The Post continues its tireless, grim updates of the Renee Bowman case, with the latest crediting three reporters in the byline and four other individuals as having contributed. New details: a lawyer who represented Bowman in a personal injury case between 2003 and 2005 describes her as being "not the same person" she was then. Bowman is apparently confused about what's going on, even though she told police one of her daughters died of starvation,......

The Calvert County, Md. Sheriff's Department has arrested one Renee Bowman, 43, after discovering what appeared to be the bodies of two children in a freezer in Bowman's home over the weekend. Authorities went to the house responding to a report of child abuse, after neighbors found Bowman's 7-year-old adopted daughter alone outside the house, showing signs of abuse and neglect. When they searched the house, they found the remains, and Bowman allegedly told them......

In the annals of heartbreaking, senseless violence in the District of Columbia, this one ranks right up there at the top. WJLA and the Post both have stories about the shooting death of 18-year-old Tanganika Stanton in Northeast over the weekend. The story D.C. police are telling is that Stanton was approached by 19-year-old Terrence Jones while she was sitting outside her home eating a hamburger. In an apparent attempt to flirt with her, Jones......

WJLA is all over the news that Montgomery County investigators linked DNA evidence from the crime scene of the homicide of a Bethesda area woman to two other home-invasion burglaries in the neighborhood. There have been a series of six similar home-invasions in the general area from Potomac to The Palisades over the last year, the most recent one resulting in the killing of Mary Havenstein, 63. The DNA evidence now shows that at least......

Close to three months after 19-year-old Ronnie White was strangled to death while in custody in a Prince George's County jail, the Post is reporting that two corrections officers have been placed on paid leave after being identified as "the focus" of an investigation into the killing. White had been taken into custody on charges of killing a Prince George's County police officer with his car less than 48 hours before he was killed. The......

Via the Post, Banita Jacks pleaded not guilty this morning to first-degree murder charges in the deaths of her four daughters. A trial date has been set for Dec. 1, and her attorneys have 15 days to inform Judge Frederick Weisberg if they intend to go forward with an insanity defense. Jacks has also been charged with failing to provide the girls with adequate nutrition and medical attention. The decomposed bodies of the four girls,......

View Larger Map WJLA has the latest on the two men who were fatally shot in the unit block of K Street NW, not far from Union Station, at around 10 a.m. this morning. One of the victims was 18-year-old Johnquon Wright. The age and identity of the second victim has not been confirmed. The Post says that Mayor Fenty showed up to the scene about two hours after the shooting. Wright's mother is a......

Back in May, 21-year-old Anteneh Getnet Amare, of Takoma Park, was found unconscious on the sidewalk on the 600 block of T Street NW. He was taken to the hospital and later pronounced dead. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the District of Columbia has since ruled Amare's death a homicide, reporting today that he died from blunt-force trauma. Anyone with information is asked to call police at 202-727-9099 or 888-919-CRIM[E]. Anonymous information......

Blogger Jeff Simmermon (he of the Murky Coffee iced espresso saga and a former DCist contributor) is asking people to help him gather some much-needed cash for the family of Marisol Caceres. As you'll recall, Marisol was found strangled in her apartment in Northeast last week, and her father has since been arrested for her murder. Jeff is a friend of Marisol's brother, Jose Andrade, and says the family is in desperate need of assistance.Marisol’s......

The Metropolitan Police Department sent around a flyer today with this photo of Felipe Antonio Caceres, asking the community for their help in locating him. Caceres is the father of 12-year-old Marisol Caceres, who was found dead earlier this week in at apartment at 60 Hawaii Avenue NE. The flyer emphasizes that Caceres is missing, that he is wanted for questioning only [emphasis theirs], and that he "should be approached with caution as he may......

In case you missed this tidbit from the coverage of last night's round of fatal shootings, the Examiner is keen to point out that there have now been 108 homicides in the District in 2008, up from the same time period last year, which saw 105.......

Commenter Lionel M. Hutz linked to a video yesterday in our post about the 1-year jail sentence handed down to the former Metrobus driver who struck and killed two women in February. Rusty over at why.i.hate.dc also linked to it this morning, and since then, the DCist Staff email list has been filled with a lot of phrases like "Wow", "Holy crap!" and "That's the single most horrific piece of video I've seen in a......

How about that first snow storm of the season, Washington? CapitalWeather.com says that "yesterday's clipper system actually significantly 'over-performed,'" which is why we ended up with 2-4" of snow for the region instead of the 1" we were originally expecting. The Examiner was concerned about your commute this morning thanks to overnight lows that were forecast to drop into the low 20s, allowing for ice to refreeze on the roads in time for this......

WJLA brings word that Victor Kolako, the former Metrobus driver who was convicted of striking and killing two pedestrians on February 14, has been sentenced to one year in jail. Kolako was found guilty on two felony counts of negligent homicide in the Pennsylvania Ave. accident. The widower of one of the victims, Greg Schoenborn, has also filed a $50 million wrongful death lawsuit against Metro in U.S. District Court. The sentencing decision is potentially......

As the region continues to mourn the loss of Sean Taylor, some hopeful news has come to light in the search for his killer. Over the course of the week, officials have stated that they have "no reason" to believe that Taylor was anything more than the random victim of a botched burglary. However, in a story broken by the Miami Herald, a relative of Taylor's has announced that three men have now been detained......

>> A gas main break closed Route 1 in Alexandria this afternoon. Expect delays. [WaPo] >> The suspicious death of a two-year-old Silver Spring boy has been ruled a homicide. [WTOP] >> Authorities have arrested and charged a Clinton, Md., woman with attempted murder and other arson-related charges for her involvement starting fire in a Gaithersburg apartment building on Thanksgiving morning. [NBC4] >> An Oak Hill Thanksgiving: "Just days before, a riot broke out......

>> Starting in January, the so-called Humpback Bridge on the George Washington Parkway will be revamped to be hump free and more pedestrian friendly. [WTOP] >> Mayor Fenty's administration tripled the number of employees making $175,000 or more from this time last year. Five of those employees, including the mayor himself, make over $200,000. [Examiner] >> Last night's fatal shooting of a man in the Barnaby Terrace neighborhood brings D.C.'s 2007 homicide total for......

Good morning, Washington, and welcome back to what will be a rather short work week for most of us. While airports and train stations are sure to be jammed with holiday travelers this week, the city's roads and metro system should be a little less crowded than normal as folks head out of town early to celebrate Thanksgiving. Less congestion may not make much of a difference in road safety, however, if a new survey......

Mayor Adrian Fenty has announced the city has formally filed an appeal to the Supreme Court in the hopes that it will overturn a March decision in which a lower court found that the District's ban on handguns was unconstitutional. Though the appeal has been a month in the making, Fenty and D.C. Attorney General Linda Singer today explained their reasoning in an op-ed published in the Post. In it, they reject the individual right......

Former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent writes a weekly column about neighborhood and development issues. For much of the past year, this column has taken a hard look at many aspects of District life, from crime and schools, to transportation planning and development, to the uneven distribution of growth in the city, and found them wanting. It’s never difficult to be critical of the way things are done in the District, and yet there are obviously many......

Happy Friday, Washington! Oh, wait. It's Tuesday. But we're not going in to work tomorrow! Oh, wait again. We have to come in on Thursday. And Friday. This is confusing. We'll have some more info for you later today on how to avoid the crowds and have a stellar 4th of July celebration -- just as soon as we can wrap our heads around the idea of stumbling to our desks on the 5th, totally......

Chances are, if you live in or near the city and are not fantastically wealthy, you probably have roommates. Maybe you live with friends, maybe with some folks you randomly found on craigslist and barely talk to, but sharing your living space with other people is a fact of life for most people under 30 in D.C. And in this kind of heat, any sort of odd personal odors emanating from your roommates' bedrooms might......

It seems like, all across the network, folks were up to no good. Maybe it was all the green beer from last weekend... Gothamist spent the week writing about New Yorkers behaving badly: at the post office, at the Garden, and at the fertility clinic. Calvin Klein may not be misbehaving, but he's just a little dirty, and in a completely different way than some NYC kitchens. SFist had its share of misbehave-rs, too, like......

Pull out the seersucker suits and floral frocks, D.C:. Spring is almost on. Today's weather will be more pleasant than yesterday's, but we're keeping our eyes on the prize. Tomorrow the equinox marks the official start of Spring and here at DCist headquarters we're already preparing for a season sans boots, scarves and Snowpocalypses... Oh my! Metro Sued Over Pedestrian Deaths: The husband of one of the women killed by a Metro bus on Feb.......

Many schools are still closed and roads and sidewalks still dangerously icy this morning as the region struggles to dig out of the winter storm that passed through earlier this week. Most of the really bad news continues to come out of the suburbs, where many homes are still without power, and injuries and at least one death have been reported. The Post has a good rundown of the extent of the metro area's ice......

On this, the eighth day of the Fenty administration, the Examiner poses an interesting question about the promised increase in beat-walking cops. The strategy is a hallmark of new Police Chief Cathy Lanier's community policing plan for a safer city. Officials haven't said where they'll be targeting, but the paper lists ten likely areas of increased presence, including Chinatown, Adams Morgan, and Takoma Park. The law enforcement theory behind assigned beats says they're most effective......

With 2006 fast coming to a close, the District on Friday reported what is surely cause for celebration -- the city's homocide tally, once one of the highest in the nation, is down, and dramatically so. According to current statistics, the District has suffered 156 homicides this year, 18.3 percent less than the same time in 2005 and 35 short of last year's total of 191. Short of a citywide killing spree in the next......

Somehow, the world of -ists managed to make it through the week despite news that Jen & Vince broke up. -Chicagoist had fall on their mind as they made squash and fudge, read "House of Leaves" and ">tried to figure out what's next for the Cubs. Not fall related, but still of utmost concern, the whole skinny black pants thing. -Torontoist fought off an evil scourge of raccoons and went to go see who......

Morning, Washington. Hypochondriacs of the city, grab some Valium, because the area seems to be teeming with illness lately. The good news, we think, is that the Maryland Department of Health has determined that three of the reported E. coli cases were not related to contaminated spinach, though it's not clear where they picked up the bacteria. The Department is still investigating four cases, including the death of one woman, but with any luck, we'll......

TUESDAY Dreckifying The Shop Around the Corner notwithstanding, Nora Ephron has a solid track record of bringing the funny. Why so wistful, then, Nora? Find out tonight at Politics and Prose as she discusses I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman. 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW., 7 p.m. If you can’t make it, she’ll be making another D.C. stop Wednesday at the District of Columbia Jewish Community Center, 16th &......