When Osmar Persisco was approached by two armed robbers who demanded his car keys, he resisted and a bullet grazed his forehead when the would-be thieves opened fire on him. His dog, Max, was with him and leaped into action when he saw the blood.

One of the robbers ran, but Max caught the other one and attacked him. The thug shot Max three times, then also got away. Persisco credits Max with saving his life and is happy to report that he and Max should each make a full recovery.

Smugglers trying to get drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border are getting old-school: they’re trying a catapult.

National Guard troops operating a remote video surveillance system near Naco observed a catapult being set up south of the border last Friday evening.

In 1983, Edward Nathan Jr. was serving a 5-year prison sentence for robbery in Tampa when he simply walked away from a work-release center. There was no trace of Nathan for 27 years, until January 21 when a cop caught him relieving himself in public in Atlanta.

When he was arrested for public urination, he gave a false name and it worked. He was released on bond and authorities didn’t realize he was a wanted man until they ran his fingerprints through a national database.

After realizing there was a warrant for Nathan in Florida, Atlanta police enlisted the help of the U.S. Marshals Service to apprehend him. He’ll be taken back to Florida to face the music after all these years. What a pisser.

A 1-year-old boy is in stable condition after being wounded in the neck during a shooting in Stockton.

Miriam Fowler Smith told police that God told her to hang and burn her nephew’s pit bull dog after it chewed up her Bible. She has been arrested and charged with a felony count of animal cruelty.

Andy Fowler, the woman’s nephew, left the dog at home on January 9th. When he returned on January 15th the dog was missing. When he asked his aunt what happened to the dog, she told him it was a “devil dog” and she had killed it because God told her to. Fowler called the police.

The cops came and found the dog’s body under a pile of leaves with an extension cord wrapped around its neck. Its body was also partially burned. They questioned Smith, who admitted to killing the animal after it chewed up her Bible and said she was worried that it might also attack neighborhood children.

When one hears “serial killer,” what comes to mind? Blurry, pasty men in bifocals? A dash of mustache under a furrowed brow? Well, redefine your standards — these badass bitches have rap sheets to turn a prison guard pale and the scars to prove it. And what’s more — they almost got away with it.

Amelia Dyer

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Though the actual number of Dyer’s victims is unknown, it is estimated that about 400 infants were disposed of under Dyer’s care in the 1900s. Dyer was what was known as a baby farmer, a woman who took illegitimate children off the hands of desperate mothers who could not care for them. Though the mothers thought Dyer was caring for the children and finding homes for them, she was in fact strangling the children with white tape or drugging them with what was then known as “Mother’s Friend,” a syrup containing opium used to sleepily starve the child to death. Though some of the mothers would attempt to check up on their offspring, Dyer avoided discovery by moving her family routinely and operating under aliases. Dyer remained successfully hidden for the majority of her career until she was finally captured and executed by hanging at the age of 58.

Aileen Wuornos

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Wuornos captured the attention of both scummy whore-hagglers and artistic professionals during her long career. This hard-hearted lesbian apparently murdered five men after having sex with them for profit. Wuornos was a derelict prostitute raised by a physically abusive mother and a convicted child-molester father. Pregnant at the age of 13, it’s no wonder Wuornos turned to physical violence towards the end of her life. Her story has inspired several movies, two documentaries and an opera.

Amy Archer-Gilligan

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Windsor, Connecticut was shocked in 1916 when fingers began to point to the Archer retirement boarding home for the slipping numbers in seniors around town. Even more so when Amy Archer-Gilligan, the widowed little sweetheart who ran the home, was charged for murdering between 20 and 100 boarders with arsenic. Gilligan claimed the arsenic was for “killing rats.” Gilligan was accused of poisoning both of her husbands as well. After her arrest and conviction, she eventually was moved from prison for admission to a mental hospital. The odd combination of sugar and spice inspired the popular comedic farce, Arsenic and Old Lace.

Beverly Allitt

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Though Allitt wasn’t as successful as her dangerous counterparts, her self-destructive tendencies surfaced while working as a nurse in Lincolnshire, victimizing innocent children that were trusted to her care. Nicknamed the “Angel of Death,” Allitt successfully murdered four and seriously injured nine others by injecting the children with lethal levels of potassium chloride or insulin. Allitt was permitted to be the caregiver of these children despite her failing scores at nursing exams and history of mental illness due to the terrible understaffing at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital.

Diana Lumbrera

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Though friends of Lumbrera insist she could not be the cause of death for her young children, hospital personnel became suspicious after all six of her infant offspring died from ailments such as asphyxiation and intestinal failure (often the outcome of poisoning) over the course of fourteen years. Lumbrera’s history didn’t boast of mental instability or allude to violent tendencies. An ex-husband eventually became suspicious of his wife after the death of their third child, a daughter whom he had been spending time with the day of her murder and claimed she appeared to be in “perfect health.” Lumbrera is incarcerated for life.

Lydia Trueblood

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Young Trueblood truly pulled on the heartstrings of the unsuspecting men in her wake. Nicknamed “The Black Widow,” Trueblood married for the first time at 19 to a wealthy Idaho landowner and the couple moved in with Trueblood’s then brother-in-law. The longest of Trueblood’s marriages, the union produced a child that mysteriously passed before the girl could reach her first year. Quickly following were the deaths of the brother-and-law and the landowner himself, leaving Trueblood with a fortune to collect in insurance money. Trueblood remarried thrice more, each husband lasting less than five months in the union before burial. After suspicion was cast on her, Trueblood went on the lam and married again. Authorities eventually caught up with her and charged her for the murder of her four husbands, brother-in-law, and daughter by arsenic poisoning. Fun fact: even within the prison Trueblood held her charm; she convinced her prison guard to give her special opportunities for outings and free time.

Martha Wise

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Some women have an affinity for death from the beginning, explained or otherwise, and Wise seemed to exude morbid tendencies. Neighbors insisted her strange affinities to funerals was odd, and were quick to suspect her when her husband, aunt, uncle, and mother died quickly from mysterious causes. Even Wise’s children suspected tomfoolery was afoot when it was discovered Wise had purchased suspicious amounts of arsenic at a local store previous to the deaths; her own son testified against her before she finally admitted to poisoning at least 17 people in her career. Wise was sentenced to life imprisonment.

LaFonda Fay Foster

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Poor LaFonda – all she wanted was more drugs. Unlike the other ladies on our list, Foster didn’t even get close to escaping life imprisonment after committing five murders in the span of only a week. Under the influence of binge drinking and cocaine, Foster and her accomplice, Tina Hickey Powell (who later claimed Foster had threatened her into taking part) took their victims, through a series of horrific experiences: first robbing them, then shooting them, then running them over repeatedly with her car until the police finally caught up to them. Foster has apparently adjusted well to her life in prison and tries to keep up her appearances despite her hard conditioning.

Jeanne Weber

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Weber, sweetly coined as “The Ogress” by newspapers of the time (early 20th Century), was acquitted twice before finally being condemned to a life in an insane asylum. Weber, whose seven infant victims include three nieces and two children of her own, operated under several aliases and favored strangulation over more humane methods of assassination. Her final murder, that of the 10-year-old son of the owner of the inn she was currently inhabiting, culminated both her career and her insanity; some sources claim that the innkeeper had to violently strike her multiple times before she would let go of the deceased’s neck.

Martha Beck

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Beck and her accomplice, Raymond Fernandez, made newspapers giggle when the unlikely pair – Beck, nearly 250 lbs, and Fernandez, tall, thin, and tweedy – were accused of luring, robbing, and murdering women into Fernandez’s grasp by offering subscriptions to the Lonely Hearts Club, which was, in fact, how Beck and Fernandez met. Beck’s childhood was notably troubled, her mental instability beginning with her weight, which was a lifelong struggle due to glandular troubles, and culminating in the rape of her brother at the age of 13. Beck and Fernandez pledged lifelong commitment to one another, even throughout the trials, and were executed together in 1951.

Gwendolyn Graham & Cathy Wood

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These lesbian lovers bonded over the poisoning of several elderly inmates of the Apline Manor nursing home during their stay as employees of the establishment. Although the couple first bragged openly of the killings and giggled they were only “playing a game,” no one took them seriously until Wood’s ex-husband alerted authorities and encouraged several patients be exhumed. Upon further review, the victim’s bodies were found riddled with arsenic poisoning, which of course brought Wood and Graham into questioning. Wood panicked and insisted Graham was the main instigator of the murders, claiming she was only a look-out. Her sentence was reduced to a mere 40 years of imprisonment. Her partner, however, was imprisoned for life.

Dorothea Puente

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Puente is everybody’s favorite serial killer. A sweet little old landlady in Sacramento, Dorothea had been ducking and in out of the can for finance-related crimes and petty theft before settling into a two story house that she would rent out to also elderly inhabitants. At the charming age of sixty, police discovered Puente was killing off her boarders and collecting the insurance money. The evidence? Seven bodies buried shallowly in her back yard. Apparently Puente wasn’t always as feeble as she was just before her death nearly twenty years later, still claiming the victims died of natural causes.

Marie Noe

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Though Noe at first claimed innocence, this 70-year-old woman later pleaded guilty to suffocating eight of her 10 children, none living past 15 months. The other two died of natural causes, or so the mother and doctors claim. They had also originally been in agreement that all 10 had died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, so who’s to know? Noe was sentenced to 20 years probation after her confession, a sentence that drew massive criticism. Seems the judge and jury were swayed by the seemingly sincere grief of Ms. Noe — her husband certainly was. He claimed, till his death, that his wife “wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Countess Bathory

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Bathory, a widow by the age of 26, had too much time, money, and power on her hands in Hungary when she suddenly found herself solely in charge of an entire serfdom. Apparently obsessed with keeping her youthful vigor by bathing in the blood of virgins, Bathory tortured and cruelly beat the poor servant girls under her care. As rumors spread, it was even hinted that she got a sexual thrill out of the torture, earning her the moniker the “Lesbian Dracula of Hungary.” The rumors finally spurred an investigation, which did not result in any prison time for the Countess, but drove her out of power for her remaining years.

When a 70-year-old Alzheimer’s patient began unexplainably dropping weight, her family installed a nanny cam to find out what was going on. They were shocked to see her caregiver shoveling down the food meant for the patient.

The hidden video footage shows Patricia Young eating all the food while watching television. The patient, Ivy McCluskey, was not fed and rapidly dropped weight. She died 12 weeks after the family fired Young.

Young confessed to two counts of abuse. She will be sentenced next month.

Cathy Cruz Marrero unwittingly became an Internet sensation this month when she fell into a fountain at the mall while texting. After appearing on Good Morning America, where she insinuated she may sue the mall, she went to court for a status hearing on five felony charges against her.

In 2009, Marrero was arrested for allegedly making more than $5,000 in purchases on a coworker’s credit card. She was charged with five felony counts, including identity theft, receiving stolen property and theft by deception.

She allegedly made the purchases at a Target store and a Zales jewelry store. In previous hearings $1,055 of the purchases were dismissed from the case. She is expected to be sentenced for the theft in April and will likely face six months of house arrest with electronic monitoring.

Marrero has a rap sheet that includes a hit-and-run, four retail theft crimes and another theft.

Authorities say a Miami-Dade police officer was killed and another was wounded in a shooting. A suspect was also shot. The two officers were working with a U.S. Marshals Service fugitive task force.

It’s just a little pinch, nobody will notice — right? Ricardo Flores was wrong about that.

After the police department seized some marijuana plants from a house in Winter Haven, Florida, Flores was helping unload the haul from a truck. That’s when he got the bright idea to pinch and pocket a bud from one of the plants.

Another officer saw him take the bud and ratted him out. Flores was forced to give the bud back and was arrested and charged with petit theft, possession of marijuana and burglary of a conveyance. Oh, and he was also suspended from his job, pending an internal investigation.

Hardly worth all this, considering he could have just bought a bud on the street for less than $10.