Authorities say marijuana “grow operations” were found at three of the four crime scenes where eight members of a rural Ohio family were murdered in “preplanned executions” this week, the Chillicothe Gazette reports.

The Anti Violence Project responded to 22 homicides of transgender/gender-nonconforming people in America in 2015. In 2014, the number was 12, as Zach Stafford pointed out in The Guardian in November. He wasn’t alone in highlighting that astronomical number this year, especially in accordance with the Trans Day of Remembrance on Nov. 20. The New York Times, The Melissa Harris Perry Show, The Advocate, Mother Jones, MTV.com, Fusion, and the Daily Dot are just a few of the outlets that have highlighted this epidemic.

Lois Colley, a Westchester County socialite and the wife of a millionaire McDonald’s franchise owner, was found dead this week, the New York Times reports. Police said they believe she was murdered.

Los Angeles police say they know how and why a 21-year-old sorority girl was brutally murdered earlier this month, the culmination of a lurid investigation involving ecstasy, arson, and a bloody UCLA-branded Snuggie.

Robert Durst was denied bail at court in New Orleans today after a nearly three-hour hearing, ABC News reports. Today's hearing pertained to two weapons charges; a second bail hearing, on his arrest on the murder warrant issued by Los Angeles police, will follow.

Avijit Roy, an atheist American-Bangladeshi writer, was brutally murdered in the streets of Dhaka on Thursday while returning home from a book fair with his wife. Roy had written frequently against religious fundamentalism on his blog Mukto-Mona, which means Free Mind.

Matt Drudge's favorite city, "CHICAGOLAND," is at its least murder-ridden since 1965: the city only experienced 415 murders last year, down from 503 in 2012. You keep not murdering people, Chicago!

A former justice of the peace was arrested Friday and his house was searched, in connection with the two shooting deaths of North Texas prosecutors, who were each killed a few weeks apart.

Sir. Sir?

Mississippi police are warning people to call the cops if a cop tries to pull them over, following two incidents in which motorists were shot while driving down rural highways in the early-morning hours.

If you were worried about the fact that police have been saying two different serial killers, both well-versed in police techniques, were responsible for the ten bodies found on Long Island's Gilgo Beach over the last year, stop worrying: there's just one serial killer! So, good news! Or something.

Well, isn't this how it always happens. Just as we were finished up the third draft of Queen and Country, our adaptation of the mysterious stabbing death of maybe-gay MI6 agent Gareth Williams, it turns out he probably wasn't murdered by a gay lover and stuffed and locked inside a duffle bag as part of an elaborate sex game! The new theory, the Daily Mail reports, or, really, posits, is that Williams was killed by the Russian mafia, on whom he may have been spying as part of a top-secret mission concerning money laundering.

Jayme Biendl, a 34-year-old prison guard at Monroe Correctional Complex in Washington state, was strangled to death on Saturday in the prison chapel. An inmate serving a life sentence, who may have been attempting to escape, is the chief suspect.

Le Hoang Hung, a Vietnamese journalist who was "investigating official misconduct," died after being set on fire in his home.

Today in safe places: Compton, California, where murders are down by more than three-quarters in the past 20 years and old folks have returned to porch-sitting. The "gangster rap causes violence and not vice versa" theory is definitively disproven. [LAT]

James Franco is directing and starring in a new film about serial killer Richard Ramirez, who was convicted of 13 murders after a 1985 rampage. We have doubts about this, unless Ramirez killed his victims by throwing phones at them.

The body of John Wheeler, a Vietnam veteran and presidential aide to Ronald Reagan and both Bushes, "was found dead in a landfill a few miles from his New Castle, Delaware home this weekend." Police have ruled it a homicide.

Remember the guy caught on a security camera wheeling a suitcase stuffed with a body down 114th Street in Manhattan? Police think they've found him: Fifty-five-year-old Hassan Malik, who apparently confessed to the murder on Tuesday.

The mysterious shooting death of Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen gets even more mysterious: Citing a "city official," The Hollywood Reporter reports that the attack was planned in advance—"not the result of road rage or a carjacking gone awry."

Colorado police are conducting a new round of interviews in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case.