Polish crime novelist Krystian Bala has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the 2000 abduction, torture and murder of a man he believed was having an affair with his estranged wife. A key piece of the prosecution's case: Bala's 2003 novel in which a character abducts, tortures and murders his victim in almost an identical manner.

The novel was not, by the way, titled If I Did It.

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Police in Hampshire, England, probably won't have much trouble convicting the man who tried to burglarize a builder's yard: It's useful when a thief leaves behind a fingerprint – thanks to a razor wire fence, this guy left behind a whole finger.

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