Ronald "Ra Diggs" Herron is a very specific breed of rapper. He's an alleged gang leader with the "Murderous Mad Dog" branch of the Bloods, in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, and in his raps, he's always been rather explicit about his life. He is, he's claimed before, "2 Real for Rap."

Alyssa Bustamante—the 18-year-old Missouri girl who, at 15, confessed to murdering a 9-year-old neighbor and bragged about "killing people" on MySpace—has been sentenced to life in prison.

Don't be looking at me.

Lauren Kornberg, the professional dogwalker who discovered a severed head in the Hollywood Hills this week—the one that a paparazzi agency is shopping photos of with a smiling mystery woman posing next to it—says she never snapped pics of the gruesome find. She does, however, have a theory about who did.

On Tuesday afternoon, on a hiking trail in Hollywood Hills, a pair of female dogwalkers stumbled across the severed head of a middle-aged man. Two of their dogs had been playing with a plastic bag, they told the LAPD. Inside was a human head.

A new study by a Mexican research group ranks the 50 most dangerous cities in the whole wide world (based on homicide rates), and guess what, Latin America seems to be a region which is unsafe, if you define unsafe as "I do not want to be murdered." Key findings:

Outstanding news, terrified Americans who watch too many fearmongering cable news crime stories: for the first time in nearly 50 years, homicide is not one of the top 15 causes of death in America. First a black president, and now this! Why, it's damn near impossible to get anyone to kill you these days. America is a safety festival, and everyone under the age of 75 is invited.

An American hero by the name of Rich Jones has obtained and published the entire 94-page FBI file of Ol' Dirty Bastard, the Wu-Tang Brooklynnnn Zuhh member who died of a wildness overdose in 2004. Some select highlights are below. [Click to enlarge the images]

Seattle police have re-opened the 20-year-old cold case of Sarah Yarborough, who was killed in 1991, and using DNA samples from the scene, they've narrowed the suspect down. To a member of "the family of Robert Fuller, who settled in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1630 and had relatives who came over before him on the Mayflower."

A dead woman has been found on Queen Elizabeth's country estate! "We are at the very early stages of the investigation and it could be a complex inquiry," says Detective Chief Inspector Jes Fry. I know what you're thinking: the Queen murdered someone!

"Police were looking for a motive in a shooting in which they believe a man dressed as Santa Claus killed six family members in a Fort Worth, Texas, suburb on Christmas day before shooting himself." It's not known whether this is connected to Santa's string of roofie attacks in Germany.

Another gruesome elevator death has shocked and terrified an already lift-phobic city. But this time it was no accident — as was the case with Wednesday's freak crushing of a 41-year-old ad executive at a Madison Ave. building — but rather a carefully premeditated act of murder perpetrated upon a 73-year-old Brooklyn woman. The term "coldblooded" here does not even begin to scratch the surface.

The inquisitive users of Quora—the social networking equivalent of a 2-year-old who keeps asking "Why?"—have put their minds together to answer a burning question from the most gentle person ever to use an internet message board: "If you injure a bug, should you kill it or let it live?"

Rachelle Grimmer, a 38 year old mother of two in Texas, had been trying to qualify for food stamps "for months" without success. On Monday, she went to a Laredo welfare office with her kids and a gun. After a seven-hour standoff, she killed herself and shot both of her children, who are now in critical condition.

One morning not long ago, Fort Bend (Texas) District Attorney John Healey was sitting at his kitchen table and updating his to-do list: "Make pozole for office party? Check. Pay mortgage? Check. Buy dog food? Check. Indict that dude Richard for murder?... Aw, crap."

Scottish authorities have launched a murder investigation into the death of Stuart Walker, a 28-year-old man who was brutally beaten, burned, then tied to a streetlight left by a roadside early Saturday morning in the town of Cumnock. A police department spokeswoman told The Scotsman that Walker probably did not die from his burns, but reports suggest that he may have been burned while still alive. Walker was gay, which has prompted questions about whether his murder was a hate crime. Police told BBC that "there was nothing to suggest" it was a homophobic attack, though they haven't ruled out the possibility. Update: Earlier reports that Walker had been found tied to a lamppost are incorrect, police say.

A new biography of Vincent van Gogh, which is getting a featured segment on 60 Minutes this weekend, posits that the post-Impressionist master didn't commit suicide by shooting himself in the abdomen, as previously believed.

Annette Morales-Rodriguez of Milwaukee, Wisc., allegedly used techniques she learned from the Discovery Channel to perform a Cesarean section on a woman she'd abducted and murdered, in the hopes she could pass the woman's child off as her own.

A whale that washed up on the Jersey shore recently wasn't killed by natural causes. It was... murder! Whale murder! Now authorities are on the hunt for the shadowy cetacean slayer.

Probably no one has ever been happier to see Seattle than Amanda Knox was this when she touched down at Tacoma this evening, a day after having her murder conviction overturned in Italy.