Chicago, Murder | featured news

... spike in murders and shootings — much of it gang-related — shocked Chicagoans, spurred new crime-fighting strategies and left indelible images: Mayor Rahm Emanuel voicing outrage about gang crossfire that killed a 7-year-old named Heaven selling candy in her front yard. Panicked mourners scrambling as shots ring out on the church steps at a funeral for a reputed gang leader. Girls wearing red high school basketball uniforms, filing by the casket of a 16-year-old teammate shot on her porch.

A suburban Chicago man was sentenced to life in prison for killing his wife and three children in the family's SUV.

An attorney testified that the fourth wife of former suburban Chicago police officer Drew Peterson talked about extorting money from her husband just days before she vanished in 2007.