Florida

Three children slain; mother says she did it

Three children were found dead under a bed in their home Tuesday, a day after their mother was arrested in North Carolina. Police said the woman allegedly confessed to their slayings.

Authorities were led to the children — girls ages 5 and 9, and a 6-year-old boy — after Andrea Williams was arrested for trespassing at a former friend’s home about 40 miles northwest of Charlotte.

Williams, 32, was being quizzed after her estranged husband filed a missing-persons report Tuesday morning with Longwood police, said Maj. Coy Reid of the Catawba County, N.C., Sheriff’s Department.

“Ms. Williams told our investigator that she had killed her children and they were in her residence in Florida,” Reid said.

Michigan

Grandmother sentenced for robbing banks

A woman was sentenced Tuesday to nearly six years in prison for robbing two Michigan banks while on a trip to visit her son, a police officer. She also admitted to 10 other robberies in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Margaret Ann Thomas-Irving’s arrest capped a nine-month crime spree in which the 58-year-old grandmother held up four banks, two savings and loans, two restaurants and two Dunkin’ Donuts shops. The robberies netted just under $20,000.

The Hartford, Conn., woman was arrested in 2003 on the same day she allegedly robbed two banks in Lansing. She pleaded guilty in February to two counts of bank robbery.

On Tuesday, District Judge Gordon J. Quist sentenced Thomas-Irving to 70 months in prison and ordered her to pay $17,565 in restitution.

Philadelphia

R&B’s John Whitehead shot to death

John Whitehead, a prominent R&B artist best known for the 1979 hit song “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now,” was shot dead Tuesday, police said.

Whitehead, 55, was shot while working on a vehicle with another man, police said. The assailant fled.

Whitehead was shot in the neck and collapsed; the other man was shot in the buttocks and taken to a hospital.

Whitehead and Gene McFadden formed a group called the Epsilons in their youth and were discovered by Otis Redding and toured with him in the 1960s.