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PANAMA CITY - Prosecutors have filed new charges against Girls Gone Wild producer Joseph Francis, three associated companies and several employees stemming from videos of allegedly underage girls exposing themselves during spring break.
The charges were filed after Bay County prosecutors went through most of the 200 tapes confiscated after Francis' arrest in April, State Attorney Jim Appleman said Tuesday.
Francis, 30, was arrested on racketeering and drug charges after parents complained to police that he told underage girls to say on camera that they were 18. Now, he faces 43 charges after Friday's filings. If convicted on all counts, he could face 335 years in prison. He says he's innocence.
Appleman has said at least 35 minors were videotaped either in sexual situations or exposing themselves by Girls Gone Wild in Panama City Beach.
Out-of-state student indicted in newborn deathKEY WEST - A 23-year-old college student from North Carolina was indicted by a grand jury on a manslaughter charge Wednesday in the death of a newborn in a Key West hotel room.
Sarah Lynn Bleckley checked out of the Radisson Key West with a companion, Joshua Allen Mayhew, on May 18, the day the body of a newborn girl was found near a stairwell at the hotel.
Police traced Bleckley and Mayhew to North Carolina through rental car records, said Key West police spokeswoman Cynthia Edwards. DNA evidence linked them to the infant.
Mayhew, 25, was not indicted.
Man charged in dragging death of woman, 86LAUDERDALE LAKES - A man was charged with first-degree murder for allegedly dragging an 86-year-old woman to death as she hung from his speeding van after he snatched her purse in a drugstore parking lot.
Luis Andre Montanez, 20, of Miami, was charged late Monday in last week's death of Gertrude Nadel, a retiree.
Police said the purse strap was looped around Nadel's arm and she couldn't get free when Montanez drove off.