A judge agreed Friday to dismiss murder charges against a man suspected of killing 10 homeless men in Los Angeles in the 1970s because he only has six months to live.
At a hearing Friday morning, Bobby Joe Maxwell's sister Rosie Harmon burst into tears when the Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler dismissed Maxwell's case following a request from prosecutors.
Harmon called her mother right after the hearing, sharing authorities' decision that came nearly four decades after Maxwell was jailed in 1979.
"While Mr. Maxwell was hospitalized, there were sheriffs sitting with him 24/7 and she had to get permission as to when she could come and visit from the sheriff," Maxwell's attorney Pierpont Laidley said.
"Now he is a free man, she'll be able to visit just like any other visitors," Laidley said.
The 68-year-old has been comatose since last December when he suffered a heart attack and will likely never recover, Deputy District Attorney Robert Grace said.
Maxwell was convicted in the 1980s of two killings. The appeals court overturned Maxwell's convictions decades later after it found that he was the victim of a notorious jailhouse snitch who committed perjury in his two convictions.
Court documents show the appeals court called the case's jailhouse informant, Sidney Storch, a "habitual liar."
The case against Maxwell appeared thin until Storch emerged. The only physical evidence, the appeals court said, was a palm print found on a bench in an area Maxwell frequented. Storch, who was Maxwell's cellmate for three weeks, read about the print in news accounts and said he asked Maxwell about it.
He claimed that Maxwell confessed he had made a mistake failing to wear gloves during the stabbings. Maxwell denied making the comment.
In 2013, prosecutors refiled five murder charges against him.
Grace said prosecutors moved expeditiously to make a decision once they confirmed that Maxwell is unlikely to regain health and that he would continue to receive acute medical care at the hospital once he's released from custody.
Grace called the dismissal a "compassionate release" and stressed there was no finding of Maxwell's guilt or innocence. Prosecutors will seek to refile the charges if Maxwell recovers.
Maxwell's attorneys said they are absolutely ready to prove his innocence.
"Mr. Maxwell has always insisted that he was innocent, and has fought to prove his innocence for forty years," another of Maxwell's lawyers, Frederick Alschuler, said.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Several days of investigations into the Brown University mass shooting and the slaying of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor ended when authorities discovered evidence they say indicates the killings were committed by the same man, who was then found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The attacker at Brown killed two students and wounded nine others in an engineering building on Saturday. Some 50 miles (80 kilometers) away MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro was killed Monday night in his home in the Boston suburb of Brookline. Police said the body of the shooter they believe is responsible for both crimes was found Thursday.
Here is what to know about the attacks and investigations:
Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, was found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility after a six-day search that spanned several New England states.
Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente was enrolled at Brown from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001. He was admitted to the graduate school to study physics beginning in September 2000.
“He has no current affiliation with the university,” she said.
Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa. He eventually obtained legal permanent residence status in September 2017. His last known residence was in Miami.
Loureiro, 47, who was married, joined MIT in 2016 and was named last year to lead the school’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, where he worked to advance clean energy technology and other research. The center, one of MIT’s largest labs, had more than 250 people working across seven buildings when he took the helm. He was a professor of physics and nuclear science and engineering.
Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, Foley said. Loureiro graduated from the physics program at Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal’s premier engineering school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page.
The same year, Neves Valente was let go from a position at the Lisbon university, according to an archive of a termination notice from the school’s then-president in February 2000.
Investigators on Friday were trying to sort out why the former Brown student allegedly committed the shootings.
The discovery of the body came after authorities released several security videos of a suspect for the Brown attack in which their face was masked or turned away. Police say a witness then gave investigators a key tip: he saw someone who looked like the person of interest with a Nissan sedan displaying Florida plates.
That enabled Providence police officers to tap into a network of more than 70 street cameras operated around the city by surveillance company Flock Safety. Those cameras track license plates and other vehicle details.
After leaving Rhode Island for Massachusetts, Providence officials said the suspect stuck a Maine license plate over the rental car’s plate to help conceal his identity.
Video footage showed Neves Valente entering an apartment building near Loureiro’s. About an hour later, he was seen entering the New Hampshire storage facility where he was later found dead, Foley said.
New Hampshire’s attorney general announced Friday that Neves Valente died on Tuesday, the same day that Loureiro died at a hospital.
The two students who were killed and the nine others wounded were studying for a final in a first-floor classroom in an older section of the engineering building when the shooter walked in and opened fire.
Those killed were 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook and 18-year-old freshman MukhammadAziz Umurzokov. Cook, whose funeral is Monday, was active in her Alabama church and served as vice president of the Brown College Republicans. Umurzokov’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Uzbekistan when he was a child, and he aspired to be a doctor.
As for the wounded, six were in stable condition Thursday, officials said. The other three were discharged.
Neves Valiente gained permanent residency status through a green card lottery program, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on X.
She said President Donald Trump ordered her to pause the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services program.
The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the United States, many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.
This combo image made with photos provided by the FBI and the Providence, Rhode Island, Police Department shows a person of interest in the shooting that occurred at Brown University in Providence, R.I., Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025. (FBI/Providence Police Department via AP)
A memorial of flowers and signs lay outside the Barus and Holley engineering building at Brown University, on Hope Street in Providence, R.I., on Tuesday, Dec 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt OBrien)
A Brown University student leaves campus, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, after all classes, exams and papers were canceled for the rest of the Fall 2025 semester following the school shooting, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
