Four years later, Widman told police that on March 9, 1982, he slapped Nicole when he became angry after she bit his toe, according to the police criminal complaint. He said she fell backward and struck her head, police said.

Widman told the mother what happened and they put her to bed, according to police. They later realized she was dead and put her body in a plastic bag, and Widman buried it in a wooded area, police said.

In 1987, then-Allegheny County District Attorney Bob Colville said charges were dropped because prosecutors couldn't prove a crime occurred. Investigators have been unable to find any independent evidence to support Widman's confession, he said.

State law required corroborating evidence, even when there was a confession, to guard against the prosecution of a mentally ill person making a false confession, Colville had said.

At the time, Widman was imprisoned for burglary and receiving stolen property.

It was not immediately clear if Widman has an attorney.

W. Christopher Conrad, who had been head of the county's homicide unit at the time, said Wednesday he believed Widman wanted to ease his conscience and bargain the case by implicating the mother. But she refused to admit culpability and Widman refused to testify against her.

She was charged with hindering apprehension and giving false reports, but the charges were withdrawn in 1987, police said. She died in 2001.

The first clinical safety trial of a purified human fetal stem cell product is about to begin in the US for a rare and fatal childhood brain disease. The trial could pave the way for neural stem cell transplants to treat a range of brain and spinal cord disorders.

A team from the Oregon Health and Science University Doernbecher Children’s Hospital plan to treat six children suffering from the inherited neurodegenerative condition, Batten’s disease – also known as neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (NCL). There is currently no alternative treatment for the disease.

The team expect to treat the first child before the end of 2006. The children will receive injections of neural stem cells that have been purified – isolated from other cell types – and grown from donated human fetal tissue. The stem cell product and isolation technique was developed by StemCells Inc, of Palo Alto, California, which is sponsoring the trial.

Children with Batten’s disease suffer seizures, motor control disturbances, blindness and communication problems. As many as 600 children in the US are currently diagnosed with the condition – death can occur in children as young as 8 years old.

The children lack an enzyme for breaking down complex fat and protein compounds in the brain, explains Robert Steiner, vice chair of paediatric research at the hospital. The material accumulates and interferes with tissue function, ultimately causing brain cells to die.

Neuron support
Previous tests on animals demonstrated that stem cells injected into the brain secreted the missing enzyme. And the stem cells were found to survive well in the rodent brain.

Once injected, the purified neural cells may develop into neurons or other nervous system tissue, including oligodendrocytes, or glial cells, which support the neurons, say the researchers. Steiner is hopeful that the treatment will work for the 25 or so other hereditary brain diseases related to Batten’s disease.

In addition to secreting enzymes, Steiner says these cells can become the type of nerve cells found in spinal cord, and so they could potentially help after spinal cord injury. The stem cells can form into neural cells found in the brain or nerve cells found elsewhere in the central nervous system, he explains.

However, Stephen Minger, director of the stem cell biology laboratory at Kings’ College London, believes that despite Steiner’s claims about the versatility of the new purified cells, their use is limited to Batten’s disease. “The cells in question have little clinical relevance to other neurological disorders,” he says.

"Groundbreaking process"
The researchers hope that the treatment will offer some clinical benefit to the children suffering from Batten's disease, but they stress that the primary purpose of the trial is to assess the safety of the product. It is the first such safety trial to be approved by the FDA.

“This is a very important first step – a groundbreaking process to bring this technology to patients,” says Nathan Selden, head of the Division of Paediatric Neurological Surgery at the hospital, who will perform the transplants.

Human fetal stem cell transplants have been performed before on adult patients with neurodegenerative conditions including Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases, and also for spinal cord injury. But these used mixtures of various, unpurified fetal stem cells. Results have been mixed.

The researchers plan to follow the children’s progress over the course of a year.

FORT WORTH, Texas -- The young girl found by police five years ago starving and locked in a filthy, lice-infested closet is once again the victim of violence, NBC 5 reported.

According to court documents obtained by NBC 5, the girl was the victim of a sexual assault by a relative of the family that adopted her.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Video
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Back in 2001, the girl's story shocked North Texans. At 8 years old, she weighed just 25 pounds when she was rescued from her birth parents' home.

Police rescued the girl and arrested her parents.

A family in rural Van Zandt County, who had cared for the girl when she was a baby, adopted her and hoped to give her a better life.

Now 13 years old, the same girl has been victimized again.

Jesse Lee Bass, the husband of the adoptive mother's niece, pleaded guilty last week to sexually assaulting the girl last year. Bass was sentenced to 13 years behind bars in connection with the girl's assault. Bass and his wife have also been charged with possession of child pornography.

"Of course most of the time, we don't see repeat victims. We see repeat offenders," said Pat Burnett, Van Zandt County Sheriff.

The Van Zandt County Sheriff's Office investigated the sexual assault after the girl reported the incident to her counselor.

The girl is once again living near Canton with her adoptive mother.

A 15-month-old Concord boy was crushed to death, apparently after his mother and her brother got into a fight and fell on top of him, authorities said Monday.

Ronald Whigman was fatally injured at about 8:30 p.m. Sunday at the Stoneridge apartment complex at 3750 Willow Pass Road, according to police and the Contra Costa County coroner's office.

The incident began when Ronald's mother began arguing with her brother, Michael Newton, 28, outside her apartment, said a resident of the complex who witnessed the incident but declined to be named.

The resident said she didn't know what the siblings were arguing about. The two began hitting each other, the witness said. During the altercation, two of their friends tried to break up the fight, she said. As that was going on, Ronald came out of the apartment.

"The baby got entangled in the middle of it, and we all jumped up and started screaming, "The baby! The baby!" the witness said Monday.

Police arrested Newton on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter, willful cruelty to a child and inflicting injury on a child. Newton was being held at Contra Costa County jail in Martinez in lieu of $185,000 bail.

The Chronicle is not naming Ronald's mother because she hasn't been arrested pending an ongoing investigation.

"The whole apartment complex is just devastated," the witness said. "Most of the people here couldn't go to work today."

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (AP) — After keeping her gruesome secret for days, a woman accused of killing a pregnant acquaintance and her fetus finally told police she drowned the woman's three children and stuffed them into a washer and dryer, authorities say.

Preliminary autopsies on the children appeared to show they were drowned, said Ace Hart, a deputy St. Clair County coroner.

As of Sunday, Tiffany Hall, 24, had not been charged in the children's deaths, but prosecutors on Saturday accused Hall of killing their mother, Jimella Tunstall, 23, and her fetus. The fetus had been cut from her womb, authorities said.

Police have not said what the motive was.

Hall remained jailed Sunday on $5 million bond, charged with first-degree murder in Tunstall's death and with intentional homicide of an unborn child.

Story continues



She likely will be arraigned Monday on the two charges, each carrying a penalty of 20 to 60 years or life in prison, prosecutors said. The murder count could be punishable by the death penalty.

According to the autopsies, there were no signs of physical abuse or trauma on the children -- ages 7, 2, and 1 -- and toxicology tests were pending "to see if they were poisoned or possibly drugged," Hart said.

The community turned to prayer Sunday to understand the slayings at a service for the family.

"This is an opportunity for people to turn to God," said Debra Kenton, a member of the New Life Community Church. "Who else can explain things like this?"

In the days after authorities say she killed Tunstall and her fetus, Hall went about everyday life, chatting with her daughter's elementary school teacher and helping her daughter with homework, Hall's mother, Beverly Cruise, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for Monday's editions.

Authorities suspect Tunstall was slain on or about Sept. 15.

That day, Hall summoned police to a park, saying she had given birth to a stillborn child, Hart said. She was arrested after she told her boyfriend during the baby's funeral that the baby wasn't his and that she had killed the mother to get it, authorities said.

Tunstall's body was found Thursday, and authorities began a furious search for her children. Police said the children were last seen with Hall on Monday.

Authorities had visited Tunstall's apartment Friday but noticed nothing amiss while looking for photographs of the children for media outlets to publicize in their search, Hart said.

While in custody, Hart says, Hall told investigators she killed the children and hid them in the washer and dryer.

Hart said he understood why investigators may have overlooked the children during their previous trip to the apartment. "Who would be looking in the washer and dryer?"

By Saturday night, Hart said, "you could find them by the smell."

The oldest, 7-year-old DeMond Tunstall, was found in the dryer and the younger two children -- 2-year-old Ivan Tunstall-Collins and 1-year-old Jinela Tunstall -- in the washer. Two of the children were found nude, the third wearing only underpants, Hart said.

Mourners left stuffed animals outside Tunstall's apartment, its door crisscrossed with white evidence tape. There was a white teddy bear, and a stuffed race car with DeMond's name.

An autopsy showed that Jimella Tunstall bled to death after sustaining an abdominal wound caused by a sharp object, believed to be scissors, Hart has said. Authorities believe her womb was cut open after she was knocked unconscious.

Relatives say Tunstall grew up with Hall and had let her baby-sit her children. Hall has two children of her own. Illinois State Police Capt. Craig Koehler said they are "safe and sound."

DNA tests should determine definitively whether the baby was the one Tunstall was carrying, Hart said.

Funerals for Tunstall and her children were scheduled for Friday.