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Here’s the rest of Snopes:

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Origins: On 6 January 2007, Knoxville, Tennessee, residents Christopher Newsom, Jr., 23, and Channon Christian, 21, went out for a dinner date at a local restaurant, then headed to a friend’s house to watch a movie. They never came back.

When the couple had failed to return by the following morning, their parents notified police. Christopher Newsom’s body was found near some railroad tracks in East Knoxville that afternoon, but Channon Christian remained missing. A trace run on Channon’s cell phone helped authorities locate her abandoned vehicle the next day, and fingerprints raised from an envelope inside the automobile led police to the residence of 25-year-old Lemaricus Devall “Slim” Davidson, where they discovered Channon’s body wrapped in a blanket.

The details of the crime as they emerged in the press were horrific. News account said that carjackers had taken Channon’s vehicle at gunpoint, bound and blindfolded the couple, and transported them to Davidson’s residence. At that location, Christopher was raped (in front of Channon) by multiple assailants, his penis was cut off, he was shot multiple times, his body was set on fire, and, finally, his corpse was taken away and dumped alongside railroad tracks. With Christopher out of the way, the perpetrators next focused their depravity on Channon. Over the ensuing two days, they beat her, gang-raped her, urinated upon her, cut off one of her breasts (while she was still alive), and poured bleach down her throat. As with Christopher, they finished up by shooting her multiple times and setting her body on fire, but instead of dumping her corpse elsewhere, they wrapped it in a blanket and stuffed it into a trash can which was left inside the residence.

(This is the version of the crime initially presented in press accounts. Subsequent reports have contradicted some of the details, chiefly that neither Newsom nor Christian was mutilated as described, that Christian was killed within a day of the kidnapping rather than being held captive for four days, and that cleaning solution was poured into Christian’s mouth post-mortem to eliminate DNA evidence rather than as a form of torture.)

Five suspects have since been arrested and charged with the murders of Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian (and related crimes). Davidson, along with his brother, Letalvis “Rome” Cobbins (24), and George Geovonni “Detroit” Thomas (27), have all been indicted on a total of 46 counts each: 16 counts of felony murder, 2 counts of premeditated murder, 2 counts of especially aggravated robbery, 4 counts of especially aggravated kidnapping, 20 counts of aggravated rape, and 2 counts of theft. Vanessa Coleman (18), has been indicted on a total of 40 counts: 12 counts of felony murder, 1 count of premeditated murder, 1 count of especially aggravated robbery, 4 counts of especially aggravated kidnapping, 20 counts of aggravated rape, and 2 counts of theft. Eric DeWayne “E” Boyd (34) was not indicted and faces federal charges only as an accessory after the fact. All five suspects are currently awaiting trial.

Some commentators (as cited in the example reproduced above) have made much of the fact that the bulk of the news reportage about the Newsom/Christian murders has been local (predominantly in Tennessee, where the crimes took place, and in neighboring Kentucky), while the case has received little or no national coverage by major news outlets — a phenomenon attributed to supposedly biased news media loath to report black-on-white crime. (Both Christian and Newsom were white; all five of the suspects arrested in connection with their killings are black.)

However, the notion that every major news outlet in the U.S. (all of them competitive, profit-making businesses) has conspired to ignore what would otherwise be a compelling national story is rather implausible. A more rational explanation might be found in the sober observation that murders — even decidedly horrific murders — are unfortunately too frequent an occurrence in the U.S. for all of them to garner national attention. The cases that do tend to attract prolonged, nationwide coverage are ones exhibiting a combination of factors (e.g., scandal, mystery, sexual elements, celebrity involvement, shockingly large numbers of deaths, victims who especially elicit sympathy) that make 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, and the celebrity trial to determine whether actress Lana Clarkson committed suicide or was killed by reclusive record producer Phil Spector.

And, of course, the fact that the victims were white and the (presumed) killer black didn’t stop the O.J. Simpson murder trial from becoming the most media-covered event in the history of jurisprudence.

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Note: “(This is the version of the crime initially presented in press accounts. Subsequent reports have contradicted some of the details, chiefly that neither Newsom nor Christian was mutilated as described, that Christian was killed within a day of the kidnapping rather than being held captive for four days, and that cleaning solution was poured into Christian’s mouth post-mortem to eliminate DNA evidence rather than as a form of torture.)”