Santa Ana Teen Gets 25 To Life In Mom's Killing: AP reports that a 19-year-old convicted of stabbing her mother to death and dumping her body in the ocean was sentenced Friday to 25 years to life in prison. The body was pulled from Newport Harbor in September 2006. The mother had been stabbed 50 times. The teen's ex-boyfriend, 23-year-old Ian Allen, was also convicted of first-degree murder in a separate trial. His sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 14. Testifying in her own defense during the trial, Rachel Mullenix admitted she helped Allen clean the crime scene and dump the body in the harbor, but only because she was in shock and was afraid of her boyfriend.

Suspect In Decades-old L.A. Homicide Hangs Self: AP writer Linda Deutsch reports that a strange cold case murder story of nearly 30 years ended this weekend a few blocks from where it began, with the shocking suicide of Japanese businessman Kazuyoshi Miura in a downtown jail cell. Attorney Mark Geragos, who was representing Miura, said his client maintained to the end that he had nothing to do with the shooting of his 28-year-old wife, Kazumi, in 1981. Miura battled extradition to the United States this year but finally agreed to come back and face trial on a charge of conspiracy to murder his long-dead wife. His suicide, in which police said he hanged himself with a piece of his shirt in his jail cell, was the last bizarre twist in a case that had many.

Prior post on the double jeopardy problem is here.