Obit watch: August 26, 2017.

August 26th, 2017

Charlie Robertson, two term mayor of York, PA, has died at the age 83.

In July of 1969. Mr. Robertson was a patrol officer on the York police force. There was massive racial unrest going on in York. Another York PD officer, Henry C. Schaad, was shot and died of his injuries two weeks later.

On the night of July 21st, a woman named Lillie Belle Allen, who was visiting from out of town, was shot and killed. She was going to buy groceries with some of her family when their car was ambushed.

More than one hundred rounds were fired at the car, and Allen was shot by several different types of bullets.

Both of these cases languished until 1999, when the local papers published a 30-year retrospective on the riots. People started coming forward with new information, and the local DA reopened the case.

As a result of the new investigation, Mayor Robertson was charged with murder. He’d just won the Democratic primary and was running for a third term, but dropped out of the race after being indicted. Nine other men were charged with crimes as well.

Prosecutors had argued that Mr. Robertson gave ammunition to at least one of the gunmen to avenge Patrolman Schaad’s shooting three days earlier. A co-defendant who pleaded guilty in the case, Rick Knouse, testified that Mr. Robertson had given him rifle bullets and told him to kill as many black people as he could.
Mr. Robertson admitted that he had shouted “White power!” at a gang rally in a city park a day earlier, but he denied the other accusations. He was the first officer to arrive at the scene of the shooting, but neither he nor three other officers disarmed gang members, took witness statements or filed a report.

Seven of the ten men who were indicted pled guilty to lesser charges. Mr. Robertson and two other men went to trial. The two other men, Gregory H. Neff and Robert N. Messersmith, were found guilty of second degree murder.

Mr. Robertson was acquitted.

In case you were wondering, the investigation into Officer Schaad’s death was also reopened. Two other men, Stephen Freeland and Leon Wright, were charged in that case and convicted of second degree murder as well.

1969 York race riot on Wikipedia.

Also among the dead: Cecil D. Andrus, former interior secretary under President Carter.

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Loser update.

August 25th, 2017

The loser update will return again this year. The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network is saying that the Jets are going to be exceptionally awful this year. We’ll see.

Speaking of ESPN, I thought some of my readers might enjoy this: the worst NFL teams of the past 30 years.

Obviously, the 2008 Detroit Lions were the worst of the worst, right? Well, not so fast: ESPN’s ranking is based on their “DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average) metric”. So the 2008 Lions aren’t the worst NFL team of the past 30 years: they’re not even the worst Lions team of the past 30 years.

Who was the worst? And are the Houston Texans represented? You’ll have to give ESPN a page view for the answer to the first question. For the second one, yes, indeed, the Texans do show up on both the worst teams and worst offenses list.

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Quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore (#4 in a series).

August 24th, 2017

I ran across this one at Half-Price a few weeks ago. It was a little more expensive than I would have liked, but not signed Capstick level. I vacillated on it, but ended up pulling the trigger because:

  1. It is the only copy of this book I’ve ever seen.
  2. It was published by a small press, so it probably isn’t that common.
  3. It was still cheap relative to Amazon asking prices.
  4. I’d actually read about the subject, and the book itself, in Bill James’s Popular Crime. This is a case (kind of like guns) where I paid as much for the story behind the book as the book itself.

He Made It Safe to Murder: The Life of Moman Pruiett by Howard K. Berry.

Who was Moman Pruiett? Like Earl Rogers, Pruiett is one of those forgotten titans of the law. As a criminal lawyer, he operated mostly out of Texas and (what became) Oklahoma, and later Florida, around the turn of the last century. Out of 342 murder cases he acted as the defense attorney for, he won outright acquittals in 304. 37 of his clients were convicted of lesser crimes than murder. The only client of his who was actually sentenced to death received a presidential commutation of his sentence.

How did Moman Pruiett do this? Well, he wasn’t just a criminal lawyer: he was a criminal lawyer. The young Pruiett had two felony convictions on his record and spent three years in prison. In spite of that, he read for the law and somehow managed to gain admission to the bar at the age of 22. It was a different time back then.

Even after being admitted, Pruiett didn’t have a lot of respect for the law: he suborned perjury, manipulated juries (in one case retold by Bill James, Pruiett figured out who the jury foreman was going to be and had the defendant’s sister seduce and move in with the man), kidnapped witnesses, played poker with judges (and, per James, “accepted acquittals to settle debts”) and generally just did whatever he needed to – legal or not – to get his clients off.

There’s an online article that partially retails one of the most famous Pruiett stores. Since this is already running long, I’ll put a jump here.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Random notes: August 24, 2017.

August 24th, 2017

Also among the dead: the print edition of the Village Voice.

In other news: WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!

Keeping your head up, your eyes open, and not driving into high water is probably a good idea. But. I remember the last time a hurricane came ashore near Houston, and was threatening Austin. I was still attending St. Ed’s at the time, and the university was sending out regular updates. There was tremendous hysteria. Everyone was hunkering down waiting for the storm.

In my part of town, the skies turned dark…and we got maybe three drops of rain, total. The hurricane was a giant bust.

I suggest being careful. But I’m not going to put any faith in apocalyptic predictions until the water starts coming over the top of the dam.

Whatever happened to Alice Goodman? She wrote the librettos to John Adams’s “Nixon in China” and “Death of Klinghoffer”…and then she just sort of vanished.

Turns out, she’s an ordained Anglican priest living in England.

“I never drifted away from music,” she said in a recent phone interview. “I couldn’t get work commissioned, so I did what members of my family do when that kind of thing happened: I started another degree. By 1997, I was being offered commissions and collaborations again, but none of them were particularly interesting to me, and my ideas didn’t interest my colleagues.”

Posted in Hysteria, Media, Music | Comments Closed

Obit watch take 2.

August 24th, 2017

To quote John “Daring Fireball” Gruber: “Finally.”

NYT obit for Brian Aldiss.

Posted in Books, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: August 24, 2017.

August 24th, 2017

Still no NYT obit for Brian Aldiss.

But the paper did run one for outsider artist M. T. Liggett.

He built a sculpture of Hillary Clinton, with a swastika for a torso, that he called “Our Jack-Booted Eva Braun.”

But before you jump to the conclusion that he was a Republican (he actually ran for local office several times as one, but was never elected):

One of Mr. Liggett’s signs links former President George W. Bush to Big Oil and asks for the return of his predecessor, Bill Clinton: “Bring Back Slick Willie.” But he also depicted Mr. Clinton as a bright red hog; he called that work “Razorback Draft Dodger.”

Apparently, he pretty much hated every politician:

Mr. Liggett could sound as angry as Howard Beale, the unhinged anchorman of the movie “Network.” He hated political stupidity, was suspicious of government intrusion into people’s lives and held “turkey politicians,” as he called them, responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

…

“I got this thing about me,” he said in “Moon Tosser of the Prairie” (2010), a documentary about him that was produced by Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kan. “If you walk up to me and say you’re a Democrat, I’m a Republican. If you’re a Buddhist, I’m a Shinto. If you’re a Catholic, I’m a Protestant.”

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Obit watch: August 23, 2017.

August 23rd, 2017

Leo Hershkowitz is another one of those people I hadn’t heard of until the NYT published his obituary. And he’s also another one of those people I would have liked to have coffee with, though our politics might not have been in alignment.

Mr. Hershkowitz was a historian and an archivist. Over the years, he rescued a lot of municipal documents that were just going to be thrown away:

Among the treasures he discovered were the city’s financial records for the funeral of Abraham Lincoln — held at City Hall on April 19, 1865 — including the undertaker’s bill for $1,000 and another bill, for $20, from James Ayliffe of Trinity Church for composing a funeral dirge and playing the church’s chimes…
And, from bundles of papers earmarked for disposal by the city comptroller’s office, he saved coroner’s records from the late 18th and early 19th centuries that recorded infanticides, suicides, drownings — and the killing of Alexander Hamilton by Aaron Burr in a duel across the Hudson in Weehawken, N.J.

He also wrote a book called Tweed’s New York: Another Look in which he argued:

Rather than portraying him as corrupt, Professor Hershkowitz determined that Tweed had been the victim of illicit machinations at his embezzlement trial; that he had shown more vision about the city’s growth than some reformers; and that he had been prosecuted to deflect attention from Republican corruption in Washington. Indeed, he said, the trial prosecutors arranged with Gov. Samuel J. Tilden of New York to handpick a judge who was prejudiced against Tweed.

(As the Times notes, the thesis that Boss Tweed was framed by evil Republicans trying to cover up their own corruption was not met with universal approval by other historians.)

He was 92.

And by the way, paper of record, where’s your damn Brian Aldiss obit?

Posted in Books, History, Obits | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: August 22, 2017.

August 22nd, 2017

“The Year Without A Tuesday Morning Quarterback” was one of Rankin-Bass’s lesser holiday specials.

Then a year ago this time, I took a year off to complete my next book.

Oh. Is that what it was? (By the way, Gregg Easterbrook has a new book coming out.)

But now, he’s back. And so is the editorial “we”. Not to be confused with the editorial wee, though we plan to purchase one or more of those really nice Toto smart toilets when we win the lottery.

Welcome back to TMQ Watch. After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

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Posted in Books, TMQ watch, TV, Urine | 2 Comments »

More tales from the bizarro world.

August 22nd, 2017

I seem to have a run of these lately.

Yesterday, someone tried to kill Judge Joseph Bruzzese Jr. as he walked into the Jefferson County courthouse in Steubenville, Ohio. The attack is being called an “ambush”: judges have reserved parking spaces, and Judge Bruzzese was attacked as he walked from his space into the courthouse.

The judge, who is described as “an avid hunter”, returned fire. Reports say the judge and his attacker fired five shots each. The judge was wounded and taken to a hospital in Pittsburgh: the most current reports I’ve seen say he’s expected to recover.

The gunman was killed by a probation officer.

Shooting a judge is bizarre enough that I’d probably make note of it here. But there’s a twist:

The gunman was the father of a former Steubenville football player who was convicted of rape.

You may remember the Steubenville rape case from 2013. Briefly, a group of football players sexually assaulted a fellow student, filmed the assault, and shared pictures on social media. There were allegations that school authorities in Steubenville knew about the sexual assault and tried to cover it up. The whole mess was big news in 2013.

The really odd thing is, Judge Bruzzese didn’t have anything to do with the rape case. That case was heard by another visiting judge. Judge Bruzzese was hearing a wrongful death suit being pressed by the alleged gunman against the local housing authority, and there was a hearing scheduled for next Monday.

So why shoot the judge now? Maybe you think he’s biassed and want to try your chances with someone else? But how did he expect to get away with this? The whole thing was apparently caught on camera (though I don’t believe the video has been released). And it’s not like Steubenville is a big city.

Maybe it was judgement juice:

A man who was in the car with the shooter was grazed by a bullet and was taken to Trinity Medical Center West. He told law enforcement interviewers he had been unaware of what was happening. Abdalla said that man and the shooting suspect had been drinking last night when the suspect said he had to be in court early today.

We extend our best wishes to Judge Bruzzese and hope for a speedy recovery.

Posted in Guns, Law | Comments Closed

Now I’m only falling apart…

August 21st, 2017

Posted in Art, Geek, History, Hysteria, Music | Comments Closed

Tales from the bizarro world.

August 21st, 2017

I saw a story this morning that I was sort of vaguely keeping track of, but didn’t consider blogging. Yesterday, the FBI, BATFE, and Houston police blocked off a street in a Houston neighborhood, brought out the robot, and were telling people to stay inside:

The FBI said it was “lawfully present conducting law enforcement operations” that are “in the interest of public safety,” according to an agency statement. “Since the matter is ongoing, we are unable to provide additional details at this time.”

Then the other shoe dropped. Apparently, there’s an explosives aficionado who lives on the block. And said gentleman tried to blow up a Confederate statue in Herman Park.

When confronted Saturday night in the park, he tried to drink some of the liquid explosives but spit it out, officials said.
Federal authorities said one of the tubes contained nitgroglycerin and hexamethylene triperoxide diamine, HMTD, a “highly explosive compound” used as a primary explosive. Nitroclycerin, in its purest form, is a contact explosive.

I describe the gentleman in question as an “explosives aficionado” because the police previously raided this house (and a couple of others) in 2013:

The following year, the younger [Andrew Cecil Earhart – DB] Schneck was sentenced to five years of probation after pleading guilty in federal court to knowingly storing explosives. In 2016, a judge released him from probation ahead of schedule.

What really grabs me about this is the whole “he tried to drink the explosives” angle. I can’t find much information about the health effects or toxicity of HMTD. But everyone knows nitro is a potent vasodilator (that’s why they give heart patients nitro pills) and that exposure can cause severe headaches.

And even if he managed to choke it all down, couldn’t BATFE or the FBI analyze the dregs in the container? Guy doesn’t exactly strike me as the sharpest knife in the drawer. Though the fact that he was able to make and transport nitro without converting himself to chunky kibble makes me think he deserves some credit. (It looks like HMTD is fairly easy to make, the ingredients are mostly readily available, and it’s not quite as unstable as TATP.)

Posted in Cops, Explosives, FBI, History, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch take 2.

August 21st, 2017

Noted British science fiction author and SF historian Brian Aldiss has passed away.

Aldis was one of Britain’s most respected science-fiction writers, author and editor of more than 100 books, including novels, non-fiction and poetry. His 1969 short story Supertoys Last All Summer Long inspired Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film AI: Artificial Intelligence.

Oddly, we were just discussing Mr. Aldiss at dinner Saturday night, though I don’t think any of us were aware of his passing: the discussion was more about his book Trillion Year Spree (a mammoth history of SF) and the possibility of it being updated.

(Hattip: Pat Cadigan on the Twitter.)

Posted in Books, History, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 21, 2017.

August 21st, 2017

I didn’t post the Jerry Lewis obits yesterday because I wanted to give those some time to shake out. For the record: NYT. LAT. WP. (Edited to add: Lawrence.) (Edited to add 2: Reason.)

This was well covered over the weekend, but for the historical record: Dick Gregory.

Posted in Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

You know what the problem with fiction is?

August 18th, 2017

It has to be believable.

22 years ago, four people were beaten to death in a hotel in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. The police believe that two men committed the crime: they had checked into the hotel intending to rob other occupants and were caught by another guest. They apparently beat that guest to death, along with the hotel owners and the owner’s grandson.

This became a cold case until earlier this year, when the police were able to do more sophisticated DNA analysis. They eventually narrowed the pool of suspects down to two men, a Mr. Wang and Liu Yongbiao. Both have been arrested, and Mr. Liu has apparently confessed.

The twist? Mr. Liu went on to become a moderately successful Chinese mystery writer.

In the preface to his 2010 novel “The Guilty Secret,” the Chinese author Liu Yongbiao expressed his desire to write a suspense-filled detective story about an alluring female writer who dodges arrest despite committing a string of murders.
“I came up with the idea after reading some detective novels and watching crime shows and movies,” Mr. Liu wrote at the time. “The working title is: ‘The Beautiful Writer Who Killed.’”

(As far as I can tell, “The Guilty Secret” is not available in a US edition.)

You put that into a novel these days, people will just roll their eyes and say, “Yeah. Right.”

Posted in Books, Law | Comments Closed

And now here’s something we hope you really like.

August 17th, 2017

Tyler “Marginal Revolution” Cowen interviews Dave “Goat Boogers” Barry.

Link goes to the transcript on Medium, which is an annoying site, but I don’t have time to listen to any more podcasts than I already do. The conversation is actually surprisingly serious, for a guy as funny as Dave Barry is.

Apparently (I did not know this) there’s a whole series of “Conversations With Tyler” podcasts where he’s been interviewing some interesting folks: Atul Gawande, Fuchsia Dunlop (“She joined Tyler over dinner at one of his favorite restaurants in DC…” Sold!), and coming up, Mary “Stiff” Roach.

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