ZURICH, Switzerland - Some people will do anything to get into the papers. But few have the audacity of a man in Switzerland, who conned one of the country's biggest media companies into publishing a two-page advertisement he created of himself posing semi-naked beside a bottle of Gucci perfume.

The man, who claimed to represent the Italian fashion giant, called up the Swiss weekly SonntagsZeitung last week to book the expensive color spread in Sunday's edition, a spokesman for the paper said.

Christoph Zimmer told The Associated Press on Tuesday the man asked for the $49,100 bill to be sent to Gucci.

"We've spoken to Gucci and apologized for the mistake," Zimmer said. "We're going to try and get the money back from this guy, but we don't rate our chances."

The Milan-based Gucci, owned by luxury goods group PPR SA, could not be reached for comment.

Zimmer said the paper fell for the scam because the call arrived too late for the advertising department to check whether it was genuine.

It was not the first time the mysterious model - a dark, handsome man who appears to be in his late 20s - tried to sneak into the limelight.

According to the Zurich-based daily Blick, the man also attempted to book concert venues by passing himself off as Puerto Rican pop singer Chayanne.

The man is under investigation for alleged fraud in relation to other cases, said Meinrad Stoecklin, a spokesman for police in Basel. Police refused to identify him under strict Swiss privacy laws.

Standoff with student shuts down Missouri campus; white powder, 'possible bomb material' found

ROLLA, Mo. (AP) - A distraught graduate student claiming to have a bomb and anthrax sparked a police standoff in a classroom building Tuesday that shut down the University of Missouri-Rolla for several hours, officials said.

Nearly two dozen people, including a faculty member and eight other students, were being decontaminated after a white, powdery substance was found.

School officials said "possible bomb materials" were also found when the man was taken into custody. Officials described the man as a graduate student who was apparently depressed and upset about his grades.

The standoff started around 2:30 a.m. in a civil engineering building on campus.

Acting Police Chief Mark Kearse said that when police arrived, the student held up a bag and said: "This is a bomb." He was armed with a knife and also claimed to have anthrax, Kearse said.

Police used a stun gun to subdue him. They also found a four-page note in which the student threatened to destroy the building, Kearse said.

The Fort Leonard Wood Explosive Operations Division was investigating the possibility that a bomb may be in the building, and members of the Missouri National Guard were called to campus.

The man's identity and nationality were not released, though school spokesman Lance Feyh said he was an international student. The man was taken to a nearby hospital to determine if he was contaminated with anthrax, city spokesman Scott Grahl said.

Mayor William Jenks and Kearse said the student had been distraught over his grades, which may have led to the incident. Jenks said the student "had problems and was depressed."

The 5,850-student technological research and engineering school campus in south-central Missouri was shut down during the incident and classes were canceled for the day while officers investigated.

"We have no hard evidence that there's anything wrong in the building but we simply can't take a chance," Jenks said. "We're taking a very cautious approach."

Those exposed to the powder included a faculty member in whose lab the graduate student was found and eight students working nearby, said campus spokeswoman Mary Helen Stoltz. The remaining people exposed to the powder were emergency personnel who responded to the scene, she said. It wasn't yet clear what the substance was.

Stoltz reiterated Kearse's belief that the student was "using the threat of terror to get attention."

"We believe the situation is completely under control," she said. "For now everybody's safe."

On the Net:

UMR: http://www.umr.edu/

Indoor football player dies after hit during game

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) - A defensive back for Daytona Beach's indoor football team died after being knocked unconscious from a helmet-to-helmet block late in the game, police said.

Javan Camon, a 6-foot-1, 180-pound defender for the Daytona Beach Thunder of the World Indoor Football League, tried to tackle the ball carrier in the fourth quarter Monday night. A Columbus Lions receiver blocked Camon on the play, sending him to the turf.

He went into cardiac arrest, Daytona Beach police said. Paramedics and doctors at the arena tried to revive him on the field for 10 minutes before taking him to a hospital. He was pronounced dead on arrival Monday night, ambulance spokesman Mark O'Keefe said.

Thunder spokesman Dan Ryan said the team and the league planned a joint news conference later Tuesday.

"There was no evidence that would suggest the pursuit of a criminal investigation," a police news release stated. "This tragic event was an accident that occurred during the normal course of the game."

More than 1,440 spectators watched Monday's game. After a delay of about 25 minutes, play resumed and the Lions defeated the Thunder 45-42 despite Camon's two interceptions that set up touchdowns.

The 25-year-old Camon was four-year letterman at the University of South Florida. He signed with Daytona Beach before the 2006 season. He played five games last season and had 20 tackles and one interception.

Florida appeals court to consider custody of Anna Nicole Smith's body in burial dispute

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - Attorneys for Anna Nicole Smith's boyfriend told an appeals court Tuesday that her estranged mother was trying to "place her in death where she never wanted to be in life" - Texas.

Smith's mother on Monday appealed a judge's ruling that left the decision on the Playboy model's burial to a court-appointed advocate for her infant daughter.

The child's advocate, Richard Milstein, has said he would bury Smith in the Bahamas, beside her 20-year-old son. In an earlier court filing, he noted that "every witness including (her mother Virgie) Arthur testified that Anna Nicole Smith expressed an interest in being buried in either California or the Bahamas."

Milstein and Smith's boyfriend, Howard K. Stern, had until Tuesday afternoon to respond to Arthur's appeal.

Arthur wants her daughter buried in her native Texas and argued in the appeal that the mother is the "legally recognized person" to take the remains. Her attorney Roberta G. Mandel said she was willing to take the fight to the Florida Supreme Court if necessary.

Stern's attorneys filed their response Tuesday.

"This case presents the tragic circumstances of Anna Nicole Smith's untimely death and the sad irony of her estranged birth mother's efforts to place her in death where she never wanted to be in life," they wrote to the three-judge appellate panel.

Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin last week gave the custody of Smith's body to the advocate for the Smith's baby daughter and urged him to have Smith laid to rest next to her son, who died last fall and is buried in the Bahamas.

In the midst of the court frenzy, Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern, not yet 6 months old, is living in the gated, waterfront home in the Bahamas, where Smith lived with Stern until her death Feb. 8 at the age of 39.

A judge in Bahamas, where custody of the little girl is in dispute, scheduled a March hearing in that case.

Stern and two other men claim they are Dannielynn's father, and Arthur also wants custody. An attorney for Los Angeles-based photographer Larry Birkhead indicated after a hearing Monday that DNA tests were expected, but she would not elaborate.

In an interview aired Tuesday on NBC's "Today" show, Birkhead talked about his plans.

"I see just me and my daughter. Me taking her to school and just playing," Birkhead sad. "My daughter has become my life. That's what I am fighting for. What kind of dad would I be if I didn't fight for my daughter?"

Stern is listed on Dannielynn's birth certificate as the father. Frederic von Anhalt, the husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, also says he may be the father.

A medical examiner has yet to determine Smith's cause of death. Toxicology results could take up to two more weeks.

Smith was married to Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II in 1994 when he was 89 and she was 26. She had been fighting his family over his estimated $500 million fortune since his death in 1995 and her baby daughter could stand to inherit millions.

Associated Press writers Adrian Sainz in Fort Lauderdale and Ben Fox in Nassau, Bahamas, contributed to this report.

Thurmond's daughter says Sharpton 'overreacted' after learning of link to family

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - The biracial daughter of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond defended the former segregationist on Tuesday and said the Rev. Al Sharpton "overreacted" when Sharpton learned he is a descendent of a slave owned by the senator's relatives.

"In spite of the fact he was a segregationist, he did many wonderful things for black people … I'm not sure that Reverend Sharpton is aware of all the things he did," said Essie Mae Washington-Williams, who was in South Carolina for a speech. "I kind of feel that there was an overreaction."

Professional genealogists working for Ancestry.com found that Sharpton's great-grandfather Coleman Sharpton was a slave owned by Julia Thurmond, whose grandfather was Strom Thurmond's great-great-grandfather. Coleman Sharpton was later freed.

When Sharpton learned of the link, he said: "It was probably the most shocking thing in my life."

Thurmond, of South Carolina, was once considered an icon of racial segregation. During his 1948 bid for president, he promised to preserve segregation. In 1957, he filibustered for more than 24 hours against a civil rights bill.

Sharpton, who ran for president in 2004 on a ticket of racial justice, said he met Thurmond in 1991 with the late soul singer James Brown, who knew Thurmond. Sharpton said the meeting was "awkward."

"I was not happy to meet him because what he had done all his life," Sharpton said.

Thurmond, the nation's long-serving senator, was originally a Democrat but became a Republican in 1964. He softened his segregation stance later in his life and died in 2003, at 100.

Thurmond's children have acknowledged that Thurmond fathered a biracial daughter. Williams' mother was a housekeeper in the home of Thurmond's parents.

A telephone message left Tuesday at Strom Thurmond Jr.'s office was not immediately returned.

Husband admits passing off other pianists' recordings as wife's work

LONDON (AP) - British pianist Joyce Hatto, hailed after her death as a neglected genius, owed her reputation to performances stolen from other artists, her husband has admitted, saying he was desperate to have her life end "on a high note."

"It is self-evident that I have acted stupidly, dishonestly and unlawfully," William Barrington-Coupe wrote in a letter acknowledging the fraudulent recordings, which he said he produced without his wife's knowledge while she was dying of ovarian cancer.

"I was desperate to finish her life, which had been disappointing in so many ways, on a high note," Barrington-Coupe wrote.

Hatto ceased to play in public in 1975, achieving only a modest reputation and collecting mixed reviews. But after she died last year at age 77, obituaries hailed her as a keyboard prodigy who left a brilliant legacy in more than 100 CDs produced by her husband on his Concert Artists label.

"A singular artist of superlative technique and interpretation," said The Times. "One of the greatest pianists Britain has ever produced," wrote The Guardian.

That reputation collapsed after Gramophone, a British music magazine, reported earlier this month that at least one Hatto CD recording, Franz Liszt's "Transcendental Etudes," was actually a release by pianist Laszlo Simon.

The deception was uncovered when a classical music fan's iTunes computer library identified the Hatto recording as Simon's. The fan contacted one of Gramophone's critics, who listened to both recordings and discovered they were identical, the magazine said.

In a letter to Robert von Bahr, chief executive officer of Sweden's BIS Records, which released Simon's recording, Barrington-Coupe acknowledged the theft.

"Of course I deeply regret it. The damage has been enormous, and frightful things have been resurrected and insinuated in the press," Barrington-Coupe wrote.

"The sad thing about all this is that my wife was a fine musician and probably the most finished pianist I had ever heard."

In the letter, Barrington-Coupe said his wife was suffering from advanced ovarian cancer by the time he was able to produce CDs, and her grunts of pain marred recording sessions.

So, he said, he searched for pianists of a similar sound and style to patch over his wife's recordings.

Over time, the letter said, he took bigger and bigger pieces of other recordings, and learned how to manipulate speed to disguise the source.

The deception unraveled when the Gramophone reader put the "Hatto" recording of "Transcendental Etudes" on his computer, and the iTunes software, which catalogues about 4 million albums based on the tracks' lengths, identified the recording as Simon's.

Then a "Hatto" recording of Rachmaninoff piano concertos was identified as one by Yefim Bronfman on Sony, Gramophone said.

After that, Andrew Rose of Pristine Audio found that a "Hatto" recording of music by Leopold Godowsky was actually one of Carlo Grante on Altarus, but slowed down by 15 percent.

The Associated Press could not immediately reach Barrington-Coupe, whose telephone number is unlisted. However, Bahr, speaking in Stockholm, said Barrington-Coupe had acknowledged the deception, "because I was the only one that confronted him in a respectful way."

"We've had a letter correspondence because he has also stolen music from me," Bahr said, adding that Barrington-Coupe asked him not to release the entire letter, though he read portions to a reporter.

Gramophone reported Barrington-Coupe's letter to BIS on Monday, saying on its Web site that it had confirmed the contents with him.

Irish pianist John O'Conor, whose recording of Beethoven's Sonata in E allegedly reappeared with Hatto's name in 1999, said he was flattered that anyone remembered his version. But he was puzzled by the late flowering of Hatto's reputation.

"You had the media calling her the `greatest' this and `most prolific' that - and people in the industry kept on saying: 'Who?' She hadn't been heard of for 30 years," O'Conor said.

BPI, the British recording trade organization, said it was investigating.

"If the stories flying around these recordings proved to be true, this would be one of the most extraordinary cases of piracy the record industry had ever seen," BPI said in a statement.

Bahr, however, said he had no intention of pursuing Barrington-Coupe.

"The guy is 76, he has a heart condition - well, he says he has a heart condition - and I can't see what, apart from revenge, it would give anyone," he said.

Gramophone appealed for Barrington-Coupe to provide a full accounting of which recordings, if any, were actually by his wife.

However, it quoted Barrington-Coupe as saying: "I'm tired, I'm not very well. I've closed the operation down, I've had the stock completely destroyed, and I'm not producing any more. Now I just want a little bit of peace."

On the Net:

Gramophone, http://www.gramophone.co.uk/

Pristine Audio, http://www.pristineclassical.com/HattoHoax.html

Concert Artists records, http://concertartistrecordings.com

Prosecutors: Atlanta courthouse shooting supsect had 'damning' chat about jail exterior

ATLANTA (AP) - The man accused of killing four people in a shooting spree that began in a courthouse had asked a female friend who visited him in jail to describe the location of a tower and barbed wire around the building, according to a transcript of a recorded call disclosed Tuesday.

The June 24, 2006, call was between Lisa Meneguzzo, who helps out at a family-run business in Torrington, Conn., and the defendant, Brian Nichols, was referenced by prosecutors in a motion regarding some 400 hours of Nichols' telephone calls that have been recorded while he has been in jail.

Prosecutors said in their filing that the selected conversation and others they have gathered are "undeniably damning and relevant to defendant's future dangerousness."

The disclosure follows previous assertions by prosecutors that Nichols was plotting another escape while in custody for the March 11, 2005, killings of a judge, court reporter, sheriff's deputy and federal agent.

"We're gonna drive right into your parking lot now," Meneguzzo, says via cell phone to Nichols, who is on a phone inside the Fulton County Jail, according to the transcript.

"If you look to your right, what do you see?" Nichols asks.

"A (inaudible) field, now we see the part with the barbed wire fence," Meneguzzo says.

Later in the conversation, Meneguzzo says, "There's a part of the building that has a barbed wire fence going around it."

"To the right?" Nichols asks.

"Yeah, to the tower," Meneguzzo says.

"What tower?" Nichols asks.

"A little tower that I never see anyone in," Meneguzzo responds.

Reached at her office Tuesday, Meneguzzo said she did not recall the conversation.

Asked if Nichols has been plotting an escape, Meneguzzo said, "He is not."

One of Nichols' defense lawyers, Gary Parker, did not immediately return a call to his cell phone Tuesday seeking comment. Defense lawyers did not speak to reporters after a court hearing Tuesday held to discuss a defense request to bar the media and public from viewing individual questioning of potential jurors in Nichols' murder trial.

Meneguzzo's relationship with Nichols is unclear, but she has visited him several times in jail, according to visitor records previously obtained by The Associated Press.

At Tuesday's hearing, meanwhile, defense lawyers argued that the questioning of potential jurors should be held behind closed doors to protect their privacy, especially because they may be asked mental health questions. Lawyers for several news organizations, including The AP, argued the voir dire process should be open to the public. There was no immediate ruling by Superior Court Judge Hilton Fuller.

Nichols, 35, was being escorted to a courtroom in the Fulton County Courthouse for the continuation of his retrial on rape charges when he allegedly beat a deputy, stole her gun and went on a deadly shooting spree.

He is accused of killing the judge presiding over the rape trial, Rowland Barnes; a court reporter chronicling the proceeding, Julie Ann Brandau; a sheriff's deputy who chased him outside, Hoyt Teasley; and a federal agent he encountered at a home a few miles away that night, David Wilhelm. Nichols surrendered the next day after allegedly taking a woman hostage in her suburban Atlanta home.

The next phase of jury selection is set to begin March 27.

41-year-old Redding man says 12-year-old was his girlfriend

RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. (AP) - A 41-year-old Redding man charged with molesting a 12-year-old girl told investigators the child was his girlfriend and he loved her, court records show.

Kurt Andrew Hakmiller drove from his home nearly 600 miles away for a Christmastime rendezvous with the Ontario girl, who he met over a telephone chat line, police said in reports filed in San Bernardino County Superior Court.

Hakmiller has pleaded not guilty to three counts of committing lewd acts on a child younger than 13. He is being held on $500,000 bail and a preliminary hearing is scheduled Thursday.

Hakmiller told police he originally thought she was 19, but he continued to profess his love after learning her age and told her he wanted to marry her, the documents showed.

After spending hours on the telephone wooing the girl, the relationship heated up around Christmas and Hakmiller arrived at the girl's home, police said. She introduced him to her parents, who apparently believed he was much younger, and on Christmas Eve he took her to an arcade and an Upland motel, the documents alleged.

Hakmiller and the girl allegedly had sexual contact and he bought her makeup and lingerie for a second day together at the motel, police said. On their third day together, Hakmiller drove her to his Redding home, police said.

The girl's parents apparently consented to the trip because they believed Hakmiller wanted to introduce the girl to his family, according to the reports.

Hakmiller and the girl allegedly had more sexual contact in Redding, and he returned her to Ontario about a day later, investigators said.

The relationship was exposed when Hakmiller telephoned Ontario police from Northern California and asked them to check on the girl because he feared she had been raped in her home.

Officers found no evidence of assault, but the girl did disclose her relationship with Hakmiller to the officers. She told them he was her boyfriend and she was in love with him.

Walter Edmiston, Keebler elf voice actor, dies in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Walker Edmiston, an actor who was the voice of many cartoon and puppet characters, including Ernie the Keebler elf in TV commercials, has died. He was 81.

Edmiston died of complications from cancer on Feb. 15 at his home in Woodland Hills, said his daughter, Erin Edmiston.

He worked up until becoming ill in January, she said.

Edmiston was born Feb. 6, 1926, in St. Louis, Mo., and moved to Los Angeles in 1947.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Edmiston had a children's show on local television. "The Walker Edmiston Show" featured his own puppets, including Kingsley the Lion and Ravenswood the Buzzard.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he voiced many characters on shows created by Sid and Marty Krofft, including Dr. Blinkey and Orson the Vulture on "H.R. Pufnstuf" and Sparky the Firefly on "Bugaloos."

"Walker was one of the most talented voice people in town," Marty Krofft said.

Edmiston also had acting roles in episodes of such TV series as "Gunsmoke," "Mission: Impossible" and "The Dukes of Hazzard," and performed for nearly 20 years on "Adventures in Odyssey," a radio series produced by the nonprofit group Focus on the Family.

He is survived by his daughter.

Mother sentenced to 25 years to life in prison in toddler's killing

LOS ANGELES - A Lancaster woman who "did nothing" to prevent her 21-month-old son's brutal death at the hands of his father was sentenced today to 25 years to life in prison.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael E. Pastor noted the "horrific circumstances" of the case in imposing the term on Sylvia Torres Rolon.

As the 44-year-old defendant listened through a Spanish interpreter, the judge said he had seen very few cases in more than two decades on the bench "that reach the level of depravity" as the toddler's killing.

Rolon was convicted Jan. 31 of second-degree murder, assault on a child resulting in death and child abuse for the death of her son, Isaac, whose body was set on fire and found wrapped in bags in April 2003 in the back of his father's van.

The boy's father, Anthony Bill Lopez, was convicted last June of first- degree murder. He is serving a life prison term without the possibility of parole.

In Lopez's trial, a deputy medical examiner said the toddler had been suffocated. He also had about two dozen blunt-force trauma injuries and a "lethal level" of a decongestant, along with alcohol and rubbing alcohol, in his system.

"He had injuries from head to toe, front to back," Deputy District attorney Mary Murray told jurors during closing arguments in Rolon's trial. "…All the time this is happening, Sylvia Rolon did nothing."

The prosecutor said Rolon had a "legal duty to act" to protect her "defenseless" and "helpless" son.

"Defendant Rolon knew what going on in her home… She failed to act," Murray said.

"By continuing to ignore the assault, that encouraged Lopez to continue," the prosecutor said. "She failed to protect Isaac in any way… She didn't even lift a finger."

Rolon's attorney, Edward Murphy, disputed the prosecution's contention that Rolon aided and abetted Lopez in what he called a "sudden attack."

"Where is the evidence that she wanted this monster to hurt Isaac?" Murphy asked the jury. "… All the evidence is that it is not what she wanted."

Murphy said Rolon cleaned up the scene and didn't initially tell police what happened because she was afraid of losing her other children.

"This is a case where the evidence isn't there. It's a case where Mrs. Rolon did things that upset us… We want to blame her. Don't do that… She never touched Isaac. Do the right thing," the defense attorney told jurors.

The boy's body was found on April 23, 2003, wrapped inside more than a half-dozen bags in the back of Lopez's Plymouth Voyager van in Bassett County Park near Industry. His parents were charged five days later.

Rolon's attorney filed a notice of appeal on his client's behalf.

"I believe that her conviction may be reversed," Murphy said outside court.

"Under California law, do you aid and abet murder by just being present and not doing anything even though the victim (is your son)?" he said, adding that he thinks the defense's motion to dismiss the murder charge should have been dismissed.

-- North County Times wire services

Judge approves Holocaust settlement with Italian insurance company; calls it fair, not perfect

NEW YORK (AP) - A federal judge on Tuesday approved a settlement involving Holocaust victims, their relatives and an Italian insurance company that ends a lawsuit brought a decade ago.

U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels announced his approval after listening to lawyers on all sides, including an attorney for six objectors who insisted the deal with Assicurazioni Generali would deny justice for tens of thousands of victims.

"The settlement is not perfect, but it's hard to imagine any recovery for Holocaust victims after 60 years could be just compensation," Daniels said.

Under the deal, Generali would accept new claims until March 31, even though it has already paid $135 million to settle claims. So far, 3,300 people have made fresh claims, which might entitle them to payouts under an international commission's formula. Lawyers said an average of $25,000 was expected to be paid out per claim.

If the sealed Nazi archives in Bad Arolsen, Germany, are opened and new insurance records are discovered, the date to file claims may be extended up to Aug. 31, 2008, according to the settlement.

Marco E. Schnabl, a lawyer for Generali, said the company was pleased, though it was unclear if it would have to continue to fight objectors to the settlement in courts.

Samuel Dubbin, a lawyer for six victims objecting to the plan, said his clients would have to decide whether to appeal.

"I don't think the true voice of the survivors or victims had a chance to be adequately heard by the court," Dubbin said.

Robert Swift, a lawyer for victims who agree with the settlement, has said the deal would end the last of the large cases brought in American courts to get money from companies responsible for aiding Nazis during the Holocaust. Those companies have been accused of enabling the cheating of Jews, forced laborers and slaves of their assets, including insurance policies, during World War II.

Swift said one benefit of the latest agreement was that a quarter of the new claimants had been forced laborers and dissidents, mainly in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, a group targeted because it was believed it was missed by earlier settlements.

"The settlement isn't perfect, but it accomplishes a long awaited result for many survivors and their heirs for improprieties they suffered during World War II," he said.

On the Net:

International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims: http://www.icheic.org

International Tracing Service: http://www.its-arolsen.org

Mississippi grand jury declines to issue indictment in 1955 Emmett Till slaying

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - A grand jury that looked into the 1955 slaying of Emmett Till - a black teenager who was killed after he whistled at a white woman in the Mississippi Delta - has refused to indict her, all but closing the books on a crime that galvanized the civil rights movement.

The district attorney in rural Leflore County had sought a manslaughter charge against Carolyn Bryant Donham, who was suspected of pointing out Till to her husband to mete out punishment for what was then a grave offense in the segregated South.

But the grand jury last Friday issued a "no bill," meaning it found insufficient evidence, according to documents made public Tuesday.

Federal authorities decided last year not to press charges, saying the statute of limitations for federal charges had run out. Mississippi authorities represented the last, best chance to prosecute.

Till, a 14-year-old boy visiting from Chicago, was kidnapped from his uncle's home in the town of Money and shot and beaten after he wolf-whistled at Donham, a shopkeeper at the Bryant Grocery & Meat Market.

Three days later, his mutilated body was found in the muddy Tallahatchie River, weighted down with a cotton gin fan. His left eye was missing, and his right eye was dangling on his cheek. The body was identified only by a ring he was wearing.

His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who died in 2003, held an open-casket funeral in Chicago, and a photograph of Till's disfigured face in Jet Magazine had a powerful effect on public opinion, letting the world see what was happening in the South.

Roy Bryant, Donham's husband, and his half brother, J.W. Milam, were acquitted of the crime by an all-white jury in 1955. The two men later confessed in an interview with Look magazine. Both are now dead.

The FBI reopened the case in 2004 but decided in 2006 not to press charges. The case was turned over to local prosecutors, with the FBI suggesting they take a closer look at Donham. Some witnesses said a woman's voice could be heard at the scene of the abduction.

Simeon Wright, 64, a black man who was in the store that day with his cousin Emmett and said he heard the wolf-whistle, got the news from the FBI on Tuesday.

"You're looking at Mississippi," he told The Associated Press. "I guess it's about the same way it was 50 years ago. We had overwhelming evidence, and they came back with the same decision. Some of the people haven't changed from 50 years ago. Same attitude. The evidence speaks for itself."

He added: "I don't know how many years I have left on this Earth. We can leave this world and say, `Hey, we tried. We tried to get some justice in this, and we failed."'

Donham, who remarried, is now 73 and has declined interviews. A telephone number for her was disconnected Tuesday.

District Attorney Joyce Chiles, a black woman who grew up near where the killing took place, was in court Tuesday and not immediately available for comment.

David Beito, a history professor at the University of Alabama who has researched the case extensively, said it is hard to underestimate the importance of the Till case, which took place the same year as the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott.

"It gave a jump-start to the civil rights movement," he said. "It did not create the civil rights movement, but it made it more into a mass movement. It really mobilized people."

Wright said: "J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant died with Emmett Till's blood on their hands. And it looks like everyone else who was involved is going to do the same. They had a chance to come clean. They will die with Emmett Till's blood on their hands."

AP National Writer Allen G. Breed contributed to this story from Raleigh, N.C.

U.S. pedophile freed from Romanian prison after writing book on Dracula

IASI, Romania (AP) - An American historian sentenced to seven years in prison for sexual perversion and abuse of minors won early release from prison Tuesday because he wrote a book about Dracula, his attorney said.

Kurt W. Treptow of Miami Beach left the prison in this northeastern city in his lawyer's car after serving less than five years.

He was sentenced to the maximum of seven years in December 2002 for offenses involving two girls, ages 10 and 13, whom he invited into his home in Iasi. A Romanian woman convicted of being his accomplice is still in prison.

Treptow, who looked visibly emaciated as he left the prison, declined to comment.

His lawyer, Liviu Bran, said the historian was released early because he wrote a book entitled "The life and Times of Vlad Dracul" while he was in prison. The book, written from September 2003 until October 2006, was counted as community service, Bran told reporters.

Bran told the court during the trial his client had sex only with the 13-year-old girl and that he did not know she was a minor.

Treptow, who first studied in Romania as a Fulbright scholar during the communist regime that toppled in 1989, has written and edited numerous books on Romanian history, including one about Romania's pro-Hitler World War II dictator, Marshal Ion Antonescu, and another on Vlad Tepes, the historical model for Dracula.

Treptow moved to Romania in the 1990s and was director of the Center for Romanian Studies in Iasi, which is housed in a building owned by the espionage service. The service has declined to say whether Treptow worked for them.