What a way to start the morning:
Hunting rats. With dogs. In Manhattan.
This is legal in Bloomberg’s New York?
…
Save horce racing! Put USADA in charge!
The state of Alabama has granted posthumous pardons to Haywood Patterson, Charles Weems and Andy Wright. You know them better as three of the nine Scottsboro Boys.
There are no undefeated teams left in the NFL this season. The Kansas City Chiefs lost on Sunday.
We all know what that means, right?
Or do we?
Noted for completeness: Ken Anderson is out of jail.
I guess by “good behavior” they mean “he didn’t withhold exculpatory evidence in order to convict the wrong man while he was actually in jail”.
I’m not sure when his community service starts.
(Previously.)
Dr. Michael Brown was taken off life support yesterday, and died in a Florida hospital. Dr. Brown had been in a coma for two weeks, apparently as the result of a suicide attempt.
I wrote about Dr. Brown a while back, but I didn’t do a very good job of keeping on top of the story. This is a shame, as it got even stranger after I wrote about it, and got really strange in the past month or so.
For those who don’t recall, Dr. Brown (no relation) was a Houston hand surgeon who built a chain of clinics. Then his wives accused him of domestic abuse and drug addiction and his behavior became increasingly erratic. Most recently, he was convicted of assaulting a flight attendant and sentenced to 30 days in prison. He also went into bankruptcy – apparently voluntary, but he engaged in a long series of disputes with the bankruptcy trustee. There are supposedly two suitcases full of cash missing from Brown’s assets, according to the current trustee.
One of the reasons I avoided writing about Dr. Brown was that the whole story is incredibly convoluted and bizarre. You would need an entire book to do justice to everything that went on. I hope someone (perhaps a HouChron or HouPress reporter) is working on that book right now; when it comes out, I’ll buy it.
It’s the classic story of the guy who had it all, but couldn’t control his personal demons. It wouldn’t make a good movie, because there’s really no redemptive arc. But as a true crime book, it should make good reading.
I have written previously about the wrongful conviction of Michael Morton, and the prosecution of former Williamson County DA Ken Anderson for withholding evidence in that case.
According to the timeline at the Texas Tribune, Michael Morton was convicted on February 17, 1987, and released from prison on October 4, 2011. Microsoft Excel tells me that is 8,995 days. (I am not taking into account time Michael Morton served while awaiting trial, since I can’t find a good figure for that.)
The ten days Ken Anderson will serve, on a “contempt of court” charge, work out to 0.11% of the time Michael Morton served.
Perhaps one of the worst things about committing a crime, or even being charged with one, is all the background stuff that tends to leak out about you. Your tastes in porn, booze, interior decoration…all of those things come out at trial.
You may beat the rap, but you can’t beat the embarrassment of everyone knowing that you scammed money to pay for cheap vodka or lap dances from low-end strippers or Michael Jackson memorablia.
Or, in today’s example…
Here’s a photo of former Mayor Hernandez from earlier this year, if you want to judge the value Bell got for their money. Former Mayor Hernandez, by the way, was making “just under” $100,000 a year for what was a part-time job. WebMD says that hair transplants run between $4,000 and $15,000. Or you could buy lasers for $549.
And as for George Cole…
Cole’s top annual salary was $67,000, his attorney said. At the time, he was earning nearly $95,000 a year as chief executive of the Steelworkers Old Timers Foundation.
In 2004, the city paid the state pension system $36,648 to buy Cole an additional five years of service time. Cole was one of 11 Bell administrators for whom the city bought service time.
The Biggest Loser Resort in Malibu charges about $3,000 a week (though the longer you stay, the more of a break you get on the weekly rate).
Surely you would think that these folks could afford to pay for their own weight loss and baldness treatments. But they didn’t, and now everyone knows.
(And to be clear, I don’t throw stones at people who get hair plugs or go to weight loss resorts. I throw stones at people who scam money from the taxpayers to do those things. “Tax-fattened hyena”, indeed.)
Were you wondering what Angela Spaccia, former assistant city manager of Bell, looks like wearing a bathrobe and smoking a cigar?
What does this have to do with corruption in Bell? Well, Spaccia texted that photo to Randy Adams, the former police chief, and it was introduced as evidence during Adams’ testimony yesterday. I think the prosecution’s intent is to establish that the Adams/Spaccia relationship went beyond the bounds of “professional”: not necessarily romantic, but perhaps a closer friendship than either one is letting on. (In turn, I guess this is intended to make the jury question Adams’ testimony for Spaccia.)
In other news, Adams was shocked, shocked! that the city of Bell was willing to pay him $457,000 a year to be Bell’s police chief. But Randy Adams appears to be much like the great Clay Davis: he’ll take any motherf—-r’s money if he givin’ it away!
It is perhaps worth pointing out that Mister Shocked, Shocked I Am:
…who had recently retired as Glendale’s police chief, wanted a salary in excess of $400,000.
It is also worth reminding folks that before he moved over to Bell, Adams was paid half as much in Glendale and ran a much larger department. And let’s not forget that little disability pension thing, but I suspect that will come out in the cross-examination.
I hate to jump to conclusions here, but I’m not sure calling Adams as a defense witness was the brightest thing Spaccia’s council could have done.
In the meantime, since you’ve got it stuck in your head anyway….
Politics depress me. In general and in specific. (I’m not sure how I feel about the Astrodome being declared dead.)
But there is at least one bright spot. Voters in the bankrupt municipality of San Bernardino threw out several elected officials in a recall election.
Those given the axe:
I haven’t been giving much attention to the Angela Spaccia/Bell trial. Most of what I’ve seen in the LAT has been the usual back and forth we’ve seen in the other trials: “City council approved!” “Did not!” “Did too!” “Rizzo’s a big poopy head and it was all his fault!”
(There have been a few amusing bits I missed covering. Among them:
The contracts in question being those for Spaccia and Robert “Ratso” Rizzo. This is interesting: while I can’t find the story now, I do recall reading that former Bell finance director Lourdes Garcia slipped contracts for Spaccia and Rizzo into stacks of other documents that were signed blindly by city officials.)
Things are getting a little more interesting. Randy Adams, the former police chief of Bell, is testifying for the defense today. You may remember former chief Adams from such hits as “I’m looking forward to see you and taking all of Bell’s money?!”, “Hire me and give me my disability pension“, and “I don’t know why he is not a defendant in this case”.
Note to self: stop off at grocery store on way home, stock up on popcorn.
So Robert “Ratso” Rizzo, former city manager of Bell, is going to prison. He’s expected to be sentenced to somewhere between 10 to 12 years (the actual sentencing is scheduled for March), and he’ll probably do about half that time.
Ratso also has to pay compensation to the city of Bell. As far as I can tell, there hasn’t been a final decision on the amount (I’m guessing that will be part of his sentencing) but it could be up to $3.2 million.
Where will that money come from? Rizzo sold his house at a loss, and it looks like the same thing is happening with his ranch.
Two places the money won’t come from: Rizzo’s retirement account, and his pension of $116,628 a year.
More:
Ah, the 1970’s. What a time.
Remember Alexander Calder, the noted sculptor? Died in 1976? Well, he had a dealer, Klaus Perls, that he worked with exclusively. It was, by all accounts, a close and very friendly relationship.
Was.
It looks like the Perls family stipulates at least part of these claims, specifically the parts about the Swiss bank accounts. But they also claim that part of the reason Perls had a Swiss bank account is so he could transfer profits to Calder’s Swiss bank account.
I knew there was a reason I liked Alexander Calder’s work.
The 1970’s were also a time when it was much easier to get your hands on explosives. Especially if you were 17 years old. And if you were peeved at the California Department of Water and Power.
The blast ripped apart a 4-foot-wide steel gate that regulates the flow of water to the aqueduct. Windows were blown out of the gatehouse atop the spill gates and its concrete floor buckled.
About 100 million gallons of water meant for Los Angeles were instead flushed into Owens Lake, which had been dry since the Department of Water and Power opened the aqueduct in 1913.
Nobody was injured. Mark Berry, one of the two men responsible, spent 30 days in juvenile detention. And he now works for the DWP.
(I love this telling detail: “The air was filled with the banana-like smell of nitroglycerin.”)
(And this one: “Berry said his father, as yet unaware that his son was one of the culprits, boasted to a neighbor, ‘If I ever find out who bombed the gates I’ll buy him a steak dinner.'” Gardner Dozois and Edward Abbey, please call your offices.)
(Since I made a “That ’70s Show” reference, I believe I have to link to this Penny Arcade. Especially since I am all about fish out of water prison dramas.)
Okay. So it sounds like the hierarchy may run something like this:
That sound about right to everyone? Discuss in comments. I guess the way I see it, “minion” is the term for both the super-set covering the entire sidekick-henchman-lackey-flunky hierarchy, and the title for the “entry level” position. “Honey, good news! I just got promoted from ‘minion’ to ‘lackey’! Now we can afford premium beer!”
Edited to add: a friend of WCD points out that we left out “toady”, so I’ve added it to the list above. I’m tentatively placing it one step above “minion”.
Also: “pawn” and “peon”. List revised, but the positions given are just starting points for discussion.
The courts are busy. Here’s a couple of quick things:
That would be Randy Adams, the former police chief of Bell, who was making $470,000 a year. I thought I’d quoted those emails before, but I can’t find them now. Here’s the LAT‘s quotes:
In an email to Spaccia, Adams wrote: “I am looking forward to seeing you and taking all of Bell’s money?! Okay … just a share of it!!”
She responded: “LOL … well you can take your share of the pie … just like us!!! We will all get fat together … [Robert Rizzo] has an expression he likes to use on occasion. Pigs get Fat … Hogs get slaughtered!!!! So as long as we’re not Hogs … All is well!”
Yes, those are out of context, but I find it hard to see any context in which those quotes are not damming, or indicate that Spaccia was trying to get Adams to lower his demands.
Guys, taping interrogations from start to finish doesn’t just protect the suspect: it also protects you. Or would you rather spend your retirement answering questions from NYT reporters?
On September 22, 1985, Roy McCaleb was shot and killed in his Houston home. He was sleeping at the time, and was heavily sedated due to recent back surgery and a heart attack.
McCaleb’s wife, Carolyn Sue Krizan-Wilson (as she is now known) stated that the shooter was a man who had car-jacked and raped her 10 days previously, then broke into her home that night…
Krizan-Wilson went on to claim that, while the intruder was fleeing the scene, he dropped the gun; she said she picked it up and fired a couple of shots at him.
Why am I bringing up this cold case now?
Krizan-Wilson confessed that this whole story was a lie, and pled guilty to killing her husband.
But that’s not why I bring it up.
But that’s not why I bring it up, either.
The courts in the state of Texas are taking pleas from people who suffer from dementia? I realize that there’s not a good alternative (how can a person with dementia effectively assist in their own defense at trial?) but there’s something about taking a plea under these circumstances that make me go “What?”