Did you commit a murder in New York City in the last forty years and never got caught? Might want to be careful where you leave your DNA. See, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office this year started a DNA-based cold case squad and is slowly working through the evidence from at least 95 of the city's roughly 3,000 unsolved murders. When they can find the evidence bags, at least. more ›

In a series of increasingly brazen attacks, the bedbugs have laid siege to our libraries, our lingere, and our most precious sources for preppy clothes. And now they've made a move on our judicial system, infiltrating the offices of Brooklyn D.A. Charles J. Hynes. According to one tipster, the D.A.'s office is currently "infested," and, alarmingly, we were unable to reach the District Attorney, who has presumably been carried off to the bedbugs' underground blood-harvesting work farm. However, Hynes's stalwart press liaison, Jerry Schmetterer, has refused to abandoned headquarters, and we got through to him by phone just moments ago. more ›

Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes announced yesterday that 125,000 tons of seized knockoff goods would be donated to earthquake victims as a part of Operation Help Haiti. The confiscated goods, worth over $10 million, were taken from a Park Slope storage facility in 2009, and bear such names as Ralph Lauren, Diesel and Ed Hardy. "I feel wonderful. It's a celebration—certainly not a traditional prosecution," said Hynes. more ›

90-year-old Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau is retiring Thursday after a 35 year reign, and he's not pulling any punches in his exit interviews with the media. Morgenthau's still lashing out at federal bureaucracy—"they ought to burn it down and start all over again"—for, most recently, interfering in his case against Credit Suisse. After copping to aiding Iran and other rogue nations in violation of economic sanctions, the bank coughed up $536 million. (The feds wanted only civil penalties.) But Morgenthau, naturally, saved his nastiest criticism for his "chickenshit" nemesis Mayor Bloomberg. more ›

Earlier this month, Mayor Bloomberg tried to halfheartedly quell an old man fight between himself and undead Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau, telling reporters, "As long as he's in compliance with the law, that's fine with me." But it's exactly those kinds of passive aggressive insinuations—that the DA might not be following the law—that drives Morgenthau to call Bloomberg names like "chickenshit." And now it's emerged that their war without end has cost tens of millions of dollars that would have gone to the city if Bloomberg had just kept his mouth shut and not tried to lean on Morgenthau for more. more ›

If you can't beat them, publicly shame them. That's the strategy that Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan is using at the shoplifting-plagued Staten Island Mall, where for the second year in a row his office has created a commercial showing the mug shots of five repeat offenders convicted of petty larceny, according to the Advance. "Want to be famous? Shoplift in this mall and you could have your face right here," reads the 15-second ad, which will air every six minutes on 11 different screens in the New Springville shopping center, the Post reports. "Stealing from any merchant at the Staten Island Mall is a crime. You will be PROSECUTED." more ›

Long-simmering tensions between Mayor Bloomberg and undead District Attorney Robert Morgenthau boiled over last week when the mayor's office accused the DA of quietly keeping $83 million in settlements, fines and forfeitures in 62 "secret" bank accounts. One official said Morgenthau's office kept "two sets of books" in order to bypass the city’s financial review process. But Morgenthau's camp insisted the city has known about the accounts for years, and speculated that Bloomberg was actually retaliating against Morgenthau because he's frustrated that 40% of the DA's settlement money still gets kicked up to the state. Bloomberg wants it all, and Morgenthau called his tactics "chickenshit." But that was last week! more ›

Mayor Bloomberg is fighting with Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, and Morgenthau is hitting back with "barnyard" vulgarity, as the Times decorously puts it. Speaking to reporters yesterday, Morgenthau said, "If you all weren't newspapers of record, I'd say these were chickenshit comments." He was referring to the Bloomberg camp's supposed discovery of $80 million in settlement money that's being held by the DA's office in what one official described as the equivalent of "offshore accounts." The heated feud underscores long-standing tensions between the mayor and DA. more ›

Back in August photographer Zach Hyman brought one of his muses to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for some naked time. The 26-year-old model, Kathleen Neill, stripped down in the Arms and Armour exhibit, only to be arrested shortly after for public lewdness. Just a few days later she said: "I want people to have the freedom to express themselves. I want the city to drop the charges. I would love to be able to go to museums and see stuff like this happen on any scale." more ›

Brooklyn prosecutors expect to meet next week with gotcha "journalists" James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles to view raw hidden-camera footage recorded by the duo at an ACORN office in Brooklyn, where they duped employees of the community organizing group into giving bad advice to Giles, posing as a prostitute with O'Keefe as her pimp. A spokesman for the Brooklyn DA tells the Daily News, "This is a first step, and there are possible criminal charges." As you probably know by now, the heavily edited video has become a rallying cry for drown-government-in-the-bathtub right-wingers, and yesterday the House of Representatives voted 345 to 75 to deny funding for ACORN. The vote came on a provision attached to a student aid bill; on Monday the Senate voted 83 to 7 to deny housing and community grant funding to ACORN. According to the AP, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described the latest allegations against ACORN as "horrible," but she still believes the group has many honest employees and stresses that it's up to House-Senate negotiators to determine whether the provision to cut funding remains in the final version of the bill. more ›

Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau wants to hold a Queens tax preparer accountable for allegedly threatening to kill a prosecutor who's handling a grand larceny case against him. 54-year-old Jack Chang (not pictured) did a year in prison in the mid-'90s for funneling nearly $1 million from his clients to his own account; in April he was arrested on similar charges in a case that's being conducted by the same prosecutor who put him away the first time: Gilda Mariani, head of the money laundering and tax crimes unit. more ›

A company whose entire business is centered on verifying the safety and quality of building materials is being investigated for falsifying or faking test results with materials being used in the some of New York City's most high-profile construction sites, such as the new Yankee Stadium and the Freedom Tower. more ›