MONDAY, MARCH 7 This week of convicted killers, ridiculous reportage, and history-altering disasters kicks off with a relatively lightweight story featuring a classic Last Days character: a beloved mother's hoarded corpse. Details come from the Associated Press, which reports today's saga began back on February 7, when 75-year-old Gladys Bergmeier was found dead in her Jennings, Missouri, home. Known by neighbors as a pack rat, Bergmeier left behind a house packed with bags of trash and old newspapers, which a relative was dutifully cleaning out on February 26 when she found a mummified woman dressed in a pajama top and wrapped in plastic. Investigators' best guess at the mummy's identity: Gladys Stansbury, better known as Gladys Bergmeier's mother, who was born in 1913, moved in with her daughter after some 1993 floods, and hasn't been seen for more than a decade. "It appears [Bergmeier] couldn't let go [of her mother]," as forensic investigator Gwen Haugen will tell the St. Louis Post-Dispatch tomorrow. "This woman always had excuses as to where [Stansbury] might be. As time went on, people just stopped asking."

TUESDAY, MARCH 8 The week continues with a fat blast of punitive justice in the Pacific Northwest, as today a Pierce County jury convicted a "Craigslist killer" of first-degree murder. As KOMO reports, today's conviction follows the April 28 shooting death of an Edgewood man who listed a ring for sale on Craigslist and found himself brutalized in front of his wife and children by a group of gun-wielding burglars who eventually killed him. Today's verdict concerns the group's alleged ringleader: 23-year-old Kiyoshi Higashi, who acknowledged his part in the break-in but testified he had no part in the shooting. "Despite his denials, however, Higashi's smug demeanor in court proved incriminating," reports KOMO. "Prosecutors argued it didn't matter whether Higashi did or didn't witness the actual shooting; they said if he was present for the crime, he's guilty of murder." The jury agreed, and along with the aforementioned first-degree murder, Higashi was convicted of first-degree burglary, first-degree robbery, and second-degree assault, with aggravating circumstances of cruelty, planning, lack of remorse, and firearm enhancement, for which he'll be sentenced on Friday to 109 years in prison. On the horizon: trials for Higashi's alleged accomplices—23-year-old Clabon Berniard, 20-year-old Joshua Reese, and 21-year-old Amanda Knight, each of whom has pleaded not guilty to murder, assault, and robbery, and is being held on $2 million bail.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9 As history buffs will recall, this past January brought the federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr., which was celebrated in Spokane with a parade, along the route of which authorities found a backpack containing a bomb. Today brought some splashy progress in the investigation of the attempted bombing, as the FBI arrested 36-year-old Kevin Harpham, a former Fort Lewis soldier and well-documented white supremacist with neo-Nazi leanings, on federal charges of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and one count of knowingly possessing an improvised explosive device, for which he faces up to life in prison.

THURSDAY, MARCH 10 Speaking of weeks, the week continues with a horrible story made worse by horrible reporting. Details come from the New York Times, which on Tuesday published the report "Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town," addressing the arrest of 18 young men and teenage boys in the East Texas town of Cleveland after cell phone video surfaced allegedly depicting the men participating in the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl in an abandoned trailer home. Among the rape suspects, the NYT informs us, are "students at Cleveland High School, including two members of the basketball team. Another is the 21-year-old son of a school board member... The suspects range in age from middle schoolers to a 27-year-old." As for the victim, little is offered beyond neighbors' testimony that the 11-year-old "dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s" and "would hang out with teenage boys at a playground." ("Where was her mother?" asked one neighbor. "What was her mother thinking?") The primary subjects of the NYT report were the poor, unfortunate rape suspects. "'It's just destroyed our community,' said Sheila Harrison, 48, a hospital worker who says she knows several of the defendants. 'These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives.'" Was the NYT trying to spice things up with "LULZ"-type trolling, or was it legitimately tone-deaf about its sub–Law & Order: SVU–level sensationalism and victim-blaming? Sensible citizens of the internet exploded in consternation and wonderment, inspiring the Times' public editor to offer an official answer tomorrow. In his report "Gang Rape Story Lacked Balance," Arthur S. Brisbane will address the "intense outrage inspired among readers who thought the piece pilloried the victim" and will concur: "My assessment is that the outrage is understandable. The story dealt with a hideous crime but addressed concerns about the ruined lives of the perpetrators without acknowledging the obvious: concern for the victim." (Which means the theory of tone-deafness is correct.)

FRIDAY, MARCH 11 In much worse news, today brought a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the east coast of Japan's Oshika Peninsula, which was followed by humongously destructive tsunami waves and exploding nuclear reactors. Unbelievable horror stories will roll in throughout the weekend (tides washing up thousands of bodies, with thousands more missing, and millions plunged into a third world refugee existence). As of press time, the death toll will be estimated at well over 10,000. To donate money, go to www.redcross.org.

••Speaking of massively destructive earthquakes: The Pacific Northwest is overdue for one, thanks to "the rhythm of great temblors along the Cascadia megathrust fault off the Northwest Coast," as the imperfect but invaluable New York Times reports. "The average time between magnitude 8 and larger Cascadia earthquakes is about 240 years... The last megaquake, estimated as a magnitude 9, occurred in 1700—that's 311 years ago. In geologic terms, Cascadia is '9 months pregnant' and overdue." For now, there's only one thing to do: Assemble your emergency preparedness kit. For tips, go to www.seattle.gov/emergency/prepare.

SATURDAY, MARCH 12 In better news, the week continues in Wisconsin, where, one day after Governor Scott Walker signed his "budget repair bill" stripping public workers of collective bargaining rights, over a hundred thousand people—including teachers, police, firefighters, nurses, students, PO'd grandmas, and the 14 Democratic senators who'd fled the state to forestall the progress of the union-busting bill—crowded into the Capitol Square in Madison for the largest protest yet against the state's union-busting maneuvers.

••In worse news, today also brought some horrific highway carnage on the East Coast, as a tour bus traveling from a casino in Connecticut back to Manhattan "fell on its side and then hit a big sign for the [Hutchinson River Parkway]," as New York police spokesman Paul J. Browne told the NYT. "The stanchion for the sign... kind of sliced through the bus, from the front almost to the very end and at passenger level." Fifteen people were killed, at least one of them decapitated.

SUNDAY, MARCH 13 Nothing happened today, unless you count the ongoing nightmare in Japan or the beguiling coda to yesterday's deadly bus crash, in which two survivors of the catastrophic crash today returned to the Connecticut casino via the same bus line. As the New York Post reports, "Bernardo Garcia, a 50-year-old cook from Brooklyn—whose buddy Miguel Aquino was one of 14 people killed [on] Saturday... [said] he figured Lady Luck was on his side"—a thought seconded by Theodore Radulescu, a 55-year-old cook from the Bronx who checked out of the hospital, changed his bloody clothes, and trekked back to gamble: "When a bomb goes off, it doesn't go off again in the same spot."

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