Crime news of the weird.

September 2nd, 2025

Remember Buford Pusser?

This is not Buford Pusser. This is Joe Don Baker playing Buford Pusser in the original “Walking Tall”.

This is the real Buford Pusser.

There’s a chance that some of my younger readers might have heard of him from the misguided remake of “Walking Tall” with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. For those who are unfamiliar with the story, Mr. Pusser was the sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee from 1964 to 1970. He’s famous for trying to clean up the county single-handedly, fighting the Dixie Mafia and the “State Line Mob”. On August 12, 1967, a person or persons unknown allegedly ambushed Mr. Pusser and his wife, Pauline. Mrs. Pusser was killed, and Mr. Pusser was badly injured.

Mr. Pusser died in 1974 as a result of a single-car accident. There were suspicions that it wasn’t an “accident”, but nobody was able to prove anything. The official investigation said he was driving drunk and wasn’t wearing a seat belt when his Corvette hit an embankment and ejected him.

As sheriff, Pusser was credited with surviving seven stabbings and eight shootings.

I’m trying to be careful in my wording here because of what happened last week: McNairy County prosecutors announced “they had amassed enough evidence…to present an indictment to a grand jury in the killing of…Pauline Mullins Pusser”.

58 years later, the prosecutors office is saying Buford killed his wife and allegedly staged the whole thing.

This raises many questions.

Mr. Davidson said that the case file revealed “physical, medical, forensic, ballistic, and re-enactment evidence that contradicts his version of events,” referring to Sheriff Pusser’s statements to law enforcement officials and others about his wife’s death on Aug. 12, 1967.
On that day, Sheriff Pusser got a call in the early morning about a disturbance. In his version of events, his wife volunteered to ride with him as he responded to the call.
Sheriff Pusser said that as they drove along a country road, a car pulled up and a gunman opened fire, killing Ms. Pusser and wounding him.
He needed several surgeries and was hospitalized for nearly three weeks.

There doesn’t seem to be any question, from what I can tell, that he was seriously injured.

Doctors said he was struck on the left side of his jaw by at least two, or possibly three, rounds from a .30-caliber carbine. He spent 18 days in the hospital before returning home, and needed several more surgeries to restore his appearance.

The prosecutors say his wounds were self-inflicted, and “the gunshot wound on Sheriff Pusser’s cheek was a close-contact wound“.

It isn’t clear, but it seems to be implied in the article that prosecutors believe something other than a .30 caliber carbine was used. I have a lot of trouble imaging shooting yourself once, much less “two or three times” in the jaw with a .30 caliber carbine. Not just the whole “shooting yourself” factor, but also just physically getting the gun into position to do it without slipping and putting a bullet in your brain. The thought does occur to me, though: taking the idea that Mr. Pusser was shot with .30 carbine rounds at face (ha!) value, it could have been done with an Enforcer, which is a weird .30 carbine pistol thing. (It could also have been a Ruger Blackhawk in .30 carbine.)

Dr. Michael Revelle, an emergency medicine doctor and medical examiner, determined that Ms. Pusser was more likely than not shot outside the car and then placed inside it.
He found that skull trauma she suffered did not match the crime scene photographs from inside the car. Blood spatter on the hood of the car also contradicted Sheriff Pusser’s statements to the authorities, he said.

I have a lot of respect for crime scene investigators and cold case detectives. But “blood spatter” evidence (I assume from photographs) in a 58-year-old case? Blood splatter evidence already has a lot of problems.

A ballistics expert, Dr. Eric Warren, determined that the physical evidence pointed to a staged crime scene.

What evidence is he looking at? Just ballistics evidence, or more than that? Crime scene experts sometimes get out over their skis and testify to things that aren’t in their field of expertise. Not saying that’s what is going on here, but the question is worth asking.

Ms. Pusser’s family seems to buy into the prosecution’s theory.

Investigators also talked with members of Sheriff Pusser’s family but did not describe those conversations. They also declined to discuss the weapon that was used, and whether it matched up with the autopsy findings.
They said that the case file would have more specifics, and that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation would make public the entire file once redactions are made.

I’ll really enjoy reading that case file. As it is now, I don’t know what to think. It could be that Buford killed his wife and staged the crime scene, but I feel like there are all kinds of holes that can be punched in that theory. But what’s the motivation of the prosecutor’s office to frame him 58 years later? The State Line Mob and the Dixie Mafia were pretty much broken up years ago, so the prosecution probably isn’t under their control.

I wonder if maybe this is one of the problems with cold case investigation. There’s a temptation once you’ve got some evidence together to say, “Oh, yeah, we think so-and-so did it, but he’s dead, so we’re closing the case and blaming him.” I really wonder if the case against Buford Pusser would actually hold up in court. We’ll never know.

Buford Pusser named one man as being the person who contracted the killing, but nobody was ever able to make a case against him for that crime. The guy is a real scumbucket, though: he was convicted of another murder in 1972, sentenced to life in prison without parole, and (while serving that sentence) arranged to have a judge whacked. And that’s another rabbit hole worth going down, but that’s also another story for another day.

Posted in Guns, Law, Ruger | 6 Comments »

Obit watch: September 2, 2025.

September 2nd, 2025

Graham Greene, actor. I’ve never seen “Dances With Wolves” but Lawrence has it and is threatening to bring it out for the next movie night. NYT (archived).

Other credits include “Wind River”, “Atlantic Rim”, and “Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion” (which I’d really like to see).

Joe Bugner, boxer.

In 1971, he won a controversial victory on points over his countryman Henry Cooper, a widely popular figure, gaining the British, the British Commonwealth and the European heavyweight titles. Cooper went into retirement afterward, and Bugner was left to deal with a less than adoring British public.

He’s perhaps more famous for fighting Ali twice and Frazier once.

On Feb. 14, 1973, in a 12-rounder against Ali in Las Vegas, Bugner sustained a cut over his left eye in the opening round. But he remained on his feet while losing a unanimous decision. There were no knockdowns. Bugner left with respect from the crowd and from Ali.
The New York Times reported that Ali, who had predicted a seventh-round knockout, said afterward of Bugner, a former sparring partner: “He’s a little better than I thought. I didn’t know his legs were so good. He’s three times better than when I sparred with him through the years.”
Less than five months later, on July 2, Bugner fought Frazier in a 12-round bout in London. It was Frazier’s first fight since losing his heavyweight title to George Foreman in January 1973. Charging ahead in the 10th round, Frazier knocked Bugner down for a nine count, but Bugner recovered and staggered Frazier before the bell, closing his left eye.
Frazier won on points, but The Times said that the decision “may have done more for his opponent’s reputation than for his.”

…

Bugner met Ali again on July 1, 1975, this time for a 15-round championship fight in the wilting morning heat of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Both fighters survived the conditions, but Ali won convincingly “with the ease of assaulting a statue,” Dave Anderson of The Times reported.
Bugner acknowledged that he had lacked energy in the heat and humidity. Afterward, he grew irritated with journalists’ probing questions and, according to The Telegraph, declared: “Get me Jesus Christ! I’ll fight him tomorrow!”
To which Hugh McIlvanney, a veteran British boxing reporter, replied, “Ah Joe, you’re only saying that ’cause you know he’s got bad hands.”

Gene Espy. He was the second person to “thru-hike” (make the whole trip in one continuous hike) the Appalachian Trail.

It took Mr. Espy 123 days to complete his journey, which started at Mount Oglethorpe in Georgia and took him through 14 states along the world’s longest continuous hiking-only footpath. Back then, the Appalachian Trail was mainly rugged wilderness, with few trail markers. He walked through parts of the trail where few others had ventured.
“I’d carry a map in my hat,” he was quoted as saying in 1993 by The News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C. “Every so often, I would stop and take my hat off, pull out my map, look around and try to figure out where I was.”
He averaged about 16 miles a day, but sometimes walked more than 30 on his way to Mount Katahdin in Maine, the northern terminus of the trail, which he reached on Sept. 30, 1951.

…

He bought a used backpack from an Army surplus store, hiking shoes from L.L. Bean, a canvas tent and a rain poncho. He carried a Boy Scout knife, cooking utensils, a miner’s carbide lamp and two canteens, one for water and the other for gasoline to fuel his tiny stove. His meals included dehydrated mashed potatoes and boiled cornmeal with sugar, raisins and powdered milk.

…

Mr. Espy’s former home in Macon became a mecca to fans seeking his advice.
“They brought their packs to our house and asked what they would need,” his wife, Eugenia (Bass) Espy, said in an interview. “He always said they were bringing too much and would say, ‘You don’t need this, you don’t need that.’ He tried to explain that you only should carry the essentials and keep the pack as light as you can.”

…

One day in 1965, Mr. Espy and his daughters were hiking on the trail in Georgia.
“We heard this crashing in the woods and this scruffy man came at us,” Ms. Gilsinger recalled. “He looked at us and said, ‘Gene Espy!’ And my father said, ‘Earl Shaffer!’ He was really depleted physically, and we took him into town, got him supplies and perked him up.”

(Earl Shaffer was the first person to thru-hike the trail. He passed away in 2002.)

Posted in Movies, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 30, 2025.

August 30th, 2025

It never fails. As soon as I say I can’t find an obit, the paper of record publishes one.

NYT obit for Randall “Duke” Cunningham.

I feel very conflicted about this. On the one hand, I have a lot of respect for people who served honorably in the military. Especially fighter pilots, and especially fighter aces.

On the other hand, Mr. Cunningham’s crimes were sleazy and stupid.

He pleaded guilty in federal court in 2005 to tax evasion and conspiracy to commit bribery. Among the favors he accepted from defense contractors were a Rolls-Royce, free rent on a live-aboard yacht, the Duke-Stir, moored on the Potomac River, and a sweetheart sale of his San Diego County home for nearly $1 million above market value.

On the gripping hand, it seems like this was a pattern for him. Wikipedia cites sources that say he was nearly court-martialed for breaking into his CO’s office. And it seems like the whole “Colonel Toon”/”Colonel Tomb” story was fabricated by Cunningham.

Floyd Levine, actor. Other credits include “Manimal”, “The Master”, “Mrs. Columbo” and “Columbo: Murder in Malibu”, “Braddock: Missing in Action III”, and “Angel III: The Final Chapter”.

Frank Price, movie executive. He was in charge at Columbia twice, and also at different times ran Universal’s television and movie divisions.

During Mr. Price’s five years there, Columbia released hits like the comedies “Stir Crazy” (1980), starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor; “Tootsie” (1982), with Dustin Hoffman as an out-of-work actor who finds success only by impersonating a woman; and “Ghostbusters” (1984), with Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd. Another major film under his watch was “Gandhi” (1982), with Ben Kingsley as the Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi; it won eight Oscars, including for best picture and best actor.
But Mr. Price was said to have refused to make “E.T. the Extraterrestrial,” Steven Spielberg’s science fiction story about a fragile alien lost on Earth, because of studio research saying that it would appeal only to children. The decision proved to be one of the biggest blunders in Hollywood history: “E.T.” went on to break box-office records.

…

“It’s hard for someone like Price to confront the fact that ‘Tootsie’ doesn’t make up for six bad films,” Mr. [Fay] Vincent told Kim Masters and Nancy Griffin for their 1996 book, “Hit and Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood.”

I don’t know. I personally think that one big hit can make up for six bad films: if you keep costs under control, which is something Hollywood seems to be bad at. Then again, as William Goldman used to say about Hollywood, “Nobody knows anything…… Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.”

Posted in History, Movies, Obits, Planes, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 29, 2025.

August 29th, 2025

I know I’m drawing heavily from the NYT, but that’s where the interesting obits are today.

Jim Murray. He was the general manager of the Philadelphia Eagles from 1974 until 1983, including during their Super Bowl run in 1981. But that’s not what I think is notable.

The first facility opened in Philadelphia in 1974, the year Mr. Murray became, at 36, the National Football League’s youngest general manager. The daughter of Fred Hill, a tight end with the Eagles, had been diagnosed with leukemia. The team raised money for her; Mr. Murray was delegated to prolong the giving by looking for a related charitable cause.
He found a local pediatric oncologist, Dr. Audrey Evans, who told him that the most pressing need was to provide accommodation for families who brought their sick children to a hospital and often had to sleep in the corridor or in their cars.
Mr. Murray understood immediately. “He saw the way they were struggling and said, ‘We have to figure something out,’” his godson, the Philadelphia sports broadcaster Rob Ellis, said in an interview. “Then the idea bloomed and progressed. It started with the motivation to help his player.”

Know your stuff. Be a man. Look after your people.

Mr. Murray reached out to a Philadelphia advertising executive who handled the region’s McDonald’s account. Local McDonald’s restaurants agreed to donate money from a promotional drink — the Shamrock Shake — as long as the house could be named after the company’s emblematic clown.
The first Ronald McDonald House opened on Oct. 15, 1974, at 4032 Spruce Street in Philadelphia. There was room for seven families. Mr. Murray took to calling it the “McMiracle.”

Joan Mellen, biographer. She wrote 25 books about all sorts of subjects (Japanese film, the JFK assassination) but I wanted to highlight her because…one of her biographies was about Bobby Knight.

In early 1987, the irascible and authoritarian college basketball coach Bobby Knight called Temple University looking for Joan Mellen…
Mr. Knight was fuming about “A Season on the Brink,” a recent best-selling biography by the sportswriter John Feinstein that portrayed him as vulgar, sexist and out of control. Professor Mellen had just reviewed the book for The St. Petersburg Times, faulting it for misunderstanding its subject.
“Knight is, above all, a teacher,” she wrote. “Aggressively he gives his all. In this he is no different from the dedicated English or math teacher. The basketball players, like all students, are recalcitrant. They fight against learning. Knight’s advantage over other teachers lies in his access and control.”
On the phone, Mr. Knight was charming.
“You’re a professor of literature?” Professor Mellen later recalled him asking her. “I just wanted to tell you I really liked what you wrote.”
Professor Mellen began compulsively watching his games. She arranged to write a profile of him for The New York Times, which she later expanded into a best seller of her own: “Bob Knight: His Own Man.”

Bob Knight: His Own Man was negatively reviewed by many people, some of whom saw it as a shot across the bow of Mr. Feinstein. One of those people was Rick Telander in the New York Times Book Review.

Professor Mellen’s response was vintage Professor Mellen.
She castigated The Times in a letter to the editor, saying that Mr. Telander should not have reviewed her book because he worked for Sports Illustrated, which had published several negative articles about Mr. Knight. He was among the writers who had criticized the coach.
“Such breaches of journalistic ethics on the part of some sportswriters are a central theme of my book,” Professor Mellen wrote. “My focus, however, was Mr. Knight as a teacher, a topic not touched upon once by Mr. Telander, who is obviously adhering to some other agenda.”
The Times published an Editors’ Note saying that Mr. Telander should not have been chosen to review the book.

A.K. Best, fly tying guy.

Mr. Best was renowned for his mastery of the meticulous art of professional fly tying. He produced nearly weightless artificial lures that mimicked the midges, caddisflies and other bugs that fish eat; his specialty was dry flies, which float on the water’s surface.

…

Mr. Best also wrote books and magazine articles, spoke at seminars and made instructional videos with the professorial tone of a pipe-smoking teacher, which he had been. (Pipe smoke helped keep the mosquitoes away while he fished.) Fly Fisherman magazine said, in a tribute after his death, that he “shaped the soul of modern fly fishing.”
For hours at a time, Mr. Best sat in his basement workshop in Boulder, using a vise, pliers, tweezers, a toothbrush, sprigs of feathers and other tools of the trade. He made the wings and tails of insect replicas by hand, for personal use and at a commercial pace of roughly 40 lures an hour and 36,000 a year for companies like Orvis, Umpqua Feather Merchants and Urban Angler. He was said to have attached a shoulder rest to his phone so he could keep tying while taking a call.
As he worked, he listened to classical music and jazz, accompaniment that dated to his earlier career as a music teacher and high school band director. He considered the precision required for tying flies similar to the exactitude of creating music.
“There’s no such thing as an unimportant detail in music,” Mr. Best told The Gazette of Colorado Springs in 2024. “The composer put that dot on the paper with an ink pen for a specific reason. Just like when you look at a picture of an insect, every dot is important.”

…

His great skill was creating flies of a size and color that appeared natural, rather than store-bought, using the knowledge that no adult aquatic insects have fuzzy bodies; that flies should appear shiny and waxy, not translucent; that hair from a white-tailed deer could be used if elk hair was not available.
“You don’t need a fly so big you’re going to scare the hell out of a fish,” he said in a 2015 interview for the Montana State University Angling Oral History Project. In the same interview, he said, “If it’s the right color and floats, it’ll catch fish.”

There’s a Montana State University Angling Oral History Project? Awesome! President Trump, I want some of my tax money going there, please.

We fished some when I was a child, by which I mean we dangled lines in the water from fishing poles. I’ve never been fly fishing, but I find myself becoming more interested in both the sport itself and the literature surrounding it as I get older. Callahan and Company has fly fishing and angling books as one of their specialties, so I see a lot of fly fishing literature advertised in their catalogs. Much of it sounds fascinating.

I am seeing reports (especially from McThag) that Randall “Duke” Cunningham, Navy ace, former Congressman, and convicted and pardoned felon, has passed away. But I don’t have anything I can link yet.

Burning in Hell watch: Tran Trong Duyet, chief warden of the Hanoi Hilton.

Posted in Books, Fish, History, Media, NFL, Obits, Planes, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: August 28, 2025.

August 28th, 2025

Pat Moore, long-time server at P.J. Clarke’s in New York City.

This is one of those not-so-famous person obits that the paper does well. She was named “Miss Fordham” in her first year at the school and signed to a modeling contract with the Ford Modeling Agency.

The Fords booked her on fashion shoots and in ads for perfume, coffee, mouthwash, crackers, brassieres, cigars and whiskey. “If I can’t have Ambassador I don’t drink Scotch” reads the copy on one print ad from the 1960s. Ms. Moore wears a slinky black cocktail dress and stares into the camera with the cool self-possession of a Bronx girl who knows what she wants.

She also had an interesting personal life, especially after she started working at P.J. Clarke’s.

As a teenager, Ms. Moore had been the president of the local chapter of the Perry Como Fan Club, invited into the studio to watch Como rehearse. An appreciation for smooth Italian American crooners would be a refrain in her life. After her divorce, she dated both Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, though whether the two men overlapped is unclear to her friends.
“The way I heard it was, when Sinatra would come in, Tony Bennett wasn’t allowed to come in the restaurant,” Michael DeFonzo, the chef for the company that owns all five of the P.J. Clarke’s locations (three in Manhattan), said in an interview. “I would always press her about it, and she would say, ‘Stop it.’ She never gave up the truth.”

…

Everyone agrees, though, that both men came to see her at P.J. Clarke’s, and Mr. Bennett was still frequenting the restaurant decades later. If it was her birthday, he brought flowers. If he wanted to take her out for a drink, he would wait in his car at the curb until the end of her shift. If he was hungry, he would take a seat in her section.

…

Few of her colleagues knew about the portrait of her that hung in her bedroom — painted, Mr. Watts said, by Mr. Bennett. Nor did she readily pose for pictures, with the result that no photographs of Ms. Moore hang on the walls of the restaurant where she spent half her life.

That’s the other reason I wanted to post this obit. David J. Schow, noted horror writer, wrote a story called “Red Light” that won a World Fantasy Award in 1987. The premise of the story involves a successful model that comes to believe, every time someone takes a picture of her, they’re stripping away pieces of her.

It’s a kind of subtle, not really splatterpunk, horror story. I commend it to your attention, if you can find it. And I wonder if Ms. Moore ever felt the same way.

Posted in Books, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 27th, 2025.

August 27th, 2025

Playing catch-up after returning from my trip:

Ens. Donald McPherson (US Navy – ret.) He was 103. National WWII Museum.

I love the NYT opening:

On April 6, 1945, during the Battle of Okinawa in the final months of World War II, a 22-year-old Navy ensign, Donald McPherson, was piloting a Hellcat fighter with “Death N’ Destruction” painted on the side.
As his squadron, the VF-83, joined an aerial assault on the island of Kikaijima, between Okinawa and mainland Japan, Mr. McPherson spotted Japanese dive-bombers rushing toward him from below. He lowered the nose of his Hellcat and fired, notching his first hit before positioning himself behind a second enemy plane.
“By using full throttle, my Hellcat responded well, and I squeezed the trigger, and it exploded,” he said, referring to the enemy plane, in an interview for Fagen Fighters WWII Museum in Granite Falls, Minn. “Then I turned and did a lot of violent maneuvering to try to get out of there without getting shot down.”

Also, I love Hellcats. Ens. McPherson shot down three kamikazes attacking the USS Ingraham in a subsequent engagement, making him an ace.

Although he never flew a plane again, Mr. McPherson was reintroduced to the F6F Hellcat when Fagen Fighters museum — which restores, displays and flies World War II-era planes — refurbished a similar one in 2021, soliciting his approval to paint it navy blue, the color of his plane, and adding the “Death N’ Destruction” motto. He reacquainted himself with the aircraft in person that year when it was flown to a ceremony at an airport in Beatrice, Neb.
At a 2022 event at the Fagen Fighters museum, Mr. McPherson said, “You people just can’t believe what all this has meant to me. That beautiful airplane.”
With a smile, he asked Evan Fagen, the museum’s chief pilot, “Can I take it home with me?”

The National WWII Museum and other reports I’ve seen refer to him as the last surviving WWII ace. The NYT obit seems to hedge that a bit by referring to him as “one of the last surviving American combat pilots from World War II recognized by the American Fighter Aces Association as combat aces”.

He received three Distinguished Flying Crosses and four Air Medals, and was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal in 2015.

Humpy Wheeler, NASCAR guy. I probably would have let this go past if it wasn’t for this:

…he transformed race day into a carnival. With his taste for Hollywood-level stunts, he might just as easily have been called the Cecil B. DeMille of motorsports. The clowns, trapeze artists, elephants and tigers he brought in to perform in the speedway’s infield in 1980 were only a start.
He once collaborated with the 82nd Airborne Division, garrisoned in Fort Bragg, N.C., to restage the U.S.-led 1983 invasion of the Caribbean nation of Grenada, complete with wood fortifications, troops and helicopters.
“The mortars were blanks,” the sportswriter Tommy Tomlinson recalled in a recent post on Substack, “but the dynamite that blew up two houses placed on the infield was very real.”

David Ketchum, actor. IMDB.

Theodore Friedman, lawyer. I think this is an interesting story. He was a personal injury specialist, and known as a zealous advocate for his clients.

Maybe a little too zealous, as he was disbarred in 1994.

Mr. Friedman’s disbarment exposed an underside to his turn-it-to-11 style of lawyering. Accused of 23 counts of professional misconduct — including intentional dishonesty, filing a false affidavit and soliciting false testimony from a witness — he lost his law license after a special referee affirmed 14 of the charges. He was disbarred by the Appellate Division of the First Department, a state court that oversees civil and criminal appeals in Manhattan and the Bronx.
His disbarment was seen by some in the legal community as unfair, by others as a comeuppance for sleaze, and by still others as a cautionary tale about the limits of overzealous advocacy.

He reapplied for his license several times, and was ultimately reinstated to the bar in 2010.

Ron Turcotte, jockey. He was most famous as the jockey who Secretariat to the Triple Crown.

Secretariat, a big coppery chestnut nicknamed Big Red who, like Riva Ridge, was owned by Penny Chenery of Meadow Stable and trained by Lucien Laurin, made up for that disappointment in spectacular fashion. He powered to victory in the Derby and the Preakness, setting track records that still stand. He then demolished the competition in the Belmont Stakes to become the first Triple Crown winner since Citation in 1948.
Secretariat’s Belmont remains one of the most celebrated performances in racing history. Under Turcotte’s supremely confident handling, he cruised by the competition on the backstretch, “moving like a tremendous machine” in the famous race call by Chic Anderson, then drew off to win by an astounding 31 lengths. He broke the track record set by Gallant Man in 1957 by just under three seconds — the equivalent of 13 lengths — and set a new world record for the mile-and-a-half distance on the dirt, one that still stands and has never been approached.

Posted in Heroism, History, Horses, Obits, Planes, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

On the road again…

August 23rd, 2025

I’m traveling for a work-related event. Blogging will, once again, be catch as catch can (probably more so than usual) through Wednesday.

Posted in Admin, Travel | Comments Closed

Note to consumers.

August 22nd, 2025

Wet Dog Publications is having a sale.

You may remember Wet Dog as the publisher of FN Browning Pistols – Sidearms that Shaped World History, which I have written about previously.

The sale is:

  • 10% discount on all new Wet Dog books.
  • 10% discount on all used books (which are under “Collectables” on their web site).
  • And they have a sale on “consignment accessories”.

The more you buy, the more you save:
-10% Discount on one accessory item (excludes books)
-15% Discount on two accessory items (excludes books)
– Spend $750 or more on accessories and get 20% Discount (excludes books)
– Spend $1500 or more on accessories and get 25% Discount (excludes books)

I know at least one person who might be interested in their book on the VIS Radom pistol. I personally ordered a copy of their book on the Browning Auto-5 for myself.

The sale runs through August 30th. I have no connection to Wet Dog except as a highly satisfied customer.

Use code SUMMER2025 at checkout for new books or email us directly for used books and accessories.
Used books and accessories are sold on a first come, first serve bases.

Posted in Books, Hoplobibilophilia | Comments Closed

Quote of the day.

August 21st, 2025

It’s honestly a little inspiring to realize that it’s always possible to screw up in a totally new way.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 21, 2025.

August 21st, 2025

Flight Lt. John Cruickshank (RAF – ret.). He was 105.

He and his crew were flying a submarine patrol mission in a Catalina flying boat on July 17, 1944 when they spotted a U-boat. They made a first pass over the boat, strafed it, and tried to drop depth charges. The depth charges didn’t release. So they made a second pass at the submarine.

But the submarine’s crew had them lined up in their sights. The Catalina, and Lt. Cruickshank, were shot all to hell. The bombardier was killed. Lt. Cruickshank managed to release the depth charges and sink the sub.

The crew put him in a bunk for the return flight back to base, which was five hours.

John Appleton, an airman who helped the flight lieutenant after he was hit by shrapnel — his injuries included two serious lung wounds and 10 penetrating leg wounds — told the Imperial War Museum in a 1995 interview that he was sure his commanding officer was mortally wounded. He meant to keep him comfortable as he died.
“I realized he must be in terrible pain,” Mr. Appleton recalled. “I can see blood started to soak through into his chest, even through all his pullovers and flying gear, and so on. But he hadn’t mentioned any of this at all.”

Lt. Cruickshank refused morphine for his pain. He knew that the co-pilot couldn’t land the plane by himself. He actually kept the plane flying for another hour once they got back to base, so they could land in daylight. And he had the crew carry him back to the cockpit and prop him in his seat so he could help land the plane.

With hands hovering shakily over the controls, he coached the co-pilot through the descent and a water landing. A doctor rushed aboard to give him a blood transfusion before he was evacuated.

Lt. Cruickshank was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions. He was the last surviving Victoria Cross recipient from WWII.

…he told The Daily Telegraph, “The citation said ‘showed great courage’ and all that nonsense, but a lot of people would have done that in those circumstances.”

This was literally just published as I was writing this: James Dobson, of “Focus on the Family”.

Posted in Heroism, History, Religion | 4 Comments »

Obit watch: August 18, 2025.

August 18th, 2025

Terence Stamp. THR. Tributes.

Other credits include “Big Eyes”, “The Limey”, “Bowfinger”, and “The Hit”.

Dan Tana, who ran one of those famous LA hangouts for the stars (until he sold it in 2009). NYT (archived).

Dobrivoje Tanasijević was born on May 26, 1935, in Cibutkovica, a small town outside Belgrade, where he grew up. His father, Radojko, was a restaurateur. His mother, Lenka (Miloseviv) Tanasijevic, resourcefully kept the family afloat during World War II, when Radojko was arrested. He was considered an ally of the old ruling classes by the Yugoslav Communists, and he wound up becoming an accountant at one of the restaurants he had owned.
In the early 1950s, Dan, still a teenager, was on the farm team of Red Star Belgrade, a professional soccer club. The team traveled to Belgium, where he got into a fight with the chaperone. He and a couple of friends promptly defected.

…

Regulars during the 1970s described a particularly rowdy era: the musician Nils Lofgren serenading strangers with an accordion while high on acid; a fight between an agent and a producer over a third man’s wife that left enduring blood stains on the restaurant’s carpeted floor.
“Our best clients are the regulars who come at least once or twice a week,” Mr. Susser told The New York Times in 2005. “Even a studio chief might not get a booth at the last minute if they haven’t been in for a while.”

…

The restaurant’s hipness depended somehow on its orthodoxy. The interior and the menu remained locked in midcentury America’s imagination of an Italian restaurant — including after a fire in 1980, when customers pleaded with Mr. Tana to exactly replicate the old saloon, and after Mr. Tana sold it to a friend in 2009.

…

The average experience of a night at Tana’s went something like this:
You walked under a green awning into a space so dark your eyes took a second to adjust. The décor was repeatedly described as “bordello red”: red Naugahyde booths, red-and-white checked tablecloths, red Christmas-tree lights on the ceiling and, everywhere, mounds of marinara sauce.
Your table, lit by candlelight, would generally occupy a dark, recessed corner. Your waiter would not be the Los Angeles archetype — a beautiful but incompetent aspiring young actor — but instead, dressed in black bow tie, a professional, courteous gentleman from the former Yugoslavia.
Mr. Tana himself, though frequently attending to his international soccer interests in London or Belgrade, where he had homes, might also stop by your table to greet you. He had an athlete’s build — six feet tall, broad shouldered — but also the sophistication of a confident speaker of Russian, German, French, Italian, English and Serbo-Croatian.
“His manners are old world: He is one of the few men who can carry off kissing a woman’s hand,” Los Angeles magazine reported in 1997. “He does it swiftly, smoothly and without hesitation, the same way he lights your cigarette.”

Ronnie Rondell, stuntman. He has a pretty massive body of credits, but would be known to many people as “the guy on fire on the cover of Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here'”. He also did stunt work on “The Night Stalker”, “To Live and Die in L.A.”, and one of the movies based on a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.

On May 23, 1969, Mr. Rondell married Mary Smith in Palm Springs, Calif. The couple had two sons, R.A. Rondell and Reid Rondell. Both children became involved in the stunt industry.
In 1985, Reid Rondell, 22, was killed when his helicopter crashed during the filming of the CBS television series “Airwolf.” A producer, Donald Bellisario, informed Mr. Rondell of the death, according to a news report at the time. “He was obviously broken up by it, but he told me, ‘You know, it goes with the territory,’” Mr. Bellisario said.

Tristan Rogers, actor. Other credits include “Cover Up“, “Mancuso, FBI”, “Delgo“, and “Fast Track”.

Jules Witcover, political columnist and reporter.

From the days of manual typewriters to the age of laptop computers, Mr. Witcover interpreted America’s political scene as an analyst and eyewitness to history. He swapped tales with presidents; covered presidential campaigns, beginning in 1960; recorded the rise and fall of Richard M. Nixon; and was steps away when a gunman killed Senator Robert F. Kennedy in a Los Angeles hotel in 1968.
Mr. Witcover’s column, “Politics Today,” written five days a week for years with Jack Germond, appeared in The Washington Star from 1977 to 1981, when The Star folded. It then ran in The Baltimore Sun and up to 140 other papers from 1981 to 2005, when it was terminated in a cutback, and was later syndicated three times a week by Tribune Media Services. Mr. Germond died in 2013, but Mr. Witcover continued writing it until he retired in 2022.

…

He was featured in “The Boys on the Bus,” Timothy Crouse’s 1973 book about pack campaign journalism, the old road show of poker games, pounding typewriters and all-night boozing. He fit right in, but he was one of the heavyweights.
“Witcover was deadly serious about his craft,” Mr. Crouse wrote. “He had given a great deal of thought to his own role as a political journalist, and was extraordinarily sensitive to the role that the whole press corps played, to its problems and failings.”

Posted in Food, Media, Movies, Obits, Politics, TV | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#150 in a series)

August 15th, 2025

150 of these, and we have a good one for number 150.

LaToya Cantrell, the mayor of New Orleans, has been indicted on Federal charges.

The indictment accuses Cantrell of a slate of crimes including wire fraud, conspiracy to obstruct justice, false statements, obstruction of justice and lying to a federal grand jury.

Also indicted: Jeffrey Vappie, who was a former New Orleans Police Department officer, the mayor’s bodyguard, and apparently her boyfriend. He had previously been indicted in 2024, but the grand jury issued a “superseding indictment” against him.

Here’s a list of the allegations against them:

Count 1: Conspiracy
Counts 2-13: Wire Fraud
Count 14: Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice
Count 15: False Statements
Count 16: Obstruction of Justice
Count 17 and 18: False Declaration Before Grand Jury

More from WWL TV:

The indictment alleges that Latoya Cantrell, the Mayor of New Orleans, and Jeffrey Paul Vappie, a member of her Executive Protection Unit (EPU), developed a personal relationship in October 2021. To conceal their relationship and maximize their time together, they allegedly created a scheme to defraud the City of New Orleans by engaging in personal activities while Vappie was on duty and being paid for providing protection.
As part of the scheme, it is alleged that Cantrell had Vappie accompany her on at least 14 out-of-state trips, falsely claiming she needed protection for safety concerns. These trips reportedly cost the City of New Orleans over $70,000, not including Cantrell’s own travel expenses. The indictment also claims that Vappie and Cantrell used a city-owned apartment in the Pontalba Building for personal use, with Vappie frequently spending time there while on duty.
The document states that Cantrell and Vappie took several actions to impede inquiries and a federal grand jury investigation into their relationship and scheme. These actions included:

Using an encrypted messaging platform
Deleting electronic evidence
Making false statements to federal law enforcement agents and a federal grand jury
Lying to colleagues and making false public statements

More:

The indictment caps a federal investigation of Cantrell, first reported by WWL Louisiana in 2022. A grand jury started hearing the evidence from federal prosecutors in February 2024 and returned an indictment last September against building inspector Randy Farrell, charging him with conspiring to bribe Cantrell with about $9,000 in gifts in 2019, including NFC Championship Game tickets, a lunch at Ruth’s Chris steakhouse and a cell phone, in exchange for causing the firing of a city official who had been investigating Farrell for alleged fraud.

The WWL story also includes the full indictment.

As noted in the press coverage, Ms. Cantrell is actually the first sitting mayor of New Orleans to be indicted. Ray Nagin was indicted, convicted, and did time, but that was after he left office.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

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