text_1: An account accurately describes the rapes and murders of Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian and the reporting thereof.
text_2: However, the fact is that only a tiny handful of the approximately 15,000 homicides that occur in the United States every year makes national news, and the cases that do tend to attract prolonged, nationwide coverage are ones exhibiting a combination of factors absent from the Newsom/Christian case (e.g., scandal, mystery, sexual elements, celebrity involvement, shockingly large numbers of deaths, murders of children and other victims who elicit especial sympathy) that makes them particularly fascinating and compelling to the public at large, such as the still-unsolved murder of 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, the mysterious disappearance (and death) of pregnant Laci Peterson, the massacre of 32 students and faculty at Virginia Tech, the sexually salacious trial of Jodi Arias for stabbing her boyfriend to death, and the celebrity trial to determine whether actress Lana Clarkson committed suicide or was killed by reclusive record producer Phil Spector.