More trouble for Lil' Kim: The plasticized, pint-sized rapper—seen here at her 33rd birthday party last Sunday drinking some sort of blue substance out of a vial while clutching a glass of champagne in her other hand—now has the distinction of having had one of her guests end up dead. Police are still trying to put together what exactly happened to Ingrid Rivera, who was found bludgeoned to death on the club's rooftop. But we're assuming Kim will tell the whole truth if she's brought in for questioning, since she's already been arrested for perjury once.

Last week a passenger was murdered, beheaded, and eaten on a Greyhound bus. Now the company is pulling its current ad campaign, which features the slogan: "There's a reason you've never heard of 'Bus Rage.'" [Chron.com]

Scientist Bruce Ivins-who committed suicide last week after after the Feds told his lawyer he would be charged in connection with the 2001 anthrax mail killings-stood to make a profit off the panic caused by the attacks thanks to vaccine patents he held. "Ivins is listed as a co-inventor on two patents for a genetically engineered anthrax vaccine, federal records show. Separately, Ivins also is listed as a co-inventor on an application to patent an additive for various biodefense vaccines."

What's new in "The Bobosphere"-the magical land where Ad Age's untethered old columnist-for-life Bob Garfield says things that make sense to Bob Garfield, exclusively? Well today, he's insinuating that the recently pulled Snickers commercial showing Mr. T shooting a speed walker with Snickers bars was probably the inspiration for the man who shot up a church in Tennessee yesterday because he hated liberals. Oh, Bob. We don't even know what to say. [Ad Age]

The British knife crime epidemic has gone virtual! Are your kids safe when they go online-safe from knives? No! Not while Facebook was condoning the existence of a "SuperPoke" application that allowed thuggish social networkers to "Shank" their friends. Thank god the UK tabloids have hollered enough to ensure that none of our children will be virtually shanked again! The Sun is outraged. In London there have been 21 teen knife murders this year! That's the average total from a single LA house party gone wrong, but no matter. The manufacturer of SuperPoke, Slide, has pulled the application, and these digital knife-pokings have been stopped. Should everyone now go to jail?

The business of selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door is surprisingly shady. It consists largely of crews of young people-some under 18-recruited by (often) criminal characters who haul them around the country in vans, releasing them only to make their way through neighborhoods, using any lies necessary to tug the heartstrings of people enough to get them to buy something. Then all the kids are rounded up again, given their meager cut of the profits, and they all go do drugs. Sometimes they rape people, or drive off cliffs. The Houston Press just put out a monster investigation of the industry, and it shows a long but clear path from the offices of Conde Nast out to the wild kids hustling in the hinterlands. And there are some true horror stories:

The revolutionary information age is great and everything, but it makes crime a really big hassle. In the McCarthy era, they ran down the Reds by tracing their anti-American magazine subscriptions. Dragnet cops could storm into the library to demand a suspect's list of books borrowed. But now criminals use the internet, and its treasure trove of crime information is an equally rich source of evidence against those who access it. We've already seen a Facebook update lead to a murder-suicide. And now, the latest entrant in the annals of "Bad Things To Do Online": Google "How to kill with a knife," and then murder your wife and child:

Gothamist.com, the NYC news-about-town blog, today posted a straightforward item about a 19-year-old woman who was raped in her apartment building in Soho last night. They described the suspect: "a black man, about 5'8" and 200 pounds, with a possibly pockmarked face, and he may be between 20-30 years old." Now, we were under the impression that Gothamist's readers are mainly drawn from the broad hipster demographic. So either our impression is way off, or many hipsters are thinly-veiled racist fucks (somewhat true, actually). Because the comments quickly turned into a call to throw black men off buildings:

Mike Gilbert, O.J. Simpson's former manager, has a tell-all coming out. According to an AP reporter who got an advance copy of the book, "He said Simpson had smoked pot, took a sleeping pill and was drinking beer when he confided at his Brentwood home weeks after his trial what happened the night of June 12, 1994. Simpson said he went to his ex- wife's condominium, but did not bring a knife with him. Simpson told him Nicole Brown Simpson had one in her hand when she opened the door."

Tracey Grinhaff, a 42-year-old mother of two in Sheffield, England, was murdered by her angry husband after she posted a message on her Facebook page saying that she was leaving him. Cops found her body in a shed in the back yard of the couple's house, and her 41-year-old husband Gary's body was found in the woods nearby. She died of head wounds, and so did he, although his were self-inflicted. Apparently the message made him extremely angry:

Once again, American scandals hang their heads in shame. News comes from jolly old England that a former "Mr. Gay UK" has been arrested for murdering an ad executive from a gay magazine, and then eating some of him [Telegraph via Queerty]. Don't get any untoward ideas, though; they were just "friends." The killer also had some flesh from the man's right leg diced up, cooked, and ready to season when the cops came in. That does seem incriminating. Eat your heart out, Jeffrey Dahmer—you never won any pageants at all. A full beefcake photo (pretty much NSFW) of the award-garnering cannibal, Anthony Morley, from the time of his glorious 1993 title win, is after the jump:

Hey look. A woman from I Know My Kid's a Star, that terrible VH1 show that makes me feel a strange and unsettling rumble from deep in the Earth, was also recently on a truTV show talking about that one time when her sister was murdered. Isn't that hilarious?

Maxim publisher Felix Dennis, who grimly admitted to a murder during an interview, keeps trying new and various ways to backtrack. He was drunk! He only kills magazines, ha ha! His latest claim, at a Columbia Journalism event last night: it was all a big prank to sell books! Dennis said it was an April fool's joke. "What [the press] didn't notice was the date," he said. Of course, that disregards the fact that the story actually ran on April 2, and that the interview the story was based on took place months earlier. Quite a bit of forward planning for a raving drunk and possibly murderous lad mag mogul. [BW]. Here's the original passage that started it all:

25-year-old photographer David Houncheringer is from Switzerland, an idyllic nation that has one major flaw: not enough murders. Houncheringer is doing his part to correct that, through art. Which is mightier than the gun! The young man has series of photos called "Would you like to die today?" He says, "I really enjoy seeing people watching these 'hard' pictures. Most of them laugh. Others are shocked. But they watch 15 murders a day on TV so I don't care." And he adds, "If someone wants to die, don't hesitate to contact us!" So keep that in mind! He has a point, though; these could be mistaken for stills from any episode of "CSI." Three bloody samples from his series [via First Magazine], after the jump.

Here's something else for you to do this weekend: avoid getting murdered. New York City's murder rate this year is up by 26% compared to last year [NYDN]—and just in time for the NYPD to cut 1,000 officers! Far be it from us to advocate for more cops, but this seems like it might be a problem. The police department argues that regardless of the increase, it's still the second-lowest murder rate in the city's recorded history. Okay fine, but that might not last long with all those Michael Bloomberg-branded firearms for sale now. Below, a handy NYC crime report with weekly, monthly, and yearly perspectives. Now go buy your gun.

Rap mogul Sean "Puff Diddy Daddy" Combs has denied yesterday's LA Times report that he had advance knowledge of a 1994 ambush on rival Tupac Shakur that left Tupac with five bullet wounds. Jimmy "Henchman" Rosemond, the music manager that the Times named as the mastermind of the attack, also denied the charges. The Times is standing by its story so far. Below, Puffy's and Rosemond's statements—as well as (BONUS!) the lyrics to two verses of "Who Shot Ya?," the 1994 Biggie Smalls/ Puffy song that was widely believed to be an allusion to the Tupac shooting in question.

An exclusive story in the LA Times today says that P. Diddy, aka Puff Daddy, aka Sean "Puffy" Combs, the hip hop superstar and head of Bad Boy Records, knew in advance about a 1994 ambush in which rap icon Tupac Shakur was shot five times and robbed in a New York recording studio. According to the story, a promoter and talent manager who were friendly with Puffy set up Tupac because they were angry about his insolent posture towards NYC and its hip hop heavyweights. The key facts:

Yesterday we noted the death of Paul Mento, whose body was found gagged with duct tape in a bathtub at Bay Ridge's Best Western Gregory Hotel, site of another recent murder. We also mocked the fact that police were "investigating the death as suspicious." No shit, right? Well, it turns out that Mento's death was in fact a suicide. And that's not all—he was a former executive with the AP.

The Best Western Gregory Hotel in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn offers high speed internet access, spacious meeting rooms, and free continental breakfast. Also offered: Murder! Yesterday the body of a 52-year-old man was found in the bathtub at the hotel, with his mouth gagged with duct tape. "The police said they were investigating the death as suspicious." Well, they know better than me, I guess. But hey, it's the same hotel where a 26-year-old man was stabbed to death in December by his lady friend after sex got too rough. Sounds like the lesson is, don't stay here if you are into kinky sex and your age is any multiple of the number 26. Or, more likely, the killers were looking for the guy (from, predictably, New England) who wrote this incredibly entitled yet asinine online review of—we remind you—a Best Western in Brooklyn:

This graffiti was scrawled in Chelsea last March. The once-legendary party promoter Baird Jones was found dead (for unclear reasons) late last week. Hmph. Well, it could have just been someone tired of getting all his freaking promo emails. [Photo by Nancy Smith/ artloversnewyork via Bucky Turco]