Alex Murdaugh has been officially disbarred.
There are also reports circulating that he’s going to be charged with killing his wife and son, but so far those are just “reports”. I’ll try to update if and when an actual indictment is returned.
Update 7/14: The indictment is official.
L.Q. Jones. Beyond “The Wild Bunch” and other Peckinpah films, credits include writing, producing, and directing “A Boy and His Dog”, based on the Harlan Ellison novella.
Adam Wade. Other credits include “B.J. and the Bear”, “The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo”, and “Come Back Charleston Blue”.
Tony Sirico. THR. Other credits include “Goodfellas”, “Police Squad!” (“In Color!”), and “Jersey Shore Shark Attack”.
Lenny Von Dohlen. “Tender Mercies” is a swell movie, and you should watch it if you haven’t. Other credits include “The Equalizer”, “Walker, Texas Ranger”, and multiple appearances on “The Pretender”.
Susie Steiner. This is kind of sad. She was a British novelist who broke out in 2016 with a crime novel, “Missing, Presumed” that got a lot of attention.
Around that time, she was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa and gradually went legally blind. She wrote two more novels, “Persons Unknown” and “Remain Silent” in the same series as “Missing, Presumed” (featuring Manon Bradshaw). In 2019, she was diagnosed with “glioblastoma, grade 4”, which eventually killed her.
Bill J. Allen. I hadn’t heard of him, but I wanted to highlight the obit because I find it interesting.
Mr. Allen was an Alaskan businessman.
As the president and chief executive of the Veco Corporation, an engineering and services company he co-founded in 1968, Mr. Allen sat at the intersection of Alaska’s vast oil industry and the equally vast political interests arrayed around it.
He specialized in greasing the connections between the two, shuffling money into the coffers of friendly politicians, who in turn kept companies like Veco flush with work. By the early 2000s, Veco was the largest Alaska-owned and Alaska-based company, with 3,500 employees, 18 subsidiaries and $400 million in annual revenue.
He allegedly threw around a lot of money to get his way.
Eventually he and one of his vice presidents, Rick Smith, settled into an almost comically corrupt arrangement with a coterie of state politicians.They regularly booked a suite at the Westmark Baranof, a luxury Art Deco hotel four blocks from the State Capitol in Juneau, where they dished out money and told their visitors what they wanted in return.
Mr. Allen and his circle seemed to revel in their shamelessness. He and Mr. Smith always booked Suite 604, and Mr. Allen always sat in the same chair. He bragged that he kept $100 bills in his front pocket, the easier to dole them out to friendly politicians. The girlfriend of one politician even had hats embroidered with the letters CBC, for “Corrupt Bastards Club.”
The Feds wiretapped the room and eventually came down on them. Mr. Allen was also alleged to have sexually assaulted underage girls, though as far as I can tell he was never charged with any criminal offense related to this.
Mr. Allen became the government’s key witness in a string of corruption and bribery cases against state and federal politicians, several of whom were convicted.
The most prominent of them, Senator Ted Stevens, was indicted in 2008 on charges that he had failed to register a series of gifts from Mr. Allen, notably an extensive renovation of the senator’s home south of Anchorage.
The two had been friends — they even owned a racehorse together — but that didn’t prevent Mr. Allen from providing critical testimony against the senator, telling the jury that Mr. Stevens had used an intermediary to ask him not to send a bill for the renovation.
As you may know, Bob, Senator Stevens was convicted and lost his re-election bid. As you may also know, Bob, three months after he was convicted, it came out that the government had witheld potentially exculpatory evidence (“including an interview in which Mr. Allen said he had never spoken with Mr. Stevens’s intermediary“) from Mr. Stevens’s defense team, the charges were dropped, and Mr. Stevens was killed in a plane crash in 2010.
I wanted to break this out from the others for reasons.
Jeffrey Richardson, an officer with the Poteet Police Department, was killed yesterday.
Poteet is a small city near San Antonio. According to reports, Officer Richardson was working an off-duty job in a construction zone near the Domain in Austin when he was struck and killed by a possibly impaired driver.
This one goes out to Lawrence:
Betty Rowland was 106 when she passed on April 3rd. Her death was not widely reported until recently.
John Visentin, the CEO of Xerox. He was 59, and passed due to “complications from an ongoing illness” according to a company statement.
Sonny Barger, founder of the Hells Angels. Cancer got him at 83.
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Barger was sentenced to 10 years to life behind bars in 1973 after he was convicted of possession of narcotics and a weapon by a convicted felon.
He was paroled in November 1977 after serving four-and-a-half years of his sentence, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported.
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Barger was convicted of conspiracy in October 1988 and was sentenced to four years in jail.
He was released from FCI Phoenix in November 1992 after serving three-and-a-half years behind bars.
Edited to add: NYT obit, which was not up when I originally posted.
This one is short and lazy because I missed the story, while Lawrence is on it like flies on a severed cow’s head in a Damien Hirst installation.
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On June 30, 2020, Dolcefino entered Jordan’s courtroom to question the judge about his lack of action on a series of complaints of public corruption. Dolcefino was wearing a hidden camera to document the interaction.
According to the video evidence, Jordan at first greeted Dolcefino, but then told the reporter he would not answer his questions and threatened to hold him in contempt if he persisted. Moments later, Jordan had Dolcefino shackled and taken to jail.
The following day, television cameras recorded guards ushering Dolcefino back into the courtroom in handcuffs and a jail-issued orange jumpsuit. Jordan then sentenced him to three days in jail and 180 days of probation. After Dolcefino appealed, Jordan added an alcohol monitor and random drug tests to his probation conditions.
Although Jordan maintained he had been holding virtual hearings when Dolcefino entered, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals later overturned Dolcefino’s conviction, writing, “after a review of evidence and arguments, the contempt of court allegation is not supported by the habeas corpus record.”
Last week, I was in Concord, North Carolina (a little outside of Charlotte).
Why?
The Smith and Wesson Collectors Association symposium, of course.
Yes, I did have a great time, thank you very much. No, I can’t talk a lot about what went on at the Symposium, since it is a closed meeting. I don’t think I’m revealing too much by saying there was an interesting presentation on a very early production S&W (serial number five) and another presentation on tracking down old NYPD guns. Not just “was this a NYPD gun?” but who carried it, when they carried it, and even background about the person who carried it.
(Fun fact: at least for the period of time under discussion, there was no such thing as a NYPD “issue” gun. Police officers were responsible for purchasing and providing their own firearms, based on what the department approved. There are some very limited exceptions: the department did have some “loaner” guns for officers whose weapons were being repaired, and some “specialty” guns for certain situations. But generally, if you were a NYPD officer, you bought your gun, it had your shield number engraved on it, and the NYPD kept track of what type of gun and what serial number was used by the officer with that shield number.)
I picked up some paper (S&W instruction sheets and promotional items). I didn’t buy any guns (which legally would have to be shipped to my FFL anyway), though there were a couple that tempted me. Bones, one of my friends in the association had a 638 that he offered me at what I think is a fairly good price. If I hadn’t already bought that Model 38…also, there’s another gun that I have my eye on.
(I’ve been telling people “I have Smith and Wesson tastes, but a Jennings Firearms budget.” I used to say “…a Taurus budget”, but someone pointed out to me that Taurus firearms are getting expensive.)
There are always some folks selling books as well. Generally, it isn’t their main focus, but incidental to the guns/parts/accessories on their table. Another one of my good friends had two Julian Hatcher books on his table that I think were original Samworths. But when I went back, he’d sold both of them to someone else. We did end up having a nice conversation about the Samworths, though: both of us were happy to find another SATPCO fan. (And he’s offered to sell me some of his surplus Samworths.)
Someone else was selling a copy of Elmer Keith’s Safari. For $1,000. But: this copy wasn’t just signed by Elmer Keith, it was signed by Elmer Keith to Bill Jordan, and included letters between the two of them. I can see the associational value justifying the extra $600 or so, if you’re a serious gun book crank.
(The same guy has another book I want, but the price is giving me the leaping fantods. And they weren’t on sale, but there was a guy there who had a couple of books on H.M. Pope to accompany his display: S&W target pistols that had been re-barrelled by Pope. Since I’m already interested in barrel making, that’s another rabbit hole to go down. Fortunately, those prices are more reasonable. Relatively speaking.)
I did get some good barbecue at Jim ‘N Nick’s in Concord. Thing is, it seems like it was more Alabama ‘que instead of Carolina ‘que. But it was still good. As was the chocolate cream pie. And the cheese biscuits were excellent: I’d buy a package of the mix, except shipping costs more than the mix itself. (I didn’t bring any back with me because I wasn’t sure I could fit it in my bags.)
Other than that, food was iffy. The hotel had an excellent free breakfast. Not a “continental breakfast”, but a real hot breakfast with an omelet and waffle station, eggs, biscuits and gravy, and etcetera. The hotel restaurant, on the other hand, didn’t have any wait staff: you had to order at the bar and a runner would bring the food out to you. And it honestly was not very good food.
Traditionally, there’s a “cocktail party” (which is really more like a full-blown dinner buffet, complete with prime rib carving station) and a sit-down banquet two nights during the symposium, so I didn’t go out those nights. My other meal out was at a Jason’s Deli with a bunch of my friends from the S&WCA so we could talk shop about some projects we’re working on.
I really didn’t do any touristy stuff. The convention runs Thursday through Saturday, and I spent all of that time gawking at guns and catching up with my friends. Sometimes there’s an excursion arranged as part of the Symposium, if there’s a point of interest nearby, but not in this case. Sunday was the only day I had free to explore. And I didn’t have a car. I looked into renting one just for Sunday, but that was so difficult I gave up the idea.
As it turns out, the hotel in Concord was almost right on top of Charlotte Motor Speedway. Apple Maps has it as two minutes (.5 miles) by car, and I could see the lights of the speedway from my (second floor) room. There is a tour offered, but it wasn’t available on that Sunday. Hendrick Motorsports is big in the area (the hotel is almost literally surrounded by various Hendrik auto dealerships). Their facility was also close to the hotel, and apparently used to offer tours: “Campus remains temporarily closed to the public.”
(It isn’t that I’m a huge NASCAR fan: I try to keep up with the sport as a background process, but not seeing the speedway or the Hendrik campus didn’t break my heart. On the other hand, I really enjoy going to obscure places even if they may not line up with my current interests: you never know when you’ll come out of a new place with another rabbit hole to go down.)
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a long Smith and Wesson related to-do list to work on. Only 363 days until the next Symposium.
Remember Andrew Gillum? Ran against Ron DeSantis in 2018? Crystal meth?
The 21-count indictment, which was unsealed Wednesday following his arrest, accuses Gillum and another associate, Sharon Janet Lettman-Hicks, with conspiracy, wire fraud and making false statements, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.
Federal prosecutors allege that between 2016 and 2019, Gillum and Lettman-Hicks, a consultant and one of Gillum’s closest advisers, solicited and obtained money from people “through false and fraudulent promises and representations that the funds would be used for a legitimate purpose,” according to the news release. Instead, that money was diverted to a company owned by Lettman-Hicks, who paid Gillum “disguised as payroll payments … for his personal use.”
Since the indictment is fresh (thanks to Mike the Musicologist for letting me know about it) there’s not a whole lot more information beyond that. If I see any interesting updates, I’ll add them here.
Two interesting obits from the NYT for somewhat obscure people:
Jim Murphy. He specialized in history books for kids.
I’m a little old to be his target audience, but the books on yellow fever and the “blue baby” operation sound right up my alley.
Oris Buckner. He was a homicide detective with the New Orleans Police Department in the 1980s – the only black homicide detective at the time.
Then things went to hell. Briefly (the obit goes into more details) other homicide detectives beat witnesses to the killing of a police officer until they implicated two men, then killed both men, along with the girlfriend of one.
Mr. Buckner testified against the other officers. The local grand jury refused to indict them, but seven officers were eventually charged with federal civil rights violations. Three were convicted and sentenced to five years.
Yesterday was one of those “Day For Yourself” days that my company has been granting since the recent unpleasantness began. In my case, I used a large chunk of it to go down and renew my DBA for Low Fat Heavy Industries, which was a less than fun experience. (The people in the assumed names/corporate filings branch of the county clerk’s office were awesome. The problem was that the county clerk’s office has a horrible shortage of parking: it took me longer to find a parking space than it did to get the DBA renewed. And this is not downtown: the county clerk’s office is located near where Airport hits I-35.)
So I missed covering this yesterday, but I’m only a little behind: Harry Sidhu resigned as mayor of Anaheim. He still hasn’t been charged with anything.
Also resigning:
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That’s Todd Ament, former head of the Chamber of Commerce, aka “Cooperating Witness #2”. (Previously.)
This is one of the oddest hyena watches I’ve ever done. One reason is that I’ve never seen someone accused of “illegal registration of a helicopter”. (As we will see, there’s slightly more to the story than that.)
The city of Anaheim sold land to the Los Angeles Angels for a new stadium. There’s already been one issue with the land sale violating California affordable housing law.
Now, the state attorney general has asked a court to put the deal on hold. Why?
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Okay, so we’ve got obstruction of justice and witness tampering, as well as bribery. I’m guessing the false statements probably involve lying to the Feds. As for the fraud:
Where does the helicopter come in?
The evidence, according to the affidavit, also showed Sidhu pursued an Arizona address to register his helicopter, despite the fact that he lived in Anaheim and based the helicopter out of Chino.
Had he registered the helicopter in California, he would have owed $15,888 in sales tax. Had he registered the helicopter in Arizona, he would have owed a $1,025 vehicle tax.
I’d tend to call that “tax fraud” myself, though I also have trouble throwing stones at someone who tries to lower their tax bill (especially in California).
It should be noted that:
The other odd aspect of this story is that I got tipped off to it by Field of Schemes. Neil deMause is a little more to the left than I’d like, but we find common ground in being opposed to giving tax dollars to sports franchises. This is the first actual political corruption story I’ve ever picked up from him, so take a bow, Mr. deMause.
Edited to add 5/18: Well, we have an actual indictment. But not against Mayor Sidhu: against Todd Ament, the former head of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce.
According to federal officials, Ament – with the assistance of an unnamed political consultant who federal officials describe as a partner at a national public relations firm – devised a scheme to launder proceeds intended for the Chamber through the PR firm into Ament’s bank account, authorities say.
Federal officials say Ament and the PR consultant defrauded a cannabis company that believed it was paying $225,000 for a task force that would craft favorable legislation regarding cannabis.
The way I’m reading this, the charges against Mr. Ament aren’t directly related to Mayor Sidhu or the land deal: but the Feds had Mr. Ament nailed on those charges, and used them as leverage to flip Mr. Ament, who is strongly believed (based on poor document redaction) to be “Cooperating Witness #2” in the Sidhu affidavit.
Fred Ward. Damn.
Credits include the titular character in “Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins”, “Sgt. Hoke Moseley” in “Miami Blues”, “Quincy M.E.”, “Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann”, “Tremors”, “The Right Stuff”, and “Det. Harry Philip Lovecraft” in “Cast A Deadly Spell”.
Bruce MacVittie. Other credits include “Waterfront”, “Homicide: Life on the Street”, “Spenser: For Hire” and “The Equalizer”.
Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, head of state of the U.A.E. As always, don’t look to me for geo-political takes, as I know nothing.
I have not found a good obit yet, but Randy Weaver apparently passed away. Here’s Reason‘s take.
That sniper was Lon Horiuchi. Lon Horiuchi murdered Vicki Weaver.
The RRTF report to the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) of June 1994 stated unequivocally in conclusion (in its executive summary) that the rules that allowed the second shot to have been made did not satisfy constitutional standards for legal use of deadly force. The 1996 report of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Government Information, Arlen Specter [R-PA], chair, concurred, with Senator Dianne Feinstein [D-CA] dissenting. The RRTF report said that the lack of a request by the marshals to the Weavers to surrender was “inexcusable.” Harris and the two Weavers were not believed to be an imminent threat (since they were reported as running for cover without returning fire).
The later Justice task force criticized Horiuchi for firing through the door, when he did not know if anyone was on the other side of it. While there is a dispute as to who approved the rules of engagement which Horiuchi followed, the task force condemned the rules of engagement that allowed shots to be fired without a request for surrender.
I know this sounds like the setup to a joke, but it isn’t: Ric Parnell has passed away.
Mr. Parnell was perhaps best known as “Mick Shrimpton”, one of Spinal Tap’s many drummers.
Mr. Birney’s theater career began in earnest in 1965, when he won the Barter Theater Award, enabling him to spend a season acting in shows at the prestigious Barter Theater in Abingdon, Va. He moved on to the Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut, and in 1967 he played Antipholus of Syracuse in a New York Shakespeare Festival production of “A Comedy of Errors.”
Mr. Birney made his Broadway debut two years later in Molière’s “The Miser.” And in 1971 he starred in a Broadway production of J.M. Synge’s “The Playboy of the Western World” at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. Mr. Birney played Christy Mahon, who enters an Irish pub in the early 1900s telling a story about killing his father.
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He also did a lot of TV work, including a recurring role on the first season of “St. Elsewhere”. Credits other than “Bridget Loves Bernie” include one of the spin-offs of a minor SF TV show from the 1960s, “FBI: The Untold Stories”, the good “Hawaii Five-0”, Serpico on the “Serpico” TV series, “McMillan & Wife”, and “The F.B.I.”
Ron Galella, photographer and historical footnote. He was one of the early “paparazzi” – indeed, it seems to me that he was one before the term came into common use.
He was perhaps most famous for relentlessly photographing Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Mrs. Onassis waged a running court battle with him throughout the 1970s and early ’80s, testifying in one court hearing that he had made her life “intolerable, almost unlivable, with his constant surveillance.” Mr. Galella in turn claimed the right to earn a living by taking pictures of famous people in public places.
In 1972, a judge ordered him to keep 25 feet away from Mrs. Onassis and 30 feet away from her children. A decade later, facing jail time for violating the order — hundreds of times — Mr. Galella agreed never to take another picture of them. And he never did.
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It was a busy weekend, so I’m playing catch-up on a lot of stuff here.
For the record: Naomi Judd. THR.
Klaus Schulze, musician.
Jacques Perrin, French actor. Credits include “Z”, “Cinema Paradiso”, and “The Young Girls of Rochefort”.
Neal Adams, comics guy.
During his Batman run, Adams and writer Dennis O’Neil brought a revolutionary change to the hero and the comics, delivering realism, kineticism and a sense of menace to their storytelling in the wake of the campy Adam West-starring ’60s ABC series and years of the hero being aimed at kiddie readers.
He created new villains for the rogue’s gallery — the Man-Bat and Ra’s al Ghul as well as the latter’s daughter, Talia, who became Batman’s lover. The father and daughter, played by Liam Neeson and Marion Cotillard, were key characters in the trilogy of Batman movies directed by Christopher Nolan.
Joanna Barnes. Beyond “Parent Trap” and “Auntie Mame”, she had a fair number of 70s TV credits, including “The Name of the Game”, the good “Hawaii 5-0”, “O’Hara, U.S. Treasury”, “McCloud” (and, interestingly, “Cool Million”, a short-lived show in the “Mystery Movie” wheel), “Quincy M.E.”…
…and “Mannix”. (“Fear I to Fall“, season 2, episode 12.)
Jossara Jinaro. Credits other than “ER” include “Doctor Who: Alternate Empire” and “The Devil’s Rejects”.
Rachelle Zylberberg, aka “Régine“, disco entrepreneur. At one point, she supposedly owned 23 clubs. (“Some of her clubs, she explained, were franchises owned by local entrepreneurs who paid up to $500,000 and gave her cuts of the action to use her name.”)
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Saluting Bastille Day in New York, the patriots included Gov. Hugh L. Carey, Ethel Kennedy, Margaux Hemingway, Elizabeth Taylor and John Warner (at the time, the chairman of the United States Bicentennial Commission), and Senator George S. McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate.
“If anyone had second thoughts about celebrating an event that theoretically ended the privileged class, in a room some 40 times as crowded as the Bastille dungeon on that fateful day, no one made them audible,” The New York Times reported. “To be fair, it was somewhat difficult to make anything other than isolated words audible.”
Kathy Boudin is burning in Hell. Peter Paige, Edward J. O’Grady, and Waverly L. Brown were unavailable for comment.
Oh, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Don’t ever change.
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Detailing an ongoing criminal probe of the leak, Villanueva displayed a poster with large photographs of Tchekmedyian, his political rival Eli Vera and sheriff’s Inspector General Max Huntsman with arrows pointing from the two men to the reporter.
“The three individuals that we want to know a lot about,” Villanueva said. “These three people have some important questions to answer.”
Villanueva exhibited a list of possible felonies under investigation, including conspiracy, burglary and unauthorized use of a database. When pressed by reporters on whether he was investigating Tchekmedyian specifically, the sheriff replied, “All parties to the act are subjects of the investigation.”
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At 6:46 p.m., Villanueva issued a statement reacting to what he called an “incredible frenzy of misinformation being circulated.”
“I must clarify at no time today did I state an L.A. Times reporter was a suspect in a criminal investigation,” he said. “We have no interest in pursuing, nor are we pursuing, criminal charges against any reporters.”
All of this is over a video that got leaked, showing a deputy kneeling on an inmate’s head for three minutes.