A two-story home in a middle-class neighborhood in Covington, Wash., became a nightmare for neighbors after squatters turned the house into a trash dump filled with loud party music. Indeed, U.S. neighborhoods are changing as homeowners default on properties and more homes become boarded-up shells.

Police today arrested a former grocery worker in the 1979 murder of Etan Patz, ending a mystery of what happened to the 6-year-old boy that has haunted New York City for three decades. Pedro Hernandez, 51, confessed to police that he lured Patz to his death with the promise of a soda. He took police back to the basement of a Manhattan boedga and showed them where he strangled Patz. He said he stuffed by boy's body into a plastic garbage bag, carried it to another location in the SOHO neigborhood and dumped it in the trash. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Hernandez provided no motive for the killing.

The mutilated bodies of at least 49 people have been found in Mexico, stuffed into plastic bags and dumped on a highway near the northern city of Monterrey.