Obit watch: April 19, 2023.

Tiger McKee, noted firearms trainer. American Handgunner.

I never had the pleasure of taking a course from Mr. McKee, but I did read his AH columns and The Book of Two Guns: The Martial Art of the 1911 Pistol and AR Carbine. (Amazon says I bought that in 2008. Wow.) And I think I knew that he was doing custom Smith and Wessons, but those were probably out of my price range.

This is a bad loss. And 61 seems a lot closer these days.

(Hattip to pigpen51 on this.)

Carol Locatell, actress. Other credits include “M*A*S*H”, “The Pretender”, “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”…

…and “Mannix” (“Desert Run”, season 7, episode 6.)

Almost a month ago, I posted an obit Lawrence sent me for Gloria Dea. Yesterday, the paper of record ran their own obit.

One of Ms. Dea’s last movie credits was in Ed Wood’s notoriously bad “Plan 9 From Outer Space” in 1957. She later sold insurance and then cars before settling back in Las Vegas.

IMDB. She’s credited as “Girl”.

Freddie Scappaticci.

During the Troubles (that is, the conflict in Northern Ireland), the British Army had a deep cover mole known as “Stakeknife”.

Stakeknife had penetrated the heart of the I.R.A.’s internal security unit, known as the Nutting Squad, a macabre sobriquet evoking the unit’s standard operating procedure — the execution of accused informers with two bullets to the “nut,” or head. Bodies were usually then dumped.

Mr. Scappaticci led that unit.

He was accused of overseeing the torture and killing of more than 30 suspected informers. If, at the same time, he was the British mole called Stakeknife, then he was a paid British agent killing fellow British agents.

There are a lot of people who believe he was Stakeknife. He consistently denied it.

Mr. Scappaticci may well have taken some of his secrets to his grave, shielding government intelligence and military handlers from one of the central moral conundrums of the case: Did the British state collude in the killings in order to protect Stakeknife’s identity?
British officials have described Stakeknife as the “golden egg” and “the jewel in the crown” of their infiltration of the I.R.A. They have said that intelligence he delivered alerted them to myriad I.R.A. operations, saving hundreds of lives.

…

In 2003, several British newspapers identified Stakeknife as Mr. Scappaticci. He denied the accusations publicly but then dropped out of sight. Several news reports said the British authorities had spirited him away, first to the Italian town of Cassino and then to a witness protection program in Britain.

There is an inquiry going on into Stakeknife. It’s been going on since 2016.

Mr. Boutcher, the head of the Stakeknife inquiry, promised on April 11 that investigators would publish an interim report on their findings this year. But families of victims greeted the news with skepticism.

Wikipedia entry. Why am I reminded of Whitey Bulger?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 19th, 2023 at 2:18 pm and is filed under 1911, 1970s, Books, Guns, History, Law, Magic, Mannix, Movies, Obits, Smith and Wesson, Theatre, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “Obit watch: April 19, 2023.”

  1. pigpen51 says:
    April 19, 2023 at 11:33 pm

    I just saw the other day that Mannix is available on our cable system, via the HDTV portion of our feed. I only have that on one of our sets, but it is also available on my computer, so I may have to watch it once in a while. I have a hard time watching much of anything on broadcast television today. I will watch a baseball game on occasion.
    I don’t watch the news programs anymore, due to them focusing on a single story until it is just too much, at the expense of all other things happening in the world. Sitcoms that my wife watches have never been worth my time, since I was in high school. And movies I watch on my computer. I am too cheap to go to the movie theater.
    61 is almost 2 years younger than I so yes it is getting a bit too close to home, for sure. I am lucky that I don’t have any health issues, other than being overweight, like many Americans, due to our poor diet. But I am working on that, and normally have luck with it. I just put on 30 pounds over the pandemic, and due to me being lazy. My last adventure of losing weight was as simple as eliminating all calories from liquid form, and I lost 20 pounds in about 3 months. I didn’t do anything else, but I did have the advantage of summer time, with me getting outside more. That hopefully will help once again.
    Have a great week and weekend.

  2. stainles says:
    April 20, 2023 at 3:16 pm

    I don’t know which cable channel you’re getting “Mannix” on, but it is also available over-the-air. If you have METv over-the-air in your area. And if you’re willing to stay up until 1 AM (Central), or if you have a way to record it.