Murders, Attempted Murders and Homicides

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      Witnesses to Sydney Mall Stabbing Describe Harrowing Scenes

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      Witnesses to the stabbings at a mall in a Sydney, Australia, on Saturday described a scene of terror as shoppers fled from the knife-wielding man or huddled in stores as panic spread through the shopping center.Some shoppers hid inside as alarms blared. Others ran out, screaming as they passed by bodies on the floor.When Gavin Lockhart, 37, saw people running as he sat inside a coffee shop at the mall, there was a moment of confusion. “Is it a celebrity?” he first thought. “Is it because of a gunman?”Then he fled when he heard, “He’s got a knife! He’s got a knife!”He followed the coffee shop’s owner, Michael Dunkley, 57, who also brought his wife, who was cooking, and two baristas into a staffroom where they could lock the door. Mr. Dunkley said afterward that just one thought was in his mind when the screaming began: “I have to get my wife and staff to safety.”Mr. Dunkley left the room to try to chase down the attacker, whom he described as a thin man with a beard and short hair, wearing dark green pants and a green jersey.Then, Mr. Dunkley recounted, he saw a police officer attempt to stop the assailant. When the officer told the man to put his knife down, he lunged toward her with his weapon, the cafe owner said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mall Attack Was Australia’s Worst Mass Violence in Years

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      The stabbing attack in a Sydney shopping center that left at least six people dead on Saturday was Australia’s worst act of mass violence since 2017, when a driver killed six people by deliberately plowing his car into pedestrians in Melbourne.In a country where mass stabbings and shootings are rare — in part because of strict gun laws — the latest attack has horrified Australians.Here is how it compares to other acts of mass violence in the country in recent years:June 2019: A gunman killed four people in a shooting spree across the main business district of Darwin, in the Northern Territory.January 2017: A man with drug-induced psychosis drove his car into a busy shopping street in Melbourne’s central business district, killing six people and injuring more than 20 others.December 2014: A gunman held 18 people hostage in a cafe in Sydney’s central business district. The standoff with the police, which lasted 16 hours, ended with the deaths of two hostages and the gunman. The authorities later labeled it a terrorist attack.November 2011: Fourteen people died when a nurse set fire to a nursing home in Quakers Hill, near Sydney.April 1996: Australia’s worst mass shooting occurred at Port Arthur, Tasmania, when a gunman killed 35 people. Just weeks later, the country’s leaders brought in strict gun laws. More

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      Frank Olson, Executive Who Linked O.J. Simpson With Hertz, Dies at 91

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      He negotiated Mr. Simpson’s star turn in commercials, tapping into his football fame, and formed a social bond with him — until there were murder charges. They died on the same day.Frank A. Olson, who as a top executive of Hertz cast the running back O.J. Simpson as the star of the company’s commercials — a corporate marriage that shined up both parties and that lasted two decades, until Mr. Simpson was charged in a double homicide in 1994 — died at his home in Palm Beach, Fla., on Wednesday, the same day Mr. Simpson died. Mr. Olson was 91.The cause was complications of Covid, his sons, Christopher and Blake, said.The coincidental timing of the deaths of Mr. Olson, who had steered Hertz through years of corporate turbulence, and Mr. Simpson, the athlete turned pitchman turned infamous criminal defendant, linked the two men in a way that Mr. Olson had once embraced but that he later distanced himself from.More than business partners, Mr. Olson and Mr. Simpson, both San Francisco natives, forged an alliance, beginning in the 1970s, that spoke of that mutually beneficial zone where corporate and social life intertwine. Mr. Olson, an avid golfer, sponsored Mr. Simpson for membership in the private Arcola Country Club in Paramus, N.J., where in 1992 Mr. Simpson, a former Heisman Trophy winner and Pro Football Hall of Famer, became the first Black member.In a letter that Mr. Simpson left at his Los Angeles home before his arrest in the stabbing murders of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald L. Goldman, he listed friends he was sending “love and thanks to.” Mr. Olson was one of them.“I took him places where I think very few Black men had ever been,” Mr. Olson said in the acclaimed 2016 documentary “O.J.: Made in America.”Mr. Simpson was 76 when he died of cancer at his home in Las Vegas.The idea of featuring him in Hertz commercials to symbolize speedy service, beginning in 1974, originated with the company’s ad agency. But because Mr. Simpson was Black and most Hertz customers where white businessmen, the choice made the agency nervous, according to a 1994 article in The Washington Post. So the decision was kicked up to Mr. Olson, who at the time was executive vice president and general manager of the rental-car division. (The company also rented trucks.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Was O.J. Simpson’s Connection to the Kardashians?

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      Long before the Kardashians became a star attraction on reality television, the family name first came to prominence when Simpson, the former N.F.L. star, was on trial.There was no mention of O.J. Simpson on Kim Kardashian’s Instagram page on Thursday.Early that morning, she posted a video promoting a hoodie and bike shorts from Skims, the clothing company she co-founded. Later in the day, after the Simpson family announced that Mr. Simpson had died of cancer at age 76, Ms. Kardashian was silent on social media.Over the decades, her family had distanced itself from the man who played a significant role in propping up the Kardashian name.Kim’s father, Robert Kardashian, met Mr. Simpson through their ties to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Mr. Kardashian earned a business degree there in 1966, and Mr. Simpson was a star running back for the school in 1967 and 1968.The two became close in the 1970s, when Mr. Simpson was a standout in the National Football League and Mr. Kardashian was a rising lawyer and entrepreneur in Los Angeles. His businesses included entertainment properties and a frozen yogurt company.When Mr. Kardashian married the former Kris Houghton (now Kris Jenner) in 1978, Mr. Simpson served as his best man. The couple had four children — Kim, Kourtney, Khloe and Robert Jr. The marriage ended in divorce in 1991. That same year, Ms. Jenner married the former Olympian who now goes by Caitlyn Jenner.Mr. Simpson met Nicole Brown in 1977, when he was still married to his first wife. During a separation from his wife, he lived for a time with Mr. Kardashian at his home, Mr. Simpson wrote in his 2007 book, “If I Did It.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Before Teacher Was Shot, Assistant Principal Was Warned First Grader Had a Gun

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      A Virginia grand jury found that the administrator had not acted on reports from staff members that the 6-year-old had brought a firearm to Richneck Elementary.The shooting of an elementary teacher by a 6-year-old student in Newport News, Va., last year was preceded by a “shocking” series of lapses by the school’s assistant principal at the time, according to a report by a special grand jury that was released on Wednesday.Despite having been told that same day that the student was “in a violent mood,” and having received several reports that he was carrying a firearm, the assistant principal turned down a school counselor’s request for permission to search the student, the grand jury said in its report.Less than a half-hour later, the student’s teacher, Abigail Zwerner,, was in the classroom with him and 15 other first graders when he pulled out 9-millimeter Taurus handgun and shot her from less than six feet away just before 2 p.m.The bullet passed through her hand and struck her chest. The gun, which was loaded with seven more rounds, jammed after the first shot. The boy later said that he had found it at home, in his mother’s purse.While her students sheltered in a neighboring classroom, Ms. Zwerner stumbled down the hallway and passed out in front of the door to the principal’s office. She survived.“I told you — I tried to keep you safe,” said one of the shooter’s friends, who had told one of Ms. Zwerner’s colleagues at Richneck Elementary School about the gun, according to the report.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gypsy Rose Blanchard Files for Divorce From Ryan Anderson

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      The couple married while Ms. Blanchard, who was found guilty of helping to kill her mother, was still in prison. Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who was convicted of helping to kill her abusive mother in a widely covered case, filed for divorce Monday from Ryan Anderson after just under two years of marriage, according to Louisiana court records.Mr. Anderson, a special-education teacher from Louisiana, has said that he sent Ms. Blanchard a letter at the Chillicothe Correctional Center in Missouri and that the two began corresponding. They married while Ms. Blanchard was still in prison in 2022.After her release in late December, Ms. Blanchard became the subject of frenzied social media attention, much of which concerned her relationship. The pair discussed their introduction to married life on Entertainment Weekly and documented a trip to New York City for Ms. Blanchard’s millions of social media followers.Ms. Blanchard filed for divorce in Lafourche Parish, La., just before 2 p.m. on Monday, according to the clerk of court, and the legal grounds for divorce are not yet public. TMZ was first to report the news of the couple’s divorce proceedings.Ms. Blanchard and Mr. Anderson did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.The ongoing fascination with Ms. Blanchard has raised fresh questions about the ethics of public obsession with true crime figures and victims of abuse — and of remaking those figures as influencer-style celebrities.Ms. Blanchard, now 32, pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, in 2016. Ms. Blanchard’s boyfriend at the time, Nicholas Godejohn, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.A plea agreement acknowledged that Dee Dee Blanchard had been abusive: “Gypsy’s mom was abusing her physically, medically, giving her medication she didn’t need, having her go through procedures that she didn’t need,” Ms. Blanchard’s trial lawyer, Mike Stanfield, said at a news conference in 2016.An HBO documentary and a Hulu mini-series released during her sentence characterized her as a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy — a form of abuse in which a parent sickens a child for attention — and drew intense public attention to the case.That attention morphed into a complex strain of social media celebrity after Ms. Blanchard’s release. She amassed more than eight million followers on Instagram and close to 10 million on TikTok, where she shared day-by-day updates with Mr. Anderson and promoted her Lifetime series, “The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard.”Comments on such posts were mixed, with some praising her frank discussion of her regrets — among them, she said, her role in murdering her mother — and others expressing discomfort that her story was being repackaged as entertainment.“It feels like a disservice to let her become just another social-media curiosity, with her abuse and her crimes being meme-ified for an uncaring public,” Alice Bolin, the author of “Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession,” wrote in an article for The Cut.Ms. Blanchard deactivated her TikTok and Instagram accounts last month, citing concerns about the effects of public scrutiny on her mental health.Alain Delaquérière More

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      Mary Ann Zielonko, Partner of Kitty Genovese, Dies at 85

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      The murder of Ms. Genovese, and her neighbors’ reaction to it, generated headlines. The nature of her relationship with Ms. Zielonko was a different story.For 60 years, Kitty Genovese has endured as a symbol of big-city apathy, the victim not only of a knife-wielding killer but also of her neighbors’ reluctance to get involved. Two weeks after a man named Winston Moseley stalked, raped and murdered her in Queens late at night in March 1964, a New York Times article reported that 38 of her neighbors had heard her cries for help, yet did nothing.That account turned out to be significantly flawed. Most of those 38 people were unaware of what was actually happening; they thought they were merely hearing a fight, perhaps a lovers’ quarrel. Investigations later determined that few of them had caught even a glimpse of the attacks. Nonetheless, the death of 28-year-old Catherine Susan Genovese has long remained a paradigm of urban anonymity and indifference.Kitty Genovese at work as a bar manager in an undated photo.New York Daily News, via Associated PressSomething else was out of kilter in the reporting back then. Ms. Genovese had been living for a year with Mary Ann Zielonko. In those days they were typically referred to as roommates. In fact, they were lovers. When the police investigators became aware of that, they questioned Ms. Zielonko as a possible suspect. After a night of bowling with friends, she had been asleep in their Kew Gardens apartment while the attack took place below.“I was very numb, I would say, from the whole thing,” she told Retro Report, a series of video documentaries exploring old news stories and their lasting effects, in 2016. “I felt, wow, she was so close, and I was sleeping, and I didn’t know what happened, and that I could have saved her. You know? That’s what I really think still.”Ms. Zielonko died on Wednesday at her home in Rutland, Vt., where she had lived since 2000. She was 85. Rebecca Jones, her domestic partner and sole survivor, said the cause was aspiration pneumonia.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Subway Death in NYC Gives Insight Into the City’s Challenges

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      The man charged with shoving a man from a subway platform had a violent history, according to officials. The man who died was recovering from his own troubled past, his family said.Before the paths of Jason Volz and Carlton McPherson collided in a terrible moment on a Harlem subway platform on Monday, their lives had seemed to be heading in opposite directions.Mr. McPherson had been hospitalized at least half a dozen times since last year for mental health treatment, according to someone who has seen some of his medical records. A neighbor in the Bronx said he sometimes slept in a hallway closet in his grandmother’s building because she would not let him into her apartment. Last October, a man whom prosecutors believe to be Mr. McPherson — he had the same name and birth year — was charged with beating a Brooklyn homeless shelter employee with a cane.Mr. Volz, 54, was recovering from addiction and had also endured homelessness, but had gotten sober two years ago and had just moved into a new apartment, his ex-wife said.On Monday night, the police say, Mr. McPherson, 24, walked up to Mr. Volz on the uptown platform of the 125th Street station on Lexington Avenue and shoved him in front of an oncoming No. 4 train.Responding police officers, who had been on another part of the platform, found him lifeless beneath the train. His death was a recurrence of the ultimate New York City nightmare, and another example of the difficulty of preventing violence on the subway despite years of efforts by state and city authorities to keep people struggling with severe mental illness out of the transit system.Mayor Eric Adams, who has watched crime in the subway largely defy his attempts to rein it in, sounded a note of defeat on Tuesday, acknowledging that the presence of police officers had not been enough to stop Monday’s attack.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More