances. Artie and Diane (Billy Crystal and Bette Midler) are a Fresno, Calif., couple whose nest has been empty since Alice (Marisa Tomei), their only child, left for college. She is now married to Phil (Tom Everett Scott)

By Susan FitzGerald I start my Christmas cards early because it's my annual chance to spend time with my address book. This year, when I pulled out the tattered book, I calculated its age as almost 39. The address book was a high school graduation gift, and at the time I marveled at how cool it was. Forget traditional brown: My book was pinkish-red, skinny, and a foot long. Paging through the book is like revisiting key moments of my life. Even the handwriting speaks to various stages.

  Stephen Headley could be a smooth talker when it came to dating, but his friends and family witnessed the accused murderer's explosive side long before he was arrested in the stabbing death of a South Jersey softball star. Their statements to state police show that Headley dated girls much younger than himself after meeting them at a party, a Burlington County skating rink, and a Halloween "haunted prison" where he volunteered to play a "deranged inmate. " Their words paint a portrait of a 30-year-old sex offender able to keep his violent tendencies hidden and helps explain why Nicole Ayres, a 22-year-old college student from Westville, may have agreed to go to a secluded field in the early hours of Sept.