murder

Anyone who ever enjoyed a horror film knows the fascination a gruesome death can provoke. But no fictional horror can produce the frisson generated by the items for sale on websites like SerialKillersInk.net and MurderAuction.com: Real artifacts and artwork from the crime scenes and prison cells of the world's most famous serial killers.

On Monday, the FBI trumpeted the news that violent crime dropped 5.5% in 2010 while reported property crimes fell 2.8%. The news, though, is not all so positive. A 24/7 Wall St. review of the data shows that violent crime rose in a several of the largest and poorest cities in the U.S.

Escalating violence related to the cross-border drug trade has caused Texas authorities to advise spring break revelers to avoid Mexico. The Mexico Tourism Board countered that traveling south of the border remains safe. At stake is a big chunk of the $12 billion that tourists spend in Mexico each year.

In the U.S., a real estate crisis has left some neighborhoods virtually abandoned. But in the border towns of Mexico, most notably Ciudad Juarez, a different disease is causing the same symptoms: the brutal escalation of the war among drug traffickers.

Note to people who have been murdered, raped, beaten, or robbed by your country's army, with the assistance of a corporation such as transporting the attacking troops, feeding them, paying them, and giving them access to corporate property as a staging ground: You cannot sue the corporation in U.S. courts.

Excerpt from Gilded Lily: Lily Safra: The Making of One of the World's Wealthiest Widows by Isabel Vincent ©HarperCollins Publishers, 2010 ($25.99) In Vincent's book (read DailyFinance's review here), Edmond Safra's widow has always yearned to live an extravagant lifestyle -- one that few...

Money can buy you power, but it can't always save your life. Here's a list of the world's richest murder victims, some of whom met some unlikely ends: bombs, arson and even a kinky sadomasochistic sex scene.

Whatever you do, don't call it easy money. Newly freed prisoners in Texas are being compensated richly for their travails, thanks to a new law in the state, which leads the nation in freeing wrongly-convicted inmates. Under the new law, which took effect this week, Texas exonerees will receive...

I'm glad I didn't think of this when layoffs were in the air at my former company a year ago: A man in Spain was arrested for hiring a contract killer to murder his boss so that he wouldn't be laid off.And he got the job done, too. That's right -- he had his boss whacked so he wouldn't lose his...

In Los Angeles, Calif., a man kills the six members of his family because he and his wife lost their jobs at Kaiser Permanente's West Los Angeles Medical Center. In Columbus, Ohio, a man who had just lost his job was found in an apparent murder-suicide with his wife and their two children, ages...