Joseph Petcka and Lisa Altobelli

The NY Post reports, Notorious "self-defense" cat killer Joseph Petcka took the witness stand in Manhattan yesterday, describing his victim - Norman, the orange house tabby - as a raging, rearing, growling banshee.
Norman, his girlfriend's little kitty, brought on his own demise by attacking twice - maybe three times - that night in March 2007, Petcka told jurors.
The tall, dashing, out-of-work actor spoke so dramatically about little Norman's angry "stance" - and about how the cat "lunged" and "reared" and "threw me on my butt" - that for 90 minutes of testimony, it was almost possible to forget that Norman was fully declawed and weighed only 7 3/4 pounds. Ex-girlfriend Lisa Altobelli, owner of Norman took the stand yesterday.

Lil Wayne

The AP reports, a police officer said Monday she saw rapper Lil Wayne with a gun on his tour bus last year after a concert.

Officer Diane Hornung testified in a pretrial hearing that she had gotten on the bus on July 22, 2007, because she saw and smelled marijuana smoke wafting from the bus' open door.

Hornung said about 15 people boarded the bus around 11:30 p.m. after the Manhattan concert ended. She said the bus left the site of the concert a few minutes later, and police pulled it over about a dozen blocks away.

Julian Tzolov

The NY Post reports Julian Tzolov, the former Credit Suisse broker who was charged Wednesday with fraudulent sales of auction-rate securities, has returned to the US to face the music.
Tzolov had been in his native Bulgaria, confirmed Jim Margolin, a spokesman for the FBI's New York field office, which arrested Tzolov after he arrived at Kennedy Airport from Munich around 2 p.m. yesterday.

The photograph shows him entering the offices of the FBI at 26 Federal Plaza.

Dr. Robin Motz

Laura Italiano of the NY Post writes, He's $540,000 lighter, and he's legally barred from going anywhere near his mother.
But other than that, not much has changed for disgraced doctor Robin Motz, sentenced in Manhattan yesterday for scamming his 92-year-old mother out of more than $500,000.
Under his June plea deal, Motz, 69 - for 30 years an assistant attending internist at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center - must serve five years of probation and 150 hours community service. But he gets no jail time.

Robert Chambers

One of New York's most bizarre long-term romances played out its latest chapter in a Manhattan courtroom yesterday as "Preppy Killer" Robert Chambers was sentenced to 19 years in prison for heroin possession.
There, winking and smiling at him from the gallery, on leave from a residential drug rehab program in The Bronx, sat Shawn Kovell - bottle-blonde and buxom in a clingy black top. NY Post reporter Laura Ilaliano reports the story.