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Obit watch: December 7, 2020.

Monday, December 7th, 2020

As previously noted, I got a little behind yesterday, so I’m playing catch-up.

David Lander, prominent TV actor perhaps best known as “Squiggy” on “Laverne and Shirley”.

Interesting connections:

He and his comedy partner, Michael McKean, were members of the cast of “Laverne & Shirley,” a sitcom about boy-crazy brewery workers in 1950s Milwaukee, from its debut in 1976 until it left the air in 1983.

…

Lenny and Squiggy were not the brainchild of the show’s creators. Mr. Lander and Mr. McKean invented them in college (Squiggy was called Ant’ny then) and had been performing as those characters with the Credibility Gap, a comedy performance ensemble that also included Harry Shearer.
The characters sometimes broke away from their own series. Mr. Lander and Mr. McKean appeared on the fictional talk show “America 2-Night,” hosted by Martin Mull.
Portraying two imaginary actors who supposedly played Lenny and Squiggy (but looked and talked just like them), they made small talk and sang “Creature Without a Head.” That song was also on the 1979 album recorded by Lenny and the Squigtones, their imaginary musical group (which included Christopher Guest on guitar). Principal Squiggy (Mr. Lander) appeared in “Scary Movie” (2000), and Squiggy himself turned up on a 2002 episode of “The Simpsons.”

Of course, Guest, McKean, and Shearer were all in Spinal Tap. I kind of wonder why Lander wasn’t involved. (According to Wikipedia, Guest was actually credited as “Nigel Tufnel” on the Lenny and the Squigtones album.)

Lawrence sent over an obit for Pamela Tiffin. She had what seems like an odd career: Billy Wilder’s “One, Two, Three”, “Harper” (a Ross MacDonald adaptation), “State Fair”. “The Hallelujah Trail”…and a bunch of Italian movies.

Paul Sarbanes, the man who put the “Sarbanes” in “Sarbanes-Oxley”.

Also by way of Lawrence, and this is breaking as I write it, so no links yet: Fred Akers. Links probably tomorrow.

For the historical record: NYT obits for Warren Berlinger and Walter E. Williams.

Posted in Law, Obits, Politics, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

How do you like them Apples?

Tuesday, November 24th, 2020

This is another one of those weird intersections.

Apple’s head of security, Thomas Moyer, was indicted last week along with three other people. The others were Harpreet Chadha (an insurance broker), Santa Clara Undersheriff Rick Sung and Captain James Jensen.

Why is this weird? Because it is also a gun thing, and you don’t often see “Apple” and “guns” together.

Specifically:

Sung—second in rank only to Sheriff Laurie Smith in the sheriff’s office—is accused of deliberately holding back four concealed carry weapons (CCW) permits for Apple’s security team until the Cupertino-based corporation agreed to donate 200 iPads worth about $75,000 to the Sheriff’s Office, Rosen said. Sung and Jensen allegedly worked together to solicit the exchange of CCW permits for the tech donation from Apple.

…

In another incident, Sung “extracted” a promise from Chadha for $6,000 worth of luxury box suites at a San Jose Sharks game on Valentine’s Day, 2019, before issuing Chadha a CCW permit, [DA Jeff] Rosen said.
“Sheriff Laurie Smith’s family members and some of her biggest supporters held a celebration of her reelection as sheriff in Chadha’s suite,” Rosen said.

All of this is part of an ongoing investigation into Sheriff Smith’s office. Captain Jensen was previously indicted in August:

The original August conspiracy and bribery indictment alleges Jensen, political fundraiser Christopher Schumb, attorney Harpaul Nahal and local gun-maker Michael Nichols — the other three people indicted– arranged to get up to a dozen concealed-carry weapons permits to the executive security firm AS Solution, in exchange for $90,000 in donations to support Smith’s contentious re-election bid against former undersheriff John Hirokawa.

Posted in Apple, California Über Alles, Cops, Guns, Law | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#68 in a series)

Friday, November 20th, 2020

Alexander Sittenfeld of the Cincinnati city council was arrested yesterday.

Prosectors said Mr. Sittenfeld had accepted six checks totaling $40,000 from federal agents posing as real estate investors and had stashed the money in a political action committee that he secretly controlled.
According to a six-count indictment, Mr. Sittenfeld accepted the bribe money in 2018 and 2019, while promising to “deliver the votes” and perform other official acts for the downtown development project, which needed City Council approval.

…

At a meeting in November 2018 set up with Mr. Ndukwe’s help, Mr. Sittenfeld went for lunch at a downtown Cincinnati restaurant and indicated to undercover agents that he would shepherd votes for the real estate project, prosecutors said.
He presented voting data showing that he was politically popular in Cincinnati and said he was likely to be the next mayor, according to prosecutors.
“I can move more votes than any other single person,” Mr. Sittenfeld said, according to the indictment. On another occasion, in December 2018, he said, “Don’t let these be my famous last words, but I can always get a vote to my left or a vote to my right,” according to prosecutors.

Nr. Ndukwe is Chinedum Ndukwe, a former player for the Bengals, who was one of the people behind the downtown development project.

Bonus #1: Mr. Ndukwe was also working with the Feds.

Bonus #2, and I’m embarrassed to admit I missed this: Mr. Sittenfeld is the third member of the nine-member city council to be indicted this year.

The first blow came in February when Tamaya Dennard, the president pro tem of the Cincinnati City Council, was arrested and charged with accepting $15,000 in bribes in exchange for a vote on the Council. She pleaded guilty in June and faces up to 20 years in prison when she is sentenced in federal court next week.
The second landed last week when Jeffrey Pastor, another member of the City Council, was charged with taking $55,000 in bribes in return for promising to help city development projects, including the redevelopment of a downtown building. Mr. Pastor has pleaded not guilty and has resisted calls to step down.

Apologies for linking to the NYT. I prefer to link to local sources whenever possible, but the Cincinnati Enquirer is unreadable and unlinkable without a subscription.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

I may have spoke too soon.

Thursday, November 19th, 2020

This might be the headline of the day:

Rapper with flamethrower in custody over NYC bus stunt

More context:

Authorities said Dupree G.O.D was arrested on charges of reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon. There was no information on when he would be arraigned. He was in police custody Wednesday night.
The musical artist was filmed earlier this month in an unauthorized stunt that he said was part of a tribute video for the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan. The clip gained attention on social media after a police union tweeted it as an example of the city becoming less safe.

And of course:

I’m really not sure I see the “reckless endangerment” part of that charge. It seems to me that he was pointing it away from and above people. As for the “criminal possession of a weapon” charge, well, maybe, given that this is NYC.

Posted in Art, Cops, Firings, Hysteria, Law, Media, NYPD | 3 Comments »

Headline of the day.

Thursday, November 19th, 2020

(Though this actually is datelined yesterday.)

Ponzi Scheme Suspect Uses Underwater Scooter to Flee F.B.I.

The story is exactly as it says on the tin:

Tracked by air and trailed by F.B.I. agents and members of the California Highway Patrol, Mr. Piercey, 44, of Palo Cedro, Calif., was seen removing something from his truck and entering the frigid water with it in his street clothes, the authorities said. After about 25 minutes in the lake, part of which he spent submerged, a very cold and wet Mr. Piercey emerged and was arrested, the Justice Department said.

Posted in Cops, FBI, Law, Media | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 231

Monday, November 16th, 2020

I’ve got an eye doctor’s appointment today, so I’m being a little lazy again. I thought I’d dabble a bit in true crime.

This is an odd one, as it is from that Canadian program “The Fifth Estate”, but deals with a case in the United States: Dixon Illinois, to be exact, which is a little far south to be considered Southern Canada.

The town’s Comptroller, Rita Crundwell, embezzled an estimated $53 million between approximately 1990 and 2012 (when she was indicted). That seems to me to be an astonishing amount of money, especially for a town with a population of about 15,000. (That’s close to $2.5 million a year.)

And did she spend it on moving to a country without an extradition treaty? Nope. She spent it on…quarter horses. Supposedly, she became one of the leading quarter horse breeders in the US: at least, until she was indicted, tried, and sentenced to 19 1/2 years in prison.

I personally am kind of baffled by this: there’s nothing wrong with raising horses (though stealing money from taxpayers is objectionable) but if you’re going to do it, why not raise whole horses? Why raise just a quarter of a horse? What can you do with a quarter horse?

(Yes, I will be here all week.)

Bonus: True confession, I have not watched this yet, but “All the Queen’s Horses” is a longer documentary about Rita Crundwell and the Dixon fraud.

Posted in History, Horses, Law, Sarcasm | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 13, 2020.

Friday, November 13th, 2020

Paul Hornung.

Hornung, who won the 1956 Heisman Trophy with Notre Dame, could run, throw passes and catch them, block, place-kick and punt, and he returned kicks and played defense too. In nine professional seasons he helped propel the Packers to four National Football League championships and led the N.F.L. in scoring from 1959 to 1961.

…

Hornung scored a record 176 points in the 12-game 1960 season on 15 touchdowns, 41 extra points and 15 field goals. He also passed for two touchdowns that year.Hornung was the league’s most valuable player in 1961, when he scored a championship-game record 19 points (on a rushing touchdown, four extra points and three field goals) in the Packers’ 37-0 victory over the Giants.
All the while he pursued a robust night life of women and drink that seemed to have little effect on his on-field performance. His movie-star looks certainly had something to do with the attention: He was blond and handsome, 6 feet 2 inches and 215 pounds. He wore No. 5 in honor of his boyhood idol, Joe DiMaggio.
But Hornung’s career was marred when the N.F.L. commissioner, Pete Rozelle, suspended him indefinitely in the spring of 1963 for gambling on pro football, including Packer games, over several seasons. Hornung said he had bet on Green Bay only to win, and the league found no evidence to the contrary, but he remained suspended for the entire season. The ban was an outgrowth of an N.F.L. drive against gambling by players that also brought a one-year suspension for Alex Karras, the Detroit Lions’ star defensive tackle.

…

Hornung expressed few regrets about his nightlife.
“I’m sure that during my playing days I wasn’t considered a good role model for the nation’s youth,” he wrote in his memoir. “But the way times have changed, I’d look like an altar boy if I played today. I never beat up a woman, carried a gun or a knife, shot somebody, or got arrested for disturbing the peace. I never even experimented with drugs during the season.
“All I did, really,” he went on, “was seek out fun wherever I could find it. Everything was all tied in together — the drinking, the womanizing, the partying, the traveling, the gambling. And, of course, football made it all possible.”

In other totally unrelated news, Hell is having a busy day today:

Tom Metzger, white supremacist.

Peter Sutcliffe, the “Yorkshire Ripper”.

He was convicted in 1981 in the murders of 13 women over the course of five years in northern England and given a life sentence for each, the maximum permitted. The murders, which occurred between 1975 and 1980, gripped the public and the authorities, and the lengthy investigation was “a source of considerable embarrassment to the police,” The New York Times wrote at the time.

…

A 1981 report into the police investigation’s failings was released under the Freedom of Information Act in 2006. Known as the Byford report, for the official who wrote it, it cited a “curious and unexplained lull” in Mr. Sutcliffe’s criminal activities between 1969 and 1975. The report concluded that it was “highly improbable that the crimes in respect of which Sutcliffe has been charged and convicted are the only ones attributable to him.”

…

Sutcliffe’s 13 known murder victims were Wilma McCann (1975), Emily Jackson (1976), Irene Richardson (1977), Patricia “Tina” Atkinson (1977), Jayne MacDonald (1977), Jean Jordan (1977), Yvonne Pearson (1978), Helen Rytka (1978), Vera Millward (1978), Josephine Whitaker (1979), Barbara Leach (1979), Marguerite Walls (1980) and Jacqueline Hill (1980).
He is also known to have attacked at least 9 other women: an unnamed woman (1969), Anna Rogulskyj (1975), Olive Smelt (1975), Tracy Browne (1975), Marcella Claxton (1976), Marilyn Moore (1977), Upadhya Bandara (1980), Maureen Lea (1980) and Theresa Sykes (1980). Claxton was four months pregnant when she was attacked, and lost the baby she was carrying.

Posted in History, Law, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Quote of the day.

Thursday, November 5th, 2020

That community is already in the process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where nonconformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection; where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence; where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent; where faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists, to win or lose.

–Judge Learned Hand, Speech to the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, October 24, 1952.

Oddly enough, that quote popped up on this morning’s “Perry Mason” episode.

I’m thinking, if you held a gun to my head and asked me to pick a favorite judge, it would be Learned Hand. I feel like I should apologize to Judge Willett for that, but I also have a feeling that if he heard me say that, he’d agree Learned Hand is a good choice.

Posted in Bagatelle, Law | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 218

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2020

Thought I’d post some gun stuff today, for reasons.

Miami Police Department’s patrol rifle class:

Bonus #1, also a bookmark for me: Ryan Cleckner explains milliradians.

Bonus #2: this is kind of gun adjacent, but I’m posting this explicitly as Lawrence bait: “Greatest Tank Battles”, on “The Battle of 73 Easting”.

Bonus #3: “Japanese Guns of World War 2”, from LionHeart FilmWorks.

(See also. Affiliate link, but it delights me down to the bottom of my shriveled little coal black heart that a lot of this stuff is coming back in Kindle editions.)

Posted in Bookmarks, Books, Cops, Guns, Kindleing, Law | 1 Comment »

Ask not for whom the (Blue) Bell tolls…

Thursday, October 22nd, 2020

Shot:

Blue Bell releases two holiday flavors: Christmas Cookies and Peppermint

Chaser:

Ex-Blue Bell Creameries CEO charged in deadly listeria case

The former president of Blue Bell Creameries has been charged with wire fraud for allegedly trying to cover up a 2015 listeria outbreak linked to the company’s ice cream that killed three people in Kansas and sickened several others, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday.
A federal grand jury in Austin returned a seven-count indictment Tuesday charging Paul Kruse with six counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, according to a Justice Department statement.

(I like my Blue Bell. But they sure burned through a lot of goodwill with the whole listeria thing.)

Posted in Bagatelle, Food, Law | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 201

Saturday, October 17th, 2020

The plan for today’s videos went out the window because NFL Films is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

So how aboot (see what I did there?) some true crime stories from Canada? Specifically, from “The Fifth Estate” channel on YouTube. My impression is that “The Fifth Estate” is kind of like a Canadian “60 Minutes”.

I actually watched this one many years ago on the hotel television when I was visiting Vancouver. (I didn’t go up there to watch TV: I got back to the hotel late, turned on the TV, ran through the channels, and found this). I had not heard of the “Squamish Five” before, and I think it is a rather interesting story.

If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, I would encourage you to at least fast forward to about 20 minutes in: a man who was standing right next to the Litton Industries bomb details his injuries. “I had a half a brick embedded in my back. And that half a brick that was embedded in my back was embedded solidly because four pounds of muscle had been blown out of my back…”

Bonus #1: “Bad Day at Barhead”. This is another interesting, and more recent story, that I was appalled I had not heard of. On March 3, 2005, the RCMP was executing a search warrant on a farm near Mayerthorpe, Alberta. The owner of the farm (who had fled earlier in the day) returned to the farm and killed four RCMP officers: Anthony Gordon, Leo Johnston, Brock Myrol, and Peter Schiemann. This was the second worst loss of life in one day for the RCMP. (Five officers drowned in a 1958 incident.)

Bonus #2: Just one more, because I’m also fascinated by the Quebec biker war. “Walk the Line” about Benoit Roberge. He was a prominent investigator of biker gangs for the RCMP. Turns out he was also on the Hells Angels payroll.

According to Wikipedia, Roberge pled guilty in 2014 to “breach of trust” and “engaging in gangsterism”, and admitted accepting $125,000 from the Hells Angels. He was sentenced to eight years in prison. He was paroled in 2017.

Posted in History, Law | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 194

Saturday, October 10th, 2020

I thought today I’d dabble a little in true crime. Also, I wanted to do some more CanCon.

This is a fairly short documentary from The Globe and Mail: “Manhunt, Manitoba” about two vicious Canadian murderers…and the tracker who ran them to ground.

Bonus: this one from the land down under. “Manhunt”, from 60 Minutes Australia. This was posted fairly recently, but dates back to 2011, and covers the hunt for Malcolm Naden. Naden was a child molester and murderer, who evaded capture by the authorities for seven years.

Naden was finally captured in 2012. He pled guilty on 18 counts (including two murders) in 2013.

I’m trying to think of US fugitives who were on the run for that long or even close to it. Eric Rudolph evaded capture for five years. Whitey Bulger evaded capture for 16 years, but I’d argue his circumstances were different than Rudolph’s or Naden’s.

Posted in Law | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: October 7, 2020.

Wednesday, October 7th, 2020

A lot of folks told me about Eddie Van Halen: I decided to hold the obit until today because, when I looked, the NYT only had their preliminary obit up.

I know a lot of folks who I respect liked Van Halen, but I really don’t have anything to add to what’s out there already.

Thomas Jefferson Byrd. He was in several Spike Lee films, and also did some theater:

Mr. Byrd was a regular on Off Broadway and regional stages, appearing frequently in August Wilson plays, among them “The Piano Lesson” at San Jose Repertory Theater in California in 2001, “Seven Guitars” with the St. Louis Black Repertory Company in 2002 and “Gem of the Ocean” at the Actors Theater of Louisville in Kentucky in 2006.
He was a late addition to the Broadway cast of Mr. Wilson’s “Ma Rainey,” taking over the role of Toledo, the reflective, philosophizing piano player in the title character’s band. The cast was headed by Whoopi Goldberg in the title role and Charles S. Dutton as the trumpeter Levee. Though the production, which ran for 68 performances, drew mixed reviews, Mr. Byrd and the actors playing two other musicians, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Carl Gordon, drew widespread praise. Mr. Byrd was nominated for the Tony for best featured actor in a play.

Murray Newman posted a very nice obit a few days ago for Harris County legal figure Mike Hinton, which I encourage folks to go read. Mr. Hinton sounds like an amazing gentleman who I would have enjoyed knowing.

Seasonally appropriate note: Mr. Hinton prosecuted Ronald Clark O’Bryan.

Posted in HCDA, Law, Movies, Music, Obits, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Memo from the legal beat.

Monday, October 5th, 2020

Two Austin legal stories from the past couple of days that I wanted to cover:

1) A former employee of the Austin Public Library has been charged with stealing $1.3 million from the library.

Now, I’m sure you’re asking yourself: “How do you steal that much money from a library?” Answer: according to the indictment, he was purchasing printer toner with a city issued credit card and reselling it online.

“The library’s poor practices and procedures provided an opportunity for Whited to steal from the city during his tenure, leading to waste and overspending by the department,” according to the report. “Whited took advantage of poor purchasing reviews by his supervisors, former Financial Manager Victoria Rieger and Contract Management Specialist Monica McClure. Whited also took advantage of several other purchasing and budget-related shortcomings, such as having a role in the approval of his own purchases and insufficient oversight of the Library’s budget by Rieger and Assistant Director Dana McBee.”
As an accounting associate, Whited was responsible for making and approving purchases, cash receipts, billing, and other accounting transactions, the report states.

Bonus: this wasn’t his first go-around at the rodeo, but somehow the library put him in charge of all that stuff.

2) Strippers. Always with the strippers. A group of them are suing some of our finer local “gentleman’s clubs” (specifically, The Yellow Rose, Perfect 10 and Palazio, if you know Austin strip clubs).

The basis for the lawsuit is kind of unsurprising: the strippers claim that they were improperly categorized as “independent contractors” rather than employees.

The women signed documents agreeing to be independent contractors rather than employees, records show. However, Ellzey said the clubs treated them like employees — requiring them to work a certain shift, setting prices for dances and charging the women late fees if they did not arrive on time.
Under labor laws, that makes them employees, Ellzey said.
“The law looks to the conduct of the club … not the documents cooked up by the clubs,” Ellzey said. “The documents have no real legal significance.”

The responses from the clubs are about what you’d expect: the strippers wanted it that way.

Yellow Rose’s management also said that it’s in the dancers’ best interest to work as independent contractors.
“All Yellow Rose employees make at least minimum wage and generally far more than that,” the club said in a statement. “This case involves three — we have no clue who the fourth person in this lawsuit is — entertainers who knowingly and willingly worked as independent contractors, all of whom made a great deal more money than what they would have made had they been minimum wage employees. They now claim they were/are ‘actually’ employees and are due compensation directly from the Yellow Rose. We disagree.”

…

Bishop said the independent contractor agreements gave performers the opportunity to avoid turning over their tips to the club. However, Ellzey said that, despite this, the club often required the performers to divide their tips among other employees, such as the DJ, the security guard and management.
“The performers are typically younger,” Ellzey said. “They go to work in these clubs, and the money they’re making on stage is sometimes really surprising. I think when an older club owner or a manager with apparent authority says, ‘This is what you have to do. This is what everyone does. You need to split your tips, you need to pay house fees,’ then a younger, more vulnerable dancer is just going to believe them.”

This is also another “not the first go-around at the rodeo” affair: there was a previous settlement in another lawsuit filed against four clubs in Houston.

I’m no employment lawyer, but: if they control your schedule, set prices, and charge “late fees”, that kind of sounds to me like the strippers may have a case.

Posted in Austin, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#67 in a series)

Monday, October 5th, 2020

Missed this over the weekend, but Mike the Musicologist gave me the heads-up: the mayor of Rochester, New York, has been indicted on campaign finance charges.

Sandra Doorley, the Monroe County district attorney, said Ms. Warren participated in “a scheme to defraud” related to her official campaign fund and a political action committee working to help her get re-elected.
The indictment accused Ms. Warren, as well as her campaign treasurer and Rochester’s finance director, of “knowingly and willfully” working to evade contribution limits as well as engaging in “a systemic and ongoing course of conduct with the intent to defraud more than one person.”

…

The investigation into her campaign finances had dogged her since two candidates who unsuccessfully ran against her in 2017 complained to the state Board of Elections. A subsequent investigation by the board led to a March report that Ms. Doorley said found “considerable evidence” of possible crimes.
At issue are transfers made from Ms. Warren’s political action committee to her campaign committee that far exceeded the $8,557 limit that a campaign could receive from an individual donor, the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester reported. That limit also applied to the political action committee.

More from the local paper. Local TV coverage.

Warren, along with Albert Jones Jr. and Rosiland Brooks Harris, were each charged with first-degree scheme to defraud and violation of Election Law 14-126(6). Both counts are Class E felonies. If convicted, each person could face 1 1/3 to 4 years in state prison, or a range of sentencing options from probation to restitution.

Posted in Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

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