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the-homicidediaries · 4 years ago

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Mary Bell

The Tyneside Strangler

TW: child death, sexual abuse, genital mutilation

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Hello! So I’m back with another horrible story because people keep asking for them.

SO HERE WE GO

This is the story of Mary Bell, who is one of only a handful of the youngest murderers.. EVER.

Mary Bell was born to a 16 year old prostitute named Betty in Newcastle upon Tyne, England in May of 1957. (Yeah, this didn’t happen that long ago. Horrifying.)

Now, no one is entirely sure who Mary’s father is, but Betty made it very clear she wanted nothing to do with Mary from the very beginning, telling doctors, “Get that thing away from me.”

And the best thing the doctors could come up with was to continue to let Mary live with her mother.

Perfect. What could go wrong?

Well, a lot.

Things got way worse. Betty was away a lot in Glasgow for her “business trips”. When she wasn’t away, she subjected Mary to physical and mental abuse.

Betty’s sister testified that she once saw Betty try to give Mary away to a local woman who was unsuccessful in her adoption journey.

Betty’s sister also noted that Mary was very “accident prone”; i.e. “falling” down the stairs and “accidentally” overdosing sleeping pills.

After Mary’s “fall”, it was reported that Mary suffered horrible brain damage in her pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain that deals with decision-making and voluntary movements.

(Richard Ramirez, John Wayne Gacy, Fred West, David Berkowitz, Ed Gein, Albert Fish, and several other serial killers also suffered brain injuries as they were growing up.)

(I want to mention here there is a bit of a debate amongst experts whether to Betty wanted to get rid of Mary because she wasn’t fit to be a mother OR Betty had Munchausen by Proxy, which should all know is my favorite mental illness. 😬

Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP) is a mental health problem in which a caregiver makes up or causes an illness or injury in a person under his or her care, such as a child, an elderly adult, or a person who has a disability. The most famous case was Clauddinea “Dee Dee” Blancharde abusing her daughter Gypsy Rose Blancharde.)

Back to Mary.

According to family members, Betty began prostituting Mary out by the time she was four years old. (That’s hideous. That’s a year younger than Shiloh, my baby baby. I hope it isn’t true.)

I also read that by the time Mary was five, she had already had a brush with death, watching her five year old friend being run over and killed by a bus.

By the time Mary was ten, she was quiet, manipulative, and isolated herself from everyone.

In May 11, 1968, just weeks before her first murder, Mary was playing with a three year old neighbor when he was horribly injured from a fall at the top of an air raid shelter.

His parents deemed it an accident.

After this, though, a few of the neighborhood mothers came forward to the police and said Mary had tried to choke their young daughters. No charges were filed, however.

On May 25, 1968, one day before Mary Bell turned 11 years old, Mary strangled four year old Martin Brown in an abandoned house. Mary fled the scene and returned back to the body with her friend Norma Bell, (no relation), but found they had been beaten by two local boys who had been playing in the abandoned house and stumbled upon the body.

Police were baffled by what they saw. Besides a little blood and saliva on Martin’s face, there were no obvious signs of violence. There was, however, an empty bottle of painkillers on the floor near the body. This led police to believe Martin had swallowed the pain pills and his death was deemed an accident.

Mary might have gotten away with this had she not gone to Martin’s family’s house and asked his mother to see Martin. She explained to Mary that Martin was dead, and Mary said she knew, she wanted to see the dead body in the coffin.

Martin’s mother slammed the door in her face.

Shortly after, Mary and her friend Norma broke into a nursery school and vandalized it with notes taking responsibility for Martin Brown’s death and promising to kill again. Police assumed the notes were a morbid prank.

The nursery school installed an alarm system shortly after and Mary and Norma were caught at the scene of the crime but were later seen as loitering and let off the hook.

Just.. YA KNOW!? All the signs are pointing to this girl.

Mary even told her classmates she had murdered Martin Brown.

It’s aggravating as hell.

BUT I DIGRESS

On June 31, 1968, Mary Bell, now 11, strangled three year old Brian Howe to death in the same area where she strangled Martin Brown.

She later went back to the body and carved an ‘M’ onto Brian’s chest with a razor and mutilated his thighs and penis with a pair of scissors.

In a sickening twist, Mary and Norma offered to help Brian’s sister look for him when his family realized he was missing. Mary even pointed out the cinder blocks where his body was, but since Norma said it wouldn’t be there, Brian’s sister dismissed it and looked elsewhere.

Y’all. I cannot.

When the coroner’s report came back on Brian, police were shocked to find the ‘M’ carved onto his chest and the coroner reporting this death was most likely caused by a child due to the lack of force used during the attack.

MORTIFYING

Mary and Norma were not conspicuous at all; they were interviewed by the police and excited to learn new news pertaining to the case.

Mary was spotted lurking outside of Brian’s house the day of his burial. She was laughing and rubbing her hands together when she saw the coffin.

The police called Mary in to be interviewed a second time and Mary made up a story about an eight year old boy she had seen hit Brian, (police knew she and Norma had seen him the day he died), in the head and that he had a pair of broken scissors with him.

The 👏🏼 police 👏🏼 hadn’t 👏🏼 disclosed 👏🏼 anything 👏🏼 publicly 👏🏼 about 👏🏼 the 👏🏼 scissors. 👏🏼

This is where Mary done goofed. Only investigators and the murderer would have known about this clue.

Upon further questioning, Mary and Norma broke down and began blaming each other for the murders.

During the trial, which took place in December, the jury agreed that Mary had committed the murders.

Did she receive a murder charge, you may ask?

Absolutely not.

While the jury did find Mary Bell guilty, a manslaughter charge was given because Mary’s lawyer and the court psychiatrists argued Mary suffered from psychopathy, and the court agreed she was not fully responsible of her actions.

😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐

Norma Bell, however, was regarded as an unwilling accomplice and was acquitted.

Let’s look at the difference between manslaughter and murder charges and why this is so important.

man·slaugh·ter

/ˈmanˌslôdər/

noun

1. the crime of killing a human being without malice aforethought, or otherwise in circumstances not amounting to murder.

mur·der

/ˈmərdər/

noun

1. the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.

I obviously haven’t gone to law school, but I would argue that the little neighbor boy’s “accidental fall” and the mothers coming forward about Mary choking their young daughters could be viewed as premeditated. She was trying to kill them, she just managed to kill two little boys instead.

Yes she had a brain injury, but giving her a manslaughter charge is offensive to me. Offensive for the families who lost their sons. If she has a brain injury and there were several cases documented where she was hurting other children, she should have been locked away forever. Just my opinion. I agree with medication and therapy, but anyone could relapse at any time and I don’t think that’s a risk anyone should take. Again, just my unprofessional as h*ck opinion.

(Ed Kemper went to a mental institute and tricked and lied his way into letting the psychiatrists let him leave after he had killed both of his grandparents at just 15 years old. They assumed he was rehabilitated; he just learned the right answers to their questions. He later killed eight more people, including his mother.

Just an example.)

(Another example, they medicated Richard Kuklinski after he was arrested and did not feel the need to release him even though he showed signs of improvement.)

Moving on.

The judge concluded that Mary was a dangerous person and a serious threat to other children. She was sentenced to be imprisoned “at Her Majesty’s pleasure,” a British term that basically means the powers that be would release her when they felt she had been properly rehabilitated.

Apparently, they were very impressed with Mary’s treatment and rehabilitation and felt like it was appropriate to let Mary Bell out in 1980, T W E L V E Y E A R S after Mary committed these murders.

She was put in very strict probation but was able to live amongst her community as a normal person.

The cherry on top?

Mary Bell was given a new identity to offer her a new chance at life and to be able to avoid the press.

She had to move several times because the press kept tracking her down, however.

Today, Mary Bell and her daughter are in protective custody at a secret address no one knows.

Norma Bell passed away in 1989.

Do I feel Mary Bell needs court ordered protection and should be able to hide her identity? No.

Do I think they released her far too early? Yes

Do I think Martin Brown and Brian Howe got justice? No.

Does this story anger me even though I’ve heard it and read about it fifteen million times? Yes.

Her mother should be responsible. She should be responsible instead of hiding. The victim’s families deserve better.

Below are pictures of Mary Bell aged 11, Martin Brown, Brian Howe, and Mary Bell aged 51.

#true crime

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miep-knipperdolling · 6 years ago

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“Kemper explains why he murdered coeds”

(November 1, 1973)

Six coeds murdered by Edmund Kemper died because, "I wanted the girls for myself, like possessions, they were going to be mine," he testified at his murder trial this morning. Under examination by his defense lawyer Jim Jackson, continued from yesterday's session, Kemper revealed his "private world" dealing with the killings. He related the killing of the coeds to a fantasy he had had in childhood when he admittedly killed his pet cat because its affections had been transferred to his two sisters and "I wanted to make it mine." Kemper said he buried the cat alive in the back yard and later dug it up, fondled it and talked to it after it was dead. This morning he described his frustrations in attempting to establish a relationship with girls his own age after his release from Atascadero State Hospital where he had been confined for five years for the murder of his grandparents when he was 15. He said he couldn't communicate with people his own age. "When I got out on the street it was like being on a strange planet. People my own age were not talking the same language." He said he began picking up hitchhikers of both sexes just to "trying to communicate with them... just trying to make friends." Then, later, he started relying on his fantasies "more than reality." It was apparently at this point that the killings began. He was asked by Jackson to tell the jurors what he had in mind when each of six coeds died. "What were you thinking? Death?" Jackson asked. "No," Kemper replied, "Death never entered as a factor." Kemper said, "Alive, they were distant, not sharing with me. I was trying, to establish a relationship and there was no relationship there..." "When they were being killed there wasn't anything going on in my mind except that they were going to be mine ... That was the only way they could be mine." "Like the cat?" asked Jackson. "Like the cat," Kemper replied. Jackson asked him what the "real reason" was that Kemper disposed of the girls' bodies in the manner he did cutting them up and keeping parts of the bodies for a time. Kemper hesitantly replied, "Because they were rotting and I was losing them." He explained, "when the girls died I kept them a certain length of time, but couldn't keep them any longer," However, he declared, "I still have their spirits." Kemper said he also visited the grave of one of the coeds, Mary Ann Pesce, because he wanted to be near her and talk to her. "I loved her and I wanted her," he said. In the death of another girl, Cynthia Schall, he said he buried her head in the backyard of his mother's apartment house facing the window of the bedroom where he was staying and "talked to it (the head) many times, saying affectionate things." He said of the killings "I didn't want to hurt anybody... the deaths didn't exist to me. It wasn't as in dying. It was a transition to me." "I wanted the girls to be mine.” Kemper denied that he had planned his operation carefully so he wouldn't be caught by the police. He said he "just didn't want to be stopped by anybody who'd take my girls away from me." However, he admitted that while he was fleeing across the country after killing his mother and her best friend, he' felt "so horrified about what had happened," that he "wanted to be punished in the worst possible way." Kemper said that by fleeing, he was "basically running from the whole world. My fantasies were gone and I had no place to hide." He said that after his arrest he felt "convinced I should be shackled and hung upside down from the bars and beaten," and that he should be "tortured for what I did." Shortly before the noon recess District Attorney Peter Chang began his cross-examination. Yesterday's afternoon's session in the Edmund Kemper murder trial started in a near riot as load voiced and shoving teenage girls and middle-aged women, struggled to secure seats in the courtroom, and it ended abruptly when the defendant broke into tears on the stand. Kemper testified for two and a half hours yesterday, probing into the events of his childhood which may have led him to the murders of his grandparents, the horrors of confinement in Atascadero state hospital for the criminally insane and his ultimate murders of eight other persons. Kemper broke down shortly before 4 p.m. as he was being questioned by his attorney Jim Jackson about his suicide attempt Sunday morning in his San Mateo County jail cell. Kemper's cell is under constant surveillance by jailers by the means of a television camera. But Kemper told how he avoid signaling his suicidal actions by simply turning his back to the camera and slashing his wrist with the flattened and sharpened casing of a ballpoint pen. He said he had cut an artery, which was spurting blood, and a vein, which also was bleeding. Jackson interrupted him to ask why had he not, if he wanted to die, stuck himself in the throat. Kemper looked up blandly at the question and replied quietly, "I would have died too fast that way." He explained that he could have cut an artery in his throat but that he wanted to think about things as he bled. "What were you thinking about, Ed?" asked Jackson. Kemper looked down at his hands and began to reply slowly, "I was thinking about the girls who died...their fathers..." At this point, his voice broke and tears came to his eyes, which he brushed away. (Two fathers of his coed victims testified in court during the first week of the trial and Kemper had been unable or unwilling to look at them while they were on the stand.) Momentarily, Kemper recovered his composure, and Said, "Sorry," and then continued "...their mothers, and I thought about what I did..." At this point the young giant buried his face in his hands, apparently unable to continue. Judge Harry F. Brauer immediately adjourned the court for the day, and Kemper jumped up from the witness chair and hastily tussled for the back door of the courtroom, catching sheriff's deputies across the room momentarily off guard. Bailiff Don Chapman was the first to reach Kemper, and he patted him consolingly on the back as he led him into the jury room adjacent to the courtroom, where Kemper remained until Jackson went in to see him before he was taken back to San Mateo County Jail. Earlier, following the mob scene at the courtroom door, Judge Brauer, coldly angry, admonished the spectators. "There will be strict decorum, not only in the courtroom but outside," the judge said. "Anybody who pushes or yells will be excluded. This is not a circus," he snapped. The courtroom has been crowded each day of the trial, with a number of persons turned away for lack of seating. Present daily have been students from local high schools who, with their teachers, have sat through the grim recitations of murder, violence and sex. The testimony by Kemper yesterday was no exception from the preceding grim testimony. With questioning from Jackson, he recalled his childhood fantasies which started out innocently and wistfully, later to become daydreams of murder and sex. He said his first fantasy was that his "mother and father would be loving together and caring for their children." According to Kemper, it was a fantasy that never came true, he said. Instead, there was "much violence, hatred, yelling and screaming" between his father and mother who separated and were divorced when he was around seven years old. Kemper said he felt rejected and unloved by his mother and his father as well, though he indicated he yearned for a good relationship with his father. He spoke of his mother as "alcoholic," and said she once had beaten him with a heavy belt and buckle when he was a small child and told him not to scream, "because the neighbors will think I'm beating you." This was at the age of nine, and Kemper said after that he was afraid of her and began to have a recurring fantasy about sneaking up on her and hitting her in the head with a hammer. Later, in Atascadero, his fantasies turned to sex as well as murder. He said his final fantasy was, "I killed someone, cut them up and ate them... and I kept the head on a shelf and talked to it...I said the same things I would have said had she been alive, in love with me, had she been caring of me." Asked by Jackson if he ever told anyone at Atascadero about the fantasies, Kemper replied, "No, I would never got out if I had told psychiatrists I was having fantasies of sex with dead bodies and in some cases eating them I would never have gotten out ever." He paused and then said, "Wow! That's like condemning yourself to life imprisonment, and I don't know many people who do 'that" The young defendant, who worked for psychologists testing other inmates at Atascadero, said, "I hid it from them. They can't see the things going on in my mind. All I had to do to conceal it from them was not talk about it."

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hyunllx · 5 years ago

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Heathers & Gargoyles A complete rewrite of Riverdale Season 3

A game, a cult, a murder. Sounds like a stereotypical october for the town of Riverdale. Yet when Betty, Jughead, Veronica, and newly freed-from-juvie Archie are recruited to join the increasingly dangerous game of Griffins and Gargoyles, they find themselves dodging assassinations and deadly traps designed to keep them on a pre-determined story path. Left without the help of their brainwashed allies, the core four must work in the shadows to stop the rising body count and unmask the King of Gargoyles before their story is finished.

Prologue Previous Chapter[none] | Read it on AO3

The summer leading up to junior year was like so many others in Riverdale; days spent by Sweetwater River were long and hot. Fireflies doubled the stars in the sky and the scent of wood smoke hung on the midnight air. Pink-grey dawns, filled with the song of birds and dewy treks through the forest while dusks of deep golds and purples painted the skies above countless barbeques and fireworks. The town, for once, seemed happy. Normal, if they could ever grasp the concept of ‘normal’ again. At least… most of the town.

Only in private spaces and shadowy corners was the dark cloud hanging over the community mentioned, as if the town itself wanted to forget, wanted to push away the very thought another tragedy could happen to a child everyone knew, grew up with, and loved. Though the town believed his innocence whole heartedly, they forgot about him the way one forgets a traumatic memory; slow, reluctant, and silent.

In the spaces where his cloud loomed darkest, Betty worked as an intern for Mary Andrews, putting her legal and investigative prowess to test in a more lawful setting than she was used to. She spent her days reading through old case files, police reports, and transcripts of similar court cases, analyzing and decoding the vast arrays of information into easily digestible chunks. Shorthand and stenotypy became her new language and, though she interacted daily with her friends, the codes of court ruled her consciousness until the August hearing.

On the other side of town, Jughead put the Serpents to work collecting the not-so-legally obtained evidence and testimonies they were used to. Vigilantism was almost a comfort in the wake of Archie’s hanging shadow, a line of work Jughead threw himself into fully. There was a normalcy to it, a sense of nostalgia that ate away the trauma and suffering they had endured in the years since entering high school.

Hyperfixation eating the peripherals of his awareness, it wasn’t until the final weeks that Serpent King Jughead Jones realized the absence of many of his members. He expected Toni and Cheryl; they spent more time together these days than the rest of the gang, though Jughead didn’t mind. He’d be hypocritical if he did given the time he and Betty and spent alone. However, as August grew from summer gold to deep early autumn red, the absence of Sweet Pea and Fangs caught his attention first.

Jughead would visit their homes in the afternoons and evenings and most of the time, there was no one home. They were often missing from the Serpent gatherings and communal activities, and their reports were brief when he asked favors or gave them a task. By the final weekend of summer vacation, Sweet Pea and Fangs had garnered a following of a dozen young Serpents, high schoolers or younger. All missing when Jughead needed them, all caught returning home or showing up to community meetings late and covered in dirt and various forest remnants.

Though Jughead wouldn’t have known, it wasn’t just the Serpents undergoing this odd shift in youth attention-span. Veronica witnessed it too as her speakeasy, La Bonne Nuit, came to life under the floors of Pops’. Summer jobs, like most small all-American towns, were the pinnacle of high school vacation culture, and Veronica graciously contributed by hiring many of her classmates to help work on the place. This was, after all, a place for all of them to recover from the tragedies befallen the youth of the town.

Yet, as with the Serpents, many of them started skipping shifts, missing work hours, seemingly uncaring about their work or their pay as August bloomed to life. Though Veronica was not an aggressive person by nature, when she confronted their lack of vigor, she often left frustrated with no answers and a short staff. With her own attention torn between her project and her unjustly imprisoned boyfriend, the progress of La Bonne Nuit slowed to a crawl.

Veronica was not the only person frustrated by this; her father had taken an interest in the speakeasy's construction and was growing worse at hiding his impatience as the month progressed toward the looming trial. His heed had not gone unchecked, but Veronica ignored it for the time being, not wanting to confront the man who probably put her boyfriend behind bars. It wasn’t difficult to avoid him these days; after school concluded the previous year, he’d also vanished for periods of time.

“Business stuff,” he always said, a strange answer as he’d usually explain what the business was to her. The mystery and curtness was unusual, making his curiosity in her own projects even more grating. She finally stopped him the day before the trial, his judgement entering the speakeasy after 24 hours or longer missing from home.

“Daddy.” She greeted him with a mirror of his increasingly formal demeanor.

“Good morning, Mija.” He forced informality as he approached the counter where she stood, rubbing dark stain into the wooden top. The smile on his didn’t reach his eyes, the wrinkles in his crow's feet and heavy brow ridge remaining flat and expressionless, “How is everything going today?”

She didn’t answer him, side-eying his suit as she focused more on the counter. Though he wore suits often, he was more dressed up than usual, and Veronica could already feel the judgement at seeing her helping with the work. Instead she asked, trying to keep the malice from her voice,

“Where have you been? I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“I had to have an emergency meeting with a business partner.” He was lying, Veronica knew, though she couldn’t prove it. She just could tell from the way his back straightened and his hands clenched and the vein in his neck pulsed against skin as he swallowed.

“The same business partner that’s been dragging you away all summer, I presume?”

Her father let out a tense sigh, his eyes leaving her face. His shoulders slumped slightly and for the first time that summer he looked as tired as she felt. A manipulation tactic, yet Veronica couldn’t help feel that twinge of pity deep in her chest for her dear old father. She put down the stain rag and wiped her hands on the apron around her waist, the deep mahogany brown leaving streaks on the off-white canvas.

“We’re having a bit of… a setback,” He met her gaze again, his eyes sharp as he thought about his partner with clear scorn, “Their facility is not being built properly and they’re refusing to send their employees elsewhere. It’s wasting a lot of time and money. I thought you might be able to relate.”

Veronica physically shrunk inward, the passive-aggressive swing pulling the pity straight from her torso and her self-esteem with it. She wrung the rag through her fingers again, looking down at the counter. Angry fire smoldered in the pit of her stomach in the sting of his words and she shook her head,

“No, I’m sorry. Things have been progressing just fine here.”

“Hmm…” Hiram looked skeptically at the unfinished furniture and the sparse employees laying wooden planks on the raised stage, the centerpiece for the room. His scrutiny turned back to her stained hands and the dark, unfinished splotches of the bar counter, “Well, for your sake I hope so.”

“Why are you really here? To judge how quickly we’re getting this set up and running?” Hiram looked taken aback by her sudden bite but those smolders of anger were bursting to life now.

“Two days ago the facility that is being built outside of Greendale was broken into. I figured you should know, since you’re in the same boat.”

Veronica rolled her eyes at the guilting; she had already heard about the break-in. That’s why she was working and not preparing for tomorrow’s trial like she should’ve been.

“Thank you for your concern, but I think we’ll be fine.”

Their conversation dragged on with as few words as possible, filled with vitriol and disdain. Even the boys laying the woodwork into the stage glanced over at the tension every so often felt it. Hiram finally decided his chiding was over and left with tense shoulders and a silent goodbye, and Veronica wouldn’t see him until the next day in the trial.

The entire town appeared to crowd around the courthouse that morning, as many bodies as possible squeezing into the seats and the hallway to hear the case of their beloved golden boy. Betty sat with Archie, anxiety overwhelming her relief to see him as they brought him into the room, his mother on his other side clutching his hand as tightly as possible. Jughead and Ronnie sat directly behind him, happy to see him but as anxious as Betty to his left. This could be worse, he thought.

All summer he was back and forth between holding cells, interrogation and visitation rooms, and court. Whatever the sentencing was, Archie was glad this would be over with. He knew he was innocent. His loved ones knew, and from the supportive looks around the room, everyone else did too.

For six grueling hours, Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead, and the rest of the town of Riverdale sat through recounts of their recent tragedies. The death of Jason Blossom, Archie’s vigilantism, the Black Hood murders, and their apparent involvement in major crimes over the past two years.

The word ‘guilty’ stung the hearts of everyone in the room when the jury announced the verdict late that afternoon. Though the weight of reality was still a shock, Veronica knew as soon as the jury entered the room after deliberation. They made up their minds long before that…. Or had someone make it up for them.

At Archie’s request, the four had one more day together, then he left, hauled away to juvie the day before the start of their junior year. That looming cloud returned, and the halls of Riverdale High felt empty, heavy, and dark.

In that darkness, something new and dangerous grew; a monster with stone horns and skull mask. A game where everyone was a player, whether or not they knew it. It started as groups of nerds huddled around an upright-standing folder at lunch tables. Here and there a faint, excited whisper of demons and puzzles.

Jughead and Veronica often found their missing bodies among these secretive spaces. They’d started skipping their Serpent jackets and sports-branded sweaters for odd, costume-like clothing and black hood.

“We’re playing Griffins and Gargoyles.” Sweet Pea told Jughead one day when he’d tried to pry his way into the group.

“What’s that… like Dungeons and Dragons?” Jughead frowned, regarding the map spread out between the ‘players’. They exchanged nervous glances as he asked.

“Um… kind of. But you have to be initiated to play.”

“How do I get initiated?” Not that he wanted to be… the question was more out of curiosity about his former family.

“You wait.” The unfamiliar girl behind the erected folder wall cut in before Sweet Pea could think to respond. Her blue eyes sliced through him under her shadowy black hood. “You wait for the Gargoyle King to call you.”

Veronica had a similarly chilling encounter when players brought the game to work. The Acolytes, so called for their worship of this mysterious Gargoyle King, multiplied like cockroaches over the first week of school. As a virus spreads, so did the game throughout Riverdale High, recruiting more and more players and attracting the “Deathknights” who watched the school grounds with stone masks and tattered black clothes.

At the surface, it appeared to be just another fun roleplaying game. Underneath, though, lay a labyrinth of danger, destruction, and crime the town’s youth grew entangled in, unable to escape. It was not a game; it was anarchy.

The school became ground-zero for the cult-like following of the game, and Betty, Jughead, Veronica tried their best to navigate their first weeks of school together, away from the rest of their friends who quickly got sucked into the Gargoyle King’s clutches. Cheryl was among the loudest recruiters after being chosen for initiation early in the game. To their surprise, Ethel was as loud as the school’s resident HBIC.

Halls and classrooms became littered, eventually decorated, with iconography, various memorabilia, and art of the ‘game’. By the second Friday of September, kids were finding satchels and cards in hidden books and cracks in the walls.

That second Friday, a large cluster of kids gathered around the outside of Veronica’s home room, their whispers excited as they discussed their latest find. She tried not to pay too much attention to the conversation as she forced her small form through the throng, but anxious whispers of ‘kill’ and ‘plan’ and ‘escape’ assaulted her ears. She pushed it out of her mind. No, they’re talking about a game. This isn’t real.

Like usual, Veronica was early as she forced her way into the classroom, and there were few bodies in the room save for herself and the quiet outcast types that sat by themselves. She attempted a smile in their direction but, as expected, they didn’t return it. Instead, she took a seat at the front of the classroom, placing her books on the desk and sliding her bag under the chair. As she leaned over to do so, she caught sight of a small envelope on the floor, trapped partially under a front desk leg. The back where she expected to see a name or address was face up and blank, but she could tell there was something inside when she yanked it out from under the leg.

The envelope was small enough to fit in her hand, yet a smooth wax of a black seal still pressed into the back enclosure, already open by the rail of paper tear stuck to it. The embossing on the seal was a figure squatting on its hands and knees. Two thin, tined antlers rose from its head, and large, stretching bat wings protruded from its shoulders, the span larger than the size of its body.

Though she knew this was someone else’s, Veronica’s morbid curiosity seized her hands and pulled the flap up. There was only one object inside; cardstock nearly the size of the envelope give or take a few centimeters. Pulling it out carefully, she immediately recognized the pattern on the back of the card as being from the game. It was the same pattern as those people found for quests. This was definitely not for her. As she turned it over, her breath caught in her throat.

The word “QUEST” scrawled in medieval-reminiscent script at the top in bold black letters. Underneath stood a painting of a knight or a soldier; a very young man in shining silver-steel armour encrusted with rubies. She did not recognize the symbol emblazoned in red across his breastplate and intricately depressed into the shield he held at his side. His eyes were a warm brown, his hair an intimately familiar shade of red-orange, and an even familiar still innocent softness to his features.

He looked just like Archie.

Yet, that was not what shocked Veronica most about the card. At the bottom of the image, a cream-grey box held tet that, mixed with the boy looking so much like her beloved, sent shivers up her spine.

Kill the Red Paladin.

The trill of the class bell rang through the room and more bodies shuffled in through the door. Fingers trembling, Veronica stuffed the card back into the envelope and that into the back of the textbook on her desk. She’d have to show Betty and Jughead later. For now, she pushed it out of her mind along with the other stresses of her life and pretended to be a normal teen for the day.

September swelled into autumn and left as dangerously as it began, whispers of “Kill the Red Paladin” cards popping up all over school. Betty often inquired parties she caught talking about it, the Acolytes running the games, the Deathknights that now warded the woods and public areas about it, but she met with the same answer each time.

They could not participate until they were initiated.

Instead of forcing her way in, Betty took the route she knew best and snuck her way through, learning the patterns of the Deathknights and following them long into the nights. They lead her through the forest more often than not, winding trails snaking through trees and long back yards, always ending in the same place, an abandoned recreation center on the outskirts of Riverdale, near the detention center. The grounds swarmed with Deathknights like cockroaches. Betty was certain the Gargoyle King resided inside the building, but she never got close enough to see inside.

While she was busy tracking her way around the cult, Jughead and Veronica focused on Archie. As September wound down, he abruptly became unavailable for phone privileges, and each time they’d travel to visit in person, he had a new scar or bruise somewhere on his once boyish face. He wasn’t the only one, however, as the Serpents stuck in juvie also started appearing with mysterious black eyes and broken noses, even ones released at the ends of their sentences throughout September.

Jughead and a group of older Serpents visited the detention center on the first day of October, waiting for their most recent member to get released back into their care. When he exited the building with the guards, his face looked the worst out of anyone, including Archie. His nose had broken and started healing out of place and he walked with a significant limp, hunched over his belongings. His lips were twice their normal size with scarred over cuts and untreated swelling.

They drove him home in silence and set him up in a group house watched over by Tom Topaz. The boys that lived there set to work helping tend to their brother’s wounds, some of them recovering from their own horrors from that detention center.

“What happened in there?” Jughead asked when the boy, Slash, started to relax into the environment. He was quiet at first, his eyes trained on the floor and his head shaking as if he were refusing to tell him, just as the others had. Jughead waited a few minutes in silence, but broke just as he made to stand up and leave.

“Fighting pits.” Slash muttered, still looking down. “They put is in fighting pits.”

“Dude-” One boy who’d been in detention previously tried to reprimand him but Jughead snapped to shut him up. If Slash wanted to speak, Jughead needed to hear,

“Like an underground wrestling ring?”

“No. MMA. Bare-knuckle. Whatever you can do to take down the other guy.”

“Why? Just for fun?”

“Lotta rich people come to watch. Place bets. Give us special names. It’s a game or something to them.”

Veronica had given Jughead the Kill the Red Paladin card for safekeeping and it was burning a hole in his pocket listening to Slash, “You’re all forced to fight? What about the other inmates, non-Serpents?”

“You’re asking about Andrews.” It wasn’t a question; Slash’s face grew dark at the memory of Archie in the pits, “Yeah… he’s their main man. The Paladin.” He spat the title with a small stream of bloody spittle. He motioned toward his nose as he continued “I couldn’t take him down like they asked. He knocked me unconscious.”

Slash shook his head. “No, they take us somewhere else. Somewhere old with a big pool.”

Jughead stood up immediately and scrambled for his phone to call Betty and Veronica, recalling the abandoned building Betty found the Deathknights operating out of. He joined her on her near-nightly trek through the trees after that, studying the building, occasionally finding the parking lot filled with shiny and out-of-place cars. The rich folk that played with the lives of the inmates. On those nights, Veronica came to meet them as quickly as she could, using her name and money to barter her way into the games.

She became a witness to the horrible treatment of the kids in the pit, scrawny, bruised, and still forced to fight until one went down in the blood-stained pool. She had yet to see Archie, though every night she went she heard whisperings about him, excitement to see him return. Three weeks from now… two weeks from now… next time...

Finally, it came to Archie’s fight day. It surprised him to see his friends come together with such an urgency that morning, especially given it was a Friday and they should have been at school. He was even more surprised at their questions about how the guards brought him in to the pits, that he never told them about, and their plan to break him out.

The rest of the day came in a haze, and as the sun went down, Archie felt detached when the guards retrieved him for the fight. The energy of the pit was different as they paraded Archie through the crowd, the stench of expensive booze and cigar smoke making his growling, empty stomach turn. His eyes scanned the people as they gathered to watch him descend into the pool, many of them hungering with a deadly greed he’d grown accustomed to over the past month.

As he looked over the spectators, he caught the familiar gaze of Veronica, worried yet warm with the mischievous twinkle that told him to trust whatever she was plotting. And he did, wholeheartedly.

The guards removed the shackles around his wrists as he reached the edge of the abandoned pool. They shoved him between the shoulder blades and he stumbled over the drop, landing sloppily in a 3-point stance. The impact left his sore, bruised muscles straining, but he stood up and faced the opposite end of the makeshift arena.

As expected, the boy was just as young as him, wrapped in a near head-to-toe black cloak with a hood. He’d never faced The Rogue before, but he’d seen plenty of his victims laid up in the infirmary during his recovery time. They allowed him to jump into the pit instead of being pushed, though Archie could see the pain in his form as he landed, all the weight leaning on one leg. Had this been a real fight, he’d know to use that to his advantage.

Excited cheers burst from the crowd as they faced each other, but the sound droned to a dull hum as The Rogue drew his hood back, revealing the familiar face of Joaquin DeSantos. Scars and bruising crossed his face just like all the other boys Archie fought, but he wouldn’t forget the face of a Serpent.

The sound of a bell echoed through the empty pool, shaking Archie straight through the bone and out of his trance with the reverberation. Joaquin stepped onto his off-foot and feigned a jab at Archie’s chest, which he backpedaled away from with ease. It was more playful than serious, mirroring the smile on Joaquin’s lips.

“Hey, Andrews.”

“Follow me.” Archie whispered, side-stepping his opponent into a flanking position. Joaquin frowned at him, confused by his nervousness.

“What?”

Archie scanned the crowd again to make sure no one heard, but the patrons focused on the swing he launched toward his opponent, missing intentionally, “When you see the smoke, follow me.” He repeated, slower, more seriously to get his point across. With a heavy step, he launched forward onto the drain grate, causing the steel to clatter under his feet as it wobbled in its place. With the momentum, Archie slammed his chest into Joaquin’s shoulder, wrapping his arms around his waist and throwing his opponent down next to their escape route.

There was an echoing pop, a clatter of tin against tile, and a wayward shout as smoke began to creep along the bottom of the pool, filling the pit with obscuring whites and greys from all corners. Joaquin scrambled to his feet at the sight, looking to Archie for instruction as the smoke enveloped them like thick autumn fog.

As soon as his visibility of the audience completely vanished, Archie hopped off the grate and dug his fingers into the drainage holes, pulling up with all his weakened might. The steel was heavy, but Joaquin quickly rushed over a pulled on the edge that Archie lifted out of the hole. Struggling for a moment, they pulled it over the side of the hole, nearly taking Archie’s fingers with it. The steel grate banged loudly against the tile, but it didn’t alert the crowd as they rushed toward the exits above them, ushered by Veronica.

“Come on, this leads outside!” Archie called to Joaquin, beckoning him to jump down first. He wheezed, and a cough wracked his body as the smoke clogged his mouth and nose. Joaquin hesitated, though, so Archie impatiently grabbed his arm and threw him into the drain pipe below. He landed with a loud thud, and Archie took a deep, wheezing breath as left the smoke swirling above.

The pipe was wide enough for them to walk in single-file, but they had to duck and brace their arms against the walls to get out quickly. It felt like hours while they made their way over spalling concrete and lichen growing through cracks in the old pipe. When Archie’s shoulders and thighs began to shake with the effort of holding himself upright, the hot, damp air, thick with the fetor of moss and fungus, suddenly caught the breeze of the outside forest. Rustling of dried leaves and grasses echoed around the mouth of the pipe when they rounded the turn into the dark forest.

“Archie!” Betty called out as soon as she saw the flash of brilliant red hair emerge into the night. She and Jughead waited next to an old pickup on an old, dusty path, the Serpent logo emblazoned on the truck’s rusting black doors. No time for relieved greetings, they packed Archie and Joaquin into the cramped space and sped off along the back roads of the Southside.

By sunrise, news of the escape spread throughout the town, along with the alleged suicides of the warden and several guards involved in the fights. Governor Dooley issued temporary pardons by noon at the request of Mayor Hermione Lodge. Though not wholly removed from the system, Archie was finally free.

That was, until late that night, when most of Riverdale was asleep, each of the four awoke to tapping on their window. A mirror of each other, they all grabbed the closest weapon and slowly got out of bed. In unison, the tapping ceased. There, wedged under each of their window sills, sat identical parchment envelopes, the black gargoyle wax seal too thick to slip under all the way.

Upon opening the envelopes, each found a letter summoning them in two night’s time to the Southside junkyard, where the Gargoyle King awaited their arrival. Through their subterfuge and prison escape, he had noticed them, and it was finally time for initiation.

#riverdale #riverdale fanfiction #riverdale ff #varchie #bughead #heathers and gargoyles #h&g #mine #my writing #is this a grand scheme to combine 3 of my favourite things into one fic #maybe

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stahlop · 5 years ago

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Once Upon a Time 1x04 “The Price of Gold” Review

Review 1x01 1x02 1x03

Right off the bat I have to say that I’m not a fan of Jessy Schram who plays Cinderella. She’s much too passive of an actor. She basically has one emotion and one facial expression the entire time and that totally takes me out of this episode several times. Even when she’s supposed to be happy she just looks angsty. Hopefully, this doesn’t color too much of my review, considering it’s a Cinderella heavy episode.

Synopsis:

Emma tries to help a young pregnant girl while in the Enchanted Forest Cinderella makes a deal with Rumpelstiltskin.

Opening:

The fairy godmother flying in the Enchanted Forest.

New Characters:

Ella “Cinderella”/Ashley Boyd: Cinderella seems a very desperate character. I know she is in a desperate situation, being used as a maid and basically abused by her step-mother and step-sisters, but this version is so dark that I have trouble having empathy for her. When we meet her, she is watching her step-family go off to the ball and pouting, when her fairy godmother appears, and then explodes as Rumpelstiltskin kills her! WHAT! Well that’s a switch. Ashley, though, is just interested in what magic can do for her. She doesn’t care that this demon just killed her fairy godmother, she’s just interested in getting out of her current situation no matter what the cost. I do understand that, but she makes a deal with a murderer, doesn’t read the contract, and just assumes what Rumpelstiltskin will want in exchange for him helping her, so she also comes off as really stupid. Luckily, Prince Thomas seems to like the angst-ridden, pouty type and falls for Ella, as we next see them at their wedding, where Rumple appears and let’s her know he wants her first born. Ella’s response to this is not to tell her husband right away or try to prevent getting pregnant, but to try and run away when she is pregnant. Luckily, Thomas is not so stupid and proposes a new deal with the help of Snow and Charming to trap Rumpelstiltskin.

Ashley, is basically at rock bottom. She is 19, about to pop out a baby, works as a maid (a very poor maid as she just accidentally dyed all the sheets pink), and has an unsupportive boyfriend and step-family. She doesn’t believe she can change anything in her life, even though she seems to have Ruby in her corner. Not until Emma basically tells her to stop being a doormat and ‘punch back’ does she start doing something about her life, which apparently means becoming a criminal to break into Gold’s pawn shop. So now she’s pregnant in a town she can’t leave and she’s committed a crime. I see Ashley and Ella are pretty much both really stupid when looking at the long-term. Eventually, she tries to drive out of town and, of course, ends up going into labor. In the end, her ‘prince’ comes back for her and the baby (named Alexandra), and she gets her happy ending.

Prince Thomas/Sean: So, either way, he’s kind of a drip. He doesn’t seem to have much in the way of personality, so I guess he and Cinderella/Ashley are a perfect match. We don’t get to actually see the ball and he and Ella fall in love, so we don’t get to see what attracted Thomas to her, just that he is in love with her and is willing to pay the price for double crossing Rumpelstiltskin. As Sean, he is stuck under Rumpelstiltskin’s price from the Enchanted Forest, which is why he isn’t with Ashley and can’t be with her until Emma transfers the deal to herself. Because of this, he is basically a sullen teenager stuck under his wealthy father’s thumb.

Character Observations:

Rumpelstiltskin/Gold: This is the first time we get to see Rumpelstiltskin out of the jail cell. And wow! What an entrance. He starts off by killing Cinderella’s fairy godmother. WHAT! He becomes Cinderella’s fairy godfather granting her wish to go the ball, but for a price. He makes hints here that what he wants is not the gold or jewels Cinderella thinks he wants. He says what he wants is precious and small. It is never said what Rumpelstiltskin wants Cinderella’s child for. It could possibly be the writer’s don’t know at this point but were just going with the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale where he demanded the first born from the miller’s daughter. Now, here’s where it gets interesting. When Ella goes to make her second deal with him, it is very obvious that he knows what it about to happen. We know from the Pilot that Rumpelstiltskin can somewhat see into the future. He doesn’t seem to know everything, but it seems he gets bits and pieces, so I’m pretty sure he knew this was coming from his comments. He reminds Ella that magic comes with a price, he takes special interest in the enchanted quill, and he tells her only magic can imprison him (even though they are there to make a deal, no mention of imprisonment). He also seems to be much too happy to sign the contract. Considering his whole thing is to make deals with unsuspecting people, Rumpelstiltskin not reading the contract is suspicious.

Gold knows how to manipulate all the people around him. He appeals to Emma’s bail bondsperson side to look for Ashley after she attacks him and runs. He also seems to know that Emma is the one responsible for Ashley’s change and uses that to guilt Emma into looking for her. He also comments that he’s concerned about her because she’s pregnant, alone, and scared, all things Emma most likely was as well. He also makes sure that Emma does not know why he actually wants Ashley back, just saying that she stole something from him, not knowing that what he’s talking about is her baby. Once Ashley is in labor at the hospital, Gold ‘appeals’ to Emma’s past self, saying that he came to her to find Ashley because he knew Emma would understand, and that if he doesn’t get the baby to put up for private adoption, the baby would end up in the system. Emma dishes right back to him that no jury in the world would put a mother in jail for trying to keep their baby, and if it did go to trial, she’s sure there are things about Gold he wouldn’t want dug up. Gold counters this with asking Emma for a favor in the future so that Ashley can keep her baby. Knowing what we know about Rumpelstiltskin and his penchant for making deals that benefit only himself, I think Gold sent Emma on this journey specifically so he could have her own him a favor down the line.

Emma: She is trying to change in this episode. She is offered a deputy job from Graham, and eventually takes it after her adventures with Ashley. Regina makes her feel like she can’t be a good mother to Henry because she always seems to run from her problems. She talks about how Emma can’t put down roots (which we see when her stuff arrives at Mary Margaret’s and there are only a few boxes), but once she meets Ashley, she decides that if Ashley can stay and get her happy ending with Sean, then maybe that’s what she can do to; get her happy ending with Henry. A lot of the advice Emma gives to Ashley (change things yourself because there are no fairy godmothers in this world) is advice she wishes someone had given to her. She may put on a tough exterior, but she’s really a broken girl inside. She just doesn’t wear it out in the open like Ashley does. Taking the job at the sheriff’s station is two-fold, she puts down some roots, and she sticks it to Regina.

Sheriff Graham: We don’t see much of him in this episode but what we do see is super important. He offers Emma a job as his deputy and when she does accept says that he’ll deal with Regina. Then we find out he is in a sexual relationship with Regina!!! When Emma said Graham was in Regina’s pocket (when he arrested her for stealing Henry’s files), she sure didn’t think he was in that deep.

Regina: She was basically a catalyst for Emma to put down roots in this episode and take the job at the sheriff’s station. We didn’t see much of her except to verbally beat down Emma at the beginning, and to see her leaving after her rendezvous with Graham.

Henry: Again, he is our narrator, guiding us through. He doesn’t seem to know who Gold is, but I would think Rumpelstiltskin would be in the book, Gold’s penchant for making deals should clue him in. He’s already played roles in both Snow/Charming and Cinderella’s stories. We see some more of Henry’s manipulation when he convinces Emma to let him tag along on her search for Ashley. He also gives Emma a reminder that no one can try to leave Storybrooke without consequences except for her. He says it’s because she’s the savior, but he can also leave (even though he says it’s because he had to come back), so I think it’s more because they weren’t part of the curse.

Questions:

What did Rumpelstiltskin want with the fairy wand? Cinderella said it was pure magic, but he said it was pure evil.

What was in Tallahassee that Emma stayed there for two years?

How old was Emma when she had Henry? He was 10 when he found her on her 28th birthday, which means she had to have been 17 when he was born, but she tells Ashley she was 18 when she had him.

Oh god! Was Ashley technically pregnant for 28 years before the curse broke?

Did Regina really leave Henry alone all day to go have sex with Graham?

How soon after Snow and Charming’s wedding did Cinderella and Thomas get married? We see Snow and Charming at the reception. Snow is not pregnant yet (or not showing yet). Everyone also seems pretty happy considering the threat of a curse should be hanging over their heads. It doesn’t feel like this happened after Snow and Charming’s wedding, but it had to have because they are together.

How does no one see Rumpelstiltskin at the wedding? Do they not know what he looks like? Are there many men out there with gold skin? This seems rather odd.

Why does everyone want to go to Boston (which Emma states is 4 hours away) when Portland is closer?

Since Regina is not cursed and Graham is, would sex together be considered rape?

Observations:

The Fairy Godmother is dressed much better than the Blue Fairy. Much less boobage and no weird jellyfish skirt.

Regina’s speech to Emma about people not changing and just fooling themselves into believing they can hits a little too close to home. Me thinks the lady doth protests too much.

Things we see in Gold’s pawn shop: the glass unicorn mobile from Emma’s nursery, some really scary marionette puppets.

Ella doesn’t see herself as an inspiration like Snow says she is. She says all she did was get married.

Ruby has a red, crystal wolf hanging from her rear-view mirror.

Henry states that Emma can leave Storybrooke without consequences, but when she tried to leave in the Pilot, the wolf stopped her.

Rumpelstiltskin’s cell was made by dwarves in the mines.

Ashley picks out the same name for their daughter that Thomas wanted to name her in the Enchanted Forest.

Henry loses a shoe on the stairs getting back to his room, just like in the Cinderella story.

Once Upon a Time Firsts:

All magic comes with a price

Gold gets a favor for the future from Emma.

Names:

Ashley refers to ashes which is another word for cinders, which is where Cinderella got her name.

Boyd - Ashley’s last name means fair or yellow, just like her hair.

Thomas means twin, and while he doesn’t have a twin, he suggests that they make Rumpelstiltskin think they’re having twins to renegotiate the deal.

Sean is the Irish version of John which means to be gracious. Sean becomes much more gracious to have Ashley and Alexandra in his life once the deal is off and he can return to them.

If you couldn’t tell this is not one of my favorite episodes. I think it gives a lot of insight into Rumpelstiltskin/Gold, but the Cinderella/Ashley storyline was not that great.

As usual feedback is welcome. Please let me know your thoughts about anything and please reblog!!!

@searchingwardrobes @thisonesatellite @justbecauseyoubelievesomething

@laschatzi @profdanglaisstuff @mariakov81

#once upon a time #once upon a time rewatch #once upon a time 1x04 #once upon a time the price of gold

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 years ago

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Remembering Velma Demerson: Grand soul, feminist, human rights advocate and writer

[Velma Demerson was jailed in 1939 and by the Ontario government for the "crime" of having a Chinese boyfriend; sixty years later, she began an ultimately successful legal challenge seeking reparations; I'm pleased to present this remembrance for Demerson by Harry Kopyto, the campaigning human rights lawyer, who served as one of her advisors -Cory]

On Monday May 13, 2019, Athena Mary Lakes, better known as Velma Demerson, died from old age in a Vancouver hospital at the age of 98. She is best known for her successful legal battle culminating in 2002 against the Ontario Government for incarcerating her in Toronto in 1939 for almost a year. The reason for her incarceration? She was found morally “incorrigible” under the Female Refuges Act for living with a Chinese man, Harry Yip, whom she married after her release. Their son, who was born while she was in jail, was taken away from her until after her release.

Velma returned to Toronto in the late 1990s after living half a century on the west coast. While there, she married and raised two children. Her implacable sense of injustice led an unstoppable Velma Demerson to storm back to Toronto to quench her thirst for justice. After being rejected by a slew of Toronto lawyers, eventually she found Harry Kopyto who initiated a legal claim arising out of her imprisonment and turned a room in his office into a defence committee centre. Gradually, her case drew widespread public attention and support including from the leaders of all Ontario’s political parties at that time, the women’s movement, academics, the organized labour movement, the Chinese community and many individual human rights activists such as David Suzuki.

Some of the lawyers that she first approached ridiculed the prospect of initiating a lawsuit 60 years after a limitation period expired. However, Velma drew on support from a pugnacious legal team and a defence committee that issued newsletters, raised funds for legal expenses, publicized her case widely in the media and organized rallies, panel discussions and similar events. Many young people who heard her story could not believe it was true.

Despite the broad support and even outrage of many members of the public, the Ontario government resisted compensating Velma on the basis of the extraordinary lengthy delay of her legal claim. However, her lawyers soon concluded that the Female Refuges Act, under which Velma was jailed was in fact disguised criminal law with the power to jail children as young as 16 for up to two years. Accordingly, the Act was outside the legal jurisdiction of Ontario to enact. Her legal team realized that if they sought a declaration from the Court to that effect, their claim would not be subject to any limitation period at all! As a result of using that strategy, even though it might not offer her compensation, her supporters felt the Government could no longer oppose her claim once a judge declared the Act unlawful. The Ontario Government caved in when they realized their vulnerability.

There was massive support for her when the matter was raised in the Ontario Legislature. The Conservative government quickly settled her case with the Attorney-General and premier personally making an official apology.

The law that allowed Velma to be jailed, along with 15,000 other young women, was crafted at the beginning of the last century by racist promoters of eugenics. was seen as indefensible by any current standards. Even though the Female Refuges Act was abolished in 1964 because of desuetude (lack of use), almost none of the other victims incarcerated under the Act—many impoverished, emotionally drained and defeated by their abusive treatment—fought back despite Velma’s efforts to encourage those still alive.

Ms. Demerson was 18 years old at the time of her imprisonment (1938) in the Belmont House and the Mercer Reformatory for Women when the development of massive washing machines to clean the local hospital laundry washed until then by the Belmont House’s inmates made their free labour unnecessary, so they were packed into a fleet of taxis in the heart of darkness after midnight and ferried downtown to the Mercer Reformatory. There she was subjected to involuntary medical tests and injections and to rules of silence. The Mercer, which was ruled by a Superintendent committed to eugenics, was closed after a Grand Jury expressed shock at its dangerous and dungeon-like and inhumane conditions in the 1960s. In 2002, Velma received the J.S. Woodsworth Award from the Ontario NDP for her promotion of human rights and equity. Velma toured schools relating her ordeal to shocked students, spoke passionately at an Ontario Legislative Committee hearing on prevention of child prostitution, was a featured speaker at various conferences and advanced the rights of a vast parade of vulnerable people with her perspective of never giving up.

Velma was highly admired by everyone who met her. She laughed easily, was almost always positive, although sometimes irascible and was fiercely independent up to the time of her death. She wrote three books during her lifetime, two of which, Nazis in Canada published in 2017 and Incorrigible, published in 2004, were based on her experiences.

As one of her supporters and legal advisors, I recall, a few months after her legal victory, financial settlement and apology, Velma perched on the very top of a red firetruck rolling along in the Labour Day Parade in Toronto in 2003 greeting her admirers with a triumphant smile.

Velma’s struggle was motivated by her desire to set an example to others as well as to right an historic wrong against herself and victims of bigotry. She showed that through relentless struggle and solidarity, the most unlikely goals can be achieved. Her life has touched the souls of many.

https://boingboing.net/2019/05/29/justice-delayed-not-denied.html

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fcrgedstrcngth · 6 years ago

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Anna Bates

Face-claim: Joanne Froggatt

Status: semi-active

Biography:

Anna May Bates (née Smith), born in 1886, was head housemaid at Downton Abbey and is currently lady's maid to Lady Mary Crawley. She is also the wife of John Bates. She gave birth to their son on New Year's Eve, 1925.

As a servant she is mostly seen in her black lady's maid attire and on her days off she wears brighter colours and floral patterns.

Anna is the epitome of a good servant. She is loyal to a fault and a kind friend to the Crawley family, especially Lady Mary. They deeply respect and hold a strong regard for her in return. Despite all the devastation and bad fortune Anna and her beloved Mr. Bates have suffered, she continues to be a thoughtful, compassionate, positive and resilient woman.

Anna grew up with her mother and sister. Her father died when she was young, and her mother remarried in order to ensure the family's security. Anna's stepfather sexually abused her, but her mother refused to believe it as the family would not survive without him. So one night, Anna defended herself with a knife and cut him. Her mother had the matter kept quiet, after which Anna got a job further away from home. Anna later became the head house maid at Downton.

1912-14

Lady Mary wakes up Anna to tell her that Kemal Pamuk had died in her bed. Not wanting to betray Lady Mary, they agree to enlist the help of Mary's mother Cora to help move the body of Mr. Pamuk back to his own room, where he is found the next day by footman Thomas Barrow.

Anna has a special relationship with John Bates. When he first arrives, Anna was kind to Bates while others doubted his ability to be a valet with an injured leg. However, their friendship gradually blossoms into romance, and she later admits that she loves him. Mr. Bates returned her feelings, though he felt uneasy about entering a relationship with her, as he held his own secrets. He admits he is married but does not love his wife. When Bates almost loses his position after admitting he had been jailed for theft, he tells Anna to "go to sleep and dream of a better man," but she refused. While Anna is in London for Mrs. Patmore's eye surgery, she visits Mr. Bates' mother. She learns the truth about his prison sentence - that it was actually his wife, Vera, who had stolen the items - and thus saves his position by telling Lord Grantham.

1916-1919

At the beginning of the second series, Mr. Bates arrives back at Downton (having been in London after his mother died) and he doesn't waste time before informing her that there is a possibility of a divorce ahead. He asks Anna to marry him. She immediately accepts, and they begin to discuss their future. But his wife, Vera, turns up suddenly at Downton Abbey. She forces Mr. Bates to resign by threatening to ruin the Crawley family by exposing the truth about Kemal Pamuk, including Anna's role in covering up his death. Bates leaves Anna without telling her the true reason, breaking not only her heart but her dreams. Eventually she learns through Lady Mary (who found out through Sir Richard Carlisle) that Mr. Bates has been working in a pub nearby. She visits him and he tells her that that he can now prove that Vera Bates has not been faithful to him. He says he will divorce Vera and come back to Downton very soon, offering Vera more money than the papers will give her through the inheritance he received after his mother's death.

When he returns to Downton as Lord Grantham's valet again by request, she was delighted. However, Vera is infuriated that he has returned to Anna and tells them that she plans to sell the story anyway. After Vera's plan to sell the story to Sir Richard Carlisle backfires on her, she tries to get the divorce overturned by telling the judge that Mr. Bates offered to pay her off to divorce him. Mr. Bates goes to London to deal with the matter and try to talk some sense into Vera. Shortly after, Vera is found dead and Mr. Bates is a suspect because of his motives. Anna insists on marrying immediately in case Mr. Bates is arrested, so she has rights as his wife. They get married in secret, but they planned to tell everyone after Lavinia Swire's funeral, as only Mary Crawley and housemaid Jane Moorsum knew. After attending Miss Swire's funeral, Anna, as well as Bates, Mrs. Hughes and Carson discover that two officers are waiting for Mr. Bates, and he is arrested for the murder of Vera Bates. Anna and John both declare their feelings for each other before he is taken away by the officers.

Anna became aware of and kept quiet before it was announced to the whole Crawley family that Lady Sybil and the Crawley's family chauffeur, Tom Branson, are in a romantic relationship. Anna and Lady Mary discover that they're on their away to Gretna Green to get married. She, Lady Mary, and Lady Edith went after the couple. Anna spotted the Crawley's car which was parked on the road where Lady Sybil and Tom Branson were staying.

One night, Anna, and Ladies Mary and Edith, learned from Lady Sybil that Tom has a new job and she and Tom are announcing their engagement to the Crawley family. Anna told her it was a very big thing to give up her whole world. After Sybil and Tom's announcement the next day, Anna in the Servants Hall at Downton, saw Mr. Branson arriving and politely spoke to him. Daisy briefly over hears Anna and Tom talking.

Anna spoke to Lady Mary about her secret plans to get married to John Bates. Lady Mary told her she will cover for her and she instructed housemaid Jane Moorsum to decorate one of bedrooms for a wedding gift; only she and Jane knew they were married during that time.

Anna was truly supported by the Crawley family, fellow co-workers and Lady Mary when her husband was arrested and on trial for murder; Lady Mary supported and stayed with Anna throughout Bates' trial and its outcome.

Anna visits her husband in prison and attends his trial, alongside Lady Mary Crawley, Robert Crawley, Isobel Crawley and Matthew Crawley and lawyer George Murray. The prosecution calls Mrs. Hughes, Miss O'Brien, and cross examines Lord Grantham as witnesses, to bring up conversations they had with Mr. Bates, or discussions they overheard. The jury finds him guilty and sentences him to be hanged, though later his sentence is commuted to life imprisonment. Anna, the lawyers, Robert and the rest of the Crawley family are still planning to appeal the verdict and to get Bates out of prison.

1920

Anna receives constant letters from her husband in prison, which are described as the "highlight of [her] week." She is also one of the only servants to treat Tom Branson respectfully on his return, as he is now upstairs due to his marriage to Lady Sybil. Like all the staff, when Sybil dies, she is utterly heartbroken, and even shows some kindness towards Thomas as he also grieves for Sybil. Towards the end of the series, she is promoted to Lady Mary's lady's maid. Mary remarks that she still calls her Anna, since she "can't very well call her Bates." After, Edith remarks she misses Anna and mentions a new maid, further indicating how much the sisters respect her. Anna's determination to free her husband finally pays off. After much searching, she meets Vera's friend Audrey and finds evidence that clears the charges against her husband. She is there when he is released, and they greet one another lovingly. They move into a small cottage together and start painting it. It is done by the time O'Brien pays them a visit. She insists Thomas must go and cannot understand why Bates helps him. In the end, Anna asks Bates what it was that helped convince O'Brien to stop trying to ruin Thomas and is told of "her ladyship's soap."

When she goes to Scotland she comforts Lady Rose MacClare and takes a picnic with her husband. She calls herself racy when her husband says so, then asks her what she is up to. She insists nothing. They both laugh happily. It is revealed Rose is teaching her Scottish dancing as a surprise for her husband. Mary and Bates are amazed at Anna's dancing, and agree that she is marvelous.

1922

Following Matthew Crawley's death, she tries to help Mary come out of mourning by offering her clothing that is not black and remarking that Mary's son George has his mother (after Mary called him a "poor little orphan"). When Edna Braithwaite returns to Downton as a lady's maid, Anna is framed by her and Thomas for ruining a piece of clothing belonging to Cora. Cora, surprised that Anna would make such a mistake, still tells Robert, who confronts her husband, stating Anna has been unkind. John then becomes suspicious of Edna.

Rose, now living at Downton, invites Anna out to a dance hall with her in York, where they meet Sam Thawley. Unfortunately, things go terribly wrong and Anna urges Rose away. She later helps Rose disguise herself in order to say a proper goodbye to Sam when he comes around to see if she is alright. | When a number of guests come to stay at Downton, Green, the valet of Lord Gillingham takes a shine to Anna. He thanks her after she helps him with some bags he dropped and tells her about an exciting card game she did not know. However, Mr. Bates becomes suspicious of him and this causes some tension between Mr. Bates and Anna because she does not see what the problem is, thinking he was only being friendly. As Dame Nellie Melba sang later that night, Anna left the party and returned to the servants’ quarters to take something for her headache. Mr. Green follows her and offers her something stronger, which she refuses. He then suddenly tells her he thinks she wants more excitement in her life and tells her he refuses to believe that she could be happy with a cripple like Mr. Bates. She tells Mr. Green that she is very happy and that she would like him to move out the way so she could return to the party. He refuses to move and when Anna tried to get past him, he hits her multiple times and drags her into one of the other rooms, where he rapes her. Mr. Green then returns to the party, leaving Anna downstairs pretending as though nothing had happened.

Mrs. Hughes later finds Anna crying in her room while hiding behind the shelf. Mrs. Hughes quickly realizes what has happened because of Anna's torn dress and cuts and bruises. Anna begs her not to tell anyone what had happened, saying that because she trusts her, she would like her help to tidy up before someone else sees her. Mrs. Hughes tells Anna that perhaps they should tell Mr. Bates what had happened, but Anna refuses because she thinks him to be the last person who should ever find out. She is worried that he would dangerously harm Mr. Green in anger, and as an ex-felon, be sent back to prison. When Anna had tidied up, Mr. Bates catches her sneaking out. He sees Anna is distressed and wonders why she was hurt. Anna lies, telling him she has taken a pill and fainted, hitting her head in the process. Mr. Green then appears and bids goodnight to them both, with Anna reluctantly replying to him. She then tells Mr. Bates she would prefer to walk home alone, ignoring him as he tries to stop her.

As she continues pushing him away, he is convinced he has done something horribly wrong to make her avoid him, to the point of moving away from their cottage back to the servant's quarters in Downton Abbey. She feels she is now "soiled" and for that reason she feels she cannot let her husband touch her. When Mrs. Hughes asks Anna what she will do if she is with child, to her horror Anna says she will kill herself.

However, her husband, fearing Anna no longer loves him, overhears her speaking to Mrs. Hughes and learns the truth after threatening to leave (Mrs. Hughes felt it would be the end of Anna if John left). Anna then is confronted by John, who reaffirms that he loves her more than ever now, and that she is not soiled in his eyes, but holier. She embraces him in tears.

Anna soon moves back into the cottage, and tries to move on, insisting she wants to make new memories and does not consider herself a victim. But John is not determined to move on, and as she feared, he thinks of "murder" when he remembers what happened to her. Slowly, their relationship begins to mend. They go out again after a long time of not doing so, and discuss Mary's suitors, including Charles Blake (whom Mary originally had a distaste for but began to grow fonder of).

Mary learns what happened to Anna (but not who was responsible) when Mrs Hughes insisted John needed to be with Anna when Lord Grantham was going to America and see his in-laws (he took Thomas Barrow instead). Later Green returns with Lord Gillingham; he tells Mrs Hughes he and Anna were both drunk and she was to blame as much as himself. Mrs Hughes knows and sternly tells Green that Anna was not to blame - and re-blames Green alone for the rape. Green later reveals, at the servant's table downstairs, and with Bates present, that he (Green) went downstairs to seek some quiet to excape Nellie Melba's singing opera. When Bates hears Green's casual remarks he then immediately makes the timing-connection between Anna's search downstairs for headache medication, Green's leaving the opera singing, and the rape taking place - all happening in the same few moments.

Eventually, Anna tells Mary who was responsible, but she swears her to secrecy because she fears her husband will find out it was Green, and then do something terrible. She mentions being frightened every time her husband and Green are in the same room. Despite Anna's protests, Mary eventually tells her she is going to ask Lord Gillingham to dismiss his valet without telling why. Anna is nervous about this, but when Mary later relays news from Lord Gillingham at the bazaar that Green has died, Anna is relieved that a lot of people saw him fall into the road and get run over, as it appears her husband was not involved. Anna later asks her husband if he would risk the life they have put together. He assures her he would not.

Anna and her husband join the Crawley family and other servants at Grantham House for the London season and for Rose's debut. While in London, Anna gives Mrs Hughes one of her husband's old coats, in which she finds a ticket revealing that he went to London from York. Anna does not suspect John might have in fact murdered Green. Mrs Hughes tells Anna there was nothing of importance in John's old coat when she asks. Mrs Hughes tells Lady Mary about the ticket, and insists they say nothing for both John's and Anna's sake. Mary is at first uneasy about this. But after John retrieves a love letter from the Prince of Wales to Freda Dudley Ward stolen by Terence Sampson, Mary burns the ticket. She and Anna discuss the whole situation. When Mary remarks that she doubts it will be the last time the Prince is in such a situation, Anna reminds Mary that the next one won't be the fault of the Crawley family (because Rose's joking of the letter led to Sampson suspecting its existence). Mary then asks Anna to tell John the family is grateful to him. John and Anna later go to the seaside with the other servants.

1924

Anna reluctantly helps Mary prepare for her tryst with Lord Gillingham by packing her suitcases and purchasing birth control for her. Furthermore, Sergeant Willis and Inspector Vyner question her and her husband on the events surrounding Alex Green's suspicious death as there was a witness. Then she and Mrs Hughes pondered over Mr Bates's trip to London, York, on the day of Mr Green's death, both were suspicious and Anna questions her husband about it and what he knew of Mr Green's death and her rape. Mr Bates reveals he has known ever since Mr Green visited the abbey and that he spent the day in York and that he wanted to murder Mr Green for what he did to his wife but chose not since he would be hanged. Then she was ordered by Inspector Vyner to come to Scotland Yard, her husband insisted upon coming with her where they learn that Mr Green raped other women, who were afraid to come forward and Anna was placed alongside those women for a trial inspection. Then she was let go, however after helping Lady Mary into her night attire, Anna was called down stairs with Mrs Hughes who reveals that Mr Vyner is here to arrest her as the witness has identified her as being near Mr Green just before he fell. Despite protestations made by both Lady Mary, Bates, and Lord Grantham, Anna is arrested.

Lady Mary and Mr Bates visit Anna separately along with the Crawley family's lawyer Mr Murray to help get her out. Then Mr Bates, in an attempt to get his wife bailed out, confesses to the murder of Mr Green and decamps to Ireland leaving letters for both Mr Carson and Lord Grantham. Anna is partially released and Molseley and Baxter wander around York and find enough evidence to clear Mr Bates's name and he and Anna are happily united.

1925

Anna is going upstairs and crying, and Mrs Patmore asks if Anna is okay. Anna replies that she's fine, just got something in her eye. Later, Thomas Barrow comes back from playing with George and Marigold and Joseph Molesley remarks how lucky Marigold is, a farmer's daughter who now gets to grow up in luxury, and Anna snaps, "I don't believe she has any greater guarantee of happiness." Everyone looks at her for a minute and then the bell rings and she quickly heads off to Mary's room. Mary Crawley notes that Anna seems a little unhappy, but thinks it's just due to her whole jail situation not being quite figured out. Later, Anna is brushing shoes with Bates, when he questions her about the strange comment that morning. She bursts into tears and finally reveals that she thought she was pregnant, but has had a miscarriage, and it has happened twice before.

Later Sergeant Willis visits Anna and Bates and tells them that someone has confessed to killing Mr. Green, so it might get them off the hook, but nothing is certain yet. Bates is annoyed that he'd come with that pointless news. Bates later has a conversation with Anna where she once again states that he won't be happy without children. Later, Sergeant Willis comes again, and says that it's been settled, the confession is real! Everyone comes downstairs and celebrates. Sergeant Willis says that the woman apologized for waiting so long to confess, and though Bates seems upset, Anna interrupts him and says to tell her that she forgives her. Bates mentions that he's going to go talk to some estate agents and start planning again. "But not for a family," Anna says.

Mary quizzes Anna on why she still seems so downcast after the [Alex Green|Green]] saga is over. Anna finally tells her how she wants children, and she can't seem to have them, and Mary mentions how much stress they've been under, but Anna says she can get pregnant, she just "can't keep it". Mary seems rather shocked at the news but Anna says it's fine, she's used to the idea, some women just can't have children. Obviously she's not okay with that though, because Bates finds Anna crying and she says taking to Mary has brought it all back up for her. He mentions adoption but she says that wouldn't work for him; he's "tribal" and he would want an actual biological child. He asks what she wants and she says that he gives it away by not denying it. She says she feels terrible that she can't give him what he wants, and he says, "To me, we are one person and that person can't have children."

Then Anna goes up to Mary. Mary says that she wants to take Anna to her gynecologist, Dr. Ryder, in London to see if he can fix Anna's inability to remain pregnant. Anna insists that it won't work, but after Mary explains that she's earned it and really wants to help, Anna agrees. She says that she won't tell Bates yet because it would only get his hopes up.

They go to the doctor, and he says that basically she has a weak neck of the womb and the baby gets too heavy at about three or four months, so she loses it. So she needs a "cervical cerclage", basically a large stitch at the neck of the womb, when she's around twelve weeks pregnant. Bates notices Anna is a lot happier after coming back from London and gets a little suspicious.

Anna later says she thinks she's pregnant again, and Lady Mary gets all excited and says she'll invent an appointment at the end of three months "and we'll whiz up to London!" Anna says she doesn't want to be excited just yet. Understandable, given Anna's bad luck.

Mrs. Hughes' wedding dress needs some sprucing up. Anna helps Mrs Hughes try one of Cora's old coats, with permission from Lady Mary. When Cora unexpectedly comes into the room, she is furious with Anna and Mrs Hughes, and also with Mrs Patmore who was also present. They leave Cora's room embarrassed. When Lady Mary finds out about this from Anna, she forces Cora to apologize to Mrs Hughes.

Mary asks Anna how she's feeling and she says fine, but she's "starting to thicken up" and Bates will think she "ate all the pies". Bates comes in to get some luggage and Mary insists the suitcases are too heavy for Anna, and Bates gets suspicious again. Later, Anna is talking to Andy when she suddenly looks like she's in pain. She passes it off as nothing, but later, when she's in Mary's room, in the middle of Mary saying how much better Sybil was than her, Anna gets the pain again and panics a little, sure that she's losing the baby. Mary says that she'll call the doctor, Dr. Ryder, and they'll go to London right that second. Anna points out that it's night so they just missed the last train, but Mary says they'll drive to York and see if there's a late one there. She asks what she'll tell Bates because she doesn't want him to worry or be too hopeful, so Mary tells her to tell him it's her (Mary) who's ill.

As Mary walks out of her room, she bumps into Tom Branson, who just came back from America, who asks where she's going with the suitcase, and she tells him not to tell anyone, but Anna might be having a miscarriage and they need to get to London ASAP. Tom offers to drive them to York. Bates is incredibly suspicious and even asks if Anna's hiding something, but she says he's being paranoid. They go to London and the doctor is ready and she gets all fixed up. Later, when Bates and Anna celebrate Mrs. Hughes and Mr. Carson's coming back from their honeymoon, Bates confronts Anna, saying that he thinks he knows what's going on. Anna confirms that she was in danger of losing another baby, but that he was wrong in his idea that she had lost it. Bates is very happy with the news.

Mary overhears some conversation about Edith and Marigold, and questions Anna as to whether she's heard any talk downstairs. Anna says they think she's lucky, but nothing else.

Anna mentions to Bates that she's feeling some more slight pains, and Bates pressures her to tell Mary, because he thinks she should see Dr. Ryder again. Anna says she should just talk to Dr. Clarkson, but Bates insists that he has savings and only wants her to see Dr. Ryder, and that he will absolutely pay instead of letting Lady Mary pay. Mary agrees to go to London. She assures Bates that he can pay, but tells Tom Branson that she won't send him the bill. Tom says that that's unkind—Bates is a proud man and she should let him pay if he feels like he wants to. The doctor says that it's normal pain, "something to do with the ligament", "just the body adjusting". At Rosamund's house, Mary mentions how well the children get along, and Anna almost slips up and says that they're all cousins. Mary gets suspicious as Anna has to pause in the middle of her sentence and say something more.

Mary asks what Anna thinks of Mr. Henry Talbot, and Anna says she's unsure that he's a good fit for Mary, seeing as he's a race car driver and isn't really Mary's class. Mary says she sees her point, which troubles her, but they agree to go watch one of Henry's races. Anna says that Bates is looking forward to it. At the race, Henry's friend crashes his car, and as it goes up in flames, Mary runs to make sure it isn't Henry. Anna takes after her, despite Bates yelling at her to be careful because of her "condition". He sends Miss Baxter to follow her and make sure she's okay. This leads Baxter to guess that Anna is pregnant, and she later congratulates her.

Mrs. Patmore gets told that her inn may have become "a house of ill repute" and Anna and the rest of the family get a good laugh out of her reaction. Anna starts to doubt her previous feelings that Henry was not right for Mary, after Mary has broken up with him. After Thomas attempts suicide, Anna is one of the group that saves his life. She runs to get Dr. Clarkson. Anna and Baxter are assigned to attend to him after the initial danger, and to tell everyone else that he is in bed with influenza. Mary accidentally snaps at Anna when she asks whether Mary is sure that Henry is not right for her, but quickly apologizes.

Anna (by now very pregnant), gets a hairdryer for Lady Mary and is very excited about it. Daisy decides to cut her hair, and messes it up completely. Anna, who has been working all day, still volunteers to help Daisy, and gives her a cute haircut. At Edith's wedding to Mr. Bertie Pelham, Anna looks rather uncomfortable, and complains that she's hot. When they get back, everyone says that Anna should sit down, but she goes upstairs to put the hairdryer away. Mary is in the room and as she gives Anna a hat to adjust, Anna's water suddenly breaks. Mary quickly says that she'll lend her one of her dressing gowns, and that Anna can use Mary's bed. Mr. Carson is horrified that Anna would be giving birth now, in Lady Mary's bedroom, although Mrs. Hughes points out that she hardly has a choice, as she carries towels upstairs. Henry Talbot races downstairs, calling for Bates. Bates seems confused, but Henry quickly and excitedly explains the situation, and Bates rushes upstairs. Later, Henry brings up champagne for everyone in the room, and we see Anna cradling her newborn baby, and Bates happily proclaiming that she has a son. They ring in the new year together, and live happily… at least for the moment.

Verses:

From This Moment On: follows canon Downton Abbey

Road Less Traveled: any AU threads

Starter Call

#muses #(anna bates) i'm not a lady

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virginiaprelawland · 4 years ago

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Gideon V. Wainwright: The Legacy Of A Handwritten Petition

By Bailey Mullen, Mary Baldwin University Class of 2022

March 9, 2021

The fifty-eighth birthday of Gideon versus Wainwright is coming up quickly. On March 18, 1963 the Supreme Court met up to decide a major decision for the American justice system. This case still a crucial part inside of our court rooms today. It all began with handwritten letter that sparked a reform that would go on to impact millions over the decades across the nation.

Clarence Gideon was charged in Florida with breaking and entering with the intent to commit a misdemeanor, which is a felony in this state [1]. During his trial, he requested counsel because he could not afford to hire representation on his own. This was denied by the judge who claimed that counsel is only required to be appointed in capital cases, or those that are punishable by death penalty. Gideon went on to represent himself in the trial, from opening statements to cross-examining witnesses. He was found by the jury to be guilty of the charges and would end up being sentenced to five years in prison [2]. He filed a writ of habeas corpus on the basis that he was denied his Sixth Amendment right to legal counsel. Gideon would go on to handwrite a petition to the Supreme Court to hear his case out. They would decide that he was correct, and his rights were violated, allowing for him to be retried. This was the foundation that was placed for one of the biggest cases for defendants’ rights in American history.

When Gideon’s case was retried with counsel this time, he was acquitted of the charges. Gideon v. Wainwright helped to extend the right to counsel further than just capital cases. It would go on to cover juvenile charges as well as misdemeanors at any level of jurisdiction as long as imprisonment is on the line [3]. This helped to strengthen the Sixth Amendment which guarantees courtroom rights such as a fair and speedy trial, an impartial jury, and of course, the right to an attorney [4]. Now it is common knowledge of these rights because Clarence Gideon went before the Supreme Court questioning the judge back in Florida on whether or not counsel was allowed for a case that did not involve capital punishment.

So how does one go about getting their attorney? First and foremost, there are qualifications in place. It is not the right to counsel for everyone, but rather those that are deemed to not be able to afford it. The person typically needs to make under 125% of the federal poverty wage for their household size [5]. There are some exceptions depending on the program their community has. These exceptions can include elderly people, military personnel, or domestic violence cases [6]. There still will be income limitations, but they will be slightly raised to allow for more inside of these groups to be covered. If these qualifications are met, a person can request an attorney during their first appearance in court [7]. The judge will then appoint counsel to the defendant.

This program is not without drawbacks. Public defenders nationwide are being overworked. New Orleans has about sixty public defenders splitting up twenty thousand cases annually [8]. This means having to sacrifice quality of defense in order to get through all of their cases. This puts stress on the lawyers as well as the clients that they are serving. On top of the stress of caseloads, there is also the matter of these programs being underfunded. In the state of Massachusetts, the average public defender’s salary is $47,500 but the living wage average for the state is $58,178 [9,10]. With the workload required, cost of living, and possible student loan payments, this money will go fast.

Gideon versus Wainwright has greatly fleshed out the right to counsel for many Americans over the past six decades. There is still a lot of room to grow though as the lack of funding and heavy overworking has resulted in strikes and the need for crowdfunding salaries [11]. To help this program continue to provide a Constitutional right to the citizens, we need to be sure to look into our local programs and see how those who are in office are working on improving this system.

______________________________________________________________

[1] “Facts and Case Summary – Gideon v. Wainwright.” US Courts. Retrieved on 1 March 2021, from https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-activities/facts-and-case-summary-gideon-v-wainwright.

[2] “Facts and Case Summary – Gideon v. Wainwright.”

[3] (2018 October 24). “The Legacy of Gideon v. Wainwright.” U.S. Department of Justice. Retrieved on 1 March 2021, from https://www.justice.gov/archives/atj/legacy-gideon-v-wainwright.

[4] United States Constitution, Sixth Amendment.

[5] “Frequently Asked Questions.” American Bar Association. Retrieved on 2 March 2021, from https://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal_services/flh-home/flh-faq/.

[6] “Frequently Asked Questions.”

[7] “Frequently Asked Questions.”

[8] Wiltz, T. (2017 November 21). “Public Defenders Fight Back Against Budget Cuts, Growing Caseloads.” Pew Trusts. Retrieved on 2 March 2021, from https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2017/11/21/public-defenders-fight-back-against-budget-cuts-growing-caseloads.

[9] Wiltz, T.

[10] Martin, E. (2018 February 5). “Here’s how much you have to earn to live comfortably in every US state.” CNBC. Retrieved on 5 March 2021, from https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/05/what-a-living-wage-would-be-in-every-us-state.html.

[11] Witz, T.

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austinonymous · 7 years ago

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Film Critique- Is Rey A Mary Sue? (Based on The Force Awakens)

A question that many have asked and have answered to various degrees of ‘yes’ and ‘no’- here’s my take on it. Please contain your desire to burn me until I finish giving my reasoning. Maybe?

Firstly, What is the definition of a Mary Sue?

While there’s no concrete definition, a fair way to define a Mary Sue is: “A Mary Sue is an idealized and seemingly perfect fictional character. Often, this character is recognized as an author insert or wish fulfillment. They can usually perform better at tasks than should be possible given the amount of training or experience.”

Yes that was pulled from Wikipedia but I think its a fair way to describe the concept.

So really the question we are asking is whether or not Rey is better at being Rey than she should be based on her background and how the universe of Star Wars works.

Well, to start off, we need to know her training based on what the movie tells us and base what we can reasonably expect from her off that. So, what do we know about Rey before the events of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi?

1) She’s lived on more or less on her own for most of her life.

2) She’s a scavenger and has spent a long time picking through the wreckage of Jakku

3) She has some mechanic skill and can drive a repulsorlift vehicle

4) She has not been off planet and presumably never flown a starcraft before

5) She has experience using a staff as a weapon

6) She has no experience with the Force outside legends about the Original Trilogy

So, what does she do over the course of the Force Awakens?

Well, the first event that causes red flags is the fact that she single handedly pilots the Millennium Falcon after jumping into it for the first time ever- not only does she pilot it, she then engages in a dogfight with TIE fighters, piloted by trained pilots.

This is more than slightly problematic. The Millennium Falcon is an odd ship, jury rigged and modified in many ways. Indeed, the base ship shouldn’t be able to engage in dog fights at all given its sheer size in comparison to other fighters like the X-Wing or the TIE Fighter. Its just under three times the length of a X-Wing ; for comparision, America’s famous b-17 Bomber was only about twice the length of America’s most iconic fighter at the time (the p-51 Mustang), and one was obviously more suited to dogfights than the other. Its only through the Falcon’s heavy modification of its engines and adding beefed up weapons that give it fire power on par or better than larger ships. Its dual quad-turbolasers alone gave it more fire-power than the larger corvette used by Princess Leia in A New Hope, ignoring the torpedo tubes it also had.

Suffice to say, the Millennium Falcon is not something you can just walk onto and pilot. Maybe you can operate the guns (as Luke shows in A New Hope) but to pull off the advanced maneuvers we see Rey manage by herself with no training in the escape from Jakku? Like how she sent the Falcon into a free-fall, flipping it over to just the right angle for Finn to shoot the TIE fighter with his stuck-in-place turbolaser? And this is a girl who ahs never personally flown a starship before?

Luke was a great X-Wing Pilot, maybe not the best in the Star Wars continuity but still great. This is established as believable because the movie mentions details that explain his abilities. It mentions in A New Hope that he flew a Skyhopper growing up, a ship of similar size to the x-wing and made by the same company as the X-Wing, meaning the control schemes were similar and he didn't have to adjust to the cockpit or control setup. He also is mentioned to have used this ship to shoot womp rats, attesting to his skills at shooting and his connection to the Force- as we see later in A New Hope, his instincts, guided by the Force, are highly precise, honed over years of practice.

Rey has none of that. She’s poor and has never owned anything the size of a X-Wing, let alone the Millennium Falcon. Nowhere in the movie are we given even a single line about her learning to pilot ships through simulations (which yes, is the canon reason why she could pilot). In the context of the movie, without outside lore helping the movie out, she should have crashed the Millennium Falcon many, many times.

Now I’ll give her a pass on knowing the Millennium Falcon and how to repair it better than Han freaking Solo, if only because the movie does give the explanation in the way that she, as a scavenger, knew what parts were universally useful in a way that a smuggler/fighter like Han might not. So maybe she had some way to fix the Falcon he wouldn’t have thought about immediately.

Rey doesn’t have any really bad ‘what’ moments that I can remember until later in the film when she not only resists Kylo’s force mind torture, proceeds to turn it back on him and then mind tricks a stormtrooper immediately afterwards. This is probably the most prickly one to tackle as the Force is purposely set up by Lucas to be as vague as possible more or less- it brings you to places or helps you do things you wouldn’t normally be able to do because its what the universe needs.

Basically it can be used if needed as a giant excuse for convenience and the plot armor of its characters.

But its important to realize that while the Force does set up events or tries to guide the universe back to a state of balance (which is another whole subject to talk about), one’s usage of the Force is never portrayed like that in the films. The Force itself may be more or less an excuse for plot convenience, however the way the Jedi use it is fairly consistent.

The first rule is that the Light Side is the hard path, and the Dark Side is the easy path. The second rule you generally see followed throughout the films is that the force has different difficulties depending on its application. Using it on one’s self is the easiest (intuition or enhancing reflexes). Effecting material objects like rocks or pushing people is slightly harder, while effecting other people’s minds is the hardest to do. This is why some species’ are immune to the Mind Trick- its so complex that it just doesn't work sometimes, as opposed to shoving them, which almost always works.

Obi-Wan is shown to use the Mind Trick from the beginning (which makes sense, as he is a master) but it is not until the Return of the Jedi, a full year or so after his training with Yoda, that Luke is shown to use the jedi Mind Trick. This is despite being able to move objects or summon his lightsaber telekinetically as early as the Empire Strikes Back. In a New Hope, with essentially the same amount of exposure to the Force as Rey, Luke only manages to tap into the Force via his intuition, such as his training with the training droid on the Falcon in A New Hope and then his later success in blowing up the Death Star.

Rey on the other hand is able to survive a direct mental attack by a Dark Side user, and then mind trick a stormtrooper on only her second attempt. Remember, this is her first ever intentional use of the force and she can pull off one of the more tricky aspects of the Force. She’s so much more ridiculously “in tune” with the Force despite the previously mentioned zero real exposure to Force that its absurd. Even Anakin, who has such over-the-top power with the Force that he is able to pilot a podracer as a child with zero training in the Force solely based on his Force-guided intuition (and podracing is a sport that no non-force sensitive human can compete in due to not being able to react fast enough, remember), never shows the ability to even so much as move a rock with the Force prior to training.

Even though yes, you can give the in-universe explanation that Rey is just that much more powerful in the Force than any of her predecessors, or she managed to do a mind trick in a burst of desperation, that still does not excuse the fact that it is ultimately the writer’s decision for her to be able to pull this off. Instead of using any of the other ways they could have let Rey escape her imprisonment (friends save her, more defectors, chaos from the attack somehow lets her out, etc), the creators decided to let her have this incredible power in the force.

You may say that there is an explanation given to us, albeit indirectly- the Force. That would solve the whole issue with being a Mary Sue, which is having more competency than you should based on what we know about the character, right? We have an explanation, right?

But the problem is that, as said before, the Force is essentially a writing crutch- why did the characters all happen to end up here? The Force wills it.

The reason why Lucas got away with it though is because he rarely used it in that sense. The Force was a supplement to Luke’s or, for instance, even Vader’s skills. The fought mostly with lightsabers or star-fighters. Their piloting/fighting was bolstered by the Force of course, but it was never the way Luke escaped from a bad situation. Half the time he relied on his friends (Han saved him at the end of A New Hope, Chewy and Leia saved him at the end of the Empire Strikes Back, and Lando, R2 and Chewy were all instrumental to saving Han in Return of the Jedi ).

This is the real issue with Rey- no matter how well portrayed she may be (honestly her and Kylo’s development in The Last Jedi was probably the best part of that movie in my opinion), she has skills so categorically superior to previous protagonists without clear in-movie explanations as to why.

Could she grow out of being a Mary Sue? Sure, of course (I’ll detail whether I think they managed that in the Last Jedi at a later date). But I think that we can pretty clearly say that in the Force Awakens, she fits the definition of a Mary Sue.

(Also to clarify I do like her character in concept and Daisy Ridley can be a pretty great actress for the role. I just have issues with the writing of her character.)

#star wars #the force awakens #rey #mary sue #my opinion

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tipsycad147 · 5 years ago

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Island Magee Witches

Island Magee Witches The last witch trial to occur in Ireland took place in 1711 and involved the mysterious death of a widow, poltergeist activities and the bizarre possessionof a serving girl. The accused witches were not executed but sentenced to a much milder punishment of imprisonment and public ridicule.

The incidents leading to the trial began in September 1710. Anne Hattridge (or Haltridge), widow of the Presbyterian minister at Island magee, visited the home of her son, James, and his wife. The widow was plagued every night by some unseen force which hurled stones and turf onto her bed (see Lithoboly), blew open the curtains, stripped off her nightclothes and snatched the pillows from under her head. Frightened, mrs. Hattridge finally moved to another room.

But the mysterious activities continued in other forms. On December 11, as mrs. Hattridge sat by the fire at about twilight, a strange little boy about 12 years old appeared suddenly and sat down beside her. She couldn’t see his face, because he kept it covered with a worn blanket, but she observed that he had short black hair and was dressed in dirty and torn clothing. He didn’t answer her questions as to who he was or where he’d come from but danced “very nimbly” around the kitchen and then ran out of the house and into the cow shed. The servants attempted to catch him, but the boy had vanished as suddenly as he had appeared.

The apparition did not manifest again until February 11, 1711, when it apparently took a book of sermons that mrs. Hattridge had been reading. The next day, the boy appeared outside the house, thrust his hand through a glass window and held out the book to one of the servants. He declared mrs. Hattridge would never get the book back and that the Devilhad taught him how to read.

The servant, named Margaret Spear, exclaimed, “The Lord bless me from thee!” But the boy laughed and produced a sword, threatening to kill all the occupants of the house. They couldn’t prevent him from entering, he said, because the Devil could make him any size or creature he pleased (see metamorphosis). He threw a stone through the window. When the frightened girl next looked out, she saw the boy catching a turkey cock and making off with it into the woods. The bird managed to escape his grasp.

Then the girl saw the boy begin to dig in the ground with his sword. He announced that he was “making a grave for a corpse which will come out of this house very soon.” He flew off into the air (see Flying).

All was quiet in the Hattridge household until February 15, when mrs. Hattridge’s clothes were moved about her room and then were found laid out on the bed like a corpse. By this time, the news of the supernatural activities had spread throughout town, and numerous people, including the new Presbyterian minister, had come to the house to investigate. No one was able to help. One night, mrs. Hattridge awoke at midnight complaining of a great pain in her back, as though she’d been stabbed with a knife. The pain persisted and mrs. Hattridge’s condition began to deteriorate, until she died on February 22. During her last days, her clothing continued to be moved mysteriously about various rooms in the house. The townspeople gossiped that mrs. Hattridge had been bewitched to death.

On February 27 a servant girl named Mary Dunbar came to stay at the house to keep the younger mrs. Hattridge company. The night she arrived, Dunbar was plagued by supernatural trouble. She found her clothing scattered about and one of her aprons tied into five knots (see knots). She undid them and found a flannel cap that had belonged to the deceased mrs. Hattridge. On the following day she was suddenly seized with a violent pain in her thigh and suffered fits and ravings.

Dunbar exclaimed that several women were bewitching her; she described them during two fits and gave their names: Janet Liston, Elizabeth Seller, kate m’Calmond, Janet Carson, Janet mean, Janet Latimer and “mrs. Ann.” Accordingly, the suspects were arrested and brought to trial. Whenever one of them was brought near Dunbar (usually without Dunbar’s knowledge), the young girl fell into fits, hearing and seeing visions of her tormentors and vomiting up great quantities of feathers, cotton, yarn, pins and buttons (see AllotrIophAgy). She would repeat her conversations with the alleged witches and thrash about so violently that it took three strong men to hold her down. According to testimony by rev. Dr. Tisdall, vicar of Belfast:

In her fits she often had her tongue thrust into her windpipe in such a manner than she was like to choak, and the root seemed pulled up into her mouth.

Dunbar claimed her tormentors prohibited her from leaving her room. Whenever she attempted to do so for a while, she fell into fits. One witness claimed he saw a knotted bracelet of yarn appear mysteriously around her wrist. Dunbar also said her tormentors told her she would not be able to give evidence against them in court. During the entire trial, she was struck dumb and sat senseless as though in a trance. Later, Dunbar said she had been possessed by three of the accused witches throughout the proceedings.

According to an account of the trial in macSkimin’s History of Carrickfergus:

It was also deposed that strange noises, as of whistling, scratching, etc., were heard in the house, and that a sulphureous [sic] smell was observed in the rooms; that stones, turf, and the like were thrown about the house, and the coverlets, etc., frequently taken off the beds and made up in the shape of a corpse; and that a bolster [ghost] once walked out of a room into the kitchen with a nightgown about it!

The defendants, none of whom had a lawyer, all denied the charges of witchcraft, and the “one with the worst looks, and therefore the greatest suspect, called God to witness she was wronged.”

According to court records,

Their characters were inquired into, and some were reported unfavorably of, which seemed to be rather due to their ill appearance than to any facts provided against them. It was made to appear on oath that most of them had received the Communion, some of them very lately, that several of them had been laborious, industrious people, and had frequently been known to pray with their families, both publickly and privately; most of them could say the Lord’s Prayer . . . they being every one Presbyterians.

The trial was short, lasting from six o’clock in the morning until two in the afternoon. In Judge Upton’s opinion, there was insufficient evidence to convict the defendants. He had no doubt that Dunbar’s affliction was “preternatural and diabolical,” but if the defendants really were witches in compact with the Devil, “it could hardly be presumed that they should be such constant attenders upon Divine Service, both in public and private.” He instructed the jury that they could not reach a guilty verdict “upon the sole testimony of the afflicted person’s visionary images.”

The jury felt differently, however, and declared a guilty verdict for all defendants. They were sentenced to a year in jail and to stand in a pillory four times during their incarceration. While pilloried, the “unfortunate wretches” were pelted with eggs and cabbage stalks; one of them was blinded in one eye.

FURTHER READING :

Seymour, St. John D. Irish Witchcraft and Demonology. Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & Co., 1913.

http://occult-world.com/witch-trials-witch-hunts/island-magee-witches/

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toldnews-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/united-states-of-america/overlooked-no-more-martin-sostre-who-reformed-americas-prisons-from-his-cell/

Overlooked No More: Martin Sostre, Who Reformed America’s Prisons From His Cell

Overlooked is a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times. The project began in 2018 with a focus on women, but it’s widening its lens this year.

Martin Sostre was jailed twice on drug charges and spent nearly 20 years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement. In that time, he transformed himself from “a street dude, a hustler,” as he described himself, to a pioneering fighter for prisoners’ rights.

“For the first time, I had a chance to think, and began reading everything I could — history, philosophy, and law,” he once said, as quoted in a 2017 NPR report that detailed his life.

He taught himself the law, organized inmates and challenged harsh prison conditions, filing lawsuits from behind bars in the 1960s and ’70s — a decade before the prisoners’ rights movement began growing — that led to legal decisions ensuring greater protection for inmates.

He successfully sued for the right to practice Islam while incarcerated, which his jailers had denied him and other prisoners. And he protested some standard prison practices as dehumanizing, including censorship of inmates’ incoming mail, rectal examinations and the use of solitary confinement as punishment.

By the 1970s, Sostre’s activism while incarcerated on a drug-sale charge, which he maintained was a police setup, would make him an international symbol. He garnered the support of Jean-Paul Sartre, prominent civil-rights advocates and Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet physicist and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

“He was raising issues of solitary confinement as cruel and unusual punishment long before anyone was even granting that prisoners have a constitutional right to anything,” Garrett Felber, a historian at the University of Mississippi who is editing a collection of Sostre’s writing, said in a telephone interview.

Martin Ramirez Sostre was born in Harlem on March 20, 1923, to Crescencia and Saturnino Sostre. His mother was a seamstress and hatmaker, his father a merchant marine. During the Great Depression he was forced to drop out of school to help his family. He was drafted into the Army in 1942 but was dishonorably discharged in 1946 after being involved, by his account, in a fight between rival companies.

Returning to Harlem with no job skills, he turned to the streets. His first arrest was in 1952 for possession of heroin. He then fled to California but was captured and ultimately sentenced to 12 years in prison that October. After a short stint at Sing Sing, he was transferred to the Attica Correctional Facility and later to Clinton State Prison. There he began transforming his life.

Sostre took up yoga for its mental and physical discipline and became involved in the Nation of Islam after borrowing a copy of the Quran from a fellow inmate. He wanted others to join him in an Islamic study group, but corrections officials accused him of trying to recruit for “an anti-white movement” and dismissed his motives as not religiously sincere. He was placed in solitary confinement.

He taught himself constitutional law with books from the prison library, and he and several other inmates sued the warden at Clinton, J.E. LaVallee, for the right to practice their religion. The suit was successful: Sostre and the others were allowed to buy the Quran and hold Nation of Islam meetings. Their case preceded the landmark Cooper v. Pate Supreme Court decision, which also revolved around the right of an inmate to access Black Muslim publications and which established that people retain constitutional rights even in jail and that they are entitled to address their grievances in court.

In an interview for “Frame Up!,” a 1974 documentary about his incarceration, Sostre drew a contrast between a political prisoner and a politicized prisoner. A politicized prisoner, he explained, is “one who has become politically aware while in prison, even though the original crime that he committed was not a political crime.”

Sostre was released in October 1964 after 12 years in prison, four of them in solitary. He broke with the Nation of Islam that year, moved to Buffalo and took a job with Bethlehem Steel. The regular paycheck enabled him to save enough money to open the Afro-Asian Book Shop in the Cold Springs neighborhood. He stocked it with Communist, anarchist and black nationalist texts.

Once Sostre added jazz records to the mix, the bookstore became a popular hangout for the city’s young leftist population — both nascent black radicals and curious white college students.

Jerry Ross, a white student who drifted in from what was then the State University of New York at Buffalo, was impressed to see Mao Zedong’s “Little Red Book,” anti-Vietnam War texts and materials on black history — “books,” he said, “you could not get in the university bookstore.”

Sostre, he said, was a willing mentor to anyone with sympathetic politics. “He treated me like he was colorblind,” Ross said. “He just completely accepted radical students into his fold.”

But the bookstore wouldn’t last. As in dozens of cities across America, racial tensions in Buffalo boiled over during the “long, hot summer” of 1967. By the end of June, many young black residents of Cold Springs, fed up with what they saw as structural inequality, police brutality and a lack of economic opportunity, took to looting and rioting.

Businesses had all but shut down, but the Afro-Asian Book Shop remained open, popular with the young and an object of scrutiny for the police. In “Frame Up!,” Sostre described feeling targeted after receiving frequent visits from the police and F.B.I. agents.

In the rioting a neighboring tavern caught fire, and water from firefighters’ hoses “wiped out” most of Sostre’s book inventory, Ross said.

Then the police accused Sostre of making Molotov cocktails in the store’s basement. He was arrested on charges of inciting to riot, arson and possession and sale of narcotics.

The trial that followed in 1968 focused on a supposed drug deal. An addict named Arto Williams, the state’s main witness, who was awaiting his own trial on a theft charge, testified that he had bought $15 worth of heroin from Sostre at the bookstore. Sostre insisted that he had been set up by the police.

It took just a few hours for the all-white jury to convict him of selling heroin, and the judge, Frederick Marshall, sentenced him to up to 41 years in prison.

At the Green Haven Correctional Facility in Dutchess County, Sostre was once again put in solitary confinement — and once again he stood up for his rights. He refused to cut his beard and would not submit to rectal examinations, resulting in more time in solitary. He was also punished when he tried to mail a document to his lawyer.

“He described his protest against rectal examinations as fighting to keep the last vestige of his humanity,” Felber, the historian, said in an email.

In 1969, Sostre sued Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller; Paul D. McGinniss, the state corrections commissioner; and several prison officials for $1.2 million, saying that his time in solitary had violated his constitutional rights.

Later that year, Judge Constance Baker Motley of United States District Court (the first African-American woman appointed to the federal bench) ordered his immediate release from solitary confinement and awarded him $13,020 the following year — $35 for each of the 372 days he spent isolated.

Throughout, Sostre maintained his innocence on the original charges. And in 1973, Arto Williams recanted his testimony, saying he had lied so that he could have his own theft charge dropped.

Sostre became something of a cause célèbre, drawing the attention and support of left-leaning figures like Jean-Paul Sartre, Noam Chomsky and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark. Amnesty International called Sostre “the victim of an international miscarriage of justice.”

The New York Times wrote that “because of his imprisonment and subsequent activities, prisons in America and particularly in New York can never again be quite the dark pits of repression and despair they once were.”

In 1975, the Soviet scientist Sakharov — winner of the Nobel Peace Prize that year — petitioned Gov. Hugh L. Carey of New York to order Sostre’s release. Carey granted him clemency that Christmas.

Sostre became an aide to Assemblywoman Marie M. Runyon, a Democrat. He married Lizabeth Roberts and had two sons, Mark and Vinny. He also continued his activism, focusing on tenants’ rights. But he always felt like a marked man, Vinny Sostre said in a telephone interview.

“We thought the place was tapped here for a long period of time,” he said of his childhood home. “I remember our whole family tearing apart things, looking for wires.”

In 1984, Sostre was managing an apartment building when he got into an altercation with a tenant he was trying to evict. Sostre shot him and then fled New York.

He returned two years later and was arrested after he was spotted in the library of New York Law School in Manhattan. He was acquitted in 1987 after arguing that he had acted in self-defense.

By the time Sostre died, on Aug. 12, 2015, at 92, he had largely been keeping to himself. His family, following his wishes, did not announce his death publicly.

Vinny said his father would have wanted “to be remembered the same way he lived, which is to inspire people to fight against injustice.”

#e commerce usa news #h&m usa news #us news etf #us news ranking 2019 #usa breaking news 24/7 #usa e newspaper #usa news 1999 #usa news govt shutdown #usa news january 2018 #usa news today headlines youtube

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sarahfinalproject · 6 years ago

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Research on Serial Killers

UK serial Killers –

Women

Beverley Allitt (Angel of Death) -

Beverley Gail Allitt is an English serial killer who was convicted of murdering four children, attempting to murder three other children, and causing grievous bodily harm to a further six children. The crimes were committed over a period of 59 days between February and April 1991 in the children's ward at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire, where Allitt was employed as a State Enrolled Nurse. She administered large doses of insulin to at least two victims and a large air bubble was found in the body of another, but police were unable to establish how all the attacks were carried out. In May 1993, at Nottingham Crown Court, she received 13 life sentences for the crimes.

Rosemary (Rose) West –

West is known as one of the most famous serial killers in British history. Alongside husband Fred she carried out the torture and murder of 10 young girls between 1971 and 1987. The couple's home in Gloucester was the scene of many of the crimes, and was widely dubbed the 'House of Horrors'. She never confessed to any of the murders but the circumstantial evidence against West was overwhelming. West went on trial in 1995 and was unanimously found guilty of 10 murders, although had no involvement in the first two that her husband committed. In only the second instance in British history, she was sentenced to a full life tariff meaning she would die in prison. Hindley was the first. West remains incarcerated at HMP Low Newton.

Myra Hindley (Moors Murder) –

Hindley and fellow Moors Murderer Ian Brady are two of the most infamous criminals of the 20th century. Convicted of five killings and the subsequent burials Hindley was widely known in the press as the "most evil woman in Britain". Five children - Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans - were killed between 1963 and 1965. The full extent of the pair's killing spree didn't come to light until after their confessions in 1985, some 20 years after their initial trial. Despite making repeated appeals against her life sentence Hindley was never released from prison and she died in incarceration in 2002 aged 60.

Mary Elizabeth Wilson – (Merry Widow of Windy Nook) –

Known as the Merry Widow of Windy Nook, Wilson is the last woman to be sentenced to death in Durham, in 1958. In a startlingly short amount of time, Wilson married and lost four husbands between 1955 and 1957. By this time she had earned herself a reputation for her cheery attitude towards the deaths and her gallows humour. She apparently joked at her latest wedding reception that any left over sandwiches could be used at the funeral, while also asking the local undertaker for a 'trade discount' for providing him with so much business. Wilson was convicted of murdering two of her four husbands, but even though she was handed a death sentence she was given a reprieve due to her advancing years.

Amelia Dyer-

Dyer is known as the most prolific baby farm murderer of Victorian England. While she was only tried for one, it is estimated she could have played a part in the deaths of as many as 400 children. The practice of baby farming saw people act as adopted parents in exchange for a fee. In return for a substantial one-off payment Dyer would take the child, but instead of looking after it she would murder them and pocket the money anyway. In April 1896 she was arrested and charged. In May of that year after only four and half minutes of jury deliberations Dyer was found guilty and sentenced to death.

Mary Ann Britland –

Bolton-born Britland is infamous as the first woman to be executed at Strangeways Prison. Britland poisoned her eldest daughter Elizabeth, her husband Thomas, and the wife of her lover, Mary Dixon in a three-month period in 1886. Despite all three murders being almost identical Britland maintained her innocence until the end declaring in court: "I am quite innocent, I am not guilty at all."

Mary Ann-Cotton-

Cotton was a dressmaker and nurse who has been implicated in as many as 21 murders. Collecting insurance pay outs Cotton is suspected in relation to the deaths of several of her husbands. Newspapers began to look closer into her past when it was discovered she had lost three husbands, a lover, a friend, her mother and a dozen children, all to stomach fevers. After forensic investigations arsenic was found and Cotton was charged and subsequently hanged for her crimes in 1873.

Joanna Dennehy –

The Peterborough ditch murders were a series of serial murders which took place in Cambridgeshire, England, in March 2013. All of the victims were male and died from stab wounds. The bodies of all three men were discovered dumped in ditches outside Peterborough. The perpetrator was Joanna Dennehy, a local woman who was later sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole life order.

Men

Steve Wright –

Steven Gerald James Wright (born 24 April 1958) is an English serial killer, also known as the Suffolk Strangler and the Ipswich Ripper. He is serving life imprisonment for the murder of five women who worked as sex workers in Ipswich, Suffolk. The killings took place during the final months of 2006, and Wright was found guilty in February 2008.

Graham Young-

Graham Frederick Young (7 September 1947 – 1 August 1990) was an English serial killer who used poison to kill his victims. He was sent to Broadmoor Hospital in 1962 after poisoning several members of his family. After his release in 1971 he went on to poison 7 more people, two of whom died. Young, who was known as the Teacup Poisoner later the St. Albans Poisoner, was then sent to Parkhurst Prison where he died of a heart attack in 1990.

Fred West –

Frederick Walter Stephen West (29 September 1941 – 1 January 1995) was an English serial killer who committed at least 12 murders between 1967 and 1987 in Gloucestershire, the majority with his second wife, Rosemary West.

All the victims were young women. At least eight of these murders involved the Wests' sexual gratification and included rape, bondage, torture and mutilation; the victims' dismembered bodies were typically buried in the cellar or garden of the Wests' Cromwell Street home in Gloucester, which became known as the "House of Horrors". Fred also committed at least two murders on his own, and Rose murdered Fred's stepdaughter, Charmaine. The couple were apprehended and charged in 1994.

Fred West fatally asphyxiated himself while on remand at HM Prison Birmingham on 1 January 1995, at which time he and Rose were jointly charged with nine murders, and he with three further murders. In November 1995, Rose was convicted of ten murders and sentenced to ten life terms with a whole life order.

Peter Sutcliffe –

Peter William Coonan (born Peter William Sutcliffe; 2 June 1946) is an English serial killer who was dubbed the "Yorkshire Ripper" by the press. In 1981 Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering 13 women and attempting to murder seven others.

Sutcliffe had allegedly regularly used the services of prostitutes in Leeds and Bradford. When interviewed by authorities, he claimed that the voice of God had sent him on a mission to kill prostitutes. Sutcliffe carried out his murder spree over five years, during which time the public were especially shocked by the murders of women who were not prostitutes. After his arrest for driving with false number plates in January 1981, the police questioned him about the killings and he confessed to being the perpetrator.

At his trial in 1981, Sutcliffe pleaded not guilty to murder on grounds of diminished responsibility after a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia but his defence was rejected by a majority of the jury. He is serving 20 concurrent sentences of life imprisonment. Following his conviction, Sutcliffe began using his mother's maiden name and became known as Peter William Coonan.

West Yorkshire Police were criticised for the time taken in apprehending Sutcliffe despite interviewing him nine times in the course of their investigation. Because of the sensational nature of the case, the police handled an exceptional amount of information, some of it misleading (including a hoax recorded message and letters purporting to be from the "Ripper"). The 1982 Byford Report of the official inquiry (made public in 2006) confirmed the validity of the criticism.

The High Court dismissed an appeal by Sutcliffe in 2010, confirming that he would serve a whole life order and never be released from custody. He was transferred from prison to a high-security psychiatric hospital in March 1984. In August 2016 it was ruled that Sutcliffe was mentally fit to be returned to prison, and was transferred that month to HM Prison Frankland in Durham.

George Joseph Smith-

George Joseph Smith (11 January 1872 – 13 August 1915) was an English serial killer and bigamist. In 1915, he was convicted and subsequently hanged for the slayings of three women, the case becoming known as the Brides in the Bath Murders. As well as being widely reported in the media, the case was significant in the history of forensic pathology and detection. It was also one of the first cases in which similarities between connected crimes were used to prove deliberation, a technique used in subsequent prosecutions.

Harold Shipman-

Harold Frederick Shipman (14 January 1946 – 13 January 2004) was an English general practitioner and one of the most prolific serial killers in history. On 31 January 2000, a jury found Shipman guilty of 15 murders of patients under his care. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with the recommendation that he never be released.

The Shipman Inquiry, a two-year-long investigation of all deaths certified by Shipman, which was chaired by Dame Janet Smith, examined Shipman's crimes. The inquiry identified 218 victims and estimated his total victim count at 250, about 80% of whom were elderly women. His youngest confirmed victim was a 41-year-old man, although "significant suspicion" arose that he had killed patients as young as four.

Much of Britain's legal structure concerning health care and medicine was reviewed and modified as a result of Shipman's crimes. He is the only British doctor to have been found guilty of murdering his patients, although other doctors have been acquitted of similar crimes or convicted on lesser charges.

Shipman died on 13 January 2004, one day prior to his 58th birthday, by hanging himself in his cell at Wakefield Prison.

Stephen Port-

Stephen John Port (born 22 February 1975) is a British convicted serial rapist and serial killer. He is responsible for murdering at least four men and for committing multiple rapes. Port received a life sentence with a whole life order on 25 November 2016, meaning he will not become eligible for parole and is unlikely to ever be released from prison. Police announced they are now investigating at least 58 deaths connected to the use of gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) in response to the Port case.

Dennis Nilsen-

Dennis Andrew Nilsen (23 November 1945 – 12 May 2018) was a Scottish serial killer and necrophile, who murdered at least 12 young men in a series of killings committed between 1978 and 1983 in London, England. Convicted, at the Old Bailey, of six counts of murder and two of attempted murder, Nilsen was sentenced to life imprisonment on 4 November 1983, with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of 25 years. In his later years, he was incarcerated at Full Sutton maximum security prison.

Nilsen committed the murders at two North London addresses. He lured his victims to these through guile and murdered them by strangulation, sometimes accompanied by drowning. Following the murders, Nilsen observed a ritual in which he bathed and dressed the victims' bodies, which he retained for extended periods of time, before dissecting and disposing of the remains by burning on a bonfire, or flushing down a lavatory.

Nilsen became known as the Muswell Hill Murderer as he committed his later murders in the Muswell Hill district of North London. He died in prison on 12 May 2018.

Patrick Mackay-

Patrick David Mackay (born 25 September 1952) is a British serial killer who confessed to murdering 11 people in London and Kent in England, from 1974 to 1975.

Colin Ireland-

Colin Ireland (16 March 1954 – 21 February 2012) was a British serial killer known as the Gay Slayer because his victims were homosexual. Criminologist David Wilson believes that Ireland was a psychopath.

Ireland suffered a severely dysfunctional upbringing. He committed various crimes from the age of 16 and had served time in borstals and prisons. While living in Southend, he started frequenting the Coleherne pub, a gay pub in Earl's Court. Ireland sought men who liked the passive role and sadomasochism, so he could readily restrain them as they initially believed it was a sexual game.

Ireland said he was heterosexual – he had been married twice – and that he pretended to be gay only to befriend potential victims. Ireland claimed that his motives were not sexually motivated. He was highly organised, and carried a full murder kit of rope and handcuffs and a full change of clothes to each murder. After killing his victim he cleaned the flat of any forensic evidence linking him to the scene and stayed in the flat until morning in order to avoid arousing suspicion from leaving in the middle of the night.

He was jailed for life for the murders in December 1993 and remained imprisoned until his death in February 2012, at the age of 57.

Trevor Hardy- Trevor Joseph Hardy (11 June 1945 – 25 September 2012), also known as the Beast of Manchester, was a convicted English serial killer who murdered three teenage girls in the Manchester area between December 1974 and March 1976. In 1977, he was found guilty on three charges of murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment, remaining in prison until his death 35 years later.

John George Haigh-

John George Haigh (/heɪɡ/; 24 July 1909 – 10 August 1949), commonly known as the Acid Bath Murderer, was an English serial killer. He was convicted for the murders of six people, although he claimed to have killed nine. He battered or shot his victims to death and used concentrated sulphuric acid to dispose of their corpses before forging papers so he could sell the victims' possessions and collect substantial sums of money.

Ian Brady -

The Moors murders were carried out by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley between July 1963 and October 1965, in and around Manchester, England. The victims were five children aged between 10 and 17—Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans—at least four of whom were sexually assaulted. Two of the victims were discovered in graves dug on Saddleworth Moor; a third grave was discovered there in 1987, more than twenty years after Brady and Hindley's trial. The body of a fourth victim, Keith Bennett, is also suspected to be buried there, but despite repeated searches it remains undiscovered.

The police were initially aware of only three killings, those of Edward Evans, Lesley Ann Downey and John Kilbride. The investigation was reopened in 1985, after Brady was reported in the press as having confessed to the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett. Brady and Hindley were taken separately to Saddleworth Moor to assist the police in their search for the graves, both by then having confessed to the additional murders.

Characterised by the press as "the most evil woman in Britain", Hindley made several appeals against her life sentence, claiming she was a reformed woman and no longer a danger to society, but was never released. She died in 2002, aged 60. Brady was declared criminally insane in 1985 and confined in the high-security Ashworth Hospital. He made it clear that he never wished to be released, and repeatedly asked to be allowed to die. He died in 2017, in Ashworth, aged 79.

The murders were the result of what Malcolm MacCulloch, professor of forensic psychiatry at Cardiff University, called a "concatenation of circumstances". The trial judge, Mr Justice Fenton Atkinson, described Brady and Hindley in his closing remarks as "two sadistic killers of the utmost depravity"

US Serial Killers –

Women

Aileen Wuornos –

Between 1989-90, prostitute-turned-killer Aileen Wuornos murdered seven johns who had the misfortune of looking for a little extra-marital action. A minor traffic accident in one her victim's cars led to her arrest and eventual 2002 execution.

Jane Toppan-

Jane Toppan, a nurse with a private practice, racked up dozens of victims between 1885 and her capture near the turn of the century. While in police custody in 1901, she admitted to being aroused by the process of killing and was eventually found to be insane and not guilty of her crimes.

Nannie Doss –

Nannie Doss was a black widow who went through five husbands before being caught and charged with a slew of murders including those of her five husbands, a mother-in-law, her sisters, two of their children, and her own mother.

She was never put to death (because she was a woman) and died in prison at age 59 in 1965.

Genene Jones –

Jones, a former pediatric nurse, killed a number of (one confirmed, could be up to 90) infants and children in her care. She used injections of several drugs to cause the kids to get gravely ill, and she'd save them to gain praise.

Men

Andrew Cunanan-

Andrew Phillip Cunanan (August 31 1969 – July 23, 1997) was an American serial killer who murdered at least five people, including Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace and Chicago real estate developer Lee Miglin, during a three-month period in mid-1997. Cunanan's string of murders ended on July 23 of that year with his suicide by firearm.

In his final years, Cunanan lived in the greater San Diego area without a job. He befriended wealthy older men and spent their money. To impress acquaintances in the local gay community he boasted about social events at clubs and often paid the check at restaurants. One millionaire friend had broken up with Cunanan in 1996, the prior year.

Darren Criss – The Assassination of Gianni Versace

David Parker Ray (The Toy Box Killer)-

David Parker Ray (November 6, 1939 – May 28, 2002), also known as the Toy-Box Killer, was a suspected American serial killer, and known torturer of women. Though no bodies were found, he was accused by his accomplices of killing several people and suspected by police to have murdered as many as 60 people from Arizona and New Mexico, while living in Elephant Butte, New Mexico, approximately 7 miles north of Truth or Consequences. He soundproofed a truck trailer that he called his "toy box", and equipped it with items used for sexual torture. Ray was convicted of kidnapping and torture in 2001, for which he received a lengthy sentence, but he was never convicted of murder. He died of a heart attack about one year after his convictions in two cases (the second of which resulted in a plea deal).

http://thinkingaboutphilosophy.blogspot.com/2012/10/david-parker-rays-audio-tape-transcript.html - Tape Transcript

David Berkowitz (Son Of Sam) –

David Richard Berkowitz (born Richard David Falco, June 1, 1953), known also as the Son of Sam and the .44 Caliber Killer, is an American serial killer who pleaded guilty to eight separate shooting attacks that began in New York City during the summer of 1976. The crimes were perpetrated with a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver. He killed six people and wounded seven others by July 1977. As the number of victims increased, Berkowitz eluded the biggest police manhunt in the history of New York City while leaving letters that mocked the police and promised further crimes, which were highly publicized by the press. The killing spree terrorized New Yorkers and achieved worldwide notoriety.

On the night of August 10, 1977, Berkowitz was taken into custody by New York City police homicide detectives in front of his Yonkers apartment building, and he was subsequently indicted for eight shooting incidents. He confessed to all of them, and initially claimed to have been obeying the orders of a demon manifested in the form of a dog named "Harvey" which belonged to his neighbor "Sam". Despite his explanation, Berkowitz was found mentally competent to stand trial. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was incarcerated in state prison. He subsequently admitted that the dog-and-devil story was a hoax. In the course of further police investigations, Berkowitz was also implicated in many unsolved arsons in the city.

Intense coverage of the case by the media lent a kind of celebrity status to Berkowitz, and some observers noted that he seemed to enjoy it. In response, the New York State legislature enacted new legal statutes known popularly as "Son of Sam laws", designed to keep criminals from profiting financially from the publicity created by their crimes. The statutes have remained law in New York in spite of various legal challenges, and similar laws have been enacted in several other states.

Berkowitz has been incarcerated since his arrest and is serving six consecutive life sentences. During the mid-1990s, he amended his confession to claim that he had been a member of a violent Satanic cult which orchestrated the incidents as ritual murder. He remains the only person ever charged with the shootings, although some law enforcement authorities have questioned whether his claims are credible. A new investigation of the murders began in 1996 but was suspended indefinitely after inconclusive findings.

Edmund Kemper (Co-Ed Killer) –

Edmund Emil Kemper III (born December 18, 1948) is an American serial killer and necrophile who murdered ten people, including his paternal grandparents and mother. He is noted for his large size, at 6 feet 9 inches (2.06 m), and for his high IQ, at 145. Kemper was nicknamed the "Co-ed Killer" as most of his victims were students at co-educational institutions.

Born in California, Kemper had a disturbed childhood. He moved to Montana with his abusive mother at a young age before returning to California, where he murdered his paternal grandparents when he was 15. He was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic by court psychiatrists and sentenced to the Atascadero State Hospital as a criminally insane juvenile.

Released at the age of 21 after convincing psychiatrists he was rehabilitated, Kemper was regarded as non-threatening by his victims. He targeted young female hitchhikers during his killing spree, luring them into his vehicle and driving them to secluded areas where he would murder them before taking their corpses back to his home to be decapitated, dismembered and violated. Kemper then murdered his mother and one of her friends before turning himself in to the authorities.

Found sane and guilty at his trial in 1973, he requested the death penalty for his crimes. However, capital punishment was suspended in California at the time, and he instead received eight life sentences. Since then, Kemper has been incarcerated in the California Medical Facility. He has waived his right to a parole hearing several times and has said he is "happy" in prison.

The Zodiac Killer –

The Zodiac Killer or Zodiac is the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer who operated in Northern California from at least the late 1960s to the early 1970s. The killer's identity remains unknown. The Zodiac murdered victims in Benicia, Vallejo, Lake Berryessa, and San Francisco between December 1968 and October 1969. Four men and three women between the ages of 16 and 29 were targeted. The killer originated the name "Zodiac" in a series of taunting letters sent to the local Bay Area press. These letters included four cryptograms (or ciphers). Of the four cryptograms sent, only one has been definitively solved.

Suspects have been named by law enforcement and amateur investigators, but no conclusive evidence has surfaced. The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) marked the case "inactive" in April 2004, but re-opened it at some point prior to March 2007. The case also remains open in the city of Vallejo, as well as in Napa County and Solano County. The California Department of Justice has maintained an open case file on the Zodiac murders since 1969.

Jeffrey Dahmer –

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (/ˈdɑːmər/; May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994), also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or the Milwaukee Monster, was an American serial killer and sex offender, who committed the rape, murder, and dismemberment of 17 men and boys from 1978 to 1991. Many of his later murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism, and the permanent preservation of body parts—typically all or part of the skeleton.

Although diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, and a psychotic disorder, Dahmer was found to be legally sane at his trial. Convicted of 15 of the 16 murders he had committed in Wisconsin, Dahmer was sentenced to 15 terms of life imprisonment on February 15, 1992. He was later sentenced to a 16th term of life imprisonment for an additional homicide committed in Ohio in 1978.

On November 28, 1994, Dahmer was beaten to death by Christopher Scarver, a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution.

Dennis Rader - BTK –

Dennis Lynn Rader (born March 9, 1945) is an American serial killer known as BTK or the BTK Strangler. He gave himself the name "BTK" (for "Bind, Torture, Kill"), which was his infamous signature. Between 1974 and 1991, Rader killed ten people in the Wichita, Kansas, metro area.

Rader was particularly known for sending taunting letters to police and newspapers describing the details of his crimes. After a decade-long hiatus, Rader resumed sending letters in 2004, leading to his 2005 arrest and subsequent guilty plea. He is serving ten consecutive life sentences at El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas.

John Wayne Gacy-

John Wayne Gacy Jr. (March 17, 1942 – May 10, 1994) was an American serial killer and rapist. He sexually assaulted, tortured and murdered at least 33 teenage boys and young men between 1972 and 1978 in Cook County, Illinois (a part of metropolitan Chicago).

All of Gacy's known murders were committed inside his Norwood Park ranch house. His victims were typically induced to his address by force or deception, and all but one of his victims were murdered by either asphyxiation or strangulation with a makeshift tourniquet; his first victim was stabbed to death. Gacy buried 26 of his victims in the crawl space of his home. Three other victims were buried elsewhere on his property, while the bodies of his last four known victims were discarded in the Des Plaines River.

Convicted of 33 murders, Gacy was sentenced to death on March 13, 1980, for 12 of those killings. He spent 14 years on death row before he was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center on May 10, 1994.

Gacy became known as the "Killer Clown" because of his charitable services at fund-raising events, parades, and children's parties where he would dress as "Pogo the Clown" or "Patches the Clown", characters he had devised.

Ted Bundy-

Theodore Robert Bundy (born Theodore Robert Cowell; November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) was an American serial killer, kidnapper, rapist, burglar, and necrophile who assaulted and murdered numerous young women and girls during the 1970s and possibly earlier. After more than a decade of denials, he confessed to 30 homicides that he committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978. The true number of victims is unknown and possibly higher.

Many of Bundy's young female victims regarded him as handsome and charismatic, which were traits that he exploited to win their trust. He would typically approach them in public places, feigning injury or disability, or impersonating an authority figure, before overpowering and assaulting them in secluded locations. He sometimes revisited his secondary crime scenes, grooming and performing sexual acts with the decomposing corpses until putrefaction and destruction by wild animals made further interaction impossible. He decapitated at least 12 victims and kept some of the severed heads as mementos in his apartment. On a few occasions, he broke into dwellings at night and bludgeoned his victims as they slept.

In 1975, Bundy was jailed for the first time when he was incarcerated in Utah for aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault. He then became a suspect in a progressively longer list of unsolved homicides in multiple states. Facing murder charges in Colorado, he engineered two dramatic escapes and committed further assaults, including three murders, before his ultimate recapture in Florida in 1978. For the Florida homicides, he received three death sentences in two separate trials.

Bundy was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Prison on January 24, 1989. Biographer Ann Rule described Bundy as "a sadistic sociopath who took pleasure from another human's pain and the control he had over his victims, to the point of death, and even after". He once called himself "the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you'll ever meet". Attorney Polly Nelson, a member of his last defense team, wrote he was "the very definition of heartless evil".

Ed Gein-

Edward Theodore Gein (/ɡiːn/; August 27, 1906[5] – July 26, 1984), also known as The Butcher of Plainfield, was an American murderer and body snatcher. His crimes, committed around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, gathered widespread notoriety after authorities discovered that Gein had exhumed corpses from local graveyards and fashioned trophies and keepsakes from their bones and skin. Gein confessed to killing two women – tavern owner Mary Hogan in 1954, and a Plainfield hardware store owner, Bernice Worden, in 1957. Gein was initially found unfit to stand trial and confined to a mental health facility. In 1968, Gein was found guilty but legally insane of the murder of Worden, and was remanded to a psychiatric institution. He died at Mendota Mental Health Institute of cancer-induced liver and respiratory failure at age 77 on July 26, 1984. He is buried next to his family in the Plainfield Cemetery, in a now-unmarked grave.

Albert Fish –

Hamilton Howard "Albert" Fish (May 19, 1870 – January 16, 1936) was an American serial killer, child rapist and cannibal. He was also known as the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria, the Brooklyn Vampire, the Moon Maniac, and The Boogey Man. Fish once boasted that he "had children in every state", and at one time stated his number of victims was about 100. However, it is not known whether he was referring to rapes or cannibalization, nor is it known if the statement was truthful. He was a suspect in at least five murders during his lifetime. Fish confessed to three murders that police were able to trace to a known homicide, and he confessed to stabbing at least two other people. He was put on trial for the kidnapping and murder of Grace Budd, and was convicted and executed by electric chair. His crimes were dramatized in the 2007 film The Gray Man, starring Patrick Bauchau as Fish

Richard Ramerez (The Night Stalker) –

Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramírez, known as Richard Ramirez (/rəˈmiːrɛz/; February 29, 1960 – June 7, 2013), was an American serial killer, rapist, and burglar. His highly publicized home invasion crime spree terrorized the residents of the greater Los Angeles area, and later the residents of the San Francisco area, from June 1984 until August 1985. Prior to his capture, Ramirez was dubbed the "Night Stalker" by the news media. He used a wide variety of weapons, including handguns, knives, a machete, a tire iron, and a hammer. Ramirez, who was an avowed Satanist, never expressed any remorse for his crimes. The judge who upheld his thirteen death sentences remarked that Ramirez's deeds exhibited "cruelty, callousness, and viciousness beyond any human understanding". Ramirez died of complications from B-cell lymphoma while awaiting execution on California's death row.

H. H. Holmes –

Herman Webster Mudgett (May 16, 1861 – May 7, 1896), better known as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes or more commonly known as H. H. Holmes, was an American serial killer. While he confessed to 27 murders, only nine could be plausibly confirmed and several of the people he claimed to have murdered were still alive. He is said to have killed as many as 200, though this figure is only traceable to 1940s pulp magazines. Many victims were said to have been killed in a mixed-use building which he owned, located about 3 miles (5 km) west of the 1893 World's Fair: Columbian Exposition, supposedly called the World's Fair Hotel (informally called "The Murder Hotel"), though evidence suggests the hotel portion was never truly open for business.

Besides being a serial killer, Holmes was also a con artist and a bigamist, the subject of more than 50 lawsuits in Chicago alone. Many now-common stories of his crimes sprang from fictional accounts that later authors assumed to be factual. In a 2017 biography, Adam Selzer wrote that Holmes' story is "effectively a new American tall tale – and, like all the best tall tales, it sprang from a kernel of truth".

H. H. Holmes was executed on May 7, 1896, nine days before his 35th birthday, for the murder of his friend and accomplice Benjamin Pitezel. During his trial for the murder of Pitezel, Holmes confessed to many other killings.

Gary Ridgeway (Green River Killer) –

Gary Leon Ridgway (born February 18, 1949), also known as the Green River Killer, is an American serial killer. He was initially convicted of 48 separate murders. As part of his plea bargain, another conviction was added, bringing the total number of convictions to 49, making him the most prolific serial killer in United States history according to confirmed murders. He killed myriad teenage girls and women in the state of Washington during the 1980s and 1990s.

Most of Ridgway's victims were alleged to be sex workers and other women in vulnerable circumstances, including underage runaways. The press gave him his nickname after the first five victims were found in the Green River before his identity was known. He strangled his victims, usually by hand but sometimes using ligatures. After strangling them, he would dump their bodies in forested and overgrown areas in King County, often returning to the bodies to have sexual intercourse with them.

On November 30, 2001, as Ridgway was leaving the Kenworth truck factory where he worked in Renton, Washington, he was arrested for the murders of four women whose cases were linked to him through DNA evidence. As part of a plea bargain wherein he agreed to disclose the locations of still-missing women, he was spared the death penalty and received a sentence of life imprisonment without parole.

Angelo Buono, Jr. & Kenneth Bianchi (Hill Side Stranglers)-

he Hillside Strangler, later the Hillside Stranglers, is the media epithet for one, later two American serial killers who terrorized Los Angeles between October 1977 and February 1978, with the nicknames originating from the fact that many of the victims' bodies were discovered in the hills surrounding greater Los Angeles. The police, however, knew because of the positions of the bodies that two individuals were killing together, but withheld this information from the press. These two individuals were discovered to be cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, who were later convicted of kidnapping, raping, torturing, and murdering 10 women and girls ranging in age from 12 to 28 years old.

The Hillside Strangler murders began with the deaths of three sex workers who were found strangled and dumped naked on hillsides northeast of Los Angeles between October and early November 1977, but it was not until the deaths of five young women who were not sex workers, but girls who had been abducted from middle-class neighborhoods, that the media attention and subsequent "Hillside Strangler" moniker came to be. There were two more deaths in December and February before the murders abruptly stopped, an extensive investigation proved fruitless until the arrest of Bianchi in January 1979 for the murder of two more young women in Washington State and the subsequent linking of his past to the Strangler case. The most expensive trial in the history of the California legal system at that time followed, with Bianchi and Buono eventually being found guilty of these crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment.

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fitnesshealthyoga-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/uw-surgeons-book-reveals-history-missteps-successes-of-organ-transplants-local-news/

UW surgeon's book reveals history, missteps, successes of organ transplants | Local News

Organ transplants can seem routine today, especially at UW Hospital, one of the nation’s largest transplant centers. But only a few decades ago, the field’s pioneers took significant risks, overcame repeated failures and sometimes crossed ethical lines.

It can be easy to forget that transplant surgeons, type A personalities with extensive training who save many people clinging to life, are humans who can have self-doubts, especially when their patients die.

Dr. Josh Mezrich’s book, “When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon,” gives an overview of transplant history and lays bare Mezrich’s trepidations and triumphs as a kidney and liver transplant surgeon at UW Hospital, where he has been on staff since 2007.

The book, to be released by HarperCollins Jan. 15, includes suspenseful narratives that take readers behind the surgical curtain. Through stories of his patients, Mezrich marvels at transplant accomplishments, brings attention to continuing challenges in transplant delivery and occasionally questions the values of the U.S. health care system.

“I want people to really understand what it’s like to do this job,” Mezrich said in an interview. “It’s a hard job. There’s a lot of anxiety. You’ve got to work really hard to be perfect, but you can never be perfect.”

Beginnings

The assassination of French President Marie Francois Sadi Carnot in 1894 is a surprising starting point for transplant’s origins. But Carnot’s stabbing inspired Dr. Alexis Carrel, of France, to develop a method of tying two blood vessels together, essential for attaching organs, Mezrich explains in the book.

Dr. Willem Kolff, of the Netherlands, adapted the use of cellophane in encasing sausages to create a barrier for filtering blood, inventing dialysis during World War II while aiding Dutch resistance against the Germans.

Kolff’s first successful patient was an imprisoned Nazi sympathizer. Dialysis allowed people with kidney disease to stay alive long enough to receive a transplant.

Dr. Christiaan Barnard, a South African who trained at the University of Minnesota, is well-known for performing the world’s first human-to-human heart transplant in 1967. One reason he got a jump on the competition, Mezrich notes, is that South Africa defined death as the moment when two doctors declared a patient dead.

A few months later, in the United States, where brain death had not yet been defined, Dr. David Hume and Dr. Dick Lower removed the heart of Bruce Tucker, a black man who showed no brain function after a head injury, for a transplant.

Tucker’s family, upset that his heart and kidneys had been taken without their consent, sued. They were represented by attorney Douglas Wilder, who became America’s first black governor, in Virginia. A jury found the doctors not liable, but Mezrich believes they made a mistake.

“Regardless of the outcome of this trial, a great disservice was done to Bruce Tucker and his family,” he writes.

Dr. Thomas Starzl, perhaps the best known American transplant pioneer, was called a murderer by colleagues in the 1960s for attempting liver transplants on high-risk patients, including children, who died on the operating table.

“You couldn’t do what they did now,” Mezrich said of Hume, Lower, Starzl and others. “You’d get fired or arrested.”

Losses

In the book, Mezrich is forthright about his own flaws, such as becoming “desensitized” to patients as an overworked resident, when he regarded patients as “standing in the way of my accomplishing these tasks.”

He rues killing an elderly woman as a resident, apparently by puncturing her lung while trying to place a central line near her heart. “We call this a clean kill,” he writes. “No doubt about who was responsible.”

In what he calls another medical error later in his career, Mezrich forgot an important step during an operation on a man who had received a liver transplant. The next day, Mezrich “was going over the case in my brain the way a professional golfer goes through each shot in a round of golf, when suddenly I said out loud, ‘I never tied the other end of the duct shut!’”

He took the man back to the OR and closed the duct, and the man is doing well today, Mezrich writes. Though the vast majority of his surgeries are successes, he agonizes over the failures.

“We have many victories, but the losses are the ones we never forget,” Mezrich writes.

Case studies

Using only first names, Mezrich writes about Michaela Layton, a white woman from Spring Green who received a liver from C.L. Phillips, a black man from Rockford, Illinois. Phillips had spent time in jail and died in a car crash while fleeing from a shooting at a nightclub. Layton has become a transplant advocate, spreading “teachable moments: we are all the same on the inside,” Mezrich writes.

When Jason Letizia, a 30-year-old high school history teacher, needed a liver transplant, a liver became available from a brain-dead donor in his 60s. Mezrich had to decide whether to accept the less-than-ideal older liver or wait for a younger one and risk Letizia dying during the delay.

Mezrich took the older liver. It lasted about four years, and Letizia died after a second liver transplant. Mezrich still isn’t sure he made the right decision. “You’re never wrong if you follow the system, but it doesn’t always feel right,” he said.

Lisa, 41, whose last name was not available, had alcoholic cirrhosis. She reported being sober for more than six months, which is required to get a liver transplant. After receiving a new liver, she said she didn’t use alcohol again, but later acknowledged some drinking. Less than five years later, she died, apparently from damage to her liver from alcohol.

The transplant team wasn’t fully equipped to address her alcoholism, Mezrich said.

“Lisa didn’t die of liver disease; she died of mental illness,” he writes. “We celebrate, and pay for, the big, sexy interventions … But what really matters, and yet what our health care system doesn’t prioritize, is the day-to-day caring for chronic disease.”

For people wondering what it’s like to work in an operating room, Mezrich provides illuminating details. His hands cramp from ice used to preserve organs. It takes him two years of stitching vessels together before he develops the muscle memory needed to sew without thinking. His OR music preference: Tupac on Pandora. At the end of a kidney transplant, urine squirts onto his hands, a sign the organ is working as it should. “What a beautiful sight!” he writes.

The operating room is a high-stakes environment, but it can be the most relaxing part of his job, said Mezrich, whose wife, Dr. Gretchen Schwarze, is also a surgeon at UW Hospital. Their daughters Sam, 13, and Kate, 11, attend Hamilton Middle School.

“In the OR, you’re in control,” Mezrich said. “All the unknown happens once you’re out of the OR.”

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#brain death #bruce tucker #christiaan barnard #current health news usa #david hume #dick lower #gretchen schwarze #healthcare news usa #josh mezrich #kidney transplant #latest health news usa #liver transplant #organ transplantation #organ transplants #thomas starzl #transplant #uw hospital #willem kolff #Health News

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