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Obit watch: February 12, 2021.

Friday, February 12th, 2021

I planned to post this last night, but we had multiple power outages through the day yesterday (as other people have noted, it is cold here: right now, my phone is calling for a low of 10 on Sunday and a low of 3 (yes, THREE) on Monday), the last one lasting until well into the evening.

So I’m playing catch-up today.

The NYT got around to publishing a respectful obit for James Gunn yesterday.

Chick Corea, jazz guy.

In 2006 he was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, the highest honor available to an American jazz musician.

In case you were wondering, I believe this is the complete list.

Lawrence sent over an obit for Leslie Robertson, structural engineer for the World Trade Center.

Mr. Robertson designed the structural systems of several notable skyscrapers, including the Shanghai World Financial Center, a 101-story tower with a vast trapezoidal opening at its peak, and I.M. Pei’s Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, a cascade of interlocking pyramids. His projects included bridges, theaters and museums, and he helped install sculptures by Richard Serra, some weighing as much as 20 tons.
But the project that came to define his career was the World Trade Center. He was in his early 30s and something of an upstart when he and his partner, John Skilling, were chosen to design the structural system for what were to be the time, at 110 stories, the world’s tallest buildings. He was in his 70s when the towers were destroyed.

…

“The responsibility for the design ultimately rested with me,” Mr. Robertson told The New York Times Magazine after the towers were destroyed. He added: “I have to ask myself, Should I have made the project more stalwart? And in retrospect, the only answer you can come up with is, Yes, you should have.”
He conceded that he had not considered the possibility of fire raging through the buildings after a plane crash. But he also said that that was not part of the structural engineer’s job, which involves making sure that buildings resist forces like gravity and wind. “The fire safety systems in a building fall under the purview of the architect,” he said.
In an interview in 2009 in his Lower Manhattan office, Mr. Robertson wiped away tears as he recalled the victims of 9/11. He talked about the family members who had come to see him, hoping he could say something to help them with their grief. But he also said he was proud of the design of the twin towers.

…

According to Mr. Robertson, the buildings had been designed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707, but the planes flown into the towers were heavier 767s. And his calculations had been based on the initial impact of the plane; they did not take into account the possibility of what he called a “second event,” like a fire.
When the planes struck the towers, they sliced through the steel frames, but the buildings remained standing. Many engineers concluded that conventionally framed buildings would have collapsed soon after impact. The twin towers stood long enough to allow thousands of people to escape.
But the fire from the burning jet fuel raged on. The floor trusses lost strength as they heated up, and they began to sag. The floors eventually began pulling away from the exterior columns before the buildings fell. A total of 2,753 people were killed, including 343 firefighters.
Mr. Robertson said he received hate mail after 9/11. But on a flight to Toronto one day, an airline employee gave him an unexpected upgrade to first class. When he asked for an explanation, he recalled in the 2009 interview, the employee said, “I was in Tower 2, and I walked out.”

The infamous Larry Flynt. As my mother said, “I thought he was dead already.”

S. Clay Wilson, underground cartoonist. I went back and forth on whether I wanted to include Mr. Flynt and Mr. Wilson, but I decided that Mr. Flynt’s celebrity was too great to ignore. As for Mr. Wilson, you have to like a guy who says:

“I’m just a big kid,” Mr. Wilson told him. “I like toys, firearms and hats.”

Finally, also by way of Lawrence, British actor Harry Fielder, who was in pretty much every darn thing in Britain, passed away February 6th. Seriously, his IMDB entry has 279 credits as “actor” (though it looks like many of those were small roles).

Posted in Books, History, Law, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 9, 2021.

Tuesday, February 9th, 2021

This just in: Marty Schottenheimer, NFL coach.

Schottenheimer coached the original Cleveland Browns from midway through the 1984 season to 1988, the Kansas City Chiefs from 1989 to 1998, the Washington Redskins in 2001 (the team dropped that name last July) and the San Diego Chargers from 2002 to 2006.
His teams went 200-126-1 over all, and he was named the 2004 N.F.L. coach of the year by The Associated Press when his Chargers went 12-4 after finishing the previous season at 4-12. But they were upset by the Jets in the first round of the playoffs.
Schottenheimer’s squads had a 5-13 record in playoff games.

Mary Wilson, of the Supremes.

Joe Allen, NYC restaurateur. Noted here because he was the guy who hung posters of Broadway flops on the wall of Joe Allen’s.

Ron Wright, Texas Congressman. (District 6, which is in North Texas.)

By way of Lawrence, a burning in Hell watch: Anthony Sowell, Ohio serial killer.

Posted in Law, Music, NFL, Obits, Politics, Sports, Texas | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 311

Friday, February 5th, 2021

As I’ve said before, I don’t like using TV shows here unless it is a short video to make a point, or a documentary series.

I’m fuzzing things a bit here, but I think it is justified. Also, it pushes some of my buttons.

Between 1962 and 1963, there was a television series called “GE True“. It was called “GE True” because it was sponsored by General Electric, and featured stories from True magazine that were adapted for television. Gene Roddenberry was one of the scriptwriters, and the series was produced and hosted by Jack Webb. Webb directed some of the episodes: some others were directed by William Conrad.

It was 25 minutes long (though some episodes were multi-part ones) and there were 33 total episodes. A small number of episodes have been uploaded to the ‘Tube.

I’ve written before about Earl Rogers, Clarence Darrow, and the LA Times jury bribery trial. From “GE True”, original airdate January 13, 1963, “Defendant: Clarence Darrow”. Robert Vaughn plays Earl Rogers, and Tol Avery (a prolific actor I was previously unfamiliar with: for the record, he appeared three times on “Mannix” before his death in 1973) plays Darrow.

Bonus #1: “V-Victor-5”, co-written by Gene Roddenberry. On a hot summer day in NYC in 1933, a lone off-duty NYPD officer in the days before radio cars, and surrounded by a hostile crowd, holds five armed and dangerous fugitives at gunpoint until backup arrives…two hours later.

(I know the YouTube title says “Commando”, but this one is really “V-Victor-5”. Also, there’s a punchline at the end that I won’t spoil for you.)

Bonus #2: “Commando”.

Oh, wait. Wrong “Commando”. Sorry. This is the right one.

“In 2013 the Jack Webb Fan Club of Los Angeles started a campaign to get the series released on DVD.”

Yes, please!

Posted in Cops, History, Law, Mannix, NYPD, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 3, 2021.

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2021

Eugenio Martinez has passed away at the age of 98.

His death, at his daughter’s home near Orlando, was announced by Brigade 2506, a veterans group of Mr. Martinez’s fellow anti-Communist Cuban exiles. Their abortive invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 to overthrow the government headed by Fidel Castro was covertly supported by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mr. Martinez was the last surviving Watergate burglar.

In January 1973 four of the five burglars — members of the so-called plumbers, an informal White House team assigned to plug information leaks — pleaded guilty so as to avoid revealing details of the bungled operation. They were convicted of conspiracy, theft and wiretapping.
The others, also Cuban-born, were Bernard L. Barker, a former Miami real estate agent and C.I.A. operative, who died in 2009; Virgilio González, a Miami locksmith, who died in 2014; and Frank A. Sturgis, a soldier of fortune, who died in 1993. (In 1971, the four had taken part in the break-in at the Los Angeles office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department analyst who disclosed the Pentagon papers to the press.)

E. Howard Hunt, who allegedly recruited them, served 31 months in prison.

They were led by James W. McCord Jr., a security coordinator for the Nixon campaign whose confession to the judge just before his sentencing precipitated the revelations of White House crimes and cover-ups that culminated in Nixon’s resignation in 1974. For aiding prosecutors in pursuing senior presidential aides in the scandal, Mr. McCord had his one-to-five-year sentence cut to less than four months.

…

In 1983, after his requests for clemency had been rejected by Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter, Mr. Martinez — who, it turned out, had still been on retainer to the C.I.A. at the time of the Watergate break-in — was pardoned by President Ronald Reagan.
The pardon, which was granted because Mr. Martinez had been regarded as the least culpable of the defendants, restored his right to vote. Despite the ordeal, he prided himself on one Watergate keepsake — a golden lucky clover inscribed, in Spanish, with the words “Good luck, Richard Nixon.”

Posted in History, Law, Nixon, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 301

Tuesday, January 26th, 2021

I would call this “True Crime Tuesday” but there’s some other jerkface out there who does that already.

I did think it might be fun to do some stuff at the intersection of crime and art.

“The Mystery Conman – The Murky Business of Counterfeit Antiques”.

Bonus: “Stealing the Mona Lisa”.

Posted in Art, History, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 25, 2021.

Monday, January 25th, 2021

Jimmie Rodgers, crossover singer probably most famous for “Honeycomb”.

Mr. Rodgers was a regular presence on the pop, country, R&B and easy listening charts for a decade after “Honeycomb,” with records that included “Oh-Oh, I’m Falling in Love Again” (1958) and “Child of Clay” (1967), both of which were nominated for Grammy Awards.

Then something happened.

Mr. Rodgers said he was under consideration for a featured role in the 1968 movie musical “Finian’s Rainbow” when the encounter on the freeway derailed his career. In his telling, he was driving home late at night when the driver behind him flashed his lights. He thought it was his conductor, who was also driving to Mr. Rodgers’s house, and pulled over.
“I rolled the window down to ask what was the matter,” he told The Toronto Star in 1987. “That’s the last thing I remember.”
He ended up with a fractured skull and broken arm. He said the off-duty officer who had pulled him over called two on-duty officers to the scene, but all three scattered when his conductor, who went looking for Mr. Rodgers when he hadn’t arrived home, drove up.
The police told a different story: They said Mr. Rodgers had been drunk and had injured himself when he fell. Mr. Rodgers sued the Los Angeles Police Department, prompting a countersuit; the matter was settled out of court in his favor to the tune of $200,000.

…

Three brain surgeries followed, and he was left with a metal plate in his head. He eventually resumed performing, and even briefly had his own television show, but he faced constant difficulties. For a time he was sidelined because he started having seizures during concerts.
“Once word gets out that you’re having seizures onstage, you can’t work,” he told The News Sentinel of Knoxville, Tenn., in 1998. “People won’t hire you.”
Mr. Rodgers was found to have spasmodic dysphonia, a disorder characterized by spasms in the muscles of the voice box, a condition he attributed to his brain injury. Yet he later settled into a comfortable niche as a performer and producer in Branson, Mo., the country music mecca, where he had his own theater for several years before retiring to California in 2002.

Posted in California Über Alles, Cops, Law, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 284

Saturday, January 9th, 2021

Do I do food today, or true crime? I think true crime, because I’ve done a lot of food this week.

“One Last Job: The Unlikely Story Behind the Hatton Garden Heist”.

According to official sources, the total stolen had an estimated value of up to £14 million, of which only £4.3 million has been recovered.

This is also fairly short: only about 22 minutes.

Bonus: “The Gang Who Tried to Steal the World’s Largest Perfect Diamond”.

There’s a guy named Dan Howland who used to publish a acclaimed ‘zine called “The Journal of Ride Theory”. It was sort of a parody of academic journals, but dealt with amusement park and carnival rides. At least that’s the best way I can describe it. I missed the ‘zine when it was at its peak, but you can still get copies (including an omnibus book) from Lulu. At some point I ordered that: it may have been a package deal because I also got his amusing one-off, “Dome and Domer: The Increasingly Stupid Story of the Millennium Dome”.

For those unfamiliar with the Millennium Dome (and Howland does it much better justice than the Wikipedia entry) it was built to house the “Millennium Experience”, a one-year exhibition that ran from 1/1/2000 to 12/31/2000. It was also a legendary fiasco. (Three words: “robotic pubic lice“.)

Anyway, that was where I first heard about the Millennium Dome Heist, in which an inept group of crooks tried to steal diamonds from De Beers exhibition in the Dome, but were foiled by the Yard’s Flying Squad.

(Isn’t “Flying Squad” one of the best names for a police unit ever? Admit it, you want to be able to say “I’m part of the Flying Squad”.)

Okay, enough digression.

I have no joke here, I just like saying “this here’s a gun powder activated, 27 caliber, full auto, no kickback, nail-throwing mayhem“.

Posted in History, Law | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 277

Saturday, January 2nd, 2021

The other day, I was at Half-Price Books, and found a first edition first printing of One Ranger (affiliate link) signed by both authors for $10, which is a heck of a find. I’ve written before about this book, and I won’t repeat myself here.

But it did get me thinking about the Texas Rangers.

I still have not seen “The Highwaymen”. It isn’t out yet on DVD or blu-ray, I refuse to subscribe to NetFlix, and I haven’t gotten up enough motivation to hoist the black flag.

But I do love this scene, both for the obvious reason and because there’s a limited amount of Woody Harrelson.

No, that wasn’t today’s video.

“Doing Justice to Pancho Hamer” part 1:

Part 2:

“Captain Frank Hamer and his go to firearms.”

This guy says that Frank Hamer did not use the Remington Model 8 to dispatch Bonnie and Clyde (they were used in the ambush, just not by Ranger Hamer):

I know I’ve mentioned him before, but Jeff Guinn in Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde (affiliate link) agrees with that guy, and says Ranger Hamer used a Colt Monitor machine rifle. On the other hand, John Boessenecker in Texas Ranger: The Epic Life of Frank Hamer, the Man Who Killed Bonnie and Clyde (ditto) asserts that Hamer used the Model 8. My problem with this is that Boessenecker’s sources amount to:

  • A photo of the posse’s weapons taken shortly after the shooting that shows one BAR. (I do not believe Boessenecker reproduced that photo in his book.)
  • A footnote in which Boessenecker attacks Guinn’s scolarship and sources, but does not offer any sources of his own.
  • Boessenecker claims that the Monitor in the Ranger’s museum did belong to Hamer but there is “no evidence” it was used in the ambush. But he also admits that Hamer’s rifle in the museum could not have been used in the ambush. (It is a Remington Model 81, a successor to the Model 8, that wasn’t manufactured until 1940.)

History doesn’t work on the basis of “which writer we like better”. But given Boessenecker’s (in my opinion) weak sourcing, his tendency to take pot shots at other writers, and the moralizing he inserted into his book…unless somebody shows me a better reliable source, I’m taking Guinn’s side in this dispute.

(It looks to me, watching clips on YouTube, that “The Highwaymen” takes the Boessenecker side.)

For those unfamiliar with the Monitor (which is probably a lot of folks) it was basically a cut-down version of the BAR. Here’s a video from Brownells showing both.

Ian’s also done a video on the Monitor, which includes demo firing.

And one last video for the road, from TFB TV: “John Moses Browning’s Amazing Remington Model 8 Semi-Auto Rifle”.

(Remember, JMB’s birthday is coming up January 23rd. I’ll probably do a thematically appropriate post that day: in the meantime, I encourage you to pick up something designed by JMB if you don’t already have one of his guns. A .45 would be nice if you fall into that category, but an Auto-5/Remington Model 11, a Hi-Power, or a Winchester Model 1894 would be fine choices as well.)

Posted in Guns, History, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 1, 2021.

Friday, January 1st, 2021

Phyllis McGuire, last of the McGuire Sisters.

Ms. McGuire, with her older sisters Christine and Dorothy, shot to success overnight after winning the televised “Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts” contest in 1952. Over the next 15 years, they were one of the nation’s most popular vocal groups, singing on the television variety shows of Ed Sullivan, Milton Berle, Andy Williams and Red Skelton, on nightclub circuits across the country and on records that sold millions.
The sisters epitomized a 1950s sensibility that held up a standard of unreal perfection, wearing identical coifs, dresses and smiles, moving with synchronized precision and blending voices in wholesome songs for simpler times. Their music, like that of Perry Como, Patti Page and other stars who appealed to white, middle-class audiences, contrasted starkly with the rock ’n’ roll craze that was taking the world by storm in the mid-to-late ’50s.

Ms. McGuire was also famously linked aromatically with Sam Giancana. Yes, the mobster.

Ms. McGuire remained unapologetic about her relationship with Mr. Giancana. “Sam was the greatest teacher I ever could have had,” she told Dominick Dunne of Vanity Fair in 1989. “He was so wise about so many things. Sam is always depicted as unattractive. He wasn’t. He was a very nice-looking man. He wasn’t flashy. He didn’t drive a pink Cadillac, like they used to say.”

Richard Thornburgh, former governor of Pennsylvania and Attorney General under Reagan and Bush.

Posted in Law, Music, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 31, 2020.

Thursday, December 31st, 2020

This is a couple of days old, but I missed it until someone mentioned it to me: William Link.

Mr. Link and his partner, Richard Levinson, created a bunch of famous TV series: “Columbo”, “Murder She Wrote”, and, of course, “Mannix”.

Link and Levinson created the character of Lt. Columbo, the cigar-chomping, perpetually underestimated detective, for an episode of the Chevy Mystery Show in 1960. Eight years later, they revisited the character (and the initial story) with a telefilm called Prescription: Murder, which starred Peter Falk as Columbo. It became a regular series in 1971, running for seven years of wealthy and powerful killers thinking themselves a step ahead of Columbo, but always slipping up just enough for the detective to catch them in a lie that cracked the case.

Burning in Hell watch: Samuel Little.

Mr. Little had confessed to having committed 93 murders between 1970 and 2005, at least 50 of which have been verified by law enforcement officers, the F.B.I. said. He had been convicted of at least eight murders, some of which were solved using D.N.A. analysis.
Many of Mr. Little’s victims were marginalized, young Black women who were estranged from their families and struggling with poverty and addiction. In many cases, their deaths did not draw the same level of attention or outrage as other killings.

Posted in Law, Mannix, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 28, 2020.

Monday, December 28th, 2020

Phil Niekro, noted knuckleballer.

A right-hander, like his brother, Phil Niekro (pronounced NEEK-row) threw a total of 5,404 innings, placing him No. 4 on the major league career list, without ever incurring a sore arm, allowing him to endure in Major League Baseball far longer than most other players.
He tied Andy Messersmith in the National League for the most victories in 1974, when he was 20-13, and he tied Joe for the most wins in 1979, when he went 21-20 (also losing the most games in the league). Joe was 21-11 that season with the Houston Astros.
Phil, who retired after the 1987 season, was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1997. But for all of his achievements, he never made it to a World Series, his Braves teams reaching only the National League Championship Series twice, losing both times. Phil pitched for four teams and Joe for seven. They were teammates with the Braves in 1973 and ’74 and briefly with the Yankees in 1985.

Barry Lopez, noted writer.

Reginald Foster, a former plumber’s apprentice from Wisconsin who, in four decades as an official Latinist of the Vatican, dreamed in Latin, cursed in Latin, banked in Latin and ultimately tweeted in Latin, died on Christmas Day at a nursing home in Milwaukee. He was LXXXI.

Finally, Michael Alig is burning in Hell. He was one of the late 80’s NYC “club kids”. But he’s burning in Hell because he killed Andre Melendez.

Mr. Melendez, who was also known as Angel, was missing for months before his dismembered corpse washed up on Staten Island, which is when people began to believe Mr. Alig’s frequent claims that he had killed Mr. Melendez.
They had argued about money one night and, prosecutors and investigators said at the time, Mr. Alig, while under the influence of heroin, had murdered Mr. Melendez and dumped his remains in the Hudson River.
Mr. Alig pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in 1997, as did an accomplice, Robert Riggs. Mr. Alig served 17 years. He was released from prison in 2014 at the age of 48 and was met by friends and supporters.

Posted in Books, Law, Obits, Sports | 1 Comment »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 270

Saturday, December 26th, 2020

364 shopping days until Christmas!

Seriously, do you ever feel like the days are just an oncoming freight train, constantly bearing down on us?

(I am obligated, of course, to point out that, as all people of goodwill know, the Christmas season actually runs through January 6th, and anyone who nags you about leaving your lights and decorations up is a Philistine and not a serious person.)

This is an odd one that didn’t pop up at random: someone on The Drive linked to it in the comments section. I have to apologize that it isn’t in English and doesn’t have subtitles, but I think there’s enough interesting imagery in this to overcome that.

According to the commenter, “Wehrhafte Schweiz / La Suisse vigilante / La Svizzera vigilante” is a 1960s Swiss military propaganda film, originally shot in Cinerama. I think this is a surprisingly good transfer: you might want to watch it on the ‘Tube in full screen mode. You might also want to fast forward past the opening, which is kind of trippy, but (again) does not have English subtitles.

English translation of the YouTube description from Google Translate:

The official doctrine is communicated after a lengthy prologue, which allows different positions on national defense to be heard. A large-scale, combined combat exercise demonstrates the interaction of various branches of weapon.

‘

Bonus: Since that was kind of short (especially if you skip over the tripping beginning), here’s something I didn’t know about previously: Wilson Combat has a YouTube channel.

What makes this interesting is that, starting in October, they started a new series: “Critical Mas(s)” with Massad Ayoob.

I’ve been thinking about my friends in the Austin Citizen’s Police Academy Alumni Association, how much I miss them, and how much I miss the CPA classes (which have been suspended due to the Chinese rabies). So I thought I’d highlight this first one, since it is relevant both to current events and to stuff we discuss in CPA: “Police Use of Deadly Force: Reasonable or Necessary?”

Posted in Cops, Guns, History, Law | Comments Closed

The cold green splendor of that beautiful legal tender…

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2020

This is a little old, but it came across Hacker News Twitter this morning, and I hadn’t seen it previously. From the “CrimeReads” website: “The Rise and Fall of the Bank Robbery Capital of the World“.

Between 1985 and 1995 the approximately 3,500 retail bank branches in the region were hit 17,106 times. 1992, the worst year of all, there was an almost unimaginable 2,641 heists, one every 45 minutes of each banking day. On a particularly bad day for the FBI that year, bandits committed 28 bank licks. There were years during that stretch when the L.A. field office of the FBI, which covers the seven counties in the Los Angeles metro region, handled more cases than the next four regions combined.

The article is by Peter Houlahan, who also wrote Norco ’80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History (previously mentioned in this space).

Summary: why was LA the bank robbery capital of the world? Answer: banks, cars, freeways, and cocaine.

Why did LA stop being the bank robbery capital of the world? Answer: the banks tightened up security (they couldn’t care less about the money that was being taken at gunpoint, but when staff started quitting and filing worker’s comp claims for PTSD, and when customers started suing, that got their attention), and the virtual abolition of parole in the Federal system.

The new guidelines allowed for much longer sentences for simple robbery, with stiff “enhancements” for those involving weapons. More importantly, it mandated a minimum of 85% of a sentence be served before eligibility for parole. The customary sentence for bank robbery immediate jumped to 20 years with a minimum of 17 served. Use a gun and you were not going to see the light of day for five more on top of that.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, FBI, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 13, 2020.

Sunday, December 13th, 2020

Oh, wow. I opened up a post so I could update some obits from the past couple of days, and the first thing I saw was: John le Carré. The current NYT obit is a preliminary one: they promise a longer one soon, and I may update with some personal thoughts when that posts.

In the meantime, Charley Pride.

A bridge-builder who broke into country music amid the racial unrest of the 1960s, Mr. Pride was one of the most successful singers ever to work in that largely white genre, placing 52 records in the country Top 10 from 1966 to 1987.
Singles like “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’” and “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone” — among his 29 recordings to reach No. 1 on the country chart — featuried a countrypolitan mix of traditional instrumentation and more uptown arrangements.
At RCA, the label for which he recorded for three decades, Mr. Pride was second only to Elvis Presley in record sales. In the process he emerged as an inspiration to generations of performers, from the Black country hitmaker Darius Rucker, formerly of the rock band Hootie and the Blowfish, to white inheritors like Alan Jackson, who included a version of “Kiss an Angel” on his 1999 album, “Under the Influence.”

…

Nevertheless, the dignity and grace with which Mr. Pride and his wife of 63 years, Rozene Pride, navigated their way through the white world of country music became a beacon to his fans and fellow performers.
“No person of color had ever done what he has done,” Mr. Rucker said in “Charley Pride: I’m Just Me,” a 2019 “American Masters” documentary on PBS.
Mr. Pride himself was more self-effacing in assessing his impact but nevertheless expressed some satisfaction in having a role in furthering integration. “We’re not colorblind yet,” he wrote in his autobiography, “but we’ve advanced a few paces along the path, and I like to think I’ve contributed something to that process.”.

NYT obit for Ben Bova.

Tommy Lister. Apparently, he was most famous as “Deebo” in “Friday” (which we watched last night: while he’s good in it, the movie itself is not good), but he had a long list of other credits.

Norman Abramson. You may never have heard of him, but he was one of the developers of ALOHAnet.

The wireless network in Hawaii, which began operating in 1971, was called ALOHAnet, embracing the Hawaiian salutation for greeting or parting. It was a smaller, wireless version of the better known ARPAnet, the precursor to the internet, which allowed researchers at universities to share a network and send messages over landlines. The ARPAnet was led by the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, which also funded the ALOHAnet.
“The early wireless work in Hawaii is vastly underappreciated,” said Marc Weber, an internet historian at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. “Every modern form of wireless data networking, from WiFi to your cellphone, goes back to the ALOHAnet.”

…

Some of the data-networking techniques developed by Professor Abramson and his Hawaii team proved valuable not only in wireless communications but also in wired networks. One heir to his work was Robert Metcalfe, who in 1973 was a young computer scientist working at Xerox PARC, a Silicon Valley research laboratory that had become a fount of personal computer innovations.
Mr. Metcalfe was working on how to enable personal computers to share data over wired office networks. He had read a 1970 paper, written by Professor Abramson, describing ALOHAnet’s method for transmitting and resending data over a network.
“Norm kindly invited me to spend a month with him at the University of Hawaii to study ALOHAnet,” Mr. Metcalfe recalled in an email.
Mr. Metcalfe and his colleagues at Xerox PARC adopted and tweaked the ALOHAnet technology in creating Ethernet office networking. Later, Mr. Metcalfe founded an Ethernet company, 3Com, which thrived as the personal computer industry grew.

I’ve been holding on to this one for a few days: William Aronwald. He was a prosecutor in the 1970s, working on organized crime cases around New York. He went into private practice later on. But that’s not the reason his obit is noteworthy.

On March 20, 1987, his father, George M. Aronwald, was shot and killed in a laundry in Queens. The senior Aronwald’s death was kind of a puzzle: he was 78, worked as a hearing officer for the Parking Violations Bureau, and shared an office listing with his son. Why would anyone want to kill him? Turns out…

…Mr. Cacace, acting on the orders of an imprisoned crime boss, Carmine Persico, had arranged to have William Aronwald killed, according to news accounts.
The reasons were vague — Mr. Persico was said to have thought Mr. Aronwald had “been disrespectful,” as one article put it. Mr. Aronwald later speculated that he had been targeted in retaliation for his testimony in one of the trials of the mobster John Gotti.
In any case, a prosecutor said later, the hit men, brothers named Vincent and Eddie Carini, were shown a piece of paper with only the name “Aronwald” on it. They killed the wrong Aronwald. And that wasn’t all, a 2003 article in The New York Times reported:
“After the botched assignment, Mr. Cacace had his hit men killed, prosecutors said. Then, they added, he had the hit men who had killed the hit men killed.”

“Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.”

Posted in Books, Geek, Law, Movies, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 256

Friday, December 11th, 2020

I haven’t done any true crime in a while, so why not fix that?

You’ve all heard about (and we’ve talked about) the Lufthansa heist, but have you ever heard of the Brink’s-Mat robbery?

£26 million (equivalent to £100 million in 2019) worth of gold bullion, diamonds, and cash was stolen from a warehouse.

Yes, there were murders (including, possibly, one of the Great Train robbers). No, the proceeds never turned up. The thing that boggles my mind is that they managed to make off with 3,000 kilos of gold bullion.

Bonus #1: Since I brought it up…here’s an episode of something called “Secret History” from Britain’s Channel 4 about the Great Train Robbery.

Bonus #2: I resisted posting this, because I have…questions…about the “Wonder” channel. But I have a fondness for tunnel heists, and for the Société Générale robbery in particular (as I’ve mentioned before) and this is only about 25 minutes long.

“Daring Capers: Plunder Under Nice”.

Posted in History, Law | Comments Closed

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