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timeless-hollywood-classics · 4 years ago

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Robert Charles Durman Mitchum (August 6, 1917 – July 1, 1997) was an American actor, director, author, poet, composer, and singer. Mitchum rose to prominence for starring roles in several classic films noirs, and his acting is generally considered a forerunner of the antiheroes prevalent in film during the 1950s and 1960s. His best-known films include Out of the Past (1947), The Night of the Hunter (1955), Cape Fear (1962), and El Dorado (1966). Mitchum was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Story of G.I. Joe (1945). He is also known for his television role as U.S. Navy Captain Victor “Pug” Henry in the epic miniseries The Winds of War (1983) and sequel War and Remembrance (1988).

Mitchum is rated number 23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male stars of Classic American Cinema.

Robert Mitchum was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on August 6, 1917, into a Norwegian-Irish Methodist family. His mother, Ann Harriet Gunderson, was a Norwegian immigrant and sea captain's daughter; his father, James Thomas Mitchum, was a shipyard and railroad worker of Irish descent.[3] His older sister, Annette (known as Julie Mitchum during her acting career), was born in 1914. Their father, James Mitchum, was crushed to death in a railyard accident in Charleston, South Carolina, in February 1919. Robert was one year old, and Annette was not yet five. Their mother was awarded a government pension, and soon realized she was pregnant. Her third child, John, was born in September of that year. Ann married again to Major Hugh Cunningham Morris, a former Royal Naval Reserve officer. Ann and Morris had a daughter together, Carol Morris, born July 1927, on the family farm in Delaware. When all of the children were old enough to attend school, Ann found employment as a linotype operator for the Bridgeport Post.

As a child, Mitchum was known as a prankster, often involved in fistfights and mischief. When he was 12, his mother sent him to live with her parents in Felton, Delaware; the boy was promptly expelled from middle school for scuffling with the principal. A year later, in 1930, he moved in with his older sister Annette, in New York's Hell's Kitchen. After being expelled from Haaren High School, he left his sister and traveled throughout the country, hopping on railroad cars, taking a number of jobs, including ditch-digging for the Civilian Conservation Corps and professional boxing. At age 14 in Savannah, Georgia, he said he was arrested for vagrancy and put on a local chain gang. By Mitchum's own account, he escaped and returned to his family in Delaware. During this time, while recovering from injuries that nearly cost him a leg, he met Dorothy Spence, whom he would later marry. He soon went back on the road, eventually "riding the rails" to California.

Mitchum arrived in Long Beach, California, in 1936, staying again with his sister, now going by the name of Julie. She had moved to the West Coast in the hope of acting in movies, and the rest of the Mitchum family soon joined them. During this time, Mitchum worked as a ghostwriter for astrologer Carroll Righter. Julie convinced him to join the local theater guild with her. At The Players Guild of Long Beach, Mitchum worked as a stagehand and occasional bit-player in company productions. He also wrote several short pieces which were performed by the guild. According to Lee Server's biography (Robert Mitchum: Baby, I Don't Care), Mitchum put his talent for poetry to work writing song lyrics and monologues for Julie's nightclub performances.

In 1940, he returned to Delaware to marry Dorothy Spence, and they moved back to California. He gave up his artistic pursuits at the birth of their first child James, nicknamed Josh, and two more children, Chris and Petrine, followed. Mitchum found steady employment as a machine operator during wartime era WWII, with the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, but the noise of the machinery damaged his hearing. He also suffered a nervous breakdown (which resulted in temporary blindness), due to job-related stress. He then sought work as a film actor, performing initially as an extra and in small speaking parts. His agent got him an interview with Harry Sherman, the producer of Paramount's Hopalong Cassidy western film series, which starred William Boyd; Mitchum was hired to play minor villainous roles in several films in the series during 1942 and 1943. He went uncredited as a soldier in the Mickey Rooney 1943 film The Human Comedy. Also in 1943 he and Randolph Scott were soldiers in the Pacific Island war film Gung Ho.

Mitchum continued to find work as an extra and supporting actor in numerous productions for various studios. After impressing director Mervyn LeRoy during the making of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Mitchum signed a seven-year contract with RKO Radio Pictures. He was groomed for B-Western stardom in a series of Zane Grey adaptations.

Following the moderately successful Western Nevada, RKO lent Mitchum to United Artists for The Story of G.I. Joe (1945). In the film, he portrayed war-weary officer Bill Walker (based on Captain Henry T. Waskow), who remains resolute despite the troubles he faces. The film, which followed the life of an ordinary soldier through the eyes of journalist Ernie Pyle (played by Burgess Meredith), became an instant critical and commercial success. Shortly after filming, Mitchum was drafted into the United States Army, serving at Fort MacArthur, California, as a medic. At the 1946 Academy Awards, The Story of G.I. Joe was nominated for four Oscars, including Mitchum's only nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He finished the year with a Western (West of the Pecos) and a story of returning Marine veterans (Till the End of Time), before filming in a genre that came to define Mitchum's career and screen persona: film noir.

Mitchum was initially known for his work in film noir. His first foray into the genre was a supporting role in the 1944 B-movie When Strangers Marry, about newlyweds and a New York City serial killer. Undercurrent, another of Mitchum's early noir films, featured him as a troubled, sensitive man entangled in the affairs of his brother (Robert Taylor) and his brother's suspicious wife (Katharine Hepburn). John Brahm's The Locket (1946) featured Mitchum as bitter ex-boyfriend to Laraine Day's femme fatale. Raoul Walsh's Pursued (1947) combined Western and noir styles, with Mitchum's character attempting to recall his past and find those responsible for killing his family. Crossfire (also 1947) featured Mitchum as a member of a group of World War II soldiers, one of whom kills a Jewish man. It featured themes of anti-Semitism and the failings of military training. The film, directed by Edward Dmytryk, earned five Academy Award nominations.

Following Crossfire, Mitchum starred in Out of the Past (also called Build My Gallows High), directed by Jacques Tourneur and featuring the cinematography of Nicholas Musuraca. Mitchum played Jeff Markham, a small-town gas-station owner and former investigator, whose unfinished business with gambler Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) and femme fatale Kathie Moffett (Jane Greer) comes back to haunt him.

On September 1, 1948, after a string of successful films for RKO, Mitchum and actress Lila Leeds were arrested for possession of marijuana.[10] The arrest was the result of a sting operation designed to capture other Hollywood partiers as well, but Mitchum and Leeds did not receive the tipoff. After serving a week at the county jail (he described the experience to a reporter as being "like Palm Springs, but without the riff-raff"), Mitchum spent 43 days (February 16 to March 30) at a Castaic, California, prison farm. Life photographers were permitted to take photos of him mopping up in his prison uniform. The arrest inspired the exploitation film She Shoulda Said No! (1949), which starred Leeds. The conviction was later overturned by the Los Angeles court and district attorney's office on January 31, 1951, after being exposed as a setup.

Despite, or because of, Mitchum's troubles with the law and his studio, his films released immediately after his arrest were box-office hits. Rachel and the Stranger (1948) featured Mitchum in a supporting role as a mountain man competing for the hand of Loretta Young, the indentured servant and wife of William Holden. In the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's novella The Red Pony (1949), he appeared as a trusted cowhand to a ranching family. He returned to film noir in The Big Steal (also 1949), where he reunited with Jane Greer in an early Don Siegel film.

In Where Danger Lives (1950), Mitchum played a doctor who comes between a mentally unbalanced Faith Domergue and cuckolded Claude Rains. The Racket was a noir remake of the early crime drama of the same name and featured Mitchum as a police captain fighting corruption in his precinct. The Josef von Sternberg film, Macao (1952), had Mitchum as a victim of mistaken identity at an exotic resort casino, playing opposite Jane Russell. Otto Preminger's Angel Face was the first of three collaborations between Mitchum and British stage actress Jean Simmons. In this film, she played an insane heiress who plans to use young ambulance driver Mitchum to kill for her.

Mitchum was fired from Blood Alley (1955), due to his conduct, reportedly having thrown the film's transportation manager into San Francisco Bay. According to Sam O'Steen's memoir Cut to the Chase, Mitchum showed up on-set after a night of drinking and tore apart a studio office when they did not have a car ready for him. Mitchum walked off the set of the third day of filming Blood Alley, claiming he could not work with the director. Because Mitchum was showing up late and behaving erratically, producer John Wayne, after failing to obtain Humphrey Bogart as a replacement, took over the role himself.

Following a series of conventional Westerns and films noirs, as well as the Marilyn Monroe vehicle River of No Return (1954), Mitchum appeared in Charles Laughton's only film as director: The Night of the Hunter (1955). Based on a novel by Davis Grubb, the thriller starred Mitchum as a monstrous criminal posing as a preacher to find money hidden by his cellmate in the cellmate's home. His performance as Reverend Harry Powell is considered by many to be one of the best of his career.[15][16] Stanley Kramer's melodrama Not as a Stranger, also released in 1955, was a box-office hit. The film starred Mitchum against type, as an idealistic young doctor, who marries an older nurse (Olivia de Havilland), only to question his morality many years later. However, the film was not well received, with most critics pointing out that Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, and Lee Marvin were all too old for their characters. Olivia de Havilland received top billing over Mitchum and Sinatra.

On March 8, 1955, Mitchum formed DRM (Dorothy and Robert Mitchum) Productions to produce five films for United Artists; four films were produced. The first film was Bandido (1956). Following a succession of average Westerns and the poorly received Foreign Intrigue (1956), Mitchum starred in the first of three films with Deborah Kerr. The John Huston war drama Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, starred Mitchum as a Marine corporal shipwrecked on a Pacific Island with a nun, Sister Angela (Deborah Kerr), as his sole companion. In this character study, they struggle to resist the elements and the invading Japanese army. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards, including Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay. For his role, Mitchum was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor. In the WWII submarine classic The Enemy Below (1956), Mitchum gave a strong performance as U.S. Naval Lieutenant Commander Murrell, the captain of a U.S. Navy destroyer who matches wits with a German U-boat captain Curt Jurgens, who starred with Mitchum again in the legendary 1962 movie The Longest Day. The film won an Oscar for Special Effects.

Thunder Road (1958), the second DRM Production, was loosely based on an incident in which a driver transporting moonshine was said to have fatally crashed on Kingston Pike in Knoxville, Tennessee, somewhere between Bearden Hill and Morrell Road. According to Metro Pulse writer Jack Renfro, the incident occurred in 1952 and may have been witnessed by James Agee, who passed the story on to Mitchum. He starred in the movie, produced, co-wrote the screenplay, and is rumored to have directed much of the film. It costars his son James, as his on screen brother, in a role originally intended for Elvis Presley. Mitchum also co-wrote (with Don Raye) the theme song, "The Ballad of Thunder Road".

He returned to Mexico for The Wonderful Country (1959) and Ireland for A Terrible Beauty/The Night Fighters for the last of his DRM Productions.

Mitchum and Kerr reunited for the Fred Zinnemann film, The Sundowners (1960), where they played husband and wife struggling in Depression-era Australia. Opposite Mitchum, Kerr was nominated for yet another Academy Award for Best Actress, while the film was nominated for a total of five Oscars. Mitchum was awarded that year's National Board of Review award for Best Actor for his performance. The award also recognized his superior performance in the Vincente Minnelli Western drama Home from the Hill (also 1960). He was teamed with former leading ladies Kerr and Simmons, as well as Cary Grant, for the Stanley Donen comedy The Grass Is Greener the same year.

Mitchum's performance as the menacing rapist Max Cady in Cape Fear (1962) brought him further renown for playing cold, predatory characters. The 1960s were marked by a number of lesser films and missed opportunities. Among the films Mitchum passed on during the decade were John Huston's The Misfits (the last film of its stars Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe), the Academy Award–winning Patton, and Dirty Harry. The most notable of his films in the decade included the war epics The Longest Day (1962) and Anzio (1968), the Shirley MacLaine comedy-musical What a Way to Go! (1964), and the Howard Hawks Western El Dorado (1967), a remake of Rio Bravo (1959), in which Mitchum took over Dean Martin's role of the drunk who comes to the aid of John Wayne. He teamed with Martin for the 1968 Western 5 Card Stud, playing a homicidal preacher.

One of the lesser-known aspects of Mitchum's career was his foray into music as a singer. Critic Greg Adams writes, "Unlike most celebrity vocalists, Robert Mitchum actually had musical talent." Mitchum's voice was often used instead of that of a professional singer when his character sang in his films. Notable productions featuring Mitchum's own singing voice included Rachel and the Stranger, River of No Return, and The Night of the Hunter. After hearing traditional calypso music and meeting artists such as Mighty Sparrow and Lord Invader while filming Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison in the Caribbean islands of Tobago, he recorded Calypso – is like so ... in March 1957. On the album, released through Capitol Records, he emulated the calypso sound and style, even adopting the style's unique pronunciations and slang. A year later, he recorded a song he had written for Thunder Road, titled "The Ballad of Thunder Road". The country-style song became a modest hit for Mitchum, reaching number 69 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart. The song was included as a bonus track on a successful reissue of Calypso ... and helped market the film to a wider audience.

Although Mitchum continued to use his singing voice in his film work, he waited until 1967 to record his follow-up record, That Man, Robert Mitchum, Sings. The album, released by Nashville-based Monument Records, took him further into country music, and featured songs similar to "The Ballad of Thunder Road". "Little Old Wine Drinker Me", the first single, was a top-10 hit at country radio, reaching number nine there, and crossed over onto mainstream radio, where it peaked at number 96. Its follow-up, "You Deserve Each Other", also charted on the Billboard Country Singles chart. He sang the title song to the Western Young Billy Young, made in 1969.

Mitchum made a departure from his typical screen persona with the 1970 David Lean film Ryan's Daughter, in which he starred as Charles Shaughnessy, a mild-mannered schoolmaster in World War I–era Ireland. At the time of filming, Mitchum was going through a personal crisis and planned to commit suicide. Aside from a personal crisis, his recent films had been critical and commercial flops. Screenwriter Robert Bolt told him that he could commit suicide after the film was finished and that he would personally pay for his burial. Though the film was nominated for four Academy Awards (winning two) and Mitchum was much publicized as a contender for a Best Actor nomination, he was not nominated. George C. Scott won the award for his performance in Patton, a project Mitchum had rejected for Ryan's Daughter.

The 1970s featured Mitchum in a number of well-received crime dramas. The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) had the actor playing an aging Boston hoodlum caught between the Feds and his criminal friends. Sydney Pollack's The Yakuza (1974) transplanted the typical film noir story arc to the Japanese underworld. He also appeared in 1976's Midway about an epic 1942 World War II battle. Mitchum's stint as an aging Philip Marlowe in the Raymond Chandler adaptation Farewell, My Lovely (1975) was sufficiently well received by audiences and critics for him to reprise the role in 1978's The Big Sleep.

In 1982, Mitchum played Coach Delaney in the film adaptation of playwright/actor Jason Miller's 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winning play That Championship Season.

At the premiere for That Championship Season, Mitchum, while intoxicated, assaulted a female reporter and threw a basketball that he was holding (a prop from the film) at a female photographer from Time magazine, injuring her neck and knocking out two of her teeth. She sued him for $30 million for damages. The suit eventually "cost him his salary from the film."

That Championship Season may have indirectly led to another debacle for Mitchum several months later. In a February 1983 Esquire interview, he made several racist, anti-Semitic and sexist statements, including, when asked if the Holocaust occurred, responded "so the Jews say." Following the widespread negative response, he apologized a month later, saying that his statements were "prankish" and "foreign to my principle." He claimed that the problem had begun when he recited a racist monologue from his role in That Championship Season, the writer believing the words to be his own. Mitchum, who claimed that he had only reluctantly agreed to the interview, then decided to "string... along" the writer with even more incendiary statements.

Mitchum expanded to television work with the 1983 miniseries The Winds of War. The big-budget Herman Wouk story aired on ABC, starring Mitchum as naval officer "Pug" Henry and Victoria Tennant as Pamela Tudsbury, and examined the events leading up to America's involvement in World War II. He returned to the role in 1988's War and Remembrance, which continued the story through the end of the war.

In 1984, Mitchum entered the Betty Ford Center in Palm Springs, California for treatment of a drinking problem.

He played George Hazard's father-in-law in the 1985 miniseries North and South, which also aired on ABC.

Mitchum starred opposite Wilford Brimley in the 1986 made-for-TV movie Thompson's Run. A hardened con (Mitchum), being transferred from a federal penitentiary to a Texas institution to finish a life sentence as a habitual criminal, is freed at gunpoint by his niece (played by Kathleen York). The cop (Brimley) who was transferring him, and has been the con's lifelong friend and adversary for over 30 years, vows to catch the twosome.

In 1987, Mitchum was the guest-host on Saturday Night Live, where he played private eye Philip Marlowe for the last time in the parody sketch, "Death Be Not Deadly". The show ran a short comedy film he made (written and directed by his daughter, Trina) called Out of Gas, a mock sequel to Out of the Past. (Jane Greer reprised her role from the original film.) He also was in Bill Murray's 1988 comedy film, Scrooged.

In 1991, Mitchum was given a lifetime achievement award from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, in the same year he received the Telegatto award and in 1992 the Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Golden Globe Awards.

Mitchum continued to act in films until the mid-1990s, such as in Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, and he narrated the Western Tombstone. He also appeared, in contrast to his role as the antagonist in the original, as a protagonist police detective in Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear, but the actor gradually slowed his workload. His last film appearance was a small but pivotal role in the television biopic, James Dean: Race with Destiny, playing Giant director George Stevens. His last starring role was in the 1995 Norwegian movie Pakten.

A lifelong heavy smoker, Mitchum died on July 1, 1997, in Santa Barbara, California, due to complications of lung cancer and emphysema. He was about five weeks shy of his 80th birthday. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered at sea, though there is a plot marker in the Odd Fellows Cemetery in Delaware. He was survived by his wife of 57 years, Dorothy Mitchum (May 2, 1919 – April 12, 2014, Santa Barbara, California, aged 94); his sons, actors James Mitchum and Christopher Mitchum; and his daughter, writer Petrine Day Mitchum. His grandchildren, Bentley Mitchum and Carrie Mitchum, are actors, as was his younger brother, John, who died in 2001. Another grandson, Kian, is a successful model.

Mitchum is regarded by some critics as one of the finest actors of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Roger Ebert called him "the soul of film noir." Mitchum, however, was self-effacing; in an interview with Barry Norman for the BBC about his contribution to cinema, Mitchum stopped Norman in mid flow and in his typical nonchalant style, said, "Look, I have two kinds of acting. One on a horse and one off a horse. That's it." He had also succeeded in annoying some of his fellow actors by voicing his puzzlement at those who viewed the profession as challenging and hard work. He is quoted as having said in the Barry Norman interview that acting was actually very simple and that his job was to "show up on time, know his lines, hit his marks, and go home". Mitchum had a habit of marking most of his appearances in the script with the letters "n.a.r.", which meant "no action required", which critic Dirk Baecker has construed as Mitchum's way of reminding himself to experience the world of the story without acting upon it.

AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars lists Mitchum as the 23rd-greatest male star of classic Hollywood cinema. AFI also recognized his performance as the menacing rapist Max Cady and Reverend Harry Powell as the 28th and 29th greatest screen villains, respectively, of all time as part of AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains. He provided the voice of the famous American Beef Council commercials that touted "Beef ... it's what's for dinner", from 1992 until his death.

A "Mitchum's Steakhouse" is in Trappe, Maryland, where Mitchum and his family lived from 1959 to 1965.

#robert mitchum #classic hollywood #classic movie stars #golden age of hollywood #old hollywood #1940s hollywood #1950s hollywood #1960s hollywood #1970s hollywood #1980s hollywood #1990s hollywood #hollywood legend

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the-record-newspaper · 7 years ago

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Unsolved: Murder at Jumpingoff Place: Epilogue

By: Larry J. Griffin

Special Reporter for The Record

“A man who is laden with the guilt of human blood shall be a fugitive until death; let no one support him.” Proverbs 28:17

I have never been a fan of the State of Mississippi.

There is a certain energy there that I perceived during my initial foray into the Magnolia State—in August, 1967—that remains inconsonant with mine. Yet, I have visited there many times, and in a one-week stretch—not too many years ago—I had speaking engagements in the cities of Columbus, Philadelphia, Jackson, Laurel, Hattiesburg, and Gulfport. Further, I am fortunate to have a considerable cadre of cogent colleagues and congenial comrades amongst Mississippians.

But I know its bloody history of craven crimes perpetrated against humanity during the Civil Rights Era—hundreds of which remain unsolved.

The City of Natchez, Miss., hugs the southwestern border of the state. Across the Mississippi River from Natchez--two miles and eleven miles respectively—sit the Louisiana towns of Vidalia and Ferriday. Because of their geographic proximity, that stretch of highway is referred to as the Natchez-Vidalia-Ferriday area or corridor. Geography, however, is not their only link—they share a sordid past of Civil Rights-based murders and mayhem, perpetrated by a violent cell of the Ku Klux Klan known as the “Silver Dollar Group.”

Comprised of about 20 men from Mississippi and Louisiana, each member carried a “silver dollar” minted during the year of his birth for identification. They prided themselves in being the toughest Klansmen found in either state. They mutilate, murdered, bombed and burned in an effort to “keep the negro in his place.” Moreover, they are responsible for the perpetration of crimes that are among the “cold cases” yet to be resolved through the FBI’s Civil Rights Cold Case Initiative—a 2007 collaboration between the FBI, Civil Rights groups, and state/local law enforcement.

In Ferriday, however, resides a newspaper editor who is a part of a three-person newsroom responsible for publishing The Concordia Sentinel—a weekly publication, like The Record—with a readership of 5,000, half that of Wilkes County’s only international newspaper. Editor Stanley Nelson has been characterized as a “slow-talking, easy-going good ole’ boy.” But, don’t let that description belie the fact that he is an accomplished investigative journalist who has written 150 stories on three Civil Rights crimes committed five decades ago—cold cases. And he has reported these in much the same way that I presented the 27 articles comprising the Murder at Jumpingoff Place series.

“I took it week by week and reported what I learned that week so that it would open people’s eyes as it did mine and help jar memories and maybe compel people to come forward,” Mr. Nelson stated in a 2011 interview with Hank Klibanoff of the Columbia Journalism Review.

Stanley’s journalistic efforts have yielded results. In January of 2011, for instance, he implicated a living suspect in the 1964 Klan murder of Frank Morris in Ferriday, LA, which led to a subsequent grand jury investigation. Additionally, in May of that same year, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in local reporting “for his courageous and determined efforts to unravel a long forgotten KKK murder during the Civil Rights era.”

“Investigative reporting is not something I ever thought I would do. It’s not glamorous, especially when you’re…looking into murders that took place forty and fifty years ago,” Stanley Nelson averred. “…You feel lucky just to learn whether the people mentioned in old documents are alive. Finding, reaching, and talking with them and others who may know about it [a case] is another challenge altogether. The biggest hurdle is finding out what happened…And how did the killers do it?”

That paragraph characterizes my life for the last eight months, as I have endeavored to reconstruct the 1984 case of the disappearance and death of Sherry Hart for readers of The Record. Despite the challenges—and perhaps because of them—this journalistic journey has been “worth the squeeze.” And I have discovered some things about myself in the process, none-the-least of which is that I am intrigued by investigative journalism. Perhaps the biggest pay-off has been a more comprehensive understanding of that which occurred a cold Sunday Evening in January along the crest of a precipice known as Jumpingoff Place.

Along the journey, I have been asked questions by readers relative to what I personally think, posit, and/or have come to believe about the case of the untimely death of Sherry Lyall Hart. As previously stated, I have assiduously avoided expressing opinions and proffering editorial comments in my columns. However, since I have been asked to do so in this several part epilogue, I will pose and answer the most “frequently-asked questions” by inquiring readers.

QUESTION: “Larry, do you think Richard Lynn Bare is guilty of murdering Sherry Hart?”

Yes—after conducting extensive research across eight months, I believe the evidence to be incontrovertible—Lynn Bare pushed Ms. Hart off that 1200-foot cliff at Jumpingoff Place. Jeff Burgess said so; Lynn’s girlfriend, Dottie Jenkins Staley knew it; even Lynn implicated himself in his statement to Ashe County Sheriff Gene Goss. About the only individuals who maintain his innocence can be found among members of the Bare Family. But I am more interested in the “why” of his actions.

In the 11th article of this series entitled, “Rhyme and Reason,” I explored several theories which offered explanations for Bare’s actions. Of course, that installment was written prior to my being allowed to peruse the Ashe County case file for the first time in December, 2017. Surprisingly, a couple of the theories resonated with sworn statements and other information contained therein.

The most plausible explanation for Lynn Bare’s action that evening is a pastiche of a couple hypotheses. There is, however, no substantial evidence to support the notion that his judgment was impaired by his ingestion of drugs or imbibing too much alcohol. Rather, this impulsive, abusive 19-year-old young man knew that he was on probation. In fact, if I read correctly the Suspect’s Identification Records secured through the FBI Identification Division, Lynn received—in 1982—two years of confinement and two years of probation for Breaking/Entering/Larceny and 12 counts of Breaking into a Drink Machine. Having already experienced imprisonment, Bare was disinclined to return to confinement. If Sherry Hart had lodged a complaint with authorities relative to Bare’s two failed attempts to rape her, then likely his probation would have been revoked immediately and he remanded to the Ashe County Detention Center. Pushing her off the cliff, he reasoned, would alleviate that possibility.

QUESTION: “Do you think Bare is guilty of first degree murder?”

At first, I didn’t believe that Lynn Bare would have ever been convicted of premeditated murder—I told April Billings, Sherry Hart’s daughter, as much during our initial interview. And I have never subscribed to the notion that Lynn intended for that January 15th car ride to be Sherry’s last. It was his intent, however, to lure Sherry into a sexually-compromising liaison. Somewhere along the route of a 30-mile joyride, the dynamic changed.

A couple of statements that Jeff Burgess made across three interviews altered my perception somewhat. He recounted for Sheriff Goss and SBI Agent Steve Cabe that he urged Cousin Lynn to take a bleeding Ms. Hart to the hospital for treatment. “There is no way we can get out of it now….It’s too late,” Lynn replied. It was at that crucial juncture that intentionality was introduced into the equation and an impulsive reactive response transmogrified into a premeditative action. And when the trio approached the turn-off at Jumpingoff Place near J. D. Taylor’s bar, Lynn Bare knew how all of this was going to end for Sherry Hart. When Burgess asked him what he did, Lynn retorted, “The bitch got what she deserved….She hung up and then slid on down.”

Admittedly, those two statements bothered me more than I revealed in the reporting of them. The first reflects a complete lack of empathy and a pervasive, perverse disdain for human life. The second mirrors a cold-blooded determination to ensure that the job was thoroughly, irrevocably concluded. It also recommends to suspicion that Bare may have hit Sherry on the head again in an effort to render her unconscious before shoving her over the edge. The momentum of a victim’s sudden descent is likely to be arrested and “hang up” if the victim in insentient and lifeless rather than grasping and struggling all the way down.

That being said, even if Richard Lynn Bare had stood trial on July 29, 1985 or even when he eventually does so, I doubt that a jury would have returned or will render a verdict of “murder in the first degree.” More likely, second-degree murder. There just doesn’t seem to be enough evidentiary support for premeditation. However, Lynn’s observation, “She hung up and then slid on down,” disturbed me when I first read them—they haunt me still.

Three questions remain….These I will answer next week in the concluding segment of, Epilogue to a Murder Case.

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warninggraphiccontent · 4 years ago

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13 November 2020

In brief

My week has certainly improved from waking up to neither my broadband nor my upper back/neck working properly on Tuesday (both fine now, thank you!), so I'll spare you the usual blurb and get straight to the links (ish).

I promise next week's intro will actually be interesting.

Three things briefly:

The video of last week's Data Bites is now live, and well worth catching up on.

Grab your free tickets to next Monday's Orwell Lecture, given by Tristram Hunt with responses from Mumbai and Yangon, here (and please donate to the Orwell Youth Prize if you're able to).

Breaking news of Cummings, and goings. What will that mean for Number 10's view of data in government? His trip to Barnard Castle was bad optics at the time, but - given his apparent departure - you might say the prime minister's decision to risk public trust by keeping Cummings now looks... short-sighted.

Have a good weekend

Gavin

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States of the union

How Biden Flipped Pennsylvania and Won the Election* (New York Times)

We analyzed the vote in seven battleground states* (New York Times)

How Georgia became a swing state for the first time in decades* (Washington Post)

Which States Counted Biden’s Votes First, And Which Counted Trump’s First? (FiveThirtyEight)

Why Democrats Lost So Many South Texas Latinos—the Economy* (Wall Street Journal)

How Did Trump Do in Counties That Backed Him in 2016?* (New York Times)

Make #dataviz great again

Election Data Storytelling on US News Networks: Could They Do Better? (Nightingale)

New York Times public editor: Retire the election needles (CJR)

Red state, blue state: how colours took sides in politics (Reaction)

Viral content

Are governments following the science on covid-19?* (The Economist)

As the northern hemisphere gets colder, covid-19 deaths are rising rapidly* (The Economist)

Mapping U.S. Covid-19 Cases Near You* (Bloomberg)

Surge in Covid cases tests Sweden’s go-it-alone approach* (FT)

The Spectator Covid-19 data tracker* (The Spectator)

Britain’s Covid Response Is Graphic Confusion* (Bloomberg)

I've had a go at sonifying #covid19 data (Jamie Whyte)

What did you expect from the vaccines?

Rich countries grab half of projected covid-19 vaccine supply* (The Economist)

Trust in vaccines is... (FT)

Tracking the vaccine race (Reuters)

Vaccine bootcamp (Reuters)

Everything else

My Little Crony: A visualization of the connections between Tory politicians and companies being awarded government contracts during the pandemic (Sophie Hill)

An Economist’s Guide to the World in 2050* (Bloomberg)

Tracking the Atlantic Hurricane Season* (Bloomberg)

Moving out: making a success of civil service relocation (IfG)

Meta data

Viral content

'I was refused a home Covid test after credit check' (BBC News)

Contact Tracing Apps Were Big Tech's Best Idea for Fighting COVID-19. Why Haven't They Helped? (TIME)

Contact-tracing apps: there’s no evidence they’re helping stop COVID-19 (The Conversation)

Digital health

NHS signs up for Tim Berners-Lee pilot to reinvent web* (FT)

NHS data: Can web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee fix it? (BBC News)

DHSC and NHS need to move on from their track record of failed IT programmes (Public Accounts Committee)

The Centre for Improving Data Collaboration (NHSX)

Digital government

HMRC shuns Gov.uk Notify and seeks supplier to unify notifications (Computer Weekly)

DWP leaves thousands of people's personal data online for more than two years (Mirror)

#USElection

What can Silicon Valley expect from Joe Biden?* (FT)

TikTok says the Trump administration has forgotten about trying to ban it, would like to know what’s up (The Verge)

Poll position

The Polls Weren’t Great. But That’s Pretty Normal. (FiveThirtyEight)

Why pollsters so often seem to get it wrong* (FT)

What Went Wrong With Polling? Some Early Theories* (The Upshot)

Why Americans Will Never Turn Against Polling (Slate)

Comparing election outcomes to our forecast and to the previous election (Andrew Gelman and Elliott Morris)

UK political parties must improve data protection practices (ICO)

#ODISummit

ODI Summit 2020 (YouTube)

Data about children’s lives in the pandemic: report (ODI)

Better data sharing needed to help children during pandemic (Computer Weekly)

DCMS’s Whittingdale: National data strategy not tied to EU trade deal (Computer Weekly)

Remote working etc

The Digital Nomads Did Not Prepare for This* (New York Times)

Will Covid kill our toxic work addiction? (UnHerd)

AI got 'rithm

How artificial intelligence may be making you buy things (BBC News)

UK’s landmark online law seeks to tackle ‘algorithmic’ bias* (FT)

Data

The Downfall of Command and Control Data Leadership (Robin Linacre)

Using predictive analytics in local public services (Local Government Association, via Martin)

The inequality perceived by black people & seen from data (Joint Committee on Human Rights, via Tracey Gyateng)

Data Bites #14: Getting things done with data in government (IfG)

Data Platforms, Standards and Communities (Ryan Dunn's Weeknotes)

“Data Trusts” Could Be the Key to Better AI (Harvard Business Review)

Why connecting big data is now a bigger priority for the UK Government (PwC)

Palantir is not a data company (Palantir Explained, #1) (Palantir)

Everything else

Go figure: how Britain became a nation of armchair statisticians (The Observer)

Lack of openness on Horizon errors remains as Fujitsu refuses to explain latest outage (Computer Weekly)

The Human Experience Will Not Be Quantified* (New York Times)

Cyber weapons are called viruses for a reason: statecraft, security and safety in the digital age (Ciaran Martin for King's College London)

SNP health minister wanted to stop freedom of information during Covid-19 (The Ferret)

Review Essay: Exposing the Costs of Uncounting (LSE Review of Books)

Opportunities

JOBS: NHSX

JOBS: CDEI

JOBS: Tony Blair Institute for Global Change

FEEDBACK: We want your feedback on using the DOI standard in government (Data in government)

EVENT: Linking public sector data for policy-relevant research: an ADR UK showcase event (ADR UK)

And finally...

At the going down of the sun

Poppy Field (The Polynational War Memorial, Valentina D’Efilippo, Nicolas Pigelet)

A Street Near You (James Morley)

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thisdaynews · 4 years ago

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US ELECTION:Snell & Wilmer Withdraws From Election Lawsuit As Trump Contests Arizona Results.

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/us-electionsnell-wilmer-withdraws-from-election-lawsuit-as-trump-contests-arizona-results/

US ELECTION:Snell & Wilmer Withdraws From Election Lawsuit As Trump Contests Arizona Results.

The biggest law office speaking to the Trump lobby or its partners in post-political decision case testing votes in key states has removed from a political race claim in Maricopa County, Arizona.