The murder trial of Chris Harris from Arminton, Illinois began earlier this month in Peoria, Illinois. Harris is accused of murdering Rick and Ruth Gee and three of their children with a tire iron in the family’s Beason home in late September 2009. One of the children, a three-year-old girl, survived the attack. Prosecutors laid out what happened after brothers Chris and Jason Harris, intoxicated from a night of drinking and doing cocaine visited the Gee home in search of marijuana.

Back in March we told you about Moses Lake, Washington teen Nathon Brooks, the 14-year-old charged with attempted murder for shooting his parents with a .22 caliber pistol while they were sleeping because they took away his video games (see this story for more details).

An attorney for convicted Deltona, Florida mass murderer Troy Victorino will once again attempt to appeal his client's conviction during arguments this week before the Florida Supreme Court. In September 2006, Victorino and another killer were sentenced to death for the brutal 2004 slaying of six people and a dog using baseball bats and knives. The crime has been described as one of the most gruesome mass killings in the state's history.

According to this Daily Mail story (by way of The Escapist), the leader of the Scottish Police are blaming Gears of War for a vicious knife attack.

Activision UK has come out of court victorious in a case against a former PR executive and a consultant from Activision's external PR company, Frank PR. Two people, Activision PR executive Kathryn Kirton, and Frank PR consultant Jamie Kaye were found guilty of embezzling money from the company.

An 18-year-old Oxford man (Thomas Frongillo) has been arrested for allegedly threatening to shoot up Anna Maria College in Paxton, Massachusetts. He was released on $50,000 bail after his arraignment in Western Worcester District Court in East Brookfield. Frongillo who is studying criminal justice at Anna Maria and is currently in the police academy there.

A 14-year-old in Washington state has been charged with attempted murder for allegedly shooting both of his parents in the head after they restricted him from electronic devices - including playing video games. On Monday, Grant County prosecutors asked the court that the 14-year-old, Nathon Brooks, be tried as an adult on attempted murder charges.

A former executive from GameStop's Texas division has been sentenced to 51 months in prison for embezzling $1.7 million from the company by setting up a shell company, according to an announcement by the U.S. Attorney's Office. Frank Christopher Olivera, the now former Vice President of corporate communications and public affairs at GameStop Texas was convicted this week.

A Connecticut high school went into lockdown mode this afternoon after a threatening note was discovered in a hallway, the Weston Forum reports. Weston High school, which is located in the southern part of the state and not too far from Newtown, was locked down after a note was found threatening specific members of the school staff and students.

Microsoft says that it had no involvement in the raid of an Australian man who sold a Durango development kit on EBay. The Australian man known only as "SuperDaE" was raided last week for acquiring and selling a Durango development kit. Durango is the code-name for the next Xbox system from Microsoft. Today we learn that Microsoft is denying any involvement in the raid. The company issued the following statement:

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund points out a new two-part report produced by the Hartford Courant and PBS that reveals how video games continue to be part of the ongoing narrative of the police investigation into the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting that occurred in Newtown Connecticut in December of last year.

Bohemia is changing the name of the main island in its upcoming military shooter simulation, Arma III, GameSpot reports. The name change for the island from Lemnos to Altis is in direct response to the espionage charges two of its employees faced in Greece. The duo were recently released after spending 129-days in a Greek jail.

The brutal murder of a 31-year-old woman is being attributed to the tenuous association of the killer's time playing Final Fantasy XIV. These conclusions are being drawn by two German tabloids, according to this Kotaku report. The 31-year-old woman, Katrin M. (the last names of both the victim and the killer are being withheld) was reportedly murdered by 18- or 19-year old Marco F, who stabbed the victim 18 times using a katana.

Quest Academy in Las Vegas, Nevada is a charter school that is supposed to spend the funds it generates to give children a better education, but the school's principal had other ideas on how to spend the money, according to Action 13 News.

Update: The New York Daily News claims that "Local media" are reporting that the teen was a "home schooled teen [who] wasn’t allowed to play video games, and that his family never let him watch violent shows on television." We're not sure of the validity of that part of the NYDN story because it's a third-hand account. Thanks Andrew Eisen for passing that bit along.

After spending 128 days in a Greek prison for espionage charges, it looks like Bohemia Interactive developers Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar have been freed. According to various media reports in Czechoslovakia compiled by Ivan Martin support site www.helpivanmartin.org, the two Arma developers had to post €5,000 ($6,686) bail each.

Seen anyone wandering around with 7,000 Wii consoles?

If you have, pick up the phone and give the SeaTac, Washington police a call because those units are probably stolen.

Sgt. Cindy West told ABC News that thieves pulled up two 53-foot semi-truck trailers and a large box-truck van to a Nintendo distribution warehouse in Seattle Air Cargo last Saturday evening and, using forklifts on site, loaded up the vehicles with approximately $2 million worth of Wii consoles.

Then they left.

Final Update: A number of things about our previous story are proving to be erroneous as more details about the shooting today in Newtown, Connecticut comes to light. Here is what we know so far:

Adam Lanza, and not Ryan Lanza (his older brother) has been identified as the shooter. His brother Ryan Lanza, who lives in Hoboken, New Jersey is being questioned by police. Lanza's father, who lives in Connecticut, was similarly questioned, one of the law enforcement officials said.

Jailed Arma II developers Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar have released a letter from the Greek prison they have been held at for more than two months. The two were arrested back in September by Greek authorities for allegedly taking photographs and videos of military bases. In the letter released on a support website for the Bohemia Interactive employees, Buchta and Pezlar thanked fans for their continued support and said that they were being treated well.

According to Joystiq, the Czech ambassador was invited to a meeting by the Greek president related to jailed Bohemia Interactive employees Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar. The two have been charged with espionage and are being held without bail. They have been in jail since September of this year (75 days so far).

The president of the Czech Republic President pledges continued support for the two jailed Arma developers who are currently being held in Greece on charges of espionage. Earlier in the week President Václav Klaus wrote a personal letter to Greek President Karolos Papoulias - translated by Eurogamer urging him to give the case "special attention," but he also emphasized that he was not trying to meddle in the country's business.

A former high ranking executive at retailer GameStop has pled guilty to embezzling $2 million from the company. According to a federal indictment filed on Friday, former vice president of corporate communications and public affairs for GameStop Chris Olivera diverted a couple million from the company into a personal business account. Olivera was able to do this, the indictment claims, because he processed invoices from vendors.

41-year-old Justin Success Brooks of the United Kingdom found out the hard way that it's not a good idea to mess with the folks at Nintendo. He has been charged with the "fraudulent sale of counterfeit Nintendo games," according to a report in the Croydon Guardian. Brooks was caught red-handed in an investigation conducted by Nintendo and the UK Interactive Entertainment association.

The owner of Salt Lake City-based Sensory Sweep Studio is going to spend some quality time in jail. David M. Rushton began serving a yearlong jail sentence on October 10 at the Salt Lake County Jail for failing to pay more than 100 employees. He was also fined $1.2 million. Rushton took a plea deal in the rare criminal case for nonpayment of wages brought by the Utah Attorney General's office - but he plans to appeal the verdict to a higher court...

A Federal Judge has sentenced 36-year old Sang Jin Kim to 40 months in prison and ordered him to forfeit more than $400,000 in assets. Prosecutors charged Kim with criminal copyright infringement in November of 2011 and seized the domains 82movie.com and 007disk.com. Prosecutors claimed that Kim ran an online piracy empire through his Washington-based company World Multimedia Group Inc. The sites offered pirated versions of popular movies, Korean TV shows, software and video games, according to prosecutors.

The Bohemia Interactive developers (Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar) who were locked up under the suspicion that they shot video and took pictures of a military base in Greece have yet to be released, and according to the website dedicated to the duo, it is due to riots in the country over austerity measures.

Two weeks ago New Zealand’s Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security revealed that the government had illegally spied on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom. Specifically he said in his report that the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) carried out illegal surveillance on Dotcom, because the agency is only allowed to carry out that kind of action against foreign targets. When the news became public, New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key apologized to Dotcom.

According to the Associated Press, there will be no federal criminal charges filed against Curt Schilling or his now bankrupt game development company 38 Studios. A spokesperson for U.S. attorney spokesperson Peter Neronha told The Associated Press that the office has conducted a "narrow and focused" examination of 38 Studios to find out if any federal laws had been broken, and has decided to not continue the investigation. The federal level investigation into 38 Studios began in June, shortly after it filed for bankruptcy.

An update on the official Bohemia Interactive forums reveals that the two Czechoslovakian men who were arrested last week in Greece are doing well and that Bohemia stands by its statement that the whole ordeal was a big misunderstanding.

The Greek government has accused two employees of Bohemia Interactive of spying after the two staffers were caught trying to photograph a military base, according to IGN. The two Czech men had been found with photos and video of a military facility in Lemnos and Agios Efstratios. They were arrested while attempting to photograph the base on Lemnos, according to News237.