Archive for the ‘Law’ Category

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What goes with fajitas?

Tuesday, January 31st, 2023

Chicken wings, of course!

Remember a few years back, we had a guy busted for stealing $1.2 million worth of fajita meat in Cameron County?

The food service director of an impoverished Illinois school district was charged with stealing $1.5 million of food — most of which was chicken wings.

…

The station reported that Liddell ordered more than 11,000 cases of chicken wings for the district with school funds, but took all the poultry for herself.
“The food was never brought to the school or provided to the students,” court records claimed.

…

The auditor “discovered individual invoices signed by Liddell for massive quantities of chicken wings, an item that was never served to students because they contain bones,” prosecutors said.
The food service provider employees all knew Liddell by name “due to the massive amount of chicken wings she would purchase,” prosecutors said, according to WGN.

Posted in Food, Law | Comments Closed

Legal news of the weird.

Monday, January 23rd, 2023

1. The Alex Murdaugh murder trial starts today.

I probably will not be covering it in detail, but I will try to keep half an eye on it, and will link anything I find interesting and not offensive.

(I specify “not offensive” because: there was a story in the media last week which summarized the autopsy reports on Maggie Murdaugh and Paul Murdaugh. It went into enough detail that I decided not to link it, because I felt it was just too much detail for my readers.)

2. Back in 2021, a 15-year old boy hit a mother and child in Venice, California.

The video shows a stolen vehicle speeding the wrong way down a one-way backstreet. It plowed into a woman walking her infant son in a stroller. Then he hit the gas, accelerating away from the scene, where a good Samaritan in a pickup truck rammed the suspect vehicle head on.
Los Angeles police responded and found drugs in the driver’s system and marijuana in the car, according to an incident report obtained by Fox News.

This case was in the news last year:

…Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón’s office sought a five- to seven-month sentence in juvenile probation camp, a punishment for young offenders described as less severe than military school but harsher than summer camp.

…

The teen was already on felony probation for poisoning a high school girl’s drink at the time of the hit-and-run – which surveillance cameras captured on Aug. 6, 2021.

Last week, someone shot the (now 17-year old) boy.

Sources close to the investigation told FOX News that he had been at a fast food restaurant earlier trying to “get with a girl.”
“As he walked home alone, a car pulled up next to him and an argument broke out. Someone in the vehicle opened fire, then sped off,” FOX News reported.

The police don’t currently think there is any relationship between the hit-and-run and the shooting. It seems more like a violation of the Rule of Stupids.

3. Former Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Melanie Andress-Tobiasson died by suicide last Friday. She resigned in 2021.

Her problems began when her daughter Sarah, then 16, started working at a clothing store that Andress-Tobiasson claimed was a front for criminal activities and tried to stop it, first by reporting the issue to the police, the Daily Mail reported. She said the store, Top Knotch, was involved with prostitution and trying to recruit her daughter.
She called out Las Vegas cops for ignoring information about the alleged sex trafficking at the store. She claimed that the store was an unlicensed, underage nightclub and added that she was “terrified” of Shane Valentine, who ran the store at the time.

…

Andress-Tobiasson said she had to go to the FBI with the information after being ignored by local police — which resulted in officers investigating her for allegedly breaching judicial rules by making an allegation to federal agents.
A complaint filed against Andress-Tobiasson alleged that she failed to comply with and uphold the law, and allowed family interests and relations to influence her conduct, the Daily Mail reported.

I’m not clear on why “judicial rules” would preclude making a complaint to federal agents if you believe there’s wrongdoing or corruption, and can’t get any results at the local level. I understand the “family interests and relations” part, but I wonder how much truth there is to that.

And before you say I’m giving the innocent Mr. Valentine a hard time…

Valentine was later linked to a shooting where a couple was found dead.
They did not officially link him to the killings of Sydney Land, 21, and Nehemiah “Neo” Kauffman, 20, until months later, according to the Daily Mail.

Here’s the Daily Mail article, which includes a photo of Mr. Valentine. Neither article, however, is specific about what “linked to a shooting” means: there’s no mention of Mr. Valentine actually facing any charges.

But Andress-Tobiasson contacted Land’s mother and “began to personally investigate the case” because she thought that Valentine was responsible, the complaint stated.
It added that she used “burner phones” to contact Land’s mother and sent texts to another woman she thought was involved in the murder.
The commission alleged that Andress-Tobiasson stated publicly that she reached out to Valentine’s lawyer at the time and “told him to tell Valentine that if he called her daughter again, she would ‘take care of it herself,’” and that one time she “went to Shane Valentine’s house and kicked in the door.”

Yay, burner phones! Been a while since I’ve seen a case with those.

Detectives learned of Andress-Tobiasson’s activity, according to the charges, and launched an investigation into the judge, going as far as tracking her phone records.
They also alleged that she had links to a man called “Anthony Danna” who was a “known and documented organized crime figure.”

“known and documented organized crime figure”. Again, what does that mean? (As best as I can tell, he’s not in the Black Book.)

Posted in Law, Murdaugh | 1 Comment »

At the weird intersection of sports firings and legal news…

Wednesday, January 18th, 2023

Firings news (sort of): Matt Weiss, “co-offensive coordinator” for the University of Michigan, has been placed on leave.

Legal news: He’s involved in a criminal investigation.

Weird news: It doesn’t involve domestic violence or any of the usual crimes.

“The University of Michigan Police Department is investigating a report of computer access crimes that occurred at Schembechler Hall during December 21-23, 2022,” University of Michigan Deputy Chief of Police Crystal James said in the statement. “Since this is an ongoing investigation there is no additional information to share.”
An entry from the university police’s online daily crime log on Jan. 5 notes that police received a report about “fraudulent activity involving someone accessing university email accounts without authorization” at Schembechler Hall. It is the only report of police activity at the football facility in the past month.

Posted in Firings, Law, Sports | Comments Closed

Murder, he wrote.

Sunday, January 15th, 2023

As best as I can determine, Elizabeth Short was murdered either on January 14 or 15, 1947: it isn’t clear which day.

So I can claim that this is timely: “Black Dahlia: On the Anniversary of Elizabeth Short’s Murder, a Guide for the Hasty Reporter“, by Larry Harnisch. This is a re-run of an article originally published in the LAT, but now paywalled.

And as an extra bonus for you, freshly posted, and featuring Mr. Harnisch himself:

Posted in California Über Alles, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 13, 2023.

Friday, January 13th, 2023

Paul Johnson, noted conservative British historian.

A writer of immense range and output, capable of 6,000 words a day when in harness, Mr. Johnson modeled his career after earlier English men of letters, like Thomas Babington Macaulay and G.K. Chesterton. With an affable prose style and supreme confidence in his own opinions, he was happy to deliver forceful judgments on almost anything: the tangled politics of the Middle East, his personal quest for God or the cultural meaning of the Spice Girls.
The author or the editor of more than 50 books, Mr. Johnson alternated between large histories (of Christianity, Judaism, England, the United States, the middle years of the 20th century, art) and slim biographies of eminences from the ancient or more immediate past (Socrates, Jesus, Edward III, Elizabeth I, George Washington, Mozart, Napoleon, Darwin, Churchill, Eisenhower, Pope John XXIII.)
Writing more for a popular audience than for the approval of specialists, he filtered his wide reading through an ethical lens. As a historian, he looked back to the Victorians, for whom readable prose was as crucial as archival research, and, like those old-fashioned moralists, he was fond of hierarchies. Whether the subject was Renaissance sculptors or American humorists, no era, nation, religion, politician, event, building or piece of art or music was safe from his need to compare and rank.

…

He had an eye for the telling fact: “Between 1800 and 1835 Parliament debated no less than 11 bills seeking to make the deliberate ill-treatment of animals unlawful; all failed, mostly by narrow margins.” And: “In 1730 three out of four children born in London failed to reach their fifth birthday. By 1830 the proportion had been reversed.”

Lawrence emailed an obit for William Consovoy, prominent lawyer.

Over the course of a relatively short career, Mr. Consovoy established a reputation as one of the best and most dogged conservative litigators before the Supreme Court, with a penchant for cases aimed at making major changes to America’s constitutional landscape.He clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas during the 2008-9 Supreme Court term, and he came away with the conviction that the court was poised to tilt further to the right — and that constitutional rulings that had once been considered out of reach by conservatives, on issues like voting rights, abortion and affirmative action, would suddenly be within grasp.

…

In 2013, in one of his early cases before the Supreme Court, Mr. Consovoy successfully argued the Section 4 case, Shelby County v. Holder, persuading the Court to get rid of the requirement that several states and counties, mostly in the South, had to receive federal clearance before changing their election laws.

…

Mr. Consovoy often led the charge in attacking existing laws in court or defending new ones. In 2020 alone, he argued against an extension of the deadline for mail-in ballots in Wisconsin, the re-enfranchisement of felons in Florida and a California plan to send absentee ballots to all registered voters.
He was equally involved in efforts to strike down affirmative action by colleges and universities. He played a supporting role in Fisher v. the University of Texas, a case that originated in 2008 and came before the Supreme Court twice. In both instances, the university successfully defended its plan to automatically admit in-state students who had graduated in the top 10 percent of their class.
Mr. Consovoy then worked closely with Mr. Blum on cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, arguing that their affirmative action programs — and, by extension, college and university affirmative action programs generally — were unconstitutional.
Those cases, brought on behalf of Students for Fair Admissions, an organization that Mr. Blum founded, reached the Supreme Court last fall. By then, Mr. Consovoy was too ill to argue them himself, so two of his partners did instead. The court is widely expected to decide in favor of Students for Fair Admissions before the end of the term, most likely in June.

…

The new firm took on a variety of cases, not all of them concerned with constitutional matters but most of them in service of conservative causes and ideas. After Uber announced in 2020 that its food-delivery branch, Uber Eats, would waive fees for Black-owned businesses, Consovoy McCarthy arranged for some 31,000 complainants to claim reverse discrimination through arbitration, leaving the company owing as much as $92 million.

Lisa Marie Presley. THR. Pitchfork.

Constantine II, Olympic gold medalist (sailing, 1960) and the last king of Greece.

A lot of this took place shortly before or shortly after I was born, but it’s an interesting story I was previously not aware of.

…public support faded after he tried to influence Greek politics, machinations that led to the collapse of the newly-elected centrist government of Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou.
Constantine appointed a series of defectors from Mr. Papandreou’s party as prime minister without holding elections, a widely unpopular chain of events that became known as “the Apostasy.”
The increasing instability culminated in a coup led by a group of army colonels in 1967, considered one of the darkest moments in Greece’s modern history. It set off seven years of a brutal dictatorship for which many Greeks still blame the former king.
Constantine initially accepted the junta before attempting a counter-coup in December of the same year. When it failed, he was forced to flee to Rome, where he spent the first years of his exile.
After the dictatorship ended in 1974, Greece’s new government called a referendum on the monarchy, and 69 percent of Greeks voted to abolish it. The vote effectively deposed Constantine and ended a monarchy that had ruled Greece since 1863, except for the period from 1924 to 1935, when it was first abolished and then restored.

…

In exile he lived mostly in London, where he is said to have developed a close relationship with his second cousin, Charles, now King Charles III. He was chosen to be one of the godfathers to Prince William, heir to the British throne.

…

His relationship with the Greek authorities after his dethroning remained prickly. In 1994, the Socialist government passed a law stripping him of his nationality and expropriating the former royal family’s property. Constantine took the case to the European Court of Human Rights, which in 2002 ordered Greece to pay him and his family nearly $15 million in compensation, a fraction of what he had sought. He accused the government of acting “unjustly and vindictively.”
“They treat me sometimes as if I’m their enemy,” he said in 2002. “I am not the enemy. I consider it the greatest insult in the world for a Greek to be told that he is not a Greek.”
The former king could have regained a Greek passport by adopting a surname, which the government demanded that he do to acknowledge that he was no longer king. But he insisted on being called only Constantine, and continued to cast himself as king and his children as princes and princesses.

…

In 1964, he married Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, who became queen.
She survives him, as do their five children: Alexia, Pavlos, Nikolaos, Theodora and Philippos; nine grandchildren; and two sisters, Sofia, the former queen of Spain, and former Princess Irene.

Posted in Books, Elvis, History, Law, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 9, 2023.

Monday, January 9th, 2023

Bernard Kalb, former foreign correspondent for CBS, NBC, and the NYT.

He reported for The Times from 1946 to 1962, for CBS during the next 18 years (during which he joined his brother, Marvin, on the diplomatic beat) and as NBC’s State Department correspondent from 1980 to 1985. Then, for nearly two years, he served in the Reagan administration’s State Department — a stint that ended contentiously.
As a CBS correspondent in 1972, Mr. Kalb accompanied President Richard M. Nixon on the trip to China that proved to be a major step in the normalization of relations between the two nations. He also made virtually every overseas trip with Henry A. Kissinger, Cyrus R. Vance, Edmund S. Muskie, Alexander M. Haig Jr. and George P. Shultz during their tenures as secretary of state.

…

After graduating from the City College of New York in 1942, Mr. Kalb spent two years in the Army, mostly working on a newspaper published out of a Quonset hut in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. His editor was Sgt. Dashiell Hammett, the author of the detective novels “The Maltese Falcon” and “The Thin Man.”

Russell Banks, novelist.

Joyce Meskis, former owner of The Tattered Cover.

In addition to creating a bookstore famed for its vast selection and bibliophile-friendly atmosphere, Ms. Meskis often took a stand in matters related to censorship and the First Amendment. Sometimes those positions were not easy ones to embrace.
In 1991, for instance, when she was president of the American Booksellers Association, she testified against the proposed Pornography Victims Compensation Act, a bill introduced by Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, that would have allowed victims of sex crimes to sue distributors of pornography, including bookstores, if they could demonstrate that pornography influenced their attacker. Opponents of that bill (which died in committee) were sometimes labeled pro-pornography, but Ms. Meskis knew the real issue was that the law would make bookstores wary of selling anything controversial.
Similarly, the case she took to the Colorado Supreme Court some two decades ago pitted her against law enforcement officials, who were trying to build a case against a customer suspected of making methamphetamine. In 2000 the police found two books on drugmaking in a trailer home used as a meth lab; they also found an envelope with Ms. Meskis’s bookstore listed as the return address. Hoping to link the drugmaking to the recipient whose name was on the envelope, they sought Ms. Meskis’s sales records — and, though her stand read as pro-drug to some, she again saw the bigger picture.
“This is about access to private records of the book-buying public,” she told The New York Times in 2000. “If buyers thought that their records would be turned over to the government, it would have a chilling affect on what they buy and what they read.”
In 2002 the State Supreme Court ruled that both the First Amendment and the Colorado Constitution “protect an individual’s fundamental right to purchase books anonymously, free from governmental interference.”

Adam Rich. Other credits include “CHiPs”, “Silver Spoons”, and “Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star”.

Owen Roizman, cinematographer. “The French Connection”, “The Exorcist”, and “Network”? Wow.

Art McNally, NFL official credited as being “the father of instant replay”.

Earl Boen. Other credits (he has 291 as an actor: man worked) include video game spun offs from a minor 1960s SF TV series, “Battle Beyond the Stars”, the good “Hawaii 5-0”, and “Richie Brockelman, Private Eye”.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Law, Media, Movies, NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | 3 Comments »

Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho.

Thursday, December 22nd, 2022

According to the NYT, Adair, Iowa has a population of about 800 people.

The chief of police has been using his law enforcement credentials to buy machine guns.

Lots of machine guns.

Between 2018 and 2022, Mr. Wendt requested 90 machine guns, either to demonstrate their use or to buy them for the Adair Police Department, according to the Justice Department. But prosecutors concluded that he had other purposes in mind.

…

According to the indictment, Mr. Wendt, 46, used his title as police chief to “obtain and possess machine guns not lawfully available to the public,” including military-grade weapons and machine guns of a type used in guarding high-risk prisoners as they are moved from place to place.

…

In all, Mr. Wendt bought 10 machine guns for the police department, tried to buy 15 additional guns and requested the demonstration of 65 guns, according to the indictment. But in reality, he sold six machine guns registered to the Adair Police Department for personal profit, making thousands of dollars; rented out machine guns in exchange for money; and intended to stockpile guns to sell at a later date, the indictment said.

Extra bonus points:

According to the indictment, Mr. Wendt contacted a machine gun manufacturer in January 2021 and inquired about buying a weapon known as a minigun, which prosecutors described as “an electric motor driven Gatling gun designed for speed and accuracy” that has a magazine capacity of 4,000 rounds and a fixed firing rate of 50 rounds per second. This type of machine gun is used by the U.S. military and is typically mounted on helicopters; the Adair Police Department does not own a helicopter. Mr. Wendt put down a $40,000 deposit for the $80,000 gun. In his law letter, Mr. Wendt said the gun was “suitable for engagements and suppressive fire.”
The A.T.F. rejected the purchase because the minigun was “not suitable for law enforcement use.”

More extra bonus points: he also hosted a machine gun shoot.

In April 2022, Mr. Wendt and Mr. Williams hosted a public machine gun shooting event in Woodbine, Iowa, allowing patrons to fire a number of the machine guns in exchange for money.
Among the guns was a .50-caliber belt-fed machine gun that Mr. Wendt had claimed was needed for demonstration to the police department. In his law letter, Mr. Wendt said the gun was “ideal” for the department “based on its price and availability.” Mr. Wendt paid $17,896 for the gun. He mounted it to his armored Humvee and charged participants $5 per round.

Posted in Guns, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 21, 2022.

Wednesday, December 21st, 2022

Franco Harris, one of the great Steelers. Archive version, but the NYT keeps saying “This is a developing story. A full obituary will be published soon.”

The 6-foot-2 running back won four Super Bowls with the Steelers as they established themselves as the N.F.L.’s dominant team of the 1970s, and he was named to the Pro Bowl in each of his first nine seasons. But it was a single, heads-up play that more than anything defined his career.
On Dec. 23, 1972, the Steelers were trailing, 7-6, in a divisional round playoff game against the Oakland Raiders. With less than 30 seconds to play in the fourth quarter, the Steelers quarterback, Terry Bradshaw, lofted a desperation pass to John “Frenchy” Fuqua, only to see the ball deflect toward the ground. But Harris scooped the ball out of the air just inches from the turf and ran untouched for the game-winning touchdown, a miraculous finish that has been replayed thousands of times since.
Five decades later, Harris, who played college football at Penn State, remained one of the most beloved Steelers players, an instantly recognizable face in Pittsburgh. He rushed for 12,120 yards over 13 seasons, 12 of which were with Pittsburgh, and was a linchpin of the Steelers’ most successful era, winning Super Bowls in the 1974, 1975, 1978 and 1979 seasons.

I want to mention pigpen51’s obit for Les Lowery, leather and saddle maker. I was unfamiliar with him until pigpen posted, but he sounds like a really good guy: anybody who helps people walk is doing a mitzvah in my book. I spent some time trying to find more about Mr. Lowery online, but everything I did find was paywalled.

Mike Hodges, director. Other credits include “The Terminal Man”, “Morons From Outer Space”, and “A Prayer For the Dying”.

Frank “Cadillac Frank” Salemme, notorious New England mobster.

Posted in Law, Movies, NFL, Obits, Sports | 3 Comments »

(Sort of an) obit watch: December 9, 2022.

Friday, December 9th, 2022

I wanted to break this out into a separate entry because it didn’t feel like it belonged with the previous one. Also, it’s another one of those “not quite an obit” things.

Philadelphia’s “Boy in the Box” has been identified.

The boy, then believed to be between 4 and 6 years old, had been beaten to death, an autopsy later revealed. But clues were scant, and copious efforts over decades to solve the crime proved futile. The unknown victim became known as “The Boy in the Box.” Others called him, more gently, “America’s Unknown Child.”
His name is now known: Joseph Augustus Zarelli. Born on Jan. 13, 1953, he was 4 when he died, Philadelphia police officials said Thursday, at a news conference where they described a breakthrough using DNA and genetic genealogy techniques that have revolutionized cold case work in recent years.

He was found in a cardboard box in February of 1957.

He was unclothed, and had been wrapped in a flannel blanket, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. His hair had recently been “cut in a way that suggested it was not the work of a skilled barber,” and his fingernails had been trimmed, according to the national system.

…

Capt. Jason Smith said officers did not yet know who killed the boy or the circumstances of how he had died, and that investigations would continue.
“We have our suspicions as to who may be responsible, but it would be irresponsible of me to share these suspicions as this remains an active and ongoing criminal investigation,” Captain Smith said.

I remember this case getting a lot of coverage from John Walsh on the old America’s Most Wanted. I’m glad they have a name for the child now.

Posted in Cops, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#99 in a series)

Tuesday, December 6th, 2022

Mike the Musicologist asked me if I do foreign flaming hyenas.

The answer is: sure! I did the Germans a while back!

Now it is the Argentinians turn.

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a political titan in Argentina, was found guilty on Tuesday and sentenced to six years in prison and banned from holding public office for a fraud scheme that directed public roadworks contracts to a family friend while she was the first lady and president.
The verdict was a major blow to Mrs. Kirchner, the current vice president and a deeply polarizing figure who has helped split Argentina between those who favor her and her leftist movement, called Kirchnerismo, and those who say she has helped ruin a country that has struggled with high inflation, poverty and failed economic policies.

…

A panel of three judges in Buenos Aires, the capital, rendered the verdict on a public broadcast after a three-year trial in which Mrs. Kirchner was accused of steering hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded contracts to a business associate to build roads in Patagonia, on the tip of South America.
The panel found her not guilty of a second charge of directing an “illicit association” that oversaw that kickbacks scheme.
“We are certain” the ruling said, that “an extraordinary fraudulent maneuver took place that harmed the pecuniary interests of the national public administration under the terms and conditions established by criminal law.”

…

Twelve other people were also accused in the corruption case including Lázaro Báez, the Kirchner associate who received the roadworks contracts, and two former Kirchnerista government ministers who have been convicted in other corruption cases.
Mr. Báez was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to six years in prison. He was already serving a 12-year sentence for money laundering in a separate case. José López, a former public works secretary, was also sentenced to six years in prison for fraud and banned from holding public office.

…

The focus of Mrs. Kirchner’s trial has largely been 51 roadworks contracts that were awarded to companies linked to Mr. Báez, who went from being a bank employee in Santa Cruz to forming a construction company in the days before Mr. Kirchner became president in 2003. The prosecution said that from 2003 to 2015 the scheme defrauded the Argentine state of more than 5 billion pesos, or about $926 million, according to officials.
The contracts were often awarded at inflated prices, went over budget or granted other special considerations, according to the prosecution. Almost half of the road projects were never finished.

…

Last year, a court dismissed charges against her over accusations that she conspired to cover up Iran’s purported role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people. The accusations against Mrs. Kirchner were first made in 2015 by a prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, who was found dead of a gunshot wound in his apartment days later.
His death was never solved, and the matter has been a source of frenzied speculation and political infighting ever since.

I feel like there’s really only one thing I can say about this:

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 5, 2022.

Monday, December 5th, 2022

Cliff Emmich.

Other credits include “Invasion of the Bee Girls”, “The Incredible Hulk”, “Salvage 1”, and “Halloween II”.

In honor of Mr. Emmich, the Saturday Movie Group watched “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot”, which I had never seen before. I like it, but it is kind of an odd film: sort of a weird blend of a road movie and a heist movie, with lots and lots of landscape. (No surprise there: this was the first movie directed by Michael Cimino. Arguably, one of the problems with “Heaven’s Gate” was Cimino’s obsession with landscapes, at the expense of plot, length, and coming in under budget.)

Notes:

  • Per Wikipedia, Clint Eastwood was available for this movie (which Cimino wrote specifically for him) because he turned down the lead in “Charlie Varrick”. I liked “Charlie Varrick”, but supposedly Eastwood didn’t find anything likeable in any of the characters. So the role went to Walter Matthau, who I think acquitted himself well. But he found the movie incomprehensible.
  • This is the second week in a row we’ve watched a movie with George Kennedy in a key role. (Last week, it was “Airport ’75”.)
  • I think Lawrence and I were both a little surprised by the vault scene. Both of us were wondering, “Are they going to put on ears?” And then, yes, the Eastwood and Kennedy characters put on both ear and eye protection before the real star of the movie comes into play.

IMFDB entry.

Back in the day (before GCA 1968) you could purchase 20mm surplus anti-tank guns and shells. Today, Anzio Ironworks will sell you a single-shot 20mm for a mere $9,800, and a mag-fed one for $11,900. Add $3,200 for a suppressor.

And as a fun historical note, suitable for use in schools: here’s an article from American Rifleman about the real life heist that may have inspired “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot”.

Bob McGrath, longtime “Sesame Street” guy.

Aline Kominsky-Crumb, underground comic artist.

Posted in Guns, History, Law, Movies, Obits, TV | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: November 23, 2022.

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2022

John Y. Brown Jr., former governor of Kentucky and fried chicken tycoon.

In 1964, Brown purchased Kentucky Fried Chicken from Harland Sanders for $2 million. He became president of KFC in January 1965 and sold it to Heublein Corp. in a $275 million stock swap in 1971. Brown received nearly $21 million in Heublein stock for his KFC shares.

(Diversion: this is an older piece from Damn Interesting about Harland Sanders that I rather enjoyed. It does discuss the Brown sale and the Heublein buyout.)

In 1969, Brown purchased controlling interest in the Kentucky Colonels, a Louisville franchise in the American Basketball Association. After the ABA folded, Brown paid a reported $1 million for half interest in the Buffalo Braves of the National Basketball Association. He wanted to move the Braves to Louisville but was blocked in court. Brown and a partner then swapped the Braves for the Boston Celtics, in the first trade of professional sports teams.
The Braves later moved to San Diego, and Brown later sold his share of the Celtics.

As some people may recall, he was married to Phyllis George.

For Christmas one year in the not-to-distant past, Lawrence gave me a copy of The Bluegrass Conspiracy, about Drew Thornton and his drug ring. (Cocaine bear!) John Y. Brown is mentioned quite a bit in that book: while he was never convicted of any crime, he certainly had close and questionable ties to people who were.

Mickey Kuhn. He was a child actor: his most famous role was probably “Beau Wilkes” in “Gone With the Wind”. He was also the last surviving cast member from that movie.

His last acting credit was in 1957.

Wilko Johnson, guitarist with Dr. Feelgood and acted in “Game of Thrones”.

Posted in Law, Movies, Obits, Politics, TV | Comments Closed

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