Why did they do it? The year in crime

There's nothing like a crime story to grab the public's imagination — and 2006 provided some of the most gripping in the past few years.

Below, in chronological order, are seven stories that dominated the tabloids, caused a buzz among bloggers and were discussed at length by cable TV pundits.

An honor student’s brutal murder.  The murder of New York graduate student Imette St. Guillen troubled a city known to 20-somethings more as the good times of the “Sex and the City” than the gritty place of the Son of Sam era.

St. Guillen was last seen Feb. 25 at a trendy SoHo bar called The Falls at the end of a late night out. Her body was discovered 17 hours later in a bleak corner of Brooklyn after an anonymous 911 caller alerted police.

Was the killer a passerby? Or a serial killer on the loose? Did he act alone?

Courtesy Boston Latin High Schoo / AP The yearbook photo provided by Boston Latin High School shows Imette St. Guillen, a graduate honors student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who was found strangled Saturday, Feb. 25, 2006, in Brooklyn.

It was the kind of case St. Guillen came to New York to study at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

The gruesome crime resounded all over the country. The murder was cold-blooded — her captor had jammed a sock down her throat, cut off her hair and wrapped her head in transparent packing tape. The newspapers called him the “Mummy Maniac.”

And St. Guillen had everything to hope for. “She was really doing well in her life,” commented NBC News Analyst and former prosecutor Susan Filan, of the dean’s lister just two months shy of her degree.

The bouncer at The Falls bar, Darryl Littlejohn, was charged soon after with first degree murder. Littlejohn, a parolee with a long rap sheet, had been the prime suspect in the slaying. St. Guillen was last seen talking to the bouncer; meanwhile, blood found on the plastic ties used to bind the victim matched Littlejohn.

His defense attorney now claims he is being used as a scapegoat by police who were seeking a quick arrest in the high-profile case.

Littlejohn shouldn’t have been working at the bar at all — he had a 9 p.m. parole curfew. This month, in St. Guillen’s hometown of Boston, “Imette’s Law” was proposed. According to the plan, bouncers in bars and nightclubs would be required to go through stricter background checks and mandatory training.

The Duke case. The story began in March, with a party thrown by members of the Duke University lacrosse team at a house on the edge of campus.  The players hired two women to perform exotic dances.  By most accounts, the party began well — but quickly turned ugly.

One dancer told police that racial slurs were yelled at them and that one of the players brandished a broomstick, frightening the women into a bathroom — and eventually into leaving. One dancer went back into the house and later told police she’d been raped in the bathroom by three white players for 30 minutes. 

Within days, Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong announced he would be pressing charges.

It seemed like a morality tale of jocks gone wild. Nifong called the players “hooligans” and said that he was certain a racially motivated rape had occurred. By May 16, Reade Seligmann, 20, and Collin Finnerty, 20, and David Evans, 23, were indicted. All three proclaimed their innocence and are free on bond.

NBC VIDEO Not enough info in Duke rape case? Oct. 12: Defense attorneys in the Duke rape case say the prosecutor’s office has handed over incomplete records.  MSNBC senior legal analyst Susan Filan discusses. MSNBC

Blogger LaShawn Barber, who writes primarily about politics and race, was piqued by the story. “It’s salacious. It’s a black woman — a single mother stripping to feed her kid —  gang-raped and brutally beaten by ‘rich college boys. There’s lots of drama. There’s a movie in here,” she says.

“But did it really happen? Something about the initial media reports didn’t sit well with me,” says Barber.

Kim Roberts, the other dancer hired to perform at the party, has given conflicting accounts of the evening. The accuser’s credibility has also been questioned in other ways. According to documents publicly available in court filings, the accuser kept changing her story — including how many men were involved, whether or not she had been drinking or taking a muscle relaxant than night, and if she had been groped or raped.

And then there’s the controversial IDing of the three suspects: The accuser was asked to pick her assailants out of a line-up that only included the 46 lacrosse players on the team.

Throughout the year, questions have been raised about the district attorney and police’s handling of the case. Was it overeager prosecution by a D.A. up for a re-election? 

This month, it was revealed that the genetic material found in the accuser’s body and underwear came from several males, but none from any team member.

This November, Nifong fended off two challengers and won re-election. But a North Carolina congressman has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Nifong’s handling of the case, saying Nifong might have engaged in prosecutorial misconduct and violated the civil rights of the three lacrosse players.

“It became clear that the ‘rape’ itself isn’t the story,” says Barber. “It's that justice is supposed to be color-blind. That should be true for both black victims and white defendants.”

And at year's end, a big development in the case: Prosecutors on Dec. 22 dropped rape charges against the three; however, they still face kidnapping and sexual offense charges.

According to court papers filed by Nifong, the accuser told a prosecution investigator on Thursday that she now does not know if she was penetrated during the alleged attack.

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