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Briefly noted.

Tuesday, February 17th, 2026

By way of CrimeReads, “The Three Lives of William Conrad: More Than Just the ‘Heavy’” by Keith Roysdon.

I think most people, if they think of William Conrad at all, think of “Cannon” or “Jake and the Fatman”. More sophisticated folks might be aware that he had a substantial radio career, including Matt Dillon in the radio version of “Gunsmoke”.

While his voice was perfect for narrating the noir TV drama “The Fugitive” from 1963 to 1967, there’s little in Conrad’s career to tip us to the lunacy of his narration of creator/producer Jay Ward’s “Rocky and Bullwinkle” cartoons and sister show “Dudley Do-Right.” Conrad’s narration is breathless and urgent and loose in the shows, which began in 1959. At times, Conrad – credited as “Bill Conrad” – is downright goofy.

I didn’t know that he also had a short but apparently successful career as a film director. (Lawrence, I ordered “Two on a Guillotine” for Halloween viewing.)

Posted in Movies, Radio, TV | 1 Comment »

Random gun (and other) crankery.

Saturday, January 10th, 2026

One of my Christmas presents to myself was to take a gun off layaway at my local dealer.

I’m not ready to show it off yet. I want Mike to see it first, and I’ve warned him that his eyes are going to roll so hard they may pop out of his head. Let me just say that this gun combines 1.5 of this blogger’s obsessions. More later on.

One of my other Christmas presents to myself was a replacement for Project e. While it was (and still is, to some extent) a fine machine, the CPU and memory are quite limited. You can’t even get an Ubuntu distro for it any longer, as far as I can tell. It still powers on, but I was getting a lot of fan noise out of it, too. I think it is time for it to go into retirement.

The new machine is a Lenovo ThinkPad P15S – I believe this is a gen 2, with an i7-10510U processor and a discrete NVIDA T500 GPU. It is a lot larger (I’d say about twice the size) than Proect e, but several times more powerful. This was a Discount Electronics purchase when they were looking to dump inventory a few weeks ago, and I upgraded the SSD and RAM when I ordered it. (I also got six months free financing.)

Other than replacing Project e, I wanted to get a personal computer for myself. I’ve been doing a lot (well, pretty much all) of my personal stuff on my work laptop, and that doesn’t seem like a good situation for obvious reasons. I want to start moving files and personal stuff off the work laptop and onto this one. Of course, that’s more difficult than you might think, because Cisco, as a security measure, has locked down all the corporate machines so you can no longer use any removable media. I think I can still copy stuff to the cloud.

Right now, the new device has Windows 11 Pro on it. I’m keeping it there for two reasons:

1) I also signed up, at the end of the year, for the Certified Ethical Hacker certification from Colorado State. They specify Mac or Windows for the coursework. I didn’t want to try running the courseware on my work Mac (and possibly running into infosec issues) so I figured I’d get a dedicated Windows laptop for the course, and once I finish the cert, install some flavor of LINUX on it.

2) I also need to do my taxes this year. I think there may be a LINUX tax software package, but I’ve never used it. I can get the H&R Block tax software, which I prefer, for Windows. The past few years, I’ve installed it on my work Mac, but I think I’m going to stop doing that this year.

Why not just get a new personal Mac instead? I’m waiting for the M5 Pro Max laptops. Once those come out, and as long as everything holds together, I plan to purchase a fully blown and stoked M5 Pro Max (or whatever Apple calls it) for personal use. Project L (the Lenovo) will then become a dedicated security research machine.

I’ve messed around a little with the Windows version of hashcat so far, and I think I’m getting pretty good performance with that. I also want to see how it performs ripping DVDs with Handbrake. I do expect performance improvements in both these areas when I move Project L to UNIX.

I also want to go back to messing around more with SDR. I have one of those TV tuner based SDR kits, but I haven’t done anything with it because I felt my existing machines were too slow. Now that I have something a bit more modern than 2009…

And speaking of SDR, I also want to pick back up experimenting with Bluetooth. Though, again, I think that’s going to have to wait for UNIX. It is also going to have to wait for me to figure out what the current state of Bluetooth probing devices is: the Ubertooth One is out of production and deprecated. Just based on a preliminary Google search it looks like the state of the art has shifted to higher-end SDR devices.

Going back to guns for a minute, I do have a “gun” coming from Amazon on Monday. I’ll blog that when I can, as it answers the question: what happens to a dream deferred?

And I have a huge backlog of gun books to blog, once I can get picture uploads to work again.

Busier than a one-armed man in a calf-milking contest, indeed. I’m just hoping to hold everything together.

Posted in Apple, Bluetooth, Books, Christmas, Geek, Guns, Project L, project_e, Radio, SDR | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 30, 2025.

Thursday, October 30th, 2025

Bjorn Andresen. There’s a certain lack of notability here, but I think it is offset by the sadness of this story.

Mr. Andresen was 15 when Luchino Visconti cast him as Tadzio, the object of desire in his adaption of “Death In Venice”.

Tadzio’s mere appearance bewitches the composer Gustav von Aschenbach, played in the film by Dirk Bogarde. They meet in an elevator, leaving Aschenbach spellbound as they lock eyes but do not speak. Aschenbach then follows Tadzio around the city and fantasizes about him as a kind of artistic and romantic muse, before growing sick and dying in a beach chair as he reaches toward the boy.

Visconti called him “the most beautiful boy in the world”.

Visconti was also fixated on Mr. Andresen. During the boy’s screen test, the director asked him to strip to his swimsuit.
“When they asked me to take off my shirt, I wasn’t comfortable,” Mr. Andresen told Variety after the release of “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World,” a 2021 documentary about him directed by Kristina Lindstrom and Kristian Petri. “I wasn’t prepared for that. I remember when he posed me with one foot against the wall, I would never stand like that.
“When I watch it now,” he said, “I see how that son of a bitch sexualized me.”
He told The Guardian that Visconti was “the sort of cultural predator who would sacrifice anything or anyone for the work.”

…

During the making of “Death in Venice,” Visconti acted protectively toward Mr. Andresen. But the boy felt unprepared when Visconti took him to a gay club after the film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1971.
In the documentary, Mr. Andresen recalled feeling besieged by “voracious looks, wet lips and rolling tongues” and getting drunk to cope with the unwanted attention. He wondered if Visconti, who was gay, was testing him to see if he was also gay, which he wasn’t.

…

Over the last 20 years or so, his flowing hair became gray and he obscured his face behind a beard that made him look something like Ian McKellen as the wizard Gandalf in the “Lord of the Rings” films.
Mr. Andresen continued to act, mostly on television in Sweden but also in films, including a memorable turn in Ari Aster’s 2019 horror movie, “Midsommar.” He was also a keyboard player in a dance band, a composer of jazz and bossa nova music, the arranger of the music for a Swedish production of “The Rocky Horror Show,” and the manager of a small theater in Stockholm.

Lawrence sent over an obit for Pierre Robert, long time Philadelphia DJ. The NYPost ran one as well.

His legendary career with WMMR spanned over 44 years, beginning in 1981 and became a constant voice for listeners in southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, Delaware and parts of Maryland.

This isn’t quite an obit, but I don’t know where else to put it. I also don’t quite know how to write about it, so I’m just going to do the best I can.

Officer Lauren Craven of the La Mesa (California) Police Department was killed on October 23rd. She was 25 years old, and had joined the department in February of 2024.

She came upon a deadly rollover crash on Interstate 8 northeast of San Diego just before 10:30 p.m. last Monday, officials said.
She reported the incident over the radio before stepping out and walking toward a car that had flipped over.
Craven was struck by another car, which triggered a chain reaction, smashing into the vehicles involved in the initial crash.

David Pearce was sentenced yesterday.

Pearce met Christy Giles, 24, and Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola, 26, at a rave party in Los Angeles and lured them back to his place — plying them with fentanyl-laced coke and drugged drinks and then refusing to call for help when they overdosed.
A witness claimed Pearce said “dead girls don’t talk” when he begged the killer to call 911.
Instead, Pearce dragged their limp bodies into his Toyota Prius and dumped them on the sidewalk in front of two different hospitals.

After the girls were murdered and scumbag Pearce was charged, seven other women came forward and said they’d been assaulted by him.

It came out yesterday, during the sentencing, that one of those women was Ms. Craven.

Pearce assaulted Craven while she was unconscious in 2020, prosecutors said at trial. He was given six years for that crime, plus sentences of 15 years to life for the other rapes.

…

Pearce was sentenced to a total of 146 years in prison for his crimes…

She was assaulted by someone who isn’t even worth being called “human”, but she didn’t let that stop her. She worked her butt off to get through the police academy and get sworn in as an officer, and she died a hero.

Anybody else notice that there’s an awful lot of dust in the air today?

Posted in Cops, Heroism, Law, Movies, Obits, Radio | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 17, 2025.

Friday, October 17th, 2025

The archiving service I use has been having issues all day, so I’m going to put this up without some links. If they fix the problems in the next day or two, I’ll go back and add them.

Kanchha Sherpa has passed away at the age of 92. (Paywalled link. Sorry.) He was the last surviving member of the Hillary-Norgay team that climbed Mount Everest.

Mr. Kanchha carried 60 pounds of gear, fixed ropes and scouted the trail for the team. Despite injury, cold, illness and hardship, “I got good work,” he told Climate Wire in 2011. “I got good clothing. It was good for me.”

…

More recently, he expressed concern about the large numbers of people climbing Everest and the environmental damage they caused.Still, as a mountain guide, he told Climate Wire: “If we stop the tourists to save the mountains, we don’t have anything to do. Just grow potatoes and eat and sit.”

Ace Frehley, of KISS. NYT (share link, should be free).

I don’t have much to say about Mr. Frehley, and I feel a little bad. But I was never a fan of Knights In Satan’s Service.

Susan Stamberg, NPR host famous for her “cranberry relish” recipe. Recipe here. NYT (non-archived, paywalled link. Sorry.)

American Handgunner, the print edition. The brand is going to continue in the form of online “newsletters”, and I think Guns is still going to be around.

But to me, this is awful news. AH is one of the few gun magazines I subscribed to, and I’m not sure if signing up for all the newsletters will get me the content I want. Sure, Dr. Dabbs will still be around, but what about the “Ayoob Files” and Ayoob’s monthly column? Will the “Guncrank Diaries” still exist? If not, who’s going to tell me stories, like the one about Elon Musk’s dad killing three cannibals with two bullets? And what if I want to go back and refer to something? The website is a little skirty about pulling up older articles, even if you are a paid subscriber.

I think I understand the reasons, and I still support the AH staff. But the older I get, the more change stinks.

Posted in Guns, History, Media, Music, Obits, Radio | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: July 25, 2024.

Thursday, July 25th, 2024

Gene Peterson, longtime radio announcer for the Houston Rockets.

Houston Rockets Twitter. Apparently I can’t embed tweets any longer, unless maybe I’m logged in to Twitter? (That would be difficult, as I don’t have a Twitter account.)

(Hattip: Lawrence.)

Posted in Obits, Radio, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: February 13, 2024.

Tuesday, February 13th, 2024

Capt. Larry L. Taylor (United States Army – ret.) passed away on January 28th.

I wrote about Capt. Taylor back in September, when he received the Medal of Honor. Capt. Taylor is the guy who flew four men out of a hot LZ, with them hanging onto the sides of his Huey Cobra helicopter.

Bob Edwards, NPR guy. There was a time when I woke up to Bob Edwards in the morning…

Also among the dead Bobs: Bob Moore, founder of Bob’s Red Mill. I’ve bought and used specialty products from Bob’s, though I never met Bob. 94 is a pretty good run.

David Bouley, prominent NYC chef.

Kelvin Kiptum, marathon runner. He was 24 and died in a car accident in Kenya.

This seems particularly sad. He set the men’s marathon record in Chicago last year: 2:00:35.

It was only his third marathon.

…

With hundreds of Kenyans having been barred from the sport in the past decade because of doping violations, his record drew not only wonderment, but also scrutiny. “My secret is training,” Kiptum, who was never accused of doping and had no drug suspensions, told reporters last fall. “Not any other thing.”

Many people think he had a shot at running a marathon in under two hours, which is sort of the Holy Grail of marathon running. He actually ran one in Vienna (in 2019) at 1:59:40, but that didn’t count as a record for reasons. He had said he was going to try to break the two-hour mark in Rotterdam in April.

Posted in Bread, Food, Heroism, Obits, Radio, Sports | 2 Comments »

DEFCON 31 news flash.

Friday, September 8th, 2023

By way of Hacker News, and I only discovered this 15 minutes ago so I haven’t had time to go through all of it yet:

“Snoop unto them, as they snoop unto us”.

Here’s the original description:

BLE devices are now all the rage. What makes a purpose built tracking device like the AirTag all that different from the majority of BLE devices that have a fixed address? With the rise of IoT we’re also seeing a rise in government and corporate BLE surveillance systems. We’ll look at tools that normal people can use to find out if their favorite IoT gear is easily trackable. If headphones and GoPro’s use fixed addresses, what about stun guns and bodycams? We’ll take a look at IoT gear used by authorities and how it may be detectedable over long durations, just like an AirTag.

The first link will get you to slides, video of the talk, files, and code. As you know, Bob, Bluetooth is a thing for this blog, so this is relevant to my interests…

Posted in Bluetooth, Cops, DEFCON, DEFCON 31, Law, Radio | 1 Comment »

DEFCON 31 notes, part 2.

Friday, August 11th, 2023

Slides are up for Thursday’s Black Hat presentations. At least some of them, including:

Here’s a link to the DEFCON 31 presentations on the DEFCON media server.

Thursday’s DEFCON presentations that I was interested in:

As I noted earlier, the current state of Twitter makes it almost impossible for me to keep up with and provide presentation updates. Your best bet (and I feel like a lazy journalist saying this) might be to check out the decks on the media server for any presentations you are interested in, check out those folks Twitter or Mastodon feeds (if you’re on one of those services, and they’ve put that in their deck) and look for updates there.

Tips in comments are welcome.

Posted in DEFCON, DEFCON 31, Phones, Radio | Comments Closed

DEFCON 31 notes.

Wednesday, August 9th, 2023

The Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas started today.

DEFCON 31 starts tomorrow, though it seems like Friday is when things pick up.

Despite the recent, and much appreciated, shout-out from Borepatch, I’m feeling kind of ambivalent about trying to keep up with DEFCON this year.

My recent trip (write-up coming in the next few days, promise) blew a pretty big hole in my schedule. I haven’t had any time to do prep work for DEFCON/Black Hat. And I have a whole bunch of things I want to do, and so little time to do them in.

I also rely heavily on Twitter for links to presentations. And the current state of Twitter makes that almost impossible.

It also feels like DEFCON has moved past me. It used to feel like a gathering of one of my tribes. Now it feels like…something else. I note that DEFCON admission is now $460. And you don’t get free admission, or even a discount, if you go to Black Hat.

Still, tradition is tradition. So let’s see how badly I can do this.

(more…)

Posted in Android, DEFCON, DEFCON 31, Phones, Radio | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 25, 2023.

Tuesday, July 25th, 2023

Pamela Blair, actress. Other credits include John Huston’s film of “Annie”, “The Cosby Mysteries”, and “Law and Order”.

Reeves Callaway. He made cars go fast.

Mr. Callaway and his company were well known in the world of high-performance automobiles custom-made for deep-pocketed clients. He began by modifying cars out of his garage, then established his company in Old Lyme, Conn., with the goal of challenging European manufacturers like Porsche and Ferrari, which were then making the world’s fastest vehicles.

…

“They came to us,” he told the Truck Show Podcast in 2021, “and they said, ‘Look, could you, within one year’s time, develop an Alfa twin-turbo system for us that we could use to compete against the Maserati?’”
He did, making about three dozen modified vehicles, but then Alfa Romeo lost interest in the project. Yet somehow one of those modified Alfas found its way to General Motors’ Black Lake testing ground in Michigan, and soon GM was asking if Mr. Callaway could do the same thing to its Chevrolet Corvette.
“This was a huge opportunity, to become associated with Corvette,” he said. “So we saluted and said, ‘Yes, sir; immediately, sir; may I have another, sir?’”

…

In late 1988, he and his engineers tweaked the Corvette some more, taking aim at 250 miles per hour with a version of the car that they called the Sledgehammer.
“We basically decided that 250 m.p.h. was a reachable goal,” Mr. Callaway told the McClatchy News Service. “But if it was to have any meaning, the car had to be docile at low speeds as well. It had to retain all the things that make a car usable on the street, such as air-conditioning.”
To prove the point, his team drove the car from Connecticut to a seven-and-a-half-mile oval track in Ohio. (It got 16 miles per gallon, they said.) At the track, it hit 210 m.p.h. on its first run, 223 on its second. After more tweaking, it reached 254.76 on its third attempt, a record for a car made for normal driving. Mr. Callaway’s company, in its announcement of his death, said the record stood for more than 20 years.

The Santa Barbara News-Press.

Ampersand Publishing LLC, the entity that owns the paper, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, or liquidation, on Friday, with estimated assets of up to $50,000 and liabilities between $1,000,001 and $10 million, according to court records. The bankruptcy was approved by the LLC on May 1, with Wendy McCaw, who has owned the paper since 2000, as the authorized agent.

…

The News-Press has published for more than 150 years, but it has undergone years of turbulence since McCaw bought it from The New York Times Co. In 2006, six editors and a columnist resigned in protest of interference from McCaw in the editorial process. The was followed by an exodus of dozens of additional staffers, as well as a vote by remaining newsroom employees to unionize with the Teamsters.

Ron Sexton, comedian and regular on ‘The Bob & Tom Show’.

Posted in Cars, Media, Obits, Radio, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 21, 2023.

Friday, July 21st, 2023

Jim Scoutten, noted shooting sports commentator. Thanks to Pigpen51 for tipping me off on this one, but it took me some time to find something I could link.

Tony Bennett. THR. Well covered pretty much everywhere, so not a lot to say.

Carlin Glynn, actress. NYT (archived). Other credits include “Three Days of the Condor”, “Law and Order: Criminal Intent”, and “Resurrection” (an interesting sounding movie I had not heard of until recently: parts of it were filmed in the area around Cattleman’s Steakhouse in Fabens).

Josephine Chaplin. IMDB.

Dick Biondi, noted Chicago DJ. I never listened to Chicago radio, but the name does ring a bell with me.

Posted in Guns, Movies, Music, Obits, Radio | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: May 23, 2023.

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2023

Lawrence emailed an obit for C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel for George Bush and long-time advisor to other presidents. NYT (archived).

Rick Wolff. Interesting guy. He was a radio host on WFAN. Before that, he was the “psychological coach” for the Cleveland Indians: one of the first sports psychologists hired by a major league team.

Even though sports psychology was rare in baseball, Mr. Wolff said on his show last year, Cleveland’s players “took the mental side of the game seriously” and within a few years were a “powerhouse in the American League.”
The idea caught on, he added, and “these days it’s the rare, rare sports team or professional or college organization that doesn’t have at least one sports psychologist on their staff.”

…

As an author, he wrote, among other books, “Secrets of Sports Psychology Revealed: Proven Techniques to Elevate Your Performance” (2018) and “Harvard Boys: A Father and Son’s Adventure Playing Minor League Baseball” (2007), which he wrote with John Wolff.

…

The Detroit Tigers picked Mr. Wolff late in the 1972 amateur draft, and he played in their minor league system in 1973 and 1974 while completing his Harvard bachelor’s degree in psychology.

Rick Hoyt, marathon runner with his father Dick Hoyt. I wrote about the Hoyts when Dick Hoyt passed away in 2021, so I’ll point you back to that obit and to the Rick Reilly essay.

The pair competed nearly every year in the Boston Marathon from 1980 through 2014. In 2013, Dick and Rick Hoyt were honored with a bronze statue near the race’s starting line.
They completed more than 1,100 races together, including marathons, triathlons and duathlons, a combination of biking and running.

Ray Stevenson, actor. IMDB.

“Kill the Irishman” is an interesting movie that I have a sentimental fondness for (because Cleveland) and he was good as Danny Greene. But the movie could have been a lot better than it actually was.

Rolf Harris, “Australian-born, UK-resident presenter, actor and convicted sex offender” (stealing Lawrence‘s blurb). IMDB.

Helmut Berger, actor noted for his work with Luchino Visconti. IMDB. (He was also in “Victory at Entebbe” and “The Godfather Part III”.)

Posted in Movies, Obits, Politics, Radio, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 6, 2023.

Monday, March 6th, 2023

Gary Rossington, founding member of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

In 1976, Rossington survived a devastating car wreck in which he drove his Ford Torino into a tree. The crash inspired Lynyrd Skynyrd’s song “That Smell.” Only a year later, in 1977, he survived the tragic plane crash in Mississippi that killed lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and backing vocalist Cassie Gaines.
Rossington broke both arms and a leg and punctured his stomach and liver in the infamous plane crash.

Jerry Richardson, former NFL player and former owner of the Carolina Panthers.

Mr. Richardson was only the second former player to own a team (George Halas of the Chicago Bears was the other), and he made the most of his two seasons in the league. A wide receiver for the Baltimore Colts, he caught a touchdown pass from quarterback Johnny Unitas in the 1959 N.F.L. title game and used his bonus of several thousand dollars to pay for the first Hardee’s hamburger restaurant in Spartanburg, S.C.
Mr. Richardson would open hundreds more restaurants in the next 30 years, making him one of the richest men in the Carolinas.

…

In 2017, he announced he was selling the Panthers soon after Sports Illustrated reported on accusations that he sexually harassed women working for the team and that he had used a racial slur in the presence of a Black scout. The league investigation into Mr. Richardson’s workplace behavior led to a $2.75 million fine. But by then, he had already reached an agreement to sell the team for a then-record $2.3 billion. Mr. Richardson never publicly addressed the allegations.

…

After his second season, he asked for a raise to $10,000. After the team offered $9,750, Richardson returned to Spartanburg, and with his former college teammate, Charles Bradshaw, bought the first Hardee’s hamburger restaurant there. Mr. Richardson was hands-on, cleaning parking lots, mopping floors and flipping burgers.
“He was very serious, very intent, and very quickly found himself to be interested in the running of the businesses,” said Hugh McColl, the former chief executive of Bank of America who, in the 1960s, lent Mr. Richardson $25,000 to open a Hardee’s in Charlotte, and who later helped him purchase the Panthers and build a new stadium.
Decades ago, Mr. McColl visited a Hardee’s with Mr. Richardson and watched him pick up trash outside the restaurant and hand it to the manager. “I’ve never seen it before or since,” he said of Mr. Richardson’s attention to detail.

Dave Wills, radio guy for the Tampa Bay Rays. He was 58.

Darin Jackson, a veteran member of the Sox broadcast team, always looked forward to catching up with Wills when the teams met.
“Man, he was as big as life. Dave was always a legend in the city of Chicago,” Jackson said. “And he was a good man for the game of baseball. If you had Dave as part of any organization, you’ve got yourself a true warrior going to war with you guys and for you guys.
“That’s what I remember most about Dave when he was doing his job. He was there to let the people know the truth. He was there to be honest about the organization. And he wasn’t afraid to go ahead and hold people to task. I loved that about him. He’s going to be missed.”

For the record: NYT obits for Ricou Browning and Gordon Pinsent.

Posted in Movies, Music, NFL, Obits, Radio, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 14, 2022.

Friday, October 14th, 2022

Robbie Coltrane. THR.

He wasn’t someone whose work I have a lot of familiarity with, though I’ve heard good things about “Cracker”. Other credits included some “Blackadder”s, “The Pope Must Diet”, Falstaff in “Henry V”, and “Frasier”.

Dr. Vincent DiMaio, forensic pathologist. He was the chief medical examiner of Bexar County (which covers San Antonio) from 1981 to 2006. In that capacity, he testified for the prosecution against Genene Jones, who was convicted of killing a 15-month-old baby, and may have killed up to 60 other children.

Dr. DiMaio, who had been a medical examiner in Dallas from 1972 to 1981, was later called on to look into allegations that President Kennedy’s assassin was not Lee Harvey Oswald but a look-alike whom Soviet officials had trained to assume his identify. Michael Eddowes, a British lawyer and restaurateur, had made the allegations in a 1975 book, “Khrushchev Killed Kennedy,” which he published himself.
After the author persuaded Oswald’s wife, Marina, to have his body exhumed in 1981, Dr. DiMaio was recruited to help examine the remains. But his team quickly debunked the theory, confirming through forensic dentistry that the physical characteristics of the man buried as Oswald matched those on Oswald’s passport and his Marine Corps records.

As a private consultant, he also worked with the authors Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh and came to the belief that Vincent van Gogh’s death was murder, not suicide. He also testified for the defense in the George Zimmerman trial.

He also wrote four books: Morgue: A Life in Death (with Ron Franscell) was nominated for a “Best Fact Crime” Edgar award. (The NYT says it won, but the Edgar Awards database says The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer by Kate Summerscale was that year’s winner.)

He could bring firsthand experience to his expertise in gunshot wounds: He himself had survived being shot four times by his second wife in a fit of anger. They divorced.

Bernard McGuirk, Don Imus’s producer.

Posted in Books, Law, Movies, Obits, Radio, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 8, 2022.

Thursday, September 8th, 2022

I started preparing the obit watch this morning, before things happened. Mike the Musicologist sent this over:

I’m reminded of C.S. Lewis’s passing…on November 22, 1963.

Bernard Shaw, former CNN anchor.

Shaw was CNN’s first chief anchor and was with the network when it launched on June 1, 1980. He retired from CNN after more than 20 years on February 28, 2001.
During his storied career, Shaw reported on some of the biggest stories of that time — including the student revolt in Tiananmen Square in May 1989, the First Gulf war live from Baghdad in 1991, and the 2000 presidential election.

NYT.

Anne Garrels, NPR correspondent.

As much as Anne Garrels loved Russia, she is probably best known for her reporting during the 2003 Iraq war. She was one of a handful of foreign reporters who remained in Bagdhad as the war began. As she told Susan Stamberg, she used a satellite phone for her reports and went to great lengths to conceal it from Iraqi authorities.
“And then I decided it would be very smart if I broadcast naked, so if that, god forbid, the secret police were coming through the rooms, that would give me maybe five minutes to answer the phone, pretend I’d been asleep and sort of go ‘I don’t have any clothes on!’ And maybe it would maybe give me five seconds to hide the phone,” she said.

NYT:

Her most acclaimed reporting came during the 2003 Iraq war. More than 500 journalists, including more than 100 Americans, covered the run-up to the war. But once the United States began the all-out bombing campaign known as “shock and awe,” she was one of 16 American correspondents not embedded with U.S. troops who stayed — and for a time was the only U.S. network reporter to continue broadcasting from the heart of Baghdad…
Once she was home, other reporters interviewed her about her ordeal. She told of subsisting on Kit Kat chocolate bars and Marlboro Lights, bathing by gathering water in huge trash cans, and powering her equipment by attaching jumper cables to a car battery, which she lugged up to her hotel room every night.

She was 71. Lung cancer got her.

Don Gehrmann. Hadn’t heard of him before, but he had an interesting story. He was a runner. In the “1950 Wanamaker Mile”, he ran the race in four minutes and 9.3 seconds.

It took him 314 days to win the race.

In the 1950 Wanamaker Mile, on Jan. 28, Gehrmann seemed to catch Fred Wilt at the tape, or did he? Both first-place judges said Wilt had won. Both second-place judges said Wilt had finished second. The finish-line picture from the phototimer was inadvertently blocked by a judge. And so it was left to the chief judge, Asa Bushnell, who was at the finish line, to make the call. He declared Gehrmann the winner, with a time of 4 minutes, 9.3. seconds.
But that did not settle the matter. Wilt, an F.B.I. agent when not competing and a future inductee of the National Track & Field Hall of Fame, protested, and 13 days later the Metropolitan Amateur Athletic Union’s registration committee, reversing Bushnell, declared him the winner.
Then Gehrmann protested that decision, and the matter carried over almost a year later to the A.A.U.’s national convention in Washington. By a vote of 314 to 108 — 314 days after the race — that ruling body’s board of governors upheld the chief judge’s decision and declared Gehrmann, forevermore, the victor.
Some were skeptical. As Howard Schmertz, the Millrose Games’ assistant meet director in 1950, told The New York Times in 2011, “The final decision was made by maybe a dozen people who saw the race and a few hundred who didn’t.”

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In a 1976 interview with United Press International, Gehrmann described how the sport, by then having gone professional, had changed. He recalled that for his workouts he had usually run just 2 ¼ miles, that his pre-meet meal had usually consisted of a hamburger, French fries and soda pop, and that the cinder tracks he had run on stole a lot of energy.

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