LOS ANGELES — A San Fernando Valley woman who doused a bikini dancer with gasoline and set her on fire has been found guilty of aggravated mayhem and torture.

A Los Angeles jury convicted 28-year-old Rianne Theriault-Odom on Thursday on two counts but acquitted her of attempted murder. The Tarzana woman faces a possible life sentence.

The victim, Roberta Dos Santos Busby, wept as the verdict was read.

Prosecutors say the two women had been feuding when Theriault-Odom doused the 28-year-old mother of two with gasoline and set her ablaze in February 2009 at a Tarzana club.

Busby testified that she suffered burns over 40 percent of her body, spent five months in the hospital and had 30 skin grafts.

Theriault-Odom claimed someone else torched the woman.

SOURCE: FOX News

SHEBOYGAN, Wis. — A 36-year-old Wisconsin woman who stripped in front of her children in a drunken attempt to avoid a shoplifting arrest is going to jail.

As part of a plea agreement, Julia E. Laack of Sheboygan pleaded no contest to three charges including retail theft. The Sheboygan Press says she was sentenced Thursday to six months in jail.

Prosecutors say Laack stole beef jerky and a lighter from a convenience store in October. They say when police went to her home she began screaming at three children and told a teenager the incident was his fault.

Laack then stripped to her underwear and told officers they couldn’t arrest her because she would be naked.

SOURCE: KOMO News

A man has been convicted of catching, killing and eating what may have been the last wild Indochinese tiger in China.

Kang Wannian, a villager from Mengla in the southwestern Yunnan Province, got a 12-year sentence and was fined a total of 580,000 including compensation to the state for economic losses. He had denied the charges.

He encountered the tiger while gathering freshwater clams in a nature reserve near the China-Laos border in February of this year. He claimed to have killed the tiger in self-defence.

A local court gave Kang 10 years for killing a rare animal plus two years for illegal possession of firearms. Prosecutors said Kang did not need a gun to gather clams.

He claimed to have shot what he called an “unspecified animal” in the dark while searching for a kind of frog with one other villager.

However the court was also told Kang and six other villagers returned to the scene the next day, located the dead tiger and dismembered it for eating.

Four of these villagers were also sentenced to three to four years in jail for “covering up and concealing criminal gains” and fined 10-20,000 each.

Kang had surrendered in June to police, who seized two firearms at his home.

The only known wild Indochinese tiger known to be left in China was photographed in 2007 at the same nature reserve. Local newspaper Life News reported earlier this month that the tiger has not been seen since Kang’s incident.

However the paper also quoted the provincial Forestry Bureau as saying there was no evidence the tiger was the last one in China.

The Indochinese tiger, seen above,  is thought to be on the brink of extinction, with fewer than 1,000 left in the forests of Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Burma.

SOURCE: WeirdAsiaNews

KERRVILLE, Texas — Prosecutors planned to review the case of a woman authorities claim has called 911 30 times over six months for non-emergency reasons, including a call to complain that her husband refused to eat his dinner.

The woman allegedly made a pair of calls to 911, including a hang-up and another where a woman was heard screaming.

Police were dispatched to the residence and officer Paul Gonzales said she told police that “her husband did not want to eat his supper.” A police report said the 53-year-old woman was also yelling “about things that happened two weeks ago.”

SOURCE: MSNBC.com

ATHENS, Ga. – Athens-Clarke police are looking for a woman who destroyed $1,000 worth of perfume at a store after being told she couldn’t return items without a receipt. The Athens Banner-Herald reported Monday that police said the woman pushed over a large plastic display stand holding several hundred sample-size bottles of perfume that cost $3.50 each.

A clerk at Joy Joy Beauty said they told the customer she couldn’t return several items Saturday afternoon because she didn’t have a receipt.

They said the display stand broke after the woman pushed it and every bottle of perfume smashed against the floor as she stormed out of the store and drove away in a green van.

SOURCE: Philly.com

TYLER, Texas — A 25-year-old man suspected of breaking into an East Texas house is jailed after police found him taking a bath in the house.

The incident happened about 3:30 a.m. Sunday in a blue-collar neighborhood of Northwest Tyler. Police Sgt. Matthew Smyser said a resident called to report that a man had kicked in the front door of the house.

While en route, officers were advised the resident had left the house but the intruder remained inside.

Officers entered the house to find the man had stripped and was taking a bath. After a brief struggle, the man was arrested and booked into the Smith County Jail.

Larry Ticey was jailed on a misdemeanor criminal trespass charge punishable upon conviction by up to one year in jail. No bond amount or attorney is listed in jail records.

SOURCE: WISH TV

Sometimes wrongdoers outsmart police.

And then there are those suspects who make cops’ jobs a whole lot easier.

Here are seven recent examples of how to do that:

1. Wear a stolen state trooper’s watch. OK, Angel Cruz, 54, of Philadelphia, couldn’t have known he was breaking into a trooper’s personal car at a T.G.I.Friday’s in Wilmington on Sunday afternoon, according to Delaware state police. As trooper and wife left the restaurant, he saw a Chevy Blazer parked close to his car, then take off. The trooper drove his wife home, then spotted the Blazer at a Sears – where Cruz was breaking into an SUV, police said. Cruz’s legal problems were further compounded because the Blazer was stolen, and he was wearing another trooper’s anniversary watch, which was stolen in 2007, according to a news release.

2. Crash in front of police. While Gloucester Township police were investigating one crash Sunday morning, an 18-year-old woman approached, tried to make a U-turn, struck a parked van and overturned, according to township police. Luckily, fire department personnel were on the scene to free her. She was charged with reckless driving. The first crash involved a red Saturn that struck a tree. The owner of that car claimed it was stolen, but wound up getting arrested when police found the intoxicated driver and learned he lived at the owner’s address, police said.

3. Leave wallet at bank robbery. As Lloyd Virgil Barclay, 51, of Philadelphia gave Bethelhem bank tellers notes demanding money on Wednesday, he put his wallet on the counter, police said. He left with about $800, but forgot the wallet, which had two photo IDs, a Social Security card and his Philadelphia criminal registration card. The ID photos matched the man’s picture in surveillance footage.

4. Lock getaway-car keys inside bank. Three men in wigs, two of them armed, duct-taped two workers and directed a half-dozen more into a restroom during a Bear, Del., bank robbery on Aug. 31, according to state police. Fleeing with their loot, they locked the bank’s doors – but left the keys to their Chevrolet Aveo behind. A Ford Focus picked them up, but attracted the attention of witnesses, and the car was intercepted on a nearby highway, police said. Two sets of Atlantic County, N.J., siblings, including the Focus’ female driver, were arrested.

5. Leave daughter, car at crash scene. On Thursday, Tiffany Hrycek ran a red light, hit another car, put her 10-year-old daughter on the sidewalk, and ran home, where police found her and arrested her, according to Delaware State Police. She apparently fled because she was worried about two warrants and her license was suspended.

6. When police arrive, be digging up pot. Johnstown, Pa., police went to the home of John Beltz Jr., 23, to arrest him for allegedly using a women’s identity to withdraw nearly $2,7000 from her bank account. They got a little bonus business, when they found Beltz standing next to a freshly dug hole and holding a marijuana plant, police said.

7. Stop with stolen loot where cops are having coffee. Inside a Mantako, Minn., Happy Chef, two deputies, who had been investigating burglaries, were taking a coffee break Wednesday night, when they got a call about a new theft. Then a pickup pulled up, matching a description, and in the back were the stolen goods, including electronics and jewelry, police said.

SOURCE: Philly.com

SEATTLE — An aspiring ninja learned the hard way that he isn’t able to jump a 5-foot fence.

Seattle police said an officer checking out a report of an assault in the 600 block of 7th Avenue late Monday came across a man impaled on top of a metal fence, screaming for help.

Firefighters pulled the man from the metal spike and took him to Harborview Medical Center.

Police thought the man may have been involved in the earlier assault call so they went to interview him at the hospital. There, police said, the man told them that he was not being chased but thought he was a ninja and believed he could leap the fence.

“Clearly he was overconfident in his abilities, no doubt bolstered by alcohol,” police wrote in a news release.

SOURCE: KOMO TV

WACO, Texas — Authorities say a Texas woman lied about having breast cancer and spent $10,000 raised at a benefit to have her breasts enlarged. McLennan County sheriff’s investigator James Pack says in court records that 24-year-old Trista Joy Lathern shaved her head to look like a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy.

Pack says Lathern wanted breast implants to try to save her seven-month marriage.

The Waco Tribune-Herald reports that Lathern is charged with theft by deception. Sheriff’s officials and Lathern’s attorney didn’t immediately return phone calls from The Associated Press.

SOURCE: WFAA.com

In what may be the most extreme drunk driving case ever, an Oregon woman was arrested with a .72 blood alcohol level–nine times the state’s legal limit. Terri Comer, 42, was arrested after she was discovered unconscious in her car, which sheriff’s deputies found running and in a snow bank on a highway in Klamath County.

After breaking a car window, rescuers removed the comatose Comer from her Toyota and transported her to a local hospital, where a blood draw revealed the .72 BAC. She was reportedly hospitalized for a day before being released.

As seen in this police photo, Comer’s vehicle came to a stop about 50 feet in front of one of those portable traffic signs reminding motorists not to drink and drive.

Comer had a prior drunk driving arrest in which her BAC was recorded in the relatively minor .3 range.

Another Oregon woman, Meagan Harper, was nabbed for drunk driving with an extreme BAC. In her case, Harper’s BAC was measured at .55.

Comer’s .72 edges out what may have previously been the highest BAC ever (while living to tell about it). That fallen record (.69) was held by Willard Ashley III, an Indiana man who was busted in October 2003.

SOURCE: The Smoking Gun