Compiled from staff and wire reports

One arrest solves 44 break-ins, police say

The arrest of one short, thin man has helped solve 44 break-ins, Cincinnati police say.

Joseph Meyer, escorted around the city by investigators, pointed out places where he admitted he'd been able to squeeze in his 5-foot-tall, 110-pound body, police said Tuesday.

He took laptop computers and other items he could sell quickly, said Detective Brett Gleckler.

"We pulled a lot of reports of open cases and drove him around,'' Gleckler said. "He would say yes or no. He was very cooperative.''

Meyer, 47, of Riverside, has been indicted on three counts of breaking and entering, plus two of burglary.

In some places, he ate food he found inside, police said.

Mental health hearing rescheduled in slaying

HAMILTON - A hearing about future mental-health treatment for Tonda Lynn Ansley, found not guilty by reason of insanity in the slaying of a Miami University professor, has been rescheduled. Additional reports on Ansley's mental state weren't ready on Tuesday.

Butler County Common Pleas Judge Keith Spaeth ordered that Ansley, 37, continue to be held in a locked maximum-security mental facility near Columbus until her June 10 hearing, when he is to determine the "least-restrictive setting" for her continued care.

Three independent experts unanimously agreed Ansley was insane at the time of the July 27 shooting death of Sherry Lee Corbett, 55.

Two workers burned fixing electrical line

WYOMING - Two Cinergy employees suffered minor burns Tuesday while repairing an electric line in the 600 block of Springfield Pike.

Both workers, who were not identified, were treated at University Hospital and released, said Cinergy spokeswoman Kathy Meinke.

One suffered a second-degree burn to the face and the other a first-degree burn to the back of the neck.

The men were trying to restore power to about 1,000 customers following an outage. Power was restored by 3 p.m., Meinke said.

In a separate incident, a problem at a substation shortly before 1 p.m. Tuesday left about 2,600 customers in West Chester without power.

Ex-priest asks abuse victims to forgive him

LOUISVILLE - A retired priest sentenced Tuesday to 20 years in prison for decades of sexually abusing children asked his victims to forgive him and pray for him and said he would "stand before God to be judged later."

The Rev. Louis E. Miller, at the center of a sex-abuse scandal plaguing the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville, said he took responsibility for crimes he blamed on "my own moral sickness."

Miller, 72, pleaded guilty in March in Jefferson County Circuit Court to 44 counts of indecent and immoral practices and six counts of sexual abuse. The 21 victims are now all adults.

He also faces trial in neighboring Oldham County on charges of child sexual abuse. He was a priest for more than 40 years in the Louisville archdiocese until his retirement from public ministry last year.

Similar allegations have been made against priests in Greater Cincinnati, but criminal investigations and civil lawsuits have not yet been resolved.

In Northern Kentucky, a class-action lawsuit accuses the Archdiocese of Covington of doing nothing to stop 21 priests who are accused of abusing more than 150 victims.

Man took his own life in fire, coroner rules

HAMILTON - The Butler County Coroner's Office has ruled that a Reily Township man committed suicide in a car fire Friday - just three weeks after his brother had hanged himself in the Butler County Jail, authorities said.

Joel P. Burton, 36, died as a result of thermal injuries and was also intoxicated at the time of his death, Coroner Dr. Richard P. Burkhardt said Tuesday in a preliminary ruling.

Butler County sheriff's deputies and Reily Township fire and rescue personnel were called to the 5400 block of Stephenson Road on Friday afternoon. Burton had been working on a car there. Sheriff's officials said his mother, Cathy Teeter discovered the fire and partially pulled her son from the vehicle and doused the flames with a garden hose, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Burton's brother, Lawrence E. Burton, 33, of Cambridge, Ohio, was found unconscious in his jail cell May 1 with a bed sheet around his neck. The sheet was attached to a light fixture in his locked, single cell. He was pronounced dead at Fort Hamilton Hospital.

Sheriff's officials said Lawrence Burton had been in the jail for a little more than a month on charges that he violated probation and failed to appear in court on other charges.