Murder Rap

After having a murder rap hanging over his head for almost four years, admitted holdup man Joseph "Jo-Jo" Andrews has been given a new lease on life. Andrews, 34, this week beat the case that could have resulted in an automatic life prison term. He was returned to prison to complete an 8-20-year sentence for robbing the man the prosecution said he murdered Nov. 19, 1993. When cops arrived at the Croyden apartments on South 49th Street, they discovered the body of maintenance man Sam Bentley, 67. Assistant District Attorney Edward McCann said he died of suffocation after being bound and gagged.

Junior welterweight boxer Anthony "Two Guns" Fletcher, who once said he joined the Army to escape "the shooting and killing in the streets of Philadelphia," was arrested and charged with murder yesterday. Once a boxer with a promising future, Fletcher, who has gained more attention from his run-ins with Philadelphia's mean streets than his time in the ring, was arrested at his home early yesterday, police said. Fletcher, who police have said was a member of the Junior Black Mafia, has survived being stabbed in the stomach during a late-night altercation and later being shot several times as he sat with a friend in his BMW, watching a basketball game at a crowded city playground in June 1989.

CRYSTAL MANGUM is back in the news. Mangum, you'll remember, is the stripper who falsely accused three Duke lacrosse players of rape in 2006. Yesterday, WRAL-TV in Raleigh, N.C., reported that a Durham County grand jury charged Mangum with murder in the fatal stabbing of her boyfriend, 46-year-old Reginald Daye. The 32-year-old Mangum originally was charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill for allegedly stabbing Daye in the torso with a kitchen knife on April 3. That charge was changed to murder after Daye died on April 14. Durham police said the stabbing allegedly occurred while the two argued over rent money in Daye's apartment.

The convicted car thief was "out of his mind" when he led police on an auto chase that ended with the death of a passenger on May 18, said the defense lawyer. That's because Edwin D. Core, 30, was high on drugs and alcohol, said attorney Ramy I. Djerassi during a preliminary hearing yesterday. "He couldn't form the intent to kill," Djerassi argued while asking Municipal Judge Ronald B. Merriweather to dismiss a first-degree murder charge and hold his client for court for third-degree murder in the death of Edwin Taylor, 24, of Vodges Street near Arch.

Kevin McCall, 22, got a break last year when Common Pleas Judge Carolyn E. Temin reversed his second-degree murder conviction in the slaying of a taxi driver in 1990. The judge ruled that McCall's trial lawyer had failed to call a key defense witness. Yesterday, after his retrial, McCall, of 22nd Street near Tasker, got another break. A jury acquitted him of robbery and murder charges, convicting him only of voluntary manslaughter, which carries a possible sentence of five to 10 years.

PRETORIA, South Africa - Paralympic superstar Oscar Pistorius was charged Thursday with the murder of his girlfriend who was shot inside his home in South Africa, a stunning development in the life of a national hero known as the Blade Runner for his high-tech artificial legs. Reeva Steenkamp, a model who spoke out on Twitter against rape and abuse of women, was shot four times in the predawn hours in the house, in a gated community in the capital, Pretoria, police said. Hours later after undergoing police questioning, Pistorius left a police station accompanied by officers.

When Allen "Omar" Richards heard police were trying to pin a murder rap on him in 1990, he headed for the border. The Canadian border. Later, a key witness against him would go south, refusing to repeat a statement allegedly implicating Richards. Richards, 30, should have stayed put, said his lawyer Joseph C. Santaguida yesterday. "He didn't kill anyone," Santaguida said after a jury acquitted Richards of the fatal shooting of Locksley Mudie, 35, of Windrim Avenue near Broad Street, and the shooting and wounding of Roy Green, of Thompson Street, which left him paralyzed on June 2, 1990.

HOUSTON - A murder charge has been dismissed against an ailing 76-year-old woman who spent more than four decades on the run after being accused of killing her husband by dousing him with hot grease. Mary Ann Rivera, who needs an oxygen tank to breathe, was arrested Oct. 11 after a Texas investigator tracked her down in Lake Park, Ga. She was brought back to Houston to face the murder charge. She allegedly threw grease on her husband, Cruz, in October 1970 at their Houston home.

A 20-YEAR-OLD MAN has been charged with murder and a slew of related offenses for allegedly shooting one man to death and wounding another outside a rapper's tour bus late last week. Police say 20-year-old Frank Briggs, of Shedaker Street near Baynton in East Germantown, pulled up in a car and opened fire on a crowd gathered outside rap artist French Montana's tour bus late Thursday night, after the bus stopped near a Holiday Inn Express on Columbus Boulevard. Fatally wounded in the drive-by shooting was Jowann King, 26, of New York.

PRETORIA, South Africa - Paralympic superstar Oscar Pistorius was charged Thursday with the murder of his girlfriend who was shot inside his home in South Africa, a stunning development in the life of a national hero known as the Blade Runner for his high-tech artificial legs. Reeva Steenkamp, a model who spoke out on Twitter against rape and abuse of women, was shot four times in the predawn hours in the house, in a gated community in the capital, Pretoria, police said. Hours later after undergoing police questioning, Pistorius left a police station accompanied by officers.

By Timothy Hallinan Soho Crime. 347 pp. $25 Reviewed by Bruce DeSilva Ever since Dashiell Hammett introduced us to Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon 83 years ago, hundreds of writers have adopted his formula, flooding the bookshelves with wisecracking private eyes who work both sides of the law, disrespect authority, icily stare down gun barrels, and conceal an immutable code of honor beneath a cynical outer shell. This can get awfully tiresome, but every now and then a writer comes along with the imagination and skill to make the whole thing feel fresh and new again.

A MAN WHO viciously attacked a Chinese takeout owner in West Oak Lane nearly two years ago was charged Wednesday with murder because the victim died of his injuries last week. The District Attorney's Office filed the murder charge against Malik Niblack, who is serving a six-to-15-year sentence in state prison after having pleaded guilty last year to attempted murder in the attack. On the morning of June 8, 2010, Niblack, then 21, ambushed owner Jicun Wu outside his takeout store on 66th Avenue near Uber Street.

HOUSTON - A murder charge has been dismissed against an ailing 76-year-old woman who spent more than four decades on the run after being accused of killing her husband by dousing him with hot grease. Mary Ann Rivera, who needs an oxygen tank to breathe, was arrested Oct. 11 after a Texas investigator tracked her down in Lake Park, Ga. She was brought back to Houston to face the murder charge. She allegedly threw grease on her husband, Cruz, in October 1970 at their Houston home.

CRYSTAL MANGUM is back in the news. Mangum, you'll remember, is the stripper who falsely accused three Duke lacrosse players of rape in 2006. Yesterday, WRAL-TV in Raleigh, N.C., reported that a Durham County grand jury charged Mangum with murder in the fatal stabbing of her boyfriend, 46-year-old Reginald Daye. The 32-year-old Mangum originally was charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill for allegedly stabbing Daye in the torso with a kitchen knife on April 3. That charge was changed to murder after Daye died on April 14. Durham police said the stabbing allegedly occurred while the two argued over rent money in Daye's apartment.

The career criminal and a raven-haired sidekick accused of murdering an Atlantic City tourist are now in different jails, nearly 40 miles apart, because of jailhouse letters discovered by authorities. Craig Arno and Jessica Kisby are still in the same troubled legal boat, though, and it's one that keeps sinking as more charges pile on. Arno, 44, of Atlantic City, and his accomplice, Kisby, 24, of Egg Harbor Township, pleaded not guilty to murder charges yesterday in Atlantic County Superior Court in connection with the stabbing death of Martin Caballero, a grocery-store manager from North Bergen, N.J., in the Trump Taj Mahal parking garage on May 21. Atlantic County Prosecutor Ted Housel said Kisby was moved to the Salem County Jail Friday, after authorities discovered she had written letters to Arno in the jail.

When I saw O.J. doing the perp walk out of that Vegas jail, it underscored an immutable fact: He is no criminal mastermind. Every doubt I ever had about his guilt or innocence evaporated, because now, it's clear: O.J. Simpson did not kill Nicole Brown or Ron Goldman. He doesn't have the kind of smarts it would take to dispatch two people, clean up a crime scene, shower, and hop a plane in record time. I doubted it back in '94; I doubt it now. America, brace yourself for another acquittal.

USUALLY, when you beat a murder rap that everyone in the world knows you committed, including the civil jury that found you liable for the deaths of your ex-wife and Ron Goldman, you'd think you'd become humble and remain as straight as an arrow. But not O.J. No, this guy has the audacity to try to pull off an armed robbery. I had a chance to listen to that audiotape of the event. And if anyone has any doubts that this man can be violent, they should listen to it. Kenneth Carchidi, Philadelphia

A Camden woman is standing up to take a murder rap for her son. Deborah Pitman Fleming, 51, said yesterday she has confessed to the September slaying of Robert Mays, 51, in a shooting at a notorious drug corner in North Camden. But authorities, who listened to her story on Monday, aren't buying it. According to Fleming, they heard her out and let her go. Fleming's son is Perman Pitman, 35, a former member of the Sons of Malcolm X gang who was convicted in 1996 of murdering fellow gang member Stephon Cook.