A hitchhiker was forced to walk more than 4km into a forest where she was sexually assaulted and murdered, before her killer took his own life.

Phillip Layton Edwards has today pleaded not guilty to kidnapping a toddler.

Convicted killer Phillip Layton Edwards has appeared in court this afternoon charged with kidnapping a toddler.

A businessman at the centre of a citizen's arrest case has been found guilty of kidnapping but cleared of assault.

A jury is deciding whether a Christchurch drilling boss who detained two thieves caught siphoning fuel did so legally and with reasonable force.

Christchurch jurors waiting for a trial to begin are rudely interrupted by a woman who burst into the jury room and locked herself in the toilet.

A woman who suffered horrific injuries after she was dragged behind a car at high speed has fallen out with her family.

A man wanted by police for child abduction has taken to Facebook to explain why he took the 2-year-old boy from his mother.

Over the noise of a heavy rain, a child's faint cries for help could he heard. Two-year-old Gabriel Witehira-Donnelly was cold and alone in a shed.

Family members of convicted killer Phillip Layton Edwards, who is on the run after allegedly abducting a 2-year-old boy in Auckland yesterday have been asked to phone police if they know where he is hiding out.

Police issue a blunt message to a convicted killer sought over a toddler's alleged kidnapping, as residents are urged to check their properties for signs of someone sleeping rough.

To her patients she was a grandmotherly figure, a kindly 56-year-old doctor who delivered hundreds of children.

A spellbound court watched as a woman who had spent 11 years in chains and had her unborn baby beaten to death inside her declared the beginning of her new life.

A 10-month-old baby is being returned to his mother this afternoon after his Mongrel Mob father allegedly kidnapped him after a domestic dispute in Hastings today.

A man has denied raping a woman during a kidnap but the Crown says he was "10,000,000,000,000,000 times likely" to be a contributor to crucial DNA evidence.

Within 24 hours of buying her new car, Ana Eriepa was being dragged from the back of it at high speed as she tried to escape from the boot after being kidnapped.

International child abduction cases spiked by nearly a quarter in the past year, when 130 children were illegally moved in or out of New Zealand. Most were Kiwi kids taken overseas.

Kate and Gerry McCann have welcomed news that Scotland Yard detectives have identified a number of suspects who could be responsible for their daughter's abduction six years ago.

The annals of criminal history are writ large with ordinary streets that hide dark secrets.

She had her top pulled high to cover her head and she moved in a shield of police. The crowd cheered and surged a little. Cameramen bustled and focused their lenses.

The two horrified daughters of the man charged with raping three women locked in his house for a decade have denounced their father, declaring: "We don't have monster in our blood."

There are a number of cases where young women have been abducted and locked away, but this latest case in Cleveland, where three young women were held captive for more than 10 years, is particularly nasty.

Hands cuffed, his chin buried deep in the collar of his dark blue jumpsuit, Ariel Castro appeared in a Cleveland court yesterday.

Whatever happened to the mythical American neighbourhood, that Rockwellian idyll of friendliness and normality, where no problem cannot be resolved by the community spirit, and nothing nasty ever happens?

Kate McCann did something frighteningly normal recently. She stopped at a petrol station, and went in to pay, leaving her 8-year-old twins strapped in the back seat.

A West Auckland man is facing up to 14 years in jail after he allegedly lied to police about being kidnapped and torching his own mother's car.