• "Police removed a large suitcase filled with human remains from a rowhouse in South Philadelphia yesterday." The case has not been ruled a homicide. The older man living in the rowhouse is being cooperative and is apparently not connected to the suitcase. The suspicion is that the remains may be those of a baby reported missing in Baltimore several months ago. An autopsy will be performed today.
• "State Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille has toughened his criticism of Senate Republicans for not acting on four interim appointments to state appellate courts, and dismissed their arguments about diversity as 'misplaced.'"
• A 39-year-old comedian recently contracted pneumonia and died at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility while awaiting trial. An autopsy will be performed tomorrow. Since 2005, at least eight people have died at the Delaware County jail, which is the state's only privately run jail. Several of those deaths resulted in lawsuits by family members who say the facility did not provide adequate medical care or proper supervision for inmates.
• "Additional resources and manpower added this year have already helped the city reduce its emergency medical response time by more than a minute per call, Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers said yesterday."
• We didn't even know there were constables in America, but apparently there's one in West Conshohocken who's been bad. His name is Michael Solow, he's 67 years old, and he's accused of illegally evicting a West Conshohocken family from its home and searching a Horsham residence without a warrant. Both incidents occurred in early August, according to prosecutors.
• Two local descendants of John Wilkes Booth—Joanne Hulme of Philadelphia's Kensington section, and her sister, Virginia Kline of Warminster—believe that Booth was not actually killed during the attempt at apprehending him for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and that instead he escaped and lived to a ripe old age, while another man was shot and killed in his place. They hope to prove their theory by comparing their DNA with that of the man who was killed; the latter is contained in specimens at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia and National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington.

Photo of John Wilkes Booth from the National Archives, via Flickr user moosevlt