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Show World&Nation Page 12 Monday, April 18, 2011 Ohio man who killed 3 sa s he has 'evil thoughts' BELLEFONTAINE, Ohio (AP) – A man sentenced to life in prison without parole for murdering his girlfriend's daughter and an elderly couple said in his videotaped confession that he constantly has "evil thoughts" and thinks about killing. Samuel K. Littleton II, of western Ohio, pleaded guilty to three counts each of aggravated murder and gross abuse of a corpse in a deal with prosecutors to avoid the death penalty for the three February slayings. He shed some light on his thinking during hours of taped interrogations after he was arrested in West Virginia, The Columbus Dispatch newspaper reported Sunday. "I think evil thoughts all the time. I mean, there ain't one minute that I don't say or think about how to snap somebody's neck, crush their head," Littleton, 37, told investigators. "Why would a person have that kind of thoughts all the time?" Littleton lowered his head and sobbed as investigators showed him pictures of 84-year-old Richard Russell and 85-year-old wife Gladis Russell and then pleaded with him to reveal where their bodies were. Authorities believe he killed the Russells at their rural Lewiston home, put their bodies in the trunk of their car and drove south. Their bodies later were found in Tennessee and Georgia. Their car was found in Princeton, W.Va., where Littleton has relatives. When investigators asked about Littleton's girlfriend's daughter, he replied that he "snapped!' The body of Tiffany Brown, 26, was found in the basement of the Bellefontaine home that Littleton bought from the Russells. "I don't know why I snapped. I don't," he said, crying. "I don't know why I done it. Everything just happened so fast." As the questioning intensified, he vomited and then asked why God had not ended his life, the newspaper reported. "What a creator, huh?" Littleton said. "Create somebody with an evil thought and mind like mine. I'm a bad person." Several times, he referenced the idea that he should die, including when he asked an investigator to "do the world a whole big favor" by laying his loaded gun on the table and leaving the room. A couple of hours into the interrogation, Littleton's father, Sam Littleton Sr., was allowed to see him. "Can't take back what I done," the younger Littleton said during the half-hour exchange, which ended with a tearful hug. "I'm not right in the head." The case file released by prosecutors shows a co-worker told detectives Littleton had used LSD in the three weeks before the killings, the newspaper said, noting that Littleton had a rough past. He'd bounced between relatives and foster care as a child, had at times been homeless and, according to the local sheriff, was known for using marijuana as a teenager. Brown's mother and Littleton's longtime partner, Deb Neeley, said she thinks he's sorry for what happened. "I just don't think he has the guts to say anything to us," she said after he was sentenced. "He's a coward." Rural North Carolina gets worst of violent storms ASKEWVILLE, N.C. (AP) – A tornado-spewing storm system that killed at least 45 people across half the country unleashed its worst fury on North Carolina, where homes broke apart, trees snapped and livestock were swept into the air. Residents in the capital city and rural hamlets alike on Sunday mourned the dead, marveled at their own survival and began to clean up devastated neighborhoods. Observers reported more than 60 tornadoes across North Carolina on Saturday, but most of the state's 21 confirmed deaths occurred in two rural counties. A thunderstorm spawned a tornado that killed four people in southeastern Bladen County, then kept dropping tornadoes as it hopscotched more than 150 miles, eventually moving into Bertie County and killing 11 more. Heavy winds swept some homes from their foundations, demolished others and flipped cars on tiny rural roads between Askewville and Colerain, Bertie County Manager Zee Lamb said. At least three of those who died were from the same family, he said. The winds ripped to shreds the doublewide mobile home in Askewville where Justin Dunlow had sought shelter for his 3-year-old daughter, 5-year-old son and himself. The 23-year-old roofer, whose own mobile home nearby also was destroyed, lay on both children as the storm did its worst. "I just started praying, and the wall fell on top of us and that's what kept us there," he said. "I can replace the house, but I can't replace my babies. And that's what I thought about. I'm alive. My babies are alive." In Bladen County, Milton McKoy had thought his mobile home in Ammon was out of the storm's path before he saw a tornado over the tops of pine trees, lifting pigs and other animals into the sky. It looked just like The Wizard of Oz,"' said his wife, Audrey. The couple took shelter in the laundry room as the tornado snapped trees and carried off several homes in the neighborhood. When they stepped out, it took them a moment to figure out the twister had turned their own home around, leaving them in the backyard. The violent weather began Thursday in Oklahoma, where two people died, before cutting across the Deep South on Friday and hitting North Carolina and Virginia on Saturday. Authorities said seven people died in Arkansas; seven in Alabama; seven in Virginia; and one in Mississippi. More than 240 tornadoes were reported from the storm system, including 62 in North Carolina, but the National Weather Service's final numbers could be lower because some tornadoes may have been reported more than once. Saturday was North Carolina's deadliest day for tornadoes since 1984, when 22 twisters killed 42 people and injured hundreds. The state emergency management agency said it had reports of 23 fatalities from Saturday's storms, but local officials confirmed only 21 deaths with The Associated Press. The conditions that allowed for the storm occur on the Great Plains maybe twice a year, but they almost never happen in North Carolina, according to Scott Sharp, a weather service meteorologist in Raleigh. The atmosphere was unstable, which allows air to rise and fall quickly, creating winds of hurricane strength or greater. There was also plenty of moisture, which acts as fuel for the violent storms. Shear winds at different heights, moving in different directions, created the spin needed to create tornadoes, Sharp said. North Carolina officials have tallied more than 130 serious injuries, 65 homes destroyed and another 600 significantly damaged in North Carolina, according to state public safety MARY GRADY SITS IN HER neighbor's yard where she rode out a tornado in Askewville, N.C., Sunday. AP photo spokeswoman Julia Jarema. Officials expect those totals to climb as damage assessments continue. Gov. Beverly Perdue declared a state of emergency. After spending much of Sunday touring hard-hit areas, including downtown Raleigh, she said that despite her experience with natural disasters, the damage this time was so hard to bear it nearly brought her to tears. Downed trees blocked major downtown thoroughfares in the bustling capital city of 400,000. Three members of a family were killed at a trailer park about five miles north of downtown. Tania Valle, a 20-year-old freshman at Meredith College, came back to the trailer park to check on her mother, and said she had to wait hours before they were reunited. A tree split her mother's mobile home in half, leaving just one room intact. "She's so nervous. She's sad," Valle said. "She said everything got destroyed." Just east of downtown Raleigh at Shaw University, a tornado poked a hole in the roof of the student center and knocked out dormitory windows. The school canceled the last two weeks of school because of the damage. In Dunn, about 40 miles south of Raleigh, the storm reduced more than half the 40 trailers in the Cedar Creek Mobile Home Park to unrecognizable piles of rubble. A bulldozer scooped up wooden beams Sunday and deposited them in a pile. In one home, all that remained was a bathtub and half of a recliner. In Bladen County, emergency management chief Bradley Kinlaw said 82 homes were damaged and 25 destroyed in Saturday's storms. Fierce fi htin in keywestern Lib a city kills 17 AJDABIYA, Libya (AP) – Holding out under a rain of shelling and sniper fire, Libyan rebels fought Moammar Gadhafi's forces Sunday in close-quarters battles in the city center of Misrata, the last major rebel foothold in western Libya. Seventeen people were killed, an NGO worker and an opposition activist said. Government troops have been laying siege to the city on Libya's Mediterranean coast for weeks, prompting repeated international warnings of a dire humanitarian situation as well as calls for NATO forces to intensify airstrikes on Gadhafi's forces there. On Sunday, government troops, who have pushed into the city center from the outskirts in recent days, pounded Misrata with mortar rounds and rocket-propelled grenades, said resident Abdel-Salam, who only provided his given name for fear of retribution. "Residents have become so accustomed to the sound of mortars and missiles," he said. "Snipers are still on the roofs of tall buildings shooting at anything that moves in the city center." Rebels fought government forces back from an area around a central produce market, regaining a small sliver of territory, said Rida al-Montasser, a local activist reached by Skype. He said a hospital report that he received from a doctor, showed 17 people, including rebels, were killed and 74 others were injured. He said Gadhafi forces had fired at the city's hospital Sunday. A worker for a foreign NGO who visited the hospital Sunday also said 17 bodies were brought in, including that of a girl shot in the head. Other children who had been shot were among the wounded, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared for his safety. Explosions thundered late into the night, al-Montasser said. The NATO-led air campaign authorized by the U.N. to protect civilians and enforce a no-fly zone has failed to stop government shelling that, according to residents and witnesses, has hit Misrata's hospital, the port and residential areas. The international airstrikes have kept rebels from being defeated on the battlefield by the better trained and equipped government forces, but it still has not been enough to turn the tide in the war. In the eastern half of Libya, rebels in control of most of that part of the country since the uprising began on Feb. 15 have been unable to advance westward toward the capital. In Paris, French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet dis- missed statements from a top NATO official that the alliance is short of aircraft. Longuet said instead that NATO's mission in Libya is hampered by a lack of ground information. "There is no lack of planes but a lack of identification of mobile objectives," he said in an interview published Sunday in the daily Le Parisien. "The problem is that we're missing concrete and verifiable information on identified objectives on the ground." Longuet said that "coalition aviation is capable of breaking all logistical provisions of Gadhafi's troops" to the east. But he acknowledged that in urban combat, "if the aviation avoids tragedies, it still isn't solving the problem." After a meeting of NATO foreign ministers last week in Berlin, the alliance's secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said NATO needed "a small number of precision aircraft" to hit Gadhafi's forces. "I'm hopeful that nations will step up to the plate," he said, noting that the two-day Berlin meeting was not held to solicit new pledges of support. The need for the additional aircraft comes as the situation has changed on the ground, Fogh Rasmussen said. Patin: Wis. government doing the right thing with unions MADISON, Wis. (AP) – Sarah Palin defended Wisconsin's governor at a tea party tax day rally Saturday, telling hundreds of supporters that his polarizing union rights law is designed to save public jobs. Braving snow showers and a frigid wind outside the state Capitol building, the former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate told tea partyers she's glad to stand with Gov. Scott Walker. Hundreds of labor supporters surrounded the rally, trying to drown Palin out with chants of "Hey-hey, hoho, Scott Walker has got to go!" and "Recall Walker!" "Hey, folks! He's trying to save your jobs and your pensions!" Palin yelled into the microphone. "Your governor did the right thing and you won! Your beautiful state won! And people still have their jobs!" Walker, a Republican, signed a bill into law last month that calls for almost all public workers to contribute more to their pensions and health care coverage, changes that amount to an average 8 percent pay cut. The plan also strips them of their right to collectively bargain on anything except wages. Walker has said the law will help balance a $3.6 billion hole in the state budget and give local governments the flexibility they need to absorb deep cuts in state aid. Democrats, though, think Walker wants to weaken unions, one of their strongest constituencies. Tens of thousands of people descended on the Capitol to protest nonstop for weeks against the plan and minority Democrats in the state Senate fled to Illinois to block a vote in that chamber, drawing national attention to the controversy. Republicans eventually passed the plan without them and Walker signed the measure in early March. Democrats managed to win a temporary court order blocking the law from taking effect, but tensions are still running high over the measure. Capitol Police estimated about 6,500 people converged on the building Saturday, but said it was impossible to tell how many were tea partyers and how many were labor supporters. The Capitol Police is a division of the Wisconsin Department of Administration, a Walker cabinet agency. The tea partyers appeared clustered in front of the building, waving "Don't Tread on Me" flags and signs that read "Public workers – the party is over," "Thank you, Scott," and "Tax and spend brings the end." Counter-protesters surrounded them, banging drums, bellowing into bullhorns and ringing bells. Bitter arguments broke out along the edges of the two groups over everything from the size of government to corporate power. At one point conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart took the stage and told the labor supporters to "go to hell." "I'm serious!" he screamed. "Go to hell! You're trying to divide America!" The tea party crowd cheered and the counter-demonstrators booed as Palin stepped to the microphone. She said she was proud Wisconsin conservatives prevailed against union "hatred and violence" — even though none of the protests in Madison ever became physically violent and only one person was arrested Saturday, for disorderly conduct, police said. Palin said Walker is working to solve Wisconsin's long-term budget problems so it can honor pension commitments to public workers. "This is where the line has been drawn in the sand and I'm glad to stand with you in solidarity," Palin said. She segued into attacks on President Barack Obama, accusing him of failing to control the nation's burgeoning debt, leading the country into war in Libya on fuzzy pretenses and ignoring rising gas prices. FORMER ALASKA GOV. SARAH PALIN speaks at a tax day tea party rally Saturday, in Madison,Wis. AP photo |