In an extremely embarrassing incident for the Brooklyn DA's office, an audio technician taped over a statement made by a cop killer while in custody. The DA's office will now have to rely on a detective's notes taken during that statement and the videotape recorded during a follow-up interview with suspect Robert Ellis. Ellis was arrested after the fatal shooting of police officer Russel Timoshenko, who was shot in the face at point blank range......

New York City is getting safer and safer. Well, at least Manhattan is. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau told reporters yesterday that there have only been 65 murders in the borough this year, down 40% from last year. When Morgenthau took office in 1975, the borough had 648 murders, accounting for almost 40% of the city's total. The 65 homicides this year account for just 14% of the city total. The 88-year-old DA attributed the......

David Lemus, who was convicted in the 1990 killing of Palladium bouncer Marcus Peterson in 1992, was found not guilty yesterday at the conclusion of his retrial. His mother screamed when the verdict was read and Lemus' lawyers reportedly appeared stunned. The jury took only two days to deliberate and the foreman of the jury from the 1992 trial was present during much of the retrial. Before his original conviction for the 14th St. club......

The Manhattan District Attorney's office announced that the Reverend David Ajemian was arrested on charges of stalking and threatening Conan O'Brien. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston placed Ajemian, a 46-year-old priest in Stoneham, Massachusetts, on leave. The DA's office says that Ajemian had sent letters (some on parish letterhead!) to O'Brien's offices at 30 Rockefeller Plaza and home, contacted his parents, and tried to attend tapings of Late Night with Conan O'Brien. He was......

A Manhattan dog walker was charged with stealing more than $50,000 from the 84-year-old mother of a client. According to the NY Sun, the Manhattan DA's office says that Daniel Natale, who runs Luna Dog Service, "allegedly used a checkbook, credit cards, and a debit card to steal cash." Natale met Isabel Zakin through her daughter four years ago. Zakin told the Post that her broken hip "made it impossible for her to walk" Tibetan......

The Manhattan DA's office announced that thirteen people were indicted in a identity theft scam. Credit card information from diners in Chinatown and other areas (Brooklyn, Westchester, Long Island, Florida, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Connecticut) would be stolen by wait staff, using handheld credit card skimmers. A list of restaurants where the scam took place was not released. One defendant, JD Kenny, would pay $35-50 per skimmed card information, and then use that information......

That is absolutely going to be reversed. There is no way that stands. Alright lemme go take a pee...lemme make peepee... I wanna make peepee and poopie and pee pee... Who's that? Why, it's Supreme Court Justice Gerald Garson, taped by the Brooklyn DA's office. Garson is on trial for accepting bribes from lawyers while presiding over divorce cases - and the accusations are incredible. The 74-year-old jurist, who is now suspended, allegedly accepted cash,......

We never thought Foxy Brown was all smart (our favorite example: pleading guilty but then trying to take it back) and given her penchant for getting into trouble (smacking manicurists here, "stealing" belts there), but one would think she'd get a clue. Alas, no, and the Manhattan DA's office attempted to get Brown jailed because she had violated her parole by traveling to Florida. The DA's office and the Department of Probation found out because......

A year ago, the big news out of the Brooklyn DA's office was that an eight month old cat had helped sting a fake vet. And the DA Charles Hynes was able to parlay good will over the adorable Fred (the Detective) until Fred's death in August. Now, over the course of just two days, there are two scandals brewing in Hynes' office. In the first, investigator Maria Bigani, a 15 year veteran in the......

Yesterday, hundreds protested the police shooting death of Sean Bell with signs like "2 Drink Minimum, 50 Shot Maximum" A bicyclist whose foot was amputated when a city bus hit him was awarded a $11 million settlement (the bicyclist did run a red light, but the bus driver didn't realize someone was hit and so the rear tires also hit the cyclist); the MTA will appeal The city files another lawsuit against retailers who......

An instructor at LaGuardia Community College was charged with accepting payments for better grades. Elvin Escano, who taught computer science, was arraigned on a 137 count indictment; apparently, he would accept cash or liquor (examples cited were a $200 cash payment and a $2,500 bottle of wine). The DA claims Escano changed grades in the registrar's office and even asked students to "steer business his way," according to WABC 7. Escano pleaded not guilty. LaGuardia......

The Staten Island DA's office is no longer charging two teens with a hate crime in the murder of Richard Salinas. The DA's office earlier said a trio of teens targeted the chef at an International House of Pancakes because he was Mexican, but now the DA believes the motivation was robbery alone. Daniel Betancourt and Travis King were indicted on murder charges. They and John Messiha stole $60 and a cellphone from Salinas while......

Remember that New York magazine article from two weeks ago, about older women robbing the cradle and going after underage boy? Well, there have been two new cases that are certainly doozies: On Tuesday, a 40 year old female teacher at a private Montessori school was charged with statutory rape and sodomy after it was revealed she had been having sex with underage male students who were only 12 and 13 when the affairs started.......

Apparently we weren't the only one's pushing boundries today. While we only showed a photograph of the aftermath of an accident, a tipper points out that 1010 WINS has chosen to go full out snuff. Here's the story: Earlier today Marlon Fann of Corona, Queens pled guilty to second degree murder, possession of a weapon, endangering the welfare of a child and harrassment. The DA says on June 18th Fann went to his ex-girlfriend's home......

Everybody is getting screwed this year during March Madness! If you thought your brackets getting screwed left and right was bad, how bad would it suck to be one of the people busted Saturday by the NYPD at the height of gambling season. The NYPD raided a $45 million gambling ring with several locations in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens according to Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes. The raids led to the arrests of 10 people......

He's not quite The Marathon Man, but dentist Michael Mastromarino is turning into a modern day horror figure. Last night, he and two other men turned themselves in to the Brooklyn DA over charges that they had been illegally harvesting various tissues and bones from corpses. The scandal emerged when a Brooklyn funeral home was being sold, the operators claimed that an embalmer removed bones and replaced them with pipe - and given the embalmer's......

The Manhattan DA's office has announced they will charge Catherine Woods' yoga-instructing boyfriend with her murder. Paul Cortez, who was a person of interest when the young woman with dreams of being a dancer but the reality of being a stripper to make ends meet was found dead in her Upper East Side apartment after Thanksgiving, will be charged later this week. The prosecutors said they found a bloody fingerprint at the crime scene that......

- The murder of a brother and sister in Queens was solved yesterday when the sister's ex-boyfriend confessed to killing both of them in an attempt to rob money. Jin Lin had denied any role in the murder, which took place in Simon and Sharon Ng's Kew Gardens Hills apratment, but the police placed Lin at the scene when they found that Simon Ng had written an entry in his computer "wondering why Lin was......

Prosectors have dropped charges against over 200 Republican Convention protesters that had been arrested near Ground Zero during the second day of the convention. According to the Post, Assistant D.A. William Beesch said, "No useful purpose would be served by continuing the prosecution," and the judge complied. Considering one of yesterday's defendants from the War Resisters League protest was Richard Hardie, 73 year old major and combat veteran who flew in the Korean and Vietnam......