Word: homely
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Which makes the sheriff more inclined to believe that Gonzalez - who is charged with shooting Byrd "Bud" Billings and his wife Melanie in their spacious home as he and six others allegedly robbed it the night of July 9 - was hired to commit the murder by resentful local business rivals. In police documents released this week, Gonzalez says one used-car dealer, Henry "Cab" Tice, told him that he and other dealers wanted the 66-year-old Billings "whacked" and asked him to do the job. (Gonzalez claims he refused - although he boasted to police, without offering details, that...
...other males - including Gonzalez's father, an Air Force sergeant and a 16-year-old - have also been charged with capital murder as well as home invasion and, like Gonzalez, have pleaded not guilty. (The teen has been charged as an adult but will not face the death penalty.) An eighth defendant, a woman charged as an accessory to the murder for allegedly providing a van used in the crime, has also pleaded not guilty. But investigators say Gonzalez's accomplices have fingered him as the sole gunman - and add that while they'd been lured by his promise...
Still, Morgan says he doesn't buy into the idea "that Bud Billings brought this on himself." He points to the fact that Bud and Melanie "opened their home and fortunes" to their adopted brood as proof of their charitable side. But even that admirable domestic picture has come under scrutiny in the murder's wake: Billings, who was arrested in 1989 for adoption fraud, tried earlier this decade to copyright his adopted children's names in a bizarre scheme to extract money from Florida's Department of Children & Family Services. He had also recently thrown two of his teen...
...packed two to three iron cages that served as bunk beds into apartments. Fifty years later, these slums continue to be one of the negative by-products of Hong Kong's meteoric rise from a humble, fishing village into an international financial powerhouse. Asia's world city is now home to some of the world's wealthiest, claiming the distinction of having the most billionaires in Asia, and yet a third of its 7 million residents live in public housing...
...that assessment was not shared by some of his own family members. His cousin, Hewad, 31, stayed at home over concerns about security in the streets. Apathy over the quality of presidential candidates in the field made the decision easier, he says. "But it looks like there were not as many problems like we expected," he explains, adding that he would have backed Karzai, a fellow Pashtun. "Now I really regret that I didn't vote." He may yet get a second chance if the contest goes to a run-off - and the country has to pluck up its courage...