Richard Winton

LOS ANGELES -- Last summer, Christopher Ryan Smith emailed family and friends with exciting news: He was embarking on an African adventure.

Over the next few months, his emails recounted the highlights. One day he was paragliding near Johannesburg. On another, he was sand boarding in "huge mines" in South Africa where the "sand was softer than snow powder."

In December, the 32-year-old Internet executive from Laguna Beach, Calif., announced that he was going to Congo and Rwanda. Then, abruptly, all communication stopped.

His worried family in Oregon called U.S. authorities and launched an international hunt, fearing he might have run into trouble in the war-torn region.

But Orange County, Calif., authorities now say Smith was never in Africa; in fact, he was already dead. They say he was killed inside his office in San Juan Capistrano by his business partner, Edward Younghoon Shin, who used Smith's email account to send the messages.

LOS ANGELES -- Singer Justin Bieber was in an auto accident Tuesday, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

Officials said the crash occurred in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley when a Honda Civic collided with Bieber's black Ferrari. The exact location and time of the accident were not immediately released.

ALHAMBRA, Calif. -- The man known to the world as Clark Rockefeller appeared briefly in an Alhambra courtroom Friday and entered a not guilty plea to a charge he killed his landlady's son and buried the body in the Los Angeles-area community of San Marino three decades ago.

In the early 1980s, he was known as Chris Chichester, a relative of Lord Mountbatten and a would-be film producer who lived in a San Marino guest house.

A few years later, he was called Christopher Crowe, a bond salesman in Greenwich, Conn.

And by the early 1990s, he had turned up as Clark Rockefeller.

But Friday morning, he faced the charge under his birth name, Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter.

LOS ANGELES -- A Southern California street gang's campaign against blacks began during a meeting at a local park in 1992.

From there, prosecutors contend, the predominately Latino street gang went on the attack in Azusa, east of Los Angeles.

Graffiti with racial epithets began appearing around the city, including "Get out n...." sprayed on garage doors of some black residents. Gang members allegedly beat up blacks they found in their "territory," telling one man "We hate n... in Azusa. This is Azusa."

LOS ANGELES -- Los Angeles police detectives on Thursday said they have growing doubts that there was a 13-year gap in the killing spree of the "Grim Sleeper" serial killer, announcing that they have linked two more slayings to the suspect in the case and that those slayings took place during the supposed dormant period.

The "Grim Sleeper" got his moniker because he allegedly killed seven South Los Angeles women between 1985 and 1988 before appearing to abruptly stop. Police said the killings resumed in 2002, with a killing that year, another in 2003 and a third in 2007.

Detectives said they have now connected the suspect, Lonnie Franklin Jr., to two more killings. Officials declined to provide details about the crimes but said they occurred in the 1990s and involved women slain in the South L.A. area. Franklin has not been charged with these new killings and has pleaded not guilty to killing 10 people.

LOS ANGELES -- As Los Angeles police scoured the neighborhoods near El Camino Real High School where an Los Angeles Unified School District police officer was shot Wednesday, more details were emerging about the circumstances leading up to the incident. The officer shot has been identified as Jeffrey Stenroos, an eight-year veteran of the school district police force, according to LAUSD police chief Steve Zipperman.