Lowery

She should have left me alone.

That is what Nativa Lowery told cops when she finally admitted she killed celebrity realtor Lisa Stein, a detective testified Tuesday.

Lowery had claimed a black-clad ninja-like man was the real killer, but caved when police told her the intruder could not have gotten into the doorman-protected building without being seen.

No man came through the door, the former personal assistant allegedly told cops.

I snatched the cane and hit her repeatedly with it, hit her with what she had in her hand. She should have left me alone. It was not supposed to hurt like that.

1969

As the cutest of the Manson Girls, Susan Atkins became an overnight sensation in the wake of the 1969 murder of Sharon Tate and her unborn child (as well as the next  murder of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca).

 

The San Francisco native first met Charles Manson when she took a trip down to Los Angeles. They turned out to be kindred spirits, since Atkins was one of the few Manson Family members who had not emerged from conservative suburbia.

 

 

The lovely brunette had been raised among the budding San Francisco counterculture. Her pioneering hippie upbringing helped make her a natural thrill-killer. It also made her the least believable of the girls to later renounce Manson in favour of Christianity.

Jamila

Nick Ashley-Cooper, the 12th Earl of Shaftesbury, wants his Tunisian stepmother, Jamila M'Barek, to lose her title, Countess of Shaftesbury.

"It's offensive that she has got that title, especially since she murdered the man she got it from, my father," he said.

The Earl spoke about his father's killing for the first time ahead of a More4 documentary looking at his attempt to rescue the Shaftesbury family name from bankruptcy and ruin.

The Aristocrats is a four-part series exploring modern day high society through historically prominent families.

It follows Nick Ashley-Cooper coming to terms with assuming the title of the 12th Earl of Shaftesbury in 2005, after his father's murder and his 28-year-old elder brother Anthony's sudden death from a heart attack weeks later.

The jury in Jodi Arias' murder trial concluded its second full day of deliberations on Tuesday without reaching a verdict.

Jurors adjourned late Tuesday afternoon and will resume Wednesday morning. They got the case Friday afternoon but only deliberated for about an hour.

Arias, 32, is charged with first-degree murder in the June 4, 2008, death of her one-time boyfriend at his suburban Phoenix home. Authorities say she killed Travis Alexander in a jealous rage after he wanted to end their affair and had been planning to head off on a trip to Mexico with another woman. Arias initially denied involvement, then blamed it on two masked intruders. Two years after her arrest, she said she killed Alexander in self-defence when he attacked her after a day of sex.

Alexander suffered nearly 30 knife wounds, was shot in the forehead and had his throat slit. His decomposing body was found by friends crumpled in his shower about five days after the killing.

Testimony began in early January. The case has become a cable TV sensation with its lurid tales of sex, lies and betrayal. Hundreds of spectators flocked to the courthouse daily during the trial for a chance to score just a few open seats available to the public inside the courtroom.

As deliberations drag on, dozens of people gather daily on the courthouse steps waiting for a verdict.

Devotees

Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten were all sentenced to death for their roles in the carnage that claimed the lives of actress Sharon Tate, the heavily pregnant wife of director Roman Polanski, and six others in Los Angeles on the nights of August 8 and 9, 1969. The penalties were commuted to life.

Atkins initially admitted stabbing Tate 16 times. She then scrawled "pig" at the scene with the dead woman's blood. Another Family member has since said she did not actually stab the actress. She died in September 2009, in prison, at the time the longest-incarcerated female inmate in the California penal system. Following her death, Krenwinkel is now the longest serving.

Another female Manson devotee, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, who was not implicated in the 1969 slayings but was jailed in 1975 after pointing a loaded pistol at President Gerald Ford from two feet away, was released on parole in 2009. Fromme, who was a dominant figure among Manson's female followers, would have been released the previous July but had to serve additional time for a 1987 jailbreak. She escaped after she heard that Manson had testicular cancer, and planned to go to his aid in jail.

Wendi

Wendi Adriano was convicted in the October 2000 killing of her terminally ill husband Joseph Adriano, an apartment manager in Ahwatukee, Ariz. She allegedly tried to poison him by putting pesticide in his soup.

When he didn't immediately die, she allegedly struck him 23 times with a barstool and stabbed him in the neck with a kitchen knife.

The case was prosecuted by Juan Martinez, the same man who is arguing the state's case against Jodi Arias.

Martinez reportedly told jurors Adriano was hoping to cash in on a $20 million payout from a lawsuit connected to the misdiagnosis of her husband's cancer. The jury reportedly ruled she should be sentenced to death after finding the murder was committed in an "especially cruel" manner.

Shawna

In March 2009, border activist Shawna Forde led a home invasion raid in Arivaca, Ariz. - about 10 miles north of the Mexican border - that left 29-year old Raul Flores and his 9-year-old daughter Brisenia dead, prosecutors alleged.

Forde, the leader of the anti-illegal immigrant group Minutemen American Defense, allegedly posed as a police officer looking for fugitives along with two accomplices, CBS affiliate KOLD reported. Then, prosecutors said, the group opened fire.

The mother of the slain 9-year-old, Gina Gonzalez, survived and called 911. 

Prosecutors reportedly said that Forde believed Flores was a drug smuggler and wanted his money to fund Forde's border watch operation.

Forde was sentenced to death on February 22, 2011.