Tennessee

Police charge closet dweller with murder

A man was beaten to death after catching his wife’s lover living in a closet in their home, police said Tuesday.

Rafael DeJesus Rocha-Perez, 35, was charged with homicide in the slaying of 44-year-old Jeffrey A. Freeman over the weekend.

“From time to time, you come across a case with very unique — even bizarre — circumstances,” police spokesman Don Aaron said. “This one probably rates right up there with them.”

Freeman’s wife had allowed Rocha-Perez to live in a closet of the Freemans’ four-bedroom for about a month without her husband’s knowledge, police said. On Sunday, her husband heard Rocha-Perez snoring and discovered him, authorities said.

Freeman ordered his wife to get the man out of the house while he went for a walk, authorities said. Martha Freeman told authorities that when her husband returned, Rocha-Perez confronted him with a shotgun, forced him into a bathroom and bludgeoned him.

The Freemans were co-owners of a company that does background checks for apartment rental and job applicants.

Denver

Spring blizzard meltoff helps ease drought

Much of the heavy snowfall piled up by a weekend blizzard had melted Tuesday, providing at least a little help for drought-stricken areas, and airports and highways were returning to normal after storm-caused shutdowns stranded hundreds of travelers.

The weekend storm, which dropped as much as 2 feet of wet snow, was “a good shot in the arm” for northern Colorado, where mountain snowfall has lagged below average, said Mark Svoboda, a climatologist with the National Drought Mitigation Center.

Melting snow provides up to 80 percent of Colorado’s water. Statewide, the snowpack is 107 percent of average, but river basins in northern Colorado are all below average.

Flight schedules were nearly back to normal at Denver International Airport, where the storm stranded more 2,000 travelers Sunday night and created hours-long waits on Monday.

Georgia

Wanted ex-convict caught in parking lot

An ex-convict who collaborated with two professors on a book about life behind bars and vowed never to go back to prison was captured Tuesday after being accused of two slayings in South Carolina.

Stephen Stanko, 37, was arrested in a shopping center parking lot in Augusta, a day after authorities launched a nationwide manhunt, police said. Authorities had been tipped that a truck they believed Stanko was driving had been seen in the lot.

Stanko, who had just eaten lunch, was unarmed and was taken into custody without incident, Horry County, S.C., Police spokesman Andy Christenson said. He was wearing a suit and tie.

Earlier Tuesday, federal investigators had offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to his capture. He was being held in an Augusta-area jail awaiting a federal court appearance, most likely today.

Stanko is suspected of killing Laura Ling, 43, a librarian who lived with him outside Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Henry Lee Turner, 74.

Chicago

Black women less likely to get genetic counseling

Black women with a family history of breast cancer are much less likely than whites to get genetic counseling, in part because of the mistaken notion that the genetic form of the illness is a white woman’s disease, researchers say.

While breast cancer generally is more common among white women, some data suggest both races have similar rates of genetic flaws known as BRCA mutations that greatly increase the risk of developing the disease. Also, breast-cancer mortality rates are higher in black women.

In a study published in today’s Journal of the American Medical Assn., researchers questioned 408 women with a family history of breast or ovarian cancer. Only 16 of the 71 blacks studied — about 22 percent — got genetic counseling, compared with 184 of the 310 white women, or about 60 percent.

Miami

Court upholds ban on ex-felons voting

A federal appeals court in Atlanta on Tuesday upheld Florida’s 160-year-old law enforcing a lifetime ban on voting rights for convicted felons.

Ex-felons sued in 2000 to get their voting rights restored when their sentences are finished, instead of having to apply through a complex system for civil rights restoration. Many never apply or don’t complete the process.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not give a voting tally Tuesday, but of 12 judges that heard the case, there was one full written dissent and one partial dissent.