Jillian Kramer

A judge on Wednesday morning sentenced Lawrence Hecker to mandatory life in prison, a little more than two weeks after the 93-year-old priest unexpectedly pleaded guilty earlier this month to violently raping a teenage boy nearly 50 years ago in a New Orleans’ church gym.

Though the charges against him stemmed from a single incident in 1975, prosecutors said several men had been prepared to testify at trial that Hecker also sexually abused them.

“This is an organized criminal network” that has executed “coordinated, violent attacks in our community,” Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason William said in a news conference.

The streets of the French Quarter still teemed with New Orleans police officers and Louisiana State Police troopers on Wednesday night. But in other ways, life in this slice of the city seemed untouched.

Some agencies and buildings will be closed Thursday. Here's the latest.

The St Roch fire, believed to be arson, could have been started after Shamsud-Din Jabbar was shot and killed in the French Quarter, the ATF said. Here's how that could work.

In the shadow of armored vehicles and packs of police, a party slowly began to take shape and New Orleans felt like the Big Easy once more: Break dancers spun on the pavement. A woman walked her cat down the street. A jogger stopped to take a selfie by a brass band.

"All I kept thinking about was it could have been me,” Charles Weber, owner of Alibi Bar near Bourbon Street, said. “I kept thinking: I don’t want my 80-year-old mom burying me.”

Police were seen blockading Jackson Square

Len Davis, the notoriously corrupt New Orleans police officer whose death sentence for the killing of a mother was commuted last month to life in prison by President Joe Biden, has filed an emergency injunction asking a federal judge to reinstate the death penalty against him.