In brief: Judge orders three jurors to leave Holmes trial

Centennial, Colo. – The judge in the Colorado theater shooting trial dismissed three jurors Tuesday after learning that one was exposed to news coverage of the case and discussed it with the others.

Judge Carlos Samour found the three women violated his orders to avoid outside information on James Holmes’ death penalty trial and not talk about the case with anyone.

A total of 21 jurors and alternates remain, with the guilt phase of the trial more than halfway done. Samour likely anticipated some panelists would be exposed to media coverage and selected 12 alternates – an unusually large number – as a precaution, legal experts say. The judge in the Boston Marathon bombing trial chose six alternates, likely for similar reasons.

Manhunt in town yields no escapees

Willsboro, N.Y. – With police helicopters hovering overhead, hundreds of law officers in body armor poured into this small town in the Adirondack foothills Tuesday in a search for two killers who used power tools to break out of a maximum-security prison 30 miles away.

The hunt that began over the weekend focused on Willsboro, close to Lake Champlain, after residents reported seeing a couple of men walking on a road late Monday during a driving rainstorm.

By early evening, it appeared the sweep had come up empty, and there was no confirmation from police that the escaped convicts had been there.

Authorities have fielded numerous tips since the breakout from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora.

David Sweat, 34, and Richard Matt, 48, cut through a steel wall, broke through bricks and crawled through a steam pipe before emerging through a manhole outside the prison grounds.

Editor who wrote famous headline dies

New York – Veteran newspaperman Vincent Musetto, who wrote one of the industry’s most famous headlines, died Tuesday at age 74. His family said he died three weeks after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Musetto was a longtime news editor and film critic for the New York Post. He wrote the headline “Headless Body in Topless Bar,” which appeared on the newspaper’s front page on April 15, 1983, for a story about the killing of a bar owner who was shot and beheaded.

Musetto said in a 1987 interview with People magazine the killing and decapitation were known early in the reporting process but staffers had to confirm the topless dancing occurred at the bar.

“Someone said it might be a topless bar, but we weren’t sure, and then the idea of the headline came around, so we were really questioning to make sure it was a topless bar,” Musetto recalled in the interview. “We sent the reporter, this girl, and she so determined that it was a topless bar. I just wrote it, and everyone said, ‘Ha ha,’ but I didn’t think it would live in infamy.”