LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
"All of our employees, if they're too stupid to understand that they're not reaching professional standards, we terminate them."
Bertha Lewis,
CEO of ACORN, saying she will announce an independent auditor for the organization today
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5 kids, mom die;
husband sought
NAPLES, Fla. - Five young children and their mother were found dead in a Florida apartment, and authorities were searching Sunday for the woman's husband, who had left the country.
Mesac Damas, 33, boarded a flight to Haiti from Miami International Airport on Friday, said Collier County sheriff's office spokesman Michelle Batten. Damas has family from Haiti, she said. Sheriff's officials said they want to talk to Damas, who is a person of interest.
Haitian police spokesman Frantz Lerebours could not immediately be reached for comment. A message was also left with the FBI.
The victims were identified as Guerline Damas, 32, and her children: Michzach, 9; Marven, 6; Maven, 5; Megan, 3; and 11-month-old Morgan. Batten would not say how they died.
Family members contacted authorities Thursday saying they hadn't heard from the mother. A missing-person report was filed the next day, and on Saturday, the sheriff's office entered the home in a gated community in Naples and found the bodies, Batten said.
Lawmen recapture
insane murderer
SEATTLE - An insane killer who slipped away from the staff of a mental institution on a field trip to the Spokane County International Fair was recaptured Sunday more than 220 miles away in south-central Washington state.
With a helicopter overhead and dozens of federal, state and local law enforcement officers swarming around Goldendale, Phillip Arnold Paul walked out to the Goldendale-Bickleton road about 22 miles east of town shortly after 4 p.m., just as search personnel arrived at the scene, Klickitat County Sheriff Rick McComas said.
"He came out of the brush, onto the roadway, as law enforcement officers were going by. His intent was to voluntarily give himself up because he knew we were going to find him," Mc-Comas said.
The sheriff said he didn't know how Paul reached the area, adding the information that he might be nearby came from Spokane.
Suspect in deaths of 4 faces charges
RICHMOND, Va. - A California man who purportedly rapped about the thrill of killing has been charged in the slaying of a rural Virginia pastor found dead with three others inside the home of his estranged wife, a college professor, authorities said Sunday.
Police on Saturday charged Richard Alden Samuel Mc-Croskey III, 20, of Castro Valley, Calif., with murder, robbery and stealing the automobile of Mark Niederbrock, a pastor at Walker's Presbyterian Church in Appomattox County.
Niederbrock has been tentatively identified as one of four people discovered the day before in Farmville, about 50 miles west of Richmond, at the home of Longwood University professor Debra Kelley.
McCroskey recorded songs that spoke of death, murder and mutilation under the name Syko Sam.
Front Section, Pages 3 on 09/21/2009