A murder defendant’s changing story to police managed to place him at the scene of a drive-by shooting and narrow the number of unsolved cases in one of the region’s most crime-ridden areas. A Henrico County jury Thursday night returned a first-degree murder conviction and recommended a life sentence for Lamar D. Jordan, 26. Jordan, of no fixed address but familiar to law-enforcement officers because of his red Acura sedan, told police that the gunfire that killed 21-year-old Rayvell B. Fitzgerald on Nov. 7 in the Essex Village apartment complex likely was meant for him.

Authorities yesterday arrested a man in Surry County in connection with Sunday’s slaying of two Petersburg men in the Arlington Heights area of Hopewell. Hopewell police, with the assistance of Waverly and Richmond police and members of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, apprehended Shawn Wooden in the shooting deaths of Kashif Temple, 24, and Antonio Spain, 22, according to a Hopewell police news release.

Police say an Ohio man has been arrested and charged with murder in the July slaying of a Virginia woman as she worked in her home acupuncture office.

A former Yale University lab technician charged with murdering a graduate student last month is expected to plead not guilty.

In June 1995, Toussaint Gumbs’ family reported the 16-year-old missing from his grandparents’ home on Richmond’s North Side. Earlier that month, just a few blocks away in an alley behind the 3500 block of Missouri Avenue, police discovered the body of a young man who had been shot to death. Nearby, they found shell casings, but no identification.

Two shooting victims pointed out Lawrence Davon Williams in a Henrico County courtroom yesterday as the person who opened fire on them a year ago. The courtroom identifications were enough to bring convictions in a case where little other evidence emerged to explain why Williams, 16 at the time of the shootings, felt compelled to fire at Rashawn Tyler and Kyron Benjamin.

A runaway killer arrested by State Police last year told a Henrico judge this week that he killed his live-in girlfriend in a jealous rage. But the wounds suffered by 22-year-old Melissa Jamerson spoke to more brutal violence. Jamerson’s body was discovered Nov. 2 in an upstairs bedroom of the couple’s apartment at 9001 Patterson Ave. after State Police arrested Justin L. Rice, now 23, near Interstate 64 in Goochland County.

A housekeeping manager at a luxury Manhattan hotel is charged with killing a woman who was strangled and had a kitchen knife stuck in her neck.

Defending a Yale lab technician charged with murder against what appears to be a mountain of forensic evidence might mean trying to convince jurors that the crime scene was contaminated because police didn’t immediately shut down the lab where the victim was eventually found, legal experts said.

The lab tech suspected of killing a Yale student was playing softball the day the victim’s body was found. A player on an opposing team said Friday that Raymond Clark’s girlfriend often watched the games but wasn’t at Sunday’s game in New Haven.

Police say a Yale University lab technician has been arrested in the killing of a graduate student whose body was found stuffed behind the wall of a campus research building.

Police say the killing of a 24-year-old Yale University graduate student whose body was found stuffed in a wall on the day she was to be married was not a random act.

Authorities charged an 18-year-old Richmond man in the slaying of a Chinese-food deliveryman whose identity is still a mystery a month and a half after his death. Tobias J. Young of the 1000 block of North 21st Street was arrested Wednesday night. He is charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the July 27 shooting at the Whitcomb Court public-housing complex.

Dawn Smythers was shot in the head by her husband, Forrest Smythers Jr., in January. A Louisa County jury yesterday found a 54-year-old man guilty of murdering his wife after an argument over Christmas lights, prosecutors said. On the evening of Jan. 11, Forrest Smythers Jr. fired a single shot from a .22-caliber rifle that struck Dawn Smythers “almost right between the eyes,“ said Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Rusty McGuire.

A Wayne County jury has found an Army deserter from Virginia guilty of robbing and murdering a West Virginia minister.