An ex-cop fired from his job as an investigator at the U.S. Center for SafeSport for allegedly stealing money seized at a drug bust has been arrested again, this time charged with rape and sex trafficking.

Jason Krasley, a former police officer in Allentown, Pennsylvania, was arrested Friday and charged with felony rape and involuntary sexual servitude for crimes allegedly committed while he was on the force between 2011 and 2015, according to a news release from the district attorney’s office.

Krasley left the department in 2021 and went to work for the SafeSport Center, which fired him last year shortly after learning he’d been arrested for allegedly stealing $5,500 from a drug bust he helped conduct while on the force.

The new arrest resurfaces the question of how Krasley was able to maneuver through what officials at the center say is a robust vetting process it uses to hire people tasked with uncovering sensitive information regarding sex-abuse cases.

The Denver-based center was established in 2017 to deal with sex-abuse cases in Olympic sports from the elite level down to the grassroots. As of late last year, it had 36 people on its investigation team; it has tapped into police forces, where some detectives deal with similar cases, to fill some of those positions.

“I am appalled that a former staff member has been accused of such heinous acts in his previous role as a police officer,” SafeSport CEO Ju’Riese Colon said in an emailed statement to The Associated Press. “We hold all staff to the highest standard because safeguarding athletes is our utmost priority.”

The AP has learned of two cases Krasley handled — one of which was assigned to another investigator after his arrest on the theft charges. In the other, the claimant asked if her case could be reopened in the wake of the arrest and was told in an email from a SafeSport employee that “those matters are already being reviewed prior to the requests and media attention.”

Colon said the center has commissioned a third-party audit of cases Krasley handled.

“We are working with subject matter experts to determine what additional actions should be taken in light of the new allegations,” she said.

Krasley faces additional counts of felony kidnapping, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and intimidation of a witness, in addition to misdemeanor criminal coercion.

Krasley’s attorney, James Burke, told lehighvallleylive.com that Krasley “absolutely denies the allegations.” Burke did not return a voicemail left at his office by AP.

Krasley, 47, also is named in a whistleblower lawsuit filed last year by two Allentown officers who alleged widespread misconduct in the department.

Also arrested and charged with felony rape and involuntary sexual servitude Friday was a current Allentown officer, Kevin Weaver, who has been placed on administrative leave.

A court hearing is scheduled Friday for the man accused of setting a woman on fire on a New York City subway train and fanning the flames with a shirt as she burned to death.

Sebastian Zapeta has been charged with two counts of murder and one count of arson for the apparently random attack, which occurred early Sunday morning on a train stopped in Brooklyn.

The 33-year-old man made his first court appearance earlier in the week. He was not required to enter a plea, and his attorney has not responded to requests for comment.

The victim has not yet been publicly identified by police.

Zapeta, who federal immigration officials said is a Guatemalan citizen who entered the U.S. illegally, has been jailed at the city’s Rikers Island complex.

Authorities say Zapeta approached the woman, who might have been sleeping on the train at the Coney Island station stop, and set her clothing on fire with a lighter. He waved a shirt at her to fan the fire, causing her to become engulfed in flames, prosecutor Ari Rottenberg said during the court appearance Tuesday.

Zapeta then sat on a bench on the platform and watched as she burned, prosecutors allege. The woman was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police took Zapeta into custody while he was riding a train on the same line later that day.

Zapeta told investigators that he drinks a lot of liquor and did not know what had happened, according to Rottenberg. However, Zapeta did identify himself in photos and surveillance video showing the fire being lit, the prosecutor said.

A Brooklyn address for Zapeta released by police after his arrest matches a shelter that provides housing and substance abuse support.

Federal immigration officials said he was deported in 2018 but returned to the U.S. illegally sometime after that.

The man accused of fatally shooting the CEO of UnitedHealthcare pleaded not guilty on Monday to state murder and terror charges while his attorney complained that comments coming from New York’s mayor would make it tough to receive a fair trial.

Luigi Mangione, 26, was shackled and seated in a Manhattan court when he leaned over to a microphone to enter his plea. The Manhattan district attorney charged him last week with multiple counts of murder, including murder as an act of terrorism.

Mangione’s initial appearance in New York’s state trial court was preempted by federal prosecutors bringing their own charges over the shooting. The federal charges could carry the possibility of the death penalty, while the maximum sentence for the state charges is life in prison without parole.

Prosecutors have said the two cases will proceed on parallel tracks, with the state charges expected to go to trial first. One of Mangione’s attorneys told a judge that the “warring jurisdictions” had turned Mangione into a “human ping-pong ball” and that New York City Mayor Eric Adams and other government officials had made him a political pawn, robbing him of his rights as a defendant and tainting the jury pool.

“I am very concerned about my client’s right to a fair trial,” lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo said.

Adams and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch stood among a throng of heavily armed officers last Thursday when Mangione was flown to a Manhattan heliport and escorted up a pier after being extradited from Pennsylvania.

Friedman Agnifilo said police turned Mangione’s return to New York into a choreographed spectacle. She called out Adams’ comment to a local TV station that he wanted to be there to look “him in the eye and say, ‘you carried out this terroristic act in my city.’”

“He was on display for everyone to see in the biggest stage perp walk I’ve ever seen in my career. It was absolutely unnecessary,” she said.

She also accused federal and state prosecutors of advancing conflicting legal theories, calling their approach confusing and highly unusual.

In a statement, Adams spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus wrote: “Critics can say all they want, but showing up to support our law enforcement and sending the message to New Yorkers that violence and vitriol have no place in our city is who Mayor Eric Adams is to his core.”

“The cold-blooded assassination of Brian Thompson — a father of two — and the terror it infused on the streets of New York City for days has since been sickeningly glorified, shining a spotlight on the darkest corners of the internet,” Mamelak Altus said.

State trial court Judge Gregory Carro said he has little control over what happens outside the courtroom, but can guarantee Mangione will receive a fair trial.

Authorities say Mangione gunned down Thompson as he was walking to an investor conference in midtown Manhattan on the morning of Dec 4.

Mangione was arrested in a Pennsylvania McDonald’s after a five-day search, carrying a gun that matched the one used in the shooting and a fake ID, police said. He also was carrying a notebook expressing hostility toward the health insurance industry and especially wealthy executives, according to federal prosecutors.

At a news conference last week, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said the application of the terrorism law reflected the severity of a “frightening, well-planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation.”

“In its most basic terms, this was a killing that was intended to evoke terror,” he added.

Mangione is being held in a Brooklyn federal jail alongside several other high-profile defendants, including Sean “Diddy” Combs and Sam Bankman-Fried.

During his court appearance Monday, he smiled at times when talking with his attorneys and stretched his right hand after an officer removed his cuffs.

A Brazilian au pair who fell in love with an IRS agent pleaded guilty to manslaughter on Tuesday in what prosecutors say was an elaborate double-murder scheme to frame another man in the stabbing of his wife.

For months after the killings on Feb. 24, 2023, it might have seemed as if Juliana Peres Magalhães and the IRS agent, Brendan Banfield, got away with murders, according to new details prosecutors revealed in court to support her guilty plea.

Christine Banfield, a pediatric intensive care nurse with a 4-year-old daughter, had been mortally wounded with stab wounds to her neck, and Brendan Banfield, her husband, and their live-in nanny both said they shot her apparent killer — a man who had been lured to the bedroom with promises of rough sex.

Magalhães had called 911 to the house in Herndon, Virginia, and was hyperventilating at the scene as she described the killings. Detectives weren’t buying it — but it took time to build their case. Meanwhile, the live-in au pair moved into the primary bedroom with Banfield and posted photos of them as a couple, authorities said. When she was arrested in October 2023, a picture of herself with Brendan Banfield was on the nightstand.

As she remained in jail for more than a year thereafter, she declined to say anything more.

A long-awaited forensics report on the blood spatter evidence then came in, and prosecutors said it showed that Brendan Banfield had smeared blood from Christine Banfield’s wounds onto the body of Joe Ryan, the man they had tried to frame for stabbing her. Authorities arrested Brendan Banfield in September on charges of aggravated murder.

Banfield’s lawyer, John F. Carroll, said in court before he was denied bail in September that the evidence “just doesn’t add up” to him killing his wife.

In October, Magalhães agreed to cooperate with the police in her second interview since the day of the crime. Days later, on Tuesday, two weeks before she was scheduled to go to trial on charges of second-degree murder and felony firearm use, Magalhães pleaded guilty to Ryan’s killing, saying she had agreed to help the husband’s ruse to kill the wife and make it look like they both shot a predator.

“Are you entering your guilty plea because you are in fact guilty of this offense?” Chief Judge Penney Azcarate asked Magalhães before accepting her plea to a single count of manslaughter, reduced from murder and a firearm offense.

“Yes,” she replied, softly.

The sentencing of Magalhães, who was raised in the outskirts of Sao Paulo, now awaits the conclusion of Brendan Banfield’s trial. Depending on her cooperation with authorities, attorneys said in court that they may agree for her to be sentenced to the time she’s already served.

“Much of the information that led to this agreement cannot be made public at this time, due to the upcoming criminal trial against the other defendant in this matter,” Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano said.

Renowned French actor Anouk Grinberg says the sexual assault trial against fellow actor Gérard Depardieu reflects the slow path toward awareness of sex abuse in France, especially in the film industry, after years of silence.

Grinberg, 61, who has appeared in about 30 films, spoke Monday at what was supposed to be the start of Depardieu’s trial but which was postponed until March because of concerns over the 75-year-old actor’s health.

She has known Depardieu for over three decades, appearing with him in a 1991 film and in the film “The Green Shutters.” The trial centers around the alleged sexual assault of two women, a production designer and a director’s assistant, on the set of the latter film in 2021.

Depardieu has denied any wrongdoing. In recent months, Grinberg has decided to speak out on the need for change, joining other French actors who decided to shine a light on the repulsive underside of the country’s industry.

“For several years, I witnessed this … without any reaction, like everyone else,” she told The Associated Press. “Because I was overwhelmed by the violence and also because at the time, we didn’t think of it as violence.”

Yet with the #MeToo movement and more women speaking out, something “has changed” in recent years, she said. “And I’ve taken the measure of this violence.”

Grinberg also said she personally knows actor Charlotte Arnould, who accuses Depardieu of two rapes allegedly committed in August 2018 in a separate case. Depardieu was charged in 2020 with rape and sexual assault in that case, but a magistrate has yet to decide whether to send it to trial.

“What’s complicated in cases of sexual violence is that most of the time, women don’t move, don’t defend themselves. And it’s not because they consent, it’s because they’re just petrified. Something has died inside them, paralyzed by terror, by disgust,” Grinberg said.

“That’s where we have to educate the society as well as the justice system,” she added.

Grinberg described with graphic details Depardieu’s obscene comments she said he kept making on “The Green Shutters” film set.

“The society as a whole has really been a great accomplice in these actions, these excesses, these deviances,” Grinberg said. “I’ve been a witness, on movie sets who were entirely silent or sniggering at this verbal violence.”

She said many in the cinema world remained silent because they were afraid they would not be able to work anymore if they spoke out against powerful people in the industry.

Depardieu’s trial shows that times have changed, especially since the alleged victims did not have high-profile roles. The “little hands” working in the cinema industry “are speaking out and saying enough is enough. Enough is really enough,” Grinberg said.

Earlier this year, French actor Judith Godrèche called on France’s film industry to “face the truth” on sexual violence and physical abuse during the Cesar Awards ceremony, France’s version of the Oscars. “We can decide that men accused of rape no longer rule the (French) cinema,” Godrèche said.

A judge in a rural Kentucky county was fatally shot in his courthouse chambers Thursday, and the local sheriff was charged with murder in the killing, police said.

The preliminary investigation indicates Letcher County Sheriff Shawn M. Stines shot District Judge Kevin Mullins multiple times following an argument inside the courthouse, according to Kentucky State Police. Mullins, who held the judgeship for 15 years, died at the scene, and Stines surrendered without incident.

The fatal shooting in Whitesburg sent shock waves through a tight-knit Appalachian town and county seat of government with about 1,700 residents located about 145 miles (235 kilometers) southeast of Lexington.

Lead county prosecutor Matt Butler described an outpouring of sympathy as he recused himself and his office from investigations in the shooting, citing social and family ties to Mullins.

“We all know each other here. … Anyone from Letcher County would tell you that Judge Mullins and I married sisters and that we have children who are first cousins but act like siblings,” Butler said in statement from his office. “For that reason, among others, I have already taken steps to recuse myself and my entire office.”

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman said his office will collaborate with a commonwealth’s attorney in the region as special prosecutors in the criminal case.

“We will fully investigate and pursue justice,” Coleman said on social media.

Kentucky Supreme Court Chief Justice Laurance B. VanMeter said he was “shocked by this act of violence” and that the court system was “shaken by this news.” Letcher County’s judge-executive signed an order closing on Friday the county courthouse where the shooting took place.

Mullins, 54, was hit multiple times in the shooting, Kentucky State Police said. Stines, 43, was charged with one count of first-degree murder. The investigation is continuing, police said.

It was unclear whether Stines had an attorney. Kentucky State Police referred inquires about Stines’ legal representation Thursday to a spokesperson who did not immediately respond by email.

Responding to the shooting, Gov. Andy Beshear said in a social media post: “There is far too much violence in this world, and I pray there is a path to a better tomorrow.”

Mullins served as a district judge in Letcher County since he was appointed by former Gov. Steve Beshear in 2009 and elected the following year.

Mullins was known for promoting substance abuse treatment for people involved in the justice system and helped hundreds of residents enter inpatient residential treatment, according to a program for a drug summit he spoke at in 2022. Mullins also helped create a program offering courthouse peer support for addiction treatment and worked with various healthcare organizations and providers.

After the shooting, several area schools were briefly placed on lockdown.

An Alaska man accused of sending graphic threats to injure and kill six Supreme Court justices and some of their family members has been indicted on federal charges, authorities said Thursday.

Panos Anastasiou, 76, is accused of sending more than 465 messages through a public court website, including graphic threats of assassination and torture coupled with racist and homophobic rhetoric.

The indictment does not specify which justices Anastasiou targeted, but Attorney General Merrick Garland said he made the graphic threats as retaliation for decisions he disagreed with.

“Our democracy depends on the ability of public officials to do their jobs without fearing for their lives or the safety of their families,” he said.

Anastasiou has been indicted on 22 counts, including nine counts of making threats against a federal judge and 13 counts of making threats in interstate commerce.

He was released from detention late Thursday by a federal magistrate in Anchorage with a a list of conditions, including that he not directly or indirectly contact any of the six Supreme Court justices he allegedly threatened or any of their family members.

During the hearing that lasted more than hour, Magistrate Kyle Reardon noted some of the messages Anastasiou allegedly sent between March 2023 and mid-July 2024, including calling for the assassination of two of the Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices so the current Democratic president could appoint their successors.

Instead of toning down his rhetoric after receiving a visit from FBI agents last year, Anastasiou increased the frequency of his messages and their vitriolic language, Reardon said.

Gray-haired and shackled at the ankles above his salmon-colored plastic slippers, Anastasiou wore a yellow prison outfit with ACC printed in black on the back, the initials for the Anchorage Correctional Facility, at the hearing. Born in Greece, he moved to Anchorage 67 years ago. Reardon allowed him to contact his elected officials on other matters like global warming, but said the messages must be reviewed by his lawyers.

Defense attorney Jane Imholte noted Anastasiou is a Vietnam veteran who is undergoing treatment for throat cancer and has no financial means other than his Social Security benefits.

She told the judge that Anastaiou, who signed his own name to the emails, worried about his pets while being detained. She said he only wanted to return home to care for his dogs, Freddie, Buddy and Cutie Pie.

He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison for each count of making threats against a federal judge and up to five years for each count of making threats in interstate commerce if convicted.

Threats targeting federal judges overall have more than doubled in recent years amid a surge of similar violent messages directed at public officials around the country, the U.S. Marshals Service previously said.

In 2022, shortly after the leak of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, a man was stopped near the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh with weapons and zip ties.