Todd and Julie Chrisley, stars of the reality show “Chrisley Knows Best” and its spinoffs, were once the picture of the American Dream: A beautiful home, a big family and a thriving business.
But what the cameras didn’t show was an unfolding drama involving bank fraud, tax evasion and obstruction of justice.
Todd was born in Georgia in 1969 and then grew up in Westminster, South Carolina. He married his high school sweetheart, Teresa Terry, and together they had two kids before divorcing in 1996. In the same year his divorce from Terry was finalized, Todd married Julie.
He made a fortune through Chrisley Asset Management, a real estate company he founded in Georgia. The success of the business combined with Todd’s personality and large family made him a perfect candidate for reality TV.
Even before the Chrisleys began their reality show in 2014, they had financial problems. In 2012, Todd filed for bankruptcy protection. Explaining the filing, his lawyer <a href="https://people.com/tv/chrisley-knows-best-inside-todd-chrisleys-45-million-bankruptcy-case/#:~:text=After%20a%20large%20business%20investment,have%20been%20fine%2C%20financially.%E2%80%9D">told People</a>,:“He guaranteed a real estate development loan and it failed. He was on the hook for $30 million. If he hadn’t had that happen, he would have been fine, financially.”
The Department of Justice (DOJ), however, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr/reality-tv-stars-convicted-fraud-and-tax-evasion?ftag=YHF4eb9d17">explained</a> that the Chrisleys — prior to their reality show — “conspired to defraud community banks in the Atlanta area to obtain more than $30 million in personal loans.”
With the help of a business partner, <a href="https://popculture.com/reality-tv/news/todd-chrisley-ex-business-partner-mark-braddock-claims-had-affair/">Mark Braddock</a>, the Chrisleys “submitted false bank statements, audit reports, and personal financial statements to banks to obtain the millions of dollars in fraudulent loans,” the DOJ wrote.
The Chrisleys used the money from the fraudulent loans to live a life of luxury, buying expensive homes, cars and clothes, according to the DOJ. Once the money was spent, Todd filed for bankruptcy in order to avoid repaying the money; he listed $4.2 million in assets and $49.4 million in debt, according to People.
A court-appointed trustee, Jason Pettie, became suspicious of the bankruptcy filing, believing the Chrisleys were potentially hiding wealth. In February 2014, Pettie filed a complaint alleging that Todd transferred wealth to Julie to hide assets.
<a href="https://people.com/tv/chrisley-knows-best-inside-todd-chrisleys-45-million-bankruptcy-case/">According to People</a>, Pettie wrote: “Neither [Chrisley nor his wife, Julie] has been employed since 2012. However, they continue to live in lavish residences, drive expensive vehicles and travel extensively.”
Todd’s attorney, Robert Furr, insisted at the time that his client was cooperating and “not hiding assets.”
One of the issues Pettie brought up was how much the Chrisleys allegedly spent on clothes. In a promo for “Chrisley Knows Best,” Todd claimed that his family sometimes spends “$300,000 or more” a year on clothing, reported People. When filing for bankruptcy, however, Todd claimed his clothes were worth about $650. Pettie looked at receipts from several high-end stores and discovered Todd spent thousands on clothes, much more than he claimed.
Furr responded at the time by saying the Chrisleys buy used clothes.
Todd and Julie remained under suspicion for years, until 2017 when their problems expanded. WSB-TV <a href="https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/north-fulton-county/state-issues-liens-against-reality-star-after-channel-2-investigation/505362349/">reported</a> at the time that the Chrisleys owed nearly $800,000 in taxes to the state of Georgia and had declared their residency on numerous public records before moving to Nashville, Tennessee, in 2016. One of Todd’s sons, Kyle, even told the outlet that his dad bragged about the situation.
“I think he’s trying to hide money,” Kyle Chrisley said. “He doesn’t like to pay what he owes.”
In 2018, Todd sued Homebanc Mortgage Corporation, Radar Online <a href="https://radaronline.com/exclusives/2019/08/todd-chrisley-blamed-business-partner-morgage-forgery-before-indictment-scandal/">reported</a>, alleging a “former business partner,” presumably Mark Braddock, forged Todd’s name on the mortgage and made some payments on his behalf.
“Plaintiff did not sign the Mortgage or the accompanying documents and the same contains a forgery of Plaintiff’s name,” Todd alleged in court documents, according to the outlet. “Plaintiff believes that a former business partner signed his name on the Mortgage and made various payments on the Mortgage on his behalf.”
Todd also claimed that the same business partner was the reason he had to file for bankruptcy protection in 2012.
In 2019, the Chrisleys were indicted “on charges of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and tax evasion,” Insider <a href="https://www.insider.com/who-are-the-chrisleys-reality-tv-family-tax-fraud-case-2022-5">reported</a>. 
Following the indictment, Todd posted a statement on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B1FBsnfn_4q/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;ig_rid=e8b69632-0b5c-4d0e-98ae-70de4e3e737c">Instagram</a> and blamed “a trusted employee” for the family’s problems.
“It all started back in 2012, when we discovered that a trusted employee of ours had been stealing from us big time. I won’t go into details, but it involved all kinds of really bad stuff like creating phony documents, forging our signatures, and threatening other employees with violence if they said anything. We even discovered that he illegally bugged our home.”
Todd continued, saying that to “get revenge,” the employee “took a bunch of his phony documents to the U.S. Attorney’s office and told them we had committed all kinds of financial crimes, like tax evasion and bank fraud.” The post goes on to say that they explained the situation and the U.S. Attorney’s office stopped pursuing the case, but the employee took the information to a different set of investigators, who reopened the case and granted him immunity in exchange for his testimony.
At trial, the Chrisleys called Donna Cash, a woman who worked at Todd’s asset management company, to testify on their behalf. She testified that Braddock had her send fake financial documents to loan companies and lied about the companies, but said she stopped following his orders when the Chrisleys were about to lose their home, <a href="https://www.insider.com/todd-chrisleys-employee-testified-ruining-his-life-2022-5">according</a> to Insider.
“I did some bad things but that was one thing I wasn&#8217;t going to do,” Cash testified, adding that she called Todd to come back from vacation early so he wouldn’t come home to a foreclosed house.
She further testified that “both Mark and I were lying to [Todd] about everything that was going on.”
Todd reportedly started investigating the situation, using Cash to keep him informed about Braddock’s deeds, Insider reported.
During cross-examination, prosecutors noted that Cash was allowed to work for the Chrisleys for years after Todd allegedly discovered she had been helping commit fraud against him. They also played Cash’s previously recorded testimony, which differed from what she said in court.
After a three-week trial, a jury convicted the Chrisleys of bank fraud and tax evasion.
“The jury found that Todd and Julie Chrisley committed multiple fraud schemes for several years and their accountant, Peter Tarantino, filed false corporate tax returns on their behalf,” U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan said in <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr/reality-tv-stars-convicted-fraud-and-tax-evasion">a statement</a>. “This office and our partner agencies will continue to vigorously investigate and prosecute white collar criminals who flout the law.”
While the Chrisleys were found guilty of tax evasion and conspiring to defraud community banks, the couple’s accountant, Peter Tarantino, was convicted on several charges related to taxes. Julie was also convicted of obstruction of justice for submitting a fraudulent document attempting to cover up one of her and Todd’s crimes.
Braddock received immunity for providing evidence against the Chrisleys.
The Chrisleys and Tarantino will be sentenced on October 6, 2022.

Short – Will the Chrisley Family See Jail Time After their conviction_

Reality Bites: The Rise And Fall Of The Chrisley Family Empire

Hollywood

Readers Pass

Reality TV

Amina and Sarah Said were teenagers on New Year’s Eve 2007. Amina, 18, and Sarah, 17, had been allegedly abused by the father for years, both physically and sexually. Their father, Yaser Said, a devout Muslim, would monitor their communications and spy on them when they left the house. He even spied on Sarah at her after-school job and grew angry because she was apparently smiling at customers too much.
When Amina began dating a young man who was not Islamic, Said moved his family miles away. Amina and her boyfriend, Joseph Moreno, made plans to run away together, fearing Said would kill Amina over their relationship.
Shortly after Christmas 2007, the girls fled Said with their mother, Patricia. Said managed to convince Patricia to bring the girls back. Sarah agreed to return, but Amina sought refuge at a friend’s house and refused to leave.
On January 1, 2008, Said managed to convince the girls to get into his taxi cab, saying he was going to take them out to eat. Instead, he drove them to Irving, Texas, where he allegedly shot the girls and abandoned them to die in his car. Amina died instantly due to her wounds, but Sarah held on long enough to call 911 and tell them that her father had shot her and that she was dying.
The sisters’ great-aunt, Gail Gattrell, described the deaths as an “honor killing,” CBS News <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/dfw/news/yaser-said-pre-trial-hearing/">reported</a>. Honor killings refer to the murder of a woman by a relative in an effort to protect the family honor, the outlet noted.
Said fled and became a fugitive for 12 years, getting placed on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list in 2014.
In 2017, a maintenance worker called in a tip that put the FBI on Said’s trail, CBS <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/dfw/news/maintenance-workers-tip-led-to-arrest-of-capital-murder-suspect-yaser-said/">reported</a> at the time. The maintenance worker had tried to open an apartment, belonging to Islam Yaser-Abdel Said, the 32-year-old son of Yaser Said and a brother to Sarah and Amina. A middle-aged Middle Eastern man allowed the maintenance worker into the apartment to repair a water leak, whom the worker later identified to his boss as Said. The two contacted the FBI and searched the apartment, but Islam fled. He was found 12 days later.
But it wasn’t until three years later that everyone involved was arrested. Islam and Yassein Said, Yaser’s brother, were arrested for concealing a person from arrest.
&#8220;For years, Islam and Yassein Said — Sarah and Amina&#8217;s own brother and uncle – allegedly harbored the girls&#8217; killer,&#8221; U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy Cox said at the time. &#8220;In concealing Yaser Said from arrest, not only did these men waste countless law enforcement hours in the hunt for a brutal fugitive, they also delayed justice for Sarah and Amina. Thankfully, their day of reckoning has finally arrived. We are hopeful all three arrests will bring a measure of comfort to the girls&#8217; mother, relatives, and friends.&#8221;
They were staying at a home purchased in Yassein’s daughter’s name. The home was under surveillance and authorities watched Yassein and Israel leave trash bags in shopping center garbage cans. Agents seized the bags and sent them to the FBI Field Office, which allowed them to obtain a search warrant for the home. There they found Yaser Said and arrested him. Yassein and Islam were arrested soon after.
A pre-trial hearing was supposed to take place on June 30, but Judge Chika Anyiam announced that it would be postponed, CBS <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/dfw/news/yaser-said-pre-trial-hearing/">reported</a>. Said then asked if he could read from prepared remarks, but after consulting with his attorneys, said nothing. He was then escorted out of the courtroom. It is unclear why the hearing was postponed.

Police Line – Crime Scene

Man Accused In ‘Honor Killings’ Of His Daughters And Was On The Run For 12 Years Has Pre-Trial Hearing Postponed

Crime

Honor Killing

Murder

Investigators have found a long lost warrant from 1955 that charged a white woman for her part in Emmett Till’s 1955 kidnapping and murder.
The investigators were searching through the basement of a Mississippi courthouse basement believed to have evidence regarding Till’s lynching, a crime that has captivated the nation for nearly 70 years. They found documents in boxes organized by decade, the Associated Press <a href="https://apnews.com/49708de557faf747ec3e9fa8c021e9cd">reported</a>, but were unsure where exactly the August 29, 1955, warrant would be.
“They narrowed it down between the ’50s and ’60s and got lucky,” Leflore County Circuit Clerk Elmus Stockstill told the AP.
The warrant is for the arrest of “Mrs. Roy Bryant,” now Carolyn Bryant Donham, who accused Till of making inappropriate advances toward her back in 1955. A relative of Till who was in the store where Donham worked said Till had whistled at her. Donham claimed in court that Till grabbed her and made an inappropriate comment.
Donham’s then husband, Roy Bryant, and J.W. Milam kidnapped Till, beat him, and shot him in the head. They then dumped his body in a river. The two were arrested but acquitted by an all-white male jury in Mississippi in an era before the Civil Rights movement, so no one has been held accountable for one of the most famous false accusations of all time.
Till’s cousin, Deborah Watts, leads the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation with her daughter, Teri. She and Till’s other relatives want authorities to serve Donham with the decades old warrant.
“Serve it and charge her,” Teri told the AP.
The outlet noted that a woman, believed to be Donham, pointed Till out to her husband and his friend who ended up killing him.
Back in 1955, the arrest warrant for Donham was publicized, but the Leflore County sheriff told reporters at the time that he didn’t want to “bother” her because she was a mother of two young children.
District Attorney Dewayne Richardson wouldn’t comment on the warrant to the AP, but did point to the Department of Justice’s report in December saying it <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/justice-department-finds-no-proof-emmett-tills-accuser-lied">found no evidence</a> that Donham had ever lied about Till and that prosecuting her would not be possible.
Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks told the outlet that he hadn’t previously heard of the warrant and that “nothing was said about a warrant” when the former district attorney reinvestigated the case half a decade earlier.
“I will see if I can get a copy of the warrant and get with the DA and get their opinion on it,” Banks said.
Even before the warrant was found, relatives of Till were calling for Donham to be prosecuted, The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/emmett-tills-relatives-want-accuser-prosecuted-for-role-in-his-lynching">reported</a>. Relatives <a href="https://apnews.com/article/mississippi-kidnapping-emmett-till-39353359ca624e3914144a8e61627649">told</a> the AP in April that they wanted Donham prosecuted for murder for her role in Till’s death, but an attorney for the family suggested that since the kidnapping warrant apparently was never dismissed, it could still be used to arrest Donham.
“This warrant is a stepping stone toward that,” said Jaribu Hill, the attorney representing Till’s relatives. “Because warrants do not expire, we want to see that warrant served on her.”
The AP, however, noted how difficult it would be to prosecute Donham today.
“Witnesses have died in the decades since Till was lynched, and it’s unclear what happened to evidence collected by investigators,” the outlet reported.
Still, Till’s relatives want Donham held responsible.
“Mississippi is not the Mississippi of 1955, but it seems to still carry some of that era of protecting the white woman,” said Deborah Watts, a distant cousin of Till.

Emmett Till

Investigators Find 1955 Warrant To Arrest Emmett Till’s Accuser, Family Wants It Served

Investigators Find 1955 Warrant To Arrest Emmett Till’s Accuser, Carolyn Bryant Donham, Family Wants It Served

false accusations

True Crime

A <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/texas">Texas</a> woman who was charged with <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/murder">killing</a> elite cyclist Anna Moriah “Mo” Wilson was caught in Costa Rica on Wednesday after being on the run for more than a month.
Kaitlin Marie Armstrong, 34, is accused of shooting Wilson in Austin, Texas, on May as part of a love triangle gone wrong. U.S. Marshals, working with Homeland Security Investigations, learned that Armstrong boarded a flight in New Jersey by using a fraudulent passport and landed in Costa Rica on May 18 – one week after Wilson was murdered and one day after an arrest warrant was issued for Armstrong’s arrest, NBC News <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/suspect-texas-murder-elite-cyclist-anna-moriah-mo-wilson-arrested-cost-rcna36150">reported</a>.
&#8220;The Marshals Service elevated the Kaitlin Armstrong investigation to major case status early in this investigation, which likely played a key role in her capture after a 43-day run,&#8221; Susan Pamerleau, Marshal for the Western District of Texas, said in <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/06/30/metro/alleged-killer-vermont-cyclist-is-captured-costa-rica/?camp=bg:brief:rss:MSN&amp;rss_id=MSN_rss_brief">a statement</a> to The Boston Globe. “This is an example of combining the resources of local, state, federal and international authorities to apprehend a violent fugitive, bring an end to that run and hopefully a sense of closure to the victim’s family.”
“Wilson, 25, was a mountain biking and gravel racer who won several races earlier this year and resigned her position at a bike company to pursue full-time racing. She was expected to win the May 14 Gravel Locos race in Hico shortly before her death,” the outlet reported.
Armstrong is suspected of killing Wilson because they were both romantically connected to the same man, professional cyclist Colin Strickland. Strickland and Armstrong dated for three years before taking a break. During that time, Strickland began to see Wilson. The relationship lasted just a few weeks, and Strickland and Armstrong got back together a month later.
In January, Armstrong apparently learned about Strickland’s relationship with Wilson and “became furious and was shaking in anger,&#8221; a friend of Armstrong told NBC.
An affidavit filed in relation to the federal case against Armstrong described evidence that Armstrong had allegedly committed the murder.
“According to a witness, Armstrong expressed a desire to kill [Wilson] in January 2022, based on a personal grievance toward [Wilson],” the affidavit said, according to the Globe. “A surveillance camera recorded what appears to be Armstrong’s vehicle near the scene of [Wilson’s] murder at the approximate time the murder occurred.”
The filing also said that a pistol belonging to Armstrong had been retrieved from her home during a search and that “Laboratory test-firing of Armstrong’s pistol confirmed that it fired the spent shell casings that [Austin police] found at the scene of the murder.
Wilson was a star skier through college before switching to cycling, gravitating toward “gravel racing,” described as a sport sitting between road cycling and mountain biking. She was favored to win a 157-mile race on May 14, but was shot and killed days earlier, on May 11.
Police quickly honed in on Armstrong and brought her in for questioning. Days later, on May 14, Armstrong flew from Austin, Texas, where Wilson was killed, to Houston, and then from Houston to LaGuardia Airport in New York. From there she traveled to Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and then flew to San Jose, Costa Rica. A homicide warrant for Armstrong’s arrest was issued on May 18, the day she flew to Costa Rica. On May 25, a federal warrant was issued charging her with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
Armstrong was found at a hostel in Santa Teresa Beach in Provincia de Puntarenas, the Globe reported.

Group of blurred riders in a mass participation cycle race

Woman Who Went On The Run After Allegedly Killing Boyfriend’s Ex Caught In Costa Rica

Fugitive Kaitlin Armstrong, Suspected Of Killing Cyclist Anna Wilson Over A Love Triangle, Caught In Costa Rica

Texas

Journalism is a tough field. 
While there are more outlets today with much larger budgets than there were even 20 or 30 years ago, competition is still fierce. And the competition to be the best, to write the most exciting story, or to make the biggest waves, is even fiercer.
That struggle has led many to wholly make up sources or quotes, or even entire stories.
Below are 14 journalists who famously fabricated their stories and were subsequently caught.
<h4>Stephen Glass</h4>
Stephen Glass is perhaps the most famous example of a fabulist, hitting all three notes when it comes to faking stories. He made up sources, he made up quotes for those fake sources, and he made up entire stories. The most famous he fabricated,  titled “Hack Heaven,” led to his ultimate downfall.
As Vanity Fair <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/1998/09/bissinger199809">reported</a> in detail back in 1998, Glass invented a tech company called Jukt Micronics and wrote as if he witnessed its attempt to hire a teenage hacker. When Forbes began questioning the story, The New Republic, which employed Glass and published the story, started digging deeper. No one could find a company called Jukt Micronics, which Glass had claimed was a big California software company.
To aid in his deception, Glass had his brother pretend to be an executive at Jukt in order to sell it as a real company. Glass also created a cheap website for the company on his work computer. He even took his editor to the place where he said the attempted hiring had occurred, yet people there discounted his story. Glass maintained that he was telling the truth for weeks until finally admitting he wasn’t at the conference, but stopped short of admitting he had completely made up the story.
He was ultimately fired by The New Republic and, years later, attempted to become a lawyer, but his past has kept him from passing the bar.
<h4>Jayson Blair</h4>
Jayson Blair became a star reporter for The New York Times several years after Glass’s fabrications were discovered. In October 2002, however, public officials and others began questioning his reporting in relation to the D.C. sniper and other national stories, the Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-record-times-reporter-who-resigned-leaves-long-trail-of-deception.html?pagewanted=all&amp;src=pm">reported</a> after its investigation of Blair’s work. 
The paper discovered that he fabricated quotes and lied to editors about being in cities where events happened when he was actually far away in New York City. He also used the work of other outlets to make it look as if he had traveled for stories. Plagiarism accusations were also lodged. 
In one example, Blair wrote about two wounded Marines at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and said one had &#8221;questioned the legitimacy of his emotional pain as he considered his comrade in the next bed, a runner who had lost part of his leg to a land mine in Iraq.&#8221; As the Times noted, Blair made up the entire scene, even the claim that he was in Bethesda. He did speak to one of the subjects, but over the phone, not in person. The subject, Lance Cpl. James Klingel, also told Times investigators that he didn’t say most of what Blair attributed to him.
In order to make it appear as though he was really in the location he claimed, Blair used descriptions from other news outlets, such as The Washington Post, without attribution.
Blair resigned from the Times in 2003.
<h4>Janet Cooke</h4>
Janet Cooke remains the only person ever forced to return the Pulitzer Prize, which she won in 1981 for her expose, “Jimmy’s World,” for The Washington Post. The story profiled an eight-year-old heroin addict in Washington, D.C., referred to as “Jimmy,” whom Cooke described in detail. 
Then-D.C. Mayor Marion Barry launched a search for the young boy, but when he couldn’t be found, Barry falsely claimed the city knew who the boy was and was treating him for his addiction. The mayor announced Jimmy had died soon after.
Cooke won the Pulitzer prize for the story, but two days later, the Post admitted the story was not true. It was also discovered that Cooke lied about her credentials, claiming she had a degree from Vassar College and that she had received a master’s degree from the University of Toledo. She also claimed she had received a journalism award when she worked at the Toledo Blade. In reality, Cooked attended Vassar for only one year and only had a bachelor’s degree from the University of Toledo.
<h4>Jack Kelly</h4>
Jack Kelly resigned from USA Today in 2004 after <a href="https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/2004-03-18-2004-03-18_kelleymain_x.htm">an investigation</a> discovered “strong evidence that Kelley fabricated substantial portions of at least eight major stories, lifted nearly two dozen quotes or other material from competing publications, lied in speeches he gave for the newspaper and conspired to mislead those investigating his work.”
The paper’s investigation found that in 2000, Kelly took a photo of a Cuban hotel worker and claimed she had died while trying to flee the country by boat. The woman was actually alive and had not tried to flee the country.
The paper found that Kelly’s fabrications were “sweeping and substantial,” and wrote that evidence contradicted many of his claimed experiences, including a 2003 article where he said he had joined a high-speed hunt for Osama bin Laden.
<h4>Michael Finkel</h4>
Michael Finkel was fired from The New York Times in 2002 – nearly a year before Blair’s resignation – after he admitted to fabricating a story titled “Is Youssouf Malé A Slave?” Malé was a real person, but Finkel used information from several boys – and the photo of someone else – in his article while claiming it was a profile of just one boy.
Finkel had been investigating child slavery in Africa, but what he found didn’t support what he pitched to the Times, so he used the information he learned from multiple people to build a composite character he claimed was Malé.
<h4>Juan Thompson</h4>
Juan Thompson was fired from The Intercept in November 2015 after the outlet found he had fabricated quotes and even created an email account impersonating a fake source in an attempt to fool his editors. Betsy Reed, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief, issued <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/02/02/a-note-to-readers/">a statement</a> after Thompson was fired describing his fabrication:
<blockquote>&#8220;An investigation into Thompson’s reporting turned up three instances in which quotes were attributed to people who said they had not been interviewed. In other instances, quotes were attributed to individuals we could not reach, who could not remember speaking with him, or whose identities could not be confirmed. In his reporting Thompson also used quotes that we cannot verify from unnamed people whom he claimed to have encountered at public events. Thompson went to great lengths to deceive his editors, creating an email account to impersonate a source and lying about his reporting methods.&#8221;</blockquote>
In one example, Thompson appears to have invented a cousin of a mass shooter, who will not be named per The Daily Wire policy. Family members of the shooter said they did not know about the alleged cousin.
<h4>Jay Forman</h4>
In 2001, Slate published a sensational story from author Jay Forman, who claimed to have traveled with a “monkey fisherman” to one of the Florida Keys. Forman explained how the fisherman would stay on his boat and cast a line to Lois Key, where rhesus monkeys were allegedly being held for research. The fisherman would catch a monkey with his line and drag it into the water and back to the boat.
It sounded fantastical to many who read it, and it was quickly picked apart by multiple outlets. Forman originally defended his story from accusations that it was fake. But after The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal investigated, Forman admitted he had made up the so-called monkey fishing, but had “visited the island and taunted the monkeys from offshore,” Slate’s Jack Shafer <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2007/02/slate-s-author-of-monkeyfishing-now-says-none-of-his-story-was-true.html">wrote</a> in 2007.
Shafer was prompted to write his 2007 article after Forman contacted him to admit that the entire story was fake and that he hadn’t even gone to the island.
<h4>Claas Relotius</h4>
Claas Relotius had written dozens of articles for the German newspaper Der Spiegel and won multiple awards before he resigned from the paper in 2018. 
Relotius was ultimately undone by Michele Anderson and Jake Krohn, who lived in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, the setting of one of the Der Spiegel author’s stories. Relotius had claimed the city had a sign at its border with a racist message telling “Mexicans” to “Keep Out.” In a lengthy <a href="https://medium.com/@micheleanderson/der-spiegel-journalist-messed-with-the-wrong-small-town-d92f3e0e01a7">post</a> on Medium, Anderson laid out numerous falsehoods in Relotius’ story, titled “Where they pray for Trump on Sundays.” From misreporting the basic landscape of Fergus Falls to what was playing at a movie theater to making up a coal plant employee, Anderson systematically broke down Relotius’ false reporting.
Relotius eventually confessed to fabricating stories and resigned. He also returned four of his journalism awards.
<h4>Nik Cohn</h4>
In 1976, Nik Cohn wrote <a href="http://nymag.com/nightlife/features/45933/">an article</a> for New York Magazine titled “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,” purportedly about disco culture in Brooklyn. The article became the basis for the movie “Saturday Night Fever,” that propelled John Travolta to stardom. Twenty years later, however, Cohn admitted that he had fabricated his original article and based his anecdotes on people who attended clubs in England, where he was born, rather than in New York City.
Cohn, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/magazine/nik-cohn-fever-dream.html">according to The New York Times</a>, reportedly “cringes” whenever he sees the movie and “is still queasy about this chapter of his career.”
<h4>Gabriela Miranda</h4>
Miranda is the latest reporter to resign over fabricated stories, with USA Today recently <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2022/06/16/usa-today-audit-reporter/7647731001/">announcing</a> it had deleted 23 of Miranda’s articles following an investigation. According to the newspaper: 
<blockquote>&#8220;The audit revealed that some individuals quoted were not affiliated with the organizations claimed and appeared to be fabricated. The existence of other individuals quoted could not be independently verified. In addition, some stories included quotes that should have been credited to others.&#8221;</blockquote>
The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/business/media/usa-today-fabricated-sources.html">reported</a> that a source familiar with the investigation said Miranda had created fake evidence to support her stories, including recordings of interviews she had allegedly done. But a different person involved in the investigation disputed the claim, the Times noted, saying instead that the paper couldn’t verify the identities of some of the people Miranda had allegedly interviewed.
<h4>Patricia Smith</h4>
Patricia Smith was a metro columnist for the Boston Globe until 1998, when the paper’s editors discovered she had made up people for her columns. Smith resigned and admitted to fabricating details in four columns.
<h4>Mike Barnicle</h4>
Two months after Smith resigned from the Globe, Barnicle was forced to do the same after it was discovered that he had plagiarized lines from comedian George Carlin’s best-selling books in one of his columns. Barnicle at first claimed he had never read Carlin’s book, yet he had previously promoted it during a live broadcast. 
The Globe’s investigation into Barnicle revealed had not actually spoken to parents of children with cancer for a 1995 column. Barnicle said the story was true but that he heard it from a nurse. A woman later came forward to acknowledge the story was about her family but said some of the details were wrong.
Barnicle is currently a senior contributor for MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
<h4>Christopher Newton</h4>
Christopher Newton was fired by the Associated Press in 2002 after the wire service reviewed his stories and could not confirm that multiple named sources existed. He cited names of people and said they worked for real places, such as Stanford University, yet his editors could not verify the sources. In other examples, he cited unverifiable organizations, like the “Education Alliance.”
Newton claimed his stories were accurate but didn’t provide evidence. He also provided the AP with a voice message that indicated he had fallen for a hoax for one of his stories, but no one could verify the message, The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2002/09/17/associated-press-fires-reporter-over-quotes/7a6e3d1d-b0fc-45b7-b4c6-66a7324f3fd9/">reported</a>.
<h4>Jonah Lehrer</h4>
Jonah Lehrer was a wunderkind. While still in his twenties, he published three non-fiction books and wrote for major publications such as The New York Times. In 2012, however, Lehrer was discovered to have fabricated and plagiarized quotes in his best-selling book, “Imagine: How Creativity Works.”
Freelance journalist Michael Moynihan ultimately <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/jonah-lehrers-deceptions">revealed</a> Lehrer’s deception, after becoming suspicious of the Dylan quotes in “Imagine.” Moynihan wrote that he looked for sources for Lehrer’s Dylan quotes but couldn’t find many, and in one case discovered that Lehrer had cobbled together two different Dylan quotes – said at different times – to make a single quote.
Lehrer told Moynihan that Dylan’s manager had given him an unreleased interview with the musician from a Martin Scorsese documentary.
Lehrer originally claimed that editing was the reason some of the quotes appeared inaccurate, but said he couldn’t find all their sources. Eventually, Lehrer confessed to fabricating the quotes, but claimed he had approximated the quotes as he remembered them and forgot to replace them.
The book was recalled and Lehrer resigned from The New Yorker just two months after he had been hired.
<h4>Bonus Scandals</h4>
No list of journalism scandals would be complete without mentioning Dan Rather, Walter Duranty, and Sabrina Rubin Erdely. They didn’t wholly fabricate their stories, but they didn’t vet them and published content that was undeniably false.
Rather presented forged documents as real in an effort to blast then-President George W. Bush’s military service, prompting the famous phrase “fake but accurate.” 
Duranty “reported” that there was no famine in the USSR in the early 1930s, relying on Joseph Stalin’s propaganda to bolster his claims. Nearly a century later, many still believe he should lose his Pulitzer for his reporting on the subject.
Finally, Erdely took the “believe women” mantra to the extreme when she recounted the story of a University of Virginia student who claimed to have been gang raped at a fraternity. Erdely didn’t properly vet the student’s claims, leading to multiple lawsuits against Rolling Stone, which published the story.
Ashe Schow is a reporter and columnist with bylines at the Federalist and the New York Observer. She has previously worked for Real Clear Investigations, the Washington Examiner, and the Heritage Foundation. You can follow Ashe on Twitter at @AsheSchow.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Short – USA Today Pulls 23 Articles For False Info

14 Journalists Who Famously Fabricated Stories – And Three More Involved In Major Journalism Scandals

Investigation

Journalism

Plagiarism

When Morgan Geyser was 12 years old, she and her friend Anissa Weier lured their sixth-grade classmate, Payton Leutner, to a park in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and stabbed her. Now, Geyser is asking the court to release her from a mental health facility.
The girls were having a sleepover prior to traveling to the park on that late spring day in 2014. Once there, Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times while Weier encouraged her. Geyser and Weier left the scene, but Leutner survived and managed to crawl her way out of the woods, eventually found by a bicyclist who called for help. Geyser and Weier were picked up by police later in the day.
The two girls told police that they believed the fictional monster “Slender Man” would kill their families if they didn’t kill Leutner. The girls said that when police found them, they were on their way to Slender Man’s mansion in northern Wisconsin, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/wisconsin-fa027d4a4218a8abb9dbce9cddceadfa">according to the Associated Press</a>.
Geyser was charged with attempted first-degree homicide, while Weier was charged with attempted second-degree homicide for her role in the crime. The two girls were set to be tried as adults, due to the nature of the crime.
In 2017, Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide, and a jury found her “not guilty by mental disease or defect.” She was sent to the Winnebago Mental Health Institute as part of her 25 years to life sentence. In September 2021, Weier <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/01/us/slender-man-stabbing-anissa-weier-released.html">was granted</a> a conditional release and ordered to wear a GPS monitor while living with her father, the AP reported.
Geyser, now 20, asked Waukesha County Judge Michael Bohren earlier this month to release her as well. Like Weier, Geyser has spent four years in a mental health facility, though she was sentenced to 40 years to life. Complicating Geyser’s sentence was a diagnosis of schizophrenia, which she inherited from her father. At the time of the stabbing, Geyser had not been diagnosed yet.
“A psychiatrist hired by her attorneys previously testified that Geyser believed she could communicate telepathically with Slender Man and could see and hear other fictional characters, including unicorns and characters from the Harry Potter and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. She also believed she had ‘Vulcan mind control,&#8217;” the AP <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/wisconsin-girl-to-be-sentenced-for-slender-man-stabbing/ar-BBIxug3">reported</a> when Geyser was sentenced in 2018.
“During a hearing Thursday, Bohren appointed three doctors to evaluate Geyser’s mental state and to submit their reports by Aug. 26. Prosecutors and defense attorneys will return to court on Sept. 12 to schedule another hearing to review the reports,” the AP reported this week.
If Geyser is released, she will likely have similar restrictions as Weier.
In 2019, Leutner, the victim, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/slender-man-stabbing-victim-speaks-publicly-time-situation/story?id=66268385">told</a> ABC’s “20/20” that she has “come to accept all of the scars that I have.”
&#8220;It&#8217;s just a part of me. I don&#8217;t think much of them. They will probably go away and fade eventually,&#8221; she told the outlet.
Leutner said at the time that she had befriended Geyser and stayed her friend because she seemed lonely, and that she considered Geyser her best friend prior to becoming friends with Weier. Leutner also said during that same interview that she would probably “thank” Geyser after being asked what she would like her attacker to know.
&#8220;I would probably, initially thank her,&#8221; Leutner said. &#8220;I would say, &#8216;Just because of what she did, I have the life I have now. I really, really like it and I have a plan. I didn&#8217;t have a plan when I was 12, and now I do because of everything that I went through.'&#8221;
&#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t think that someone who went through what I did would ever say that,&#8221; Leutner added. &#8220;But that&#8217;s truly how I feel. Without the whole situation, I wouldn&#8217;t be who I am.&#8221;

alien

‘Slender Man’ Stabber Seeks Release After Four Years In Mental Health Facility

Morgan Geyser, Who Tried To Murder Her Friend To Appease The Fictional 'Slender Man,' Asks To Be Released From Mental Health Facility

Waukesha

Wisconsin

It’s been eight months since <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/brian-laundrie">Brian Laundrie’s</a> remains were found in the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park, and his family’s attorney is just now releasing the notebook found with the body.
Laundrie, 23, is believed to have committed suicide after he went missing following the murder of his fiancée <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/gabby-petito">Gabby Petito</a>, whom Laundrie admitted to killing, according to the FBI. The existence of the notebook and Laundrie’s confession within was known back in October, but the exact contents have not been released until now.
&#8220;I ended her life,&#8221; Laundrie wrote, according to <a href="https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2022/06/Gabby-note-better.pdf">a copy</a> of the notebook <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/gabby-petito-murder-brian-laundries-notebook-confession-revealed">exclusively</a> provided to Fox News. &#8220;I thought it was merciful, that it is what she wanted, but I see now all the mistakes I made. I panicked. I was in shock.&#8221;
Laundrie went on to claim that Petito, who was 22 when Laundrie allegedly strangled her to death, had injured herself in a fall while they were visiting Wyoming, and that he killed her to take “away her pain.”
“Rushing back to our car trying to cross the streams of spread creek before it got too dark to see, to cold. I hear a splash and a scream,” Laundrie wrote, adding that he carried her as far as he could but had to stop to make a fire to keep them warm when he couldn’t make it back to the couple’s van.
He claimed Petito “had a small bump on her forehead that eventually got larger” and that she “continually made sounds of pain, laying next to her she said little lapsing between violent shakes, gasping in pain, begging for an end to her pain.”
Laundrie also referred to Petito’s death as his “mistake,” and insisted that he was not ending his life “because of a fear of punishment but rather because I cant stand to live another day without her.”
Petito and Laundrie were driving across the country visiting national parks when Petito went missing. She was last seen alive in late August before her family reported her missing in early September, after Laundrie returned to his parents’ home in Florida without her. Laundrie’s family then reported him missing on September 17.
Petito’s body was found in Grand Teto National Park in Wyoming on September 19, 2021. Laundrie’s remains were found on October 20.
Patrick Reilly, an attorney for Petito’s family, <a href="https://people.com/crime/brian-laundrie-notebook-confession-killing-gabby-petito/?utm_source=facebook&amp;utm_medium=news_tab">told</a> People that Laundrie’s claims about killing Petito out of mercy due to an accident were “nonsense.”
&#8220;He is writing a letter as though he wants people to feel sorry for him,&#8221; Reilly told the outlet.
He also said that Laundrie’s confession wouldn’t do much to comfort Petito’s family. &#8220;I don&#8217;t think there is anything that can make them feel better about it.&#8221; He said.
Petito’s parents are <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gabby-petitos-parents-are-suing-brian-laundries-family">suing</a> Laundrie’s family, alleging the Laundries knew their son had killed the Petito’s daughter and tried to help him evade capture.
Laundrie’s family has said they have “no regrets” for the way they acted following Petito’s disappearance.
“What I knew, or what Chris and Roberta knew, we did not have to disclose, to any third party, and specifically to law enforcement, or the Petito family,” Laundrie family attorney Steven Bertolino <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/parents-of-gabby-petitos-murderer-have-no-regrets-for-what-they-did">said</a> on Wednesday. “I did everything the right way. We have no regrets. The parents did everything the right way, and they have no regrets.”
“I can tell you what I knew … perhaps, one day what Brian knew, but none of that’s gonna happen tonight on this show,” Bertolino added.

Gabby Petito memorials

‘I Ended Her Life’: Here’s What Brian Laundrie Wrote In His Notebook Before He Killed Himself

Brian Laundrie Confessed In Writing To Killing Gabby Petito

Brian Laundrie

Gabby Petito

If you followed comedy during the 80s or 90s, you certainly knew the work of comedian Phil Hartman. From his wide array of characters portrayed on “Saturday Night Live” &#8211; Ed McMahon, The Anal-Retentive Chef, Brian’s Dad, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton &#8211; to his voice work on “The Simpsons” and his many other roles in TV and film, Hartman was perhaps the most versatile and ubiquitous comedian in the decades leading up to the new millennium.
Known for his smarmy pitchman voice, his unflappable winning smile, and expert comedic timing, Hartman’s fame showed no signs of dissipating as the 1990s drew to a close. That all changed in an instant, however, on the night of May 28, 1998, when Hartman’s third wife, Brynn Omdahl Hartman, shot and killed him in his sleep before eventually taking her own life.
Phil Hartman was born in Brantford, Ontario, Canada on September 24, 1948. He didn’t initially set out to become a comedian. In the early 70s, Hartman worked as a roadie when he met and married his first wife, Gretchen Lewis, whom he divorced after only two years of marriage. He then returned to school and graduated from California State University-Northridge with a degree in graphic art, which he used to design album covers for some of music’s most iconic bands, including Steely Dan’s “Aja” album and rock supergroup Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s Celtic-style logo.
It wasn’t until 1975, when Hartman started attending comedy classes with the L.A. troupe known as The Groundlings, that his love for the stage awakened. During one of their performances, Hartman volunteered to join the cast on stage, launching his storied career. He was an instant natural.
“I never saw an audience member come up with that kind of excitement and energy…it was like a hurricane hit that stage, and I mean in a good way,” comedian and founding member of the troupe Tracy Newman <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-laughter-snl-simpsons-star-phil-hartmans-life/story?id=65642867">told</a> ABC News in 2019.
The Groundlings were so impressed with Hartman’s performance they invited him to tour with them while still taking their classes. During this time, he met Paul Reubens and helped create Reubens’ Pee-wee Herman character. Hartman co-wrote the script for “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” in 1985, and also played the character of Captain Carl on Reubens’ show “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.” In the early 80s, he married and divorced his second wife, Lisa Jarvis, who later described Hartman as “really two people” in an interview on “20/20.”
“He was the guy who wanted to draw and write and think and create and come up with ideas. He was the actor [and] entertainer, and then he was the recluse,” she said.
By age 36, Hartman began contemplating ending his acting career, as he was unable to get many parts. But after “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure&#8221; became a success, he reconsidered and began taking small roles in films and accepting work as a voice actor. His big break came in 1986, when Lorne Michaels hired Hartman as his latest cast member on “Saturday Night Live” for its 12th season, joining the likes of future comedy legends Dana Carvey, Jon Lovitz, and Dennis Miller. 

“Whatever he was going to imagine or say was nothing you could imagine or think of,” castmate Jon Lovitz told a biographer of Hartman, <a href="https://www.biography.com/news/phil-hartman-death-murder">according to Biography.com</a>. “He could do any voice, play any character, make his face look different without makeup. He was king of The Groundlings.”
Hartman became known for his impressions of Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, as well as his original characters like the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer and his voice work for SNL’s fake commercials. While on SNL, Hartman started voicing popular side characters on “The Simpsons,” including Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz.
About a year after he joined &#8216;SNL,&#8217; Hartman married his third wife, formerly Brynn Omdahl. In 1988, the couple had a son, Sean. After the birth, Hartman called his ex-wife, Lisa Jarvis, to say he was now a father. Jarvis wrote the couple to congratulate them and offered to babysit if they ever needed it. Years later, Jarvis told ABC that Brynn responded to the card with threats.
“I got a letter that was hair-curling, fury, rage and [a] death threat from Brynn,” Jarvis told ABC. “The gist of it was, ‘Don&#8217;t ever f&#8212;ing get near me or my family or I will hurt you. I never want to hear from you…never, ever, ever come near us or you will really be sorry.’”
Brynn’s anger issues were well known. She originally moved to L.A. to become a model and actress, but struggled to get work and became addicted to cocaine. She was sober when she met Hartman, but still had bouts of anger and jealousy. Brynn’s drug and alcohol addictions kept her in and out of rehab throughout their marriage, and, when combined with her antidepressant medication, resulted in violent outbursts.
Hartman’s lawyer and close friend, Steven Small, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-phil-hartman-19980529-20160521-snap-htmlstory.html">told</a> the Los Angeles Times in 1998, shortly after Hartman’s death, that Brynn “had trouble controlling her anger.&#8221;
&#8220;She got attention by losing her temper,&#8221; he said, noting the two had separated multiple times. &#8220;Phil said he had to&#8230;restrain her at times.&#8221;
Small <a href="https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1998-05-30-9805290375-story.html">told</a> the Sun Sentinel that same year that when Brynn started to argue with Hartman, he would attempt to defuse the situation by going to bed.
&#8220;They had a pattern of arguing at night and he would go to sleep and everything would be OK in the morning,&#8221; Small said. &#8220;I think he felt safe going to sleep, and he just shouldn&#8217;t have. I think she just lost control.&#8221;
It was during one of these episodes that Hartman lost his life.
On May 28, 1998, Brynn had dinner with a friend, went home, and started a fight with Hartman. As usual, Hartman went to bed to get away from Brynn and let her calm down, but that night, she grabbed a .38 Smith &amp; Wesson from the couple’s gun safe and shot Hartman in his head and chest while he slept, killing him instantly.
Brynn drank more alcohol and called her friend Ron Douglas. She was hysterical, and claimed Hartman left a note saying he’d be back later and that he was not in the house. Douglas said she should go back to sleep, but she instead drove to his home, drunk and screaming. Douglas invited her inside, all too aware of how she would respond if he challenged her in this state.
Once inside, Brynn collapsed on the floor. Douglas worried she had overdosed, but once he was able to get her to wake up, she ran to the bathroom to throw up. During this time, Brynn told Douglas multiple times that she killed Hartman, even showing him the gun. Douglas, however, didn’t believe her.
When Brynn was able to drive home, she asked Douglas to follow behind her. Back at the house, the two went upstairs, where Douglas found Hartman’s dead body. He called 911. Brynn’s friends came to the house and removed the couple’s two kids, 9-year-old Sean and 6-year-old Birgen. When the police arrived, Brynn locked herself in the bedroom and sat on the bed next to Hartman’s body. She called her sister, but when police knocked on the door, she hung up and took her own life.
Sean and Birgen went to live with Brynn’s sister and her husband following the deaths of their parents. Sean became an artist and musician, while Birgen built her own business. The Associated Press <a href="https://apnews.com/article/22708c9d9cb390a7b585e9a0152e0215">reported shortly after</a> Hartman’s death that the children would receive three separate payments from Hartman’s estimated $1.23 million estate. The first payment was made after each received their bachelor’s degree, the second payment came when they turned 30, and the final payment will be made when they turn 35.
For so many comedy fans, the tragic loss of Phil Hartman can still be felt today. He was revered by his contemporaries, loved by his fans, and earned his place in the comedy hall of fame. His eight seasons on SNL are still considered some of the best in the history of the show.
While many A-list comedy stars got their start on SNL &#8211; Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Mike Meyers &#8211; they all relied on versatile ‘wingmen’ who could hold their own in any sketch. Phil Hartman was as reliable a wingman as they come.
The views expressed in this piece are the authors own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Readers Pass – Short – True Crime- The Day Phil Hartman Died16x9

TRUE CRIME: The Tragic Murder Of ‘SNL’ Star Phil Hartman

Saturday Night Live

A northern <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/idaho">Idaho</a> man charged with <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/murder">murdering</a> a property caretaker and then microwaving the victim’s body parts received a break this week when a judge dismissed a cannibalism charge.
James “Jimmy&#8221; David Russell, 40, is accused of killing 70-year-old David Milton Flaget and then microwaving the body parts, wrapping them in plastic, and leaving Flaget&#8217;s body in a truck.
On Monday, 1st District Magistrate Judge Tera Harden said during a preliminary hearing that there was insufficient evidence to support the cannibalism charge against Russell. She did note, however, that the first-degree murder charge would move forward and suggesting there was enough evidence to charge Russell with mayhem, the Associated Press <a href="https://www.kxly.com/judge-drops-cannibalism-charge-in-northern-idaho-murder-case/">reported</a>.
“Mayhem” is <a href="https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/title18/t18ch50/sect18-5001/#:~:text=Idaho%20Statutes&amp;text=18%2D5001.,lip%2C%20is%20guilty%20of%20mayhem.">defined under Idaho law</a> as maliciously depriving another person of their body, or who disables, disfigures, or renders that body useless. It also specifically includes putting out someone’s eye and slitting their nose, ear, or lip.
Law &amp; Crime <a href="https://lawandcrime.com/crime/judge-dismisses-cannibalism-charge-in-case-of-idaho-man-who-allegedly-murdered-a-property-caretaker-and-microwaved-body-parts/">reported</a> that Russell is believed to have been the first true use of Idaho’s anti-cannibalism statute since it was adopted in 1990. If the charge had remained, Russell faced up to an additional 14 years in prison, though the murder charge alone carries the possibility of life in prison or the death penalty, the outlet noted.
On September 13, 2021, the Bonner County Sheriff’s Office published <a href="https://www.facebook.com/bonnercountysheriff1/photos/a.1456242128014115/2676556949315954/">a press release</a> on Facebook saying that three days earlier, sheriff’s deputies “responded to a call of a suspicious death” in Clark Fork, Idaho. At the scene, deputies found Flaget’s body wrapped in plastic inside a vehicle and had to break a window to gain entry. Inside the truck, allegedly, were bloody clothes. The AP reported that Flaget apparently died due to blunt force trauma to his head, noting that investigators found blood dripping from his truck when they arrived.
Investigators quickly located Russell, who was living on Flaget’s property at the time. An investigation “established probable cause” that Russell had killed Flaget and he was arrested and charged with the crime.
Subsequent reporting from Law &amp; Crime indicated that Russell was charged “thanks in part to observations and statements by his own aunt and uncle.”
The original police affidavit noted “post mortum [sic] mayhem . . . along the right thigh, anus and genitalia,” according to Law &amp; Crime. Inside Russell’s home on the property, “investigators found suspected human flesh, latex gloves, bloody newspapers, bloody duct tape pieces, cutting implements with suspected blood, [and] several areas of blood,” the affidavit said.
Another affidavit explained that investigators seized “a bowl and microwave containing apparent blood and tissue” from insider Russell’s apartment. Those items were tested and found to contain Flaget’s DNA.
The cannibalism charge stemmed from Russell allegedly telling authorities that he thought he could “cure his brain” if he ate Flaget’s remains,” Law &amp; Crime <a href="https://lawandcrime.com/crime/idaho-man-charged-with-murder-cannibalism-thought-eating-the-victim-would-cure-his-brain-reports/">reported</a>. He also reportedly got into an argument with his uncle, Mark, on the day of Flaget’s murder and later apologized in a voicemail, telling his uncle “Sorry . . . I might be a little sensitive — some sort of food I ate.”
The evidence to support the cannibalism charge, however, didn’t persuade Judge Harden.

Forensic Science

He Allegedly Murdered A Property Caretaker And Microwaved His Body Parts. A Judge Just Dismissed A Cannibalism Charge Against Him.

Cannibalism Charge Dismissed For Man Accused Of Murdering Property Caretaker And Microwaving His Body Parts

Idaho

In 1980, young couple Dean Clouse, 21, and Tina Linn, 17, moved from Florida to Texas with their new baby, Holly Marie, hoping Dean could find work as a carpenter in the Lone Star state.
The couple wrote home regularly, but in October, soon after they moved to Texas, those letters stopped. A few months later, People <a href="https://people.com/crime/inside-holly-marie-clouse-investigation-found-alive-40-years-disappearance-parents-murdered/?utm_source=facebook&amp;utm_medium=news_tab">reported</a>, the Clouse family “received a call from a stranger who said she was in Los Angeles and had information about Tina and Dean as well as a car — a 1978 two-door, red burgundy AMC Concord — she wanted to return in exchange for $1,000.”
Some family members traveled to Daytona Beach, Florida, where the car was located, and made contact with some purported members of a religious group, including a woman who referred to herself as “Sister Susan.”
&#8220;She stated that Tina and Dean had joined their religious group and no longer wanted to have contact with their families,&#8221; First Assistant Attorney General of Texas Brent Webster told People last week. &#8220;They were also giving up all of their possessions.&#8221;
Later, in January 1981, the remains of a man and woman were found in a heavily wooded area in Harris County, Texas. The man was bound, gagged, and beaten, while the woman was strangled. At the time, authorities couldn’t identify the remains, so they referred to them as “the Harris County Does.”
Three decades went by, without the Linn and Clouse families knowing what happened to their loved ones or Harris County knowing the identities of the remains. In 2011, the Harris County Medical Examiner’s office exhumed the bodies to retrieve DNA samples. The DNA showed that the remains were not related.
Misty Gillis, a senior forensic genealogist with Identifinders International, told People that she had been searching the Doe Network website for a case that was “a good fit for forensic genetic genealogy&#8221; when she found the Harris County Does.
&#8220;I was absolutely enamored with it because I thought it was like a love story,&#8221; she told the outlet. &#8220;This man and woman are found together, they&#8217;re similar age, you kind of start to think if they&#8217;re not related to each other, then what is the capacity they know each other? I wanted to know what the story was.&#8221;
Gillis and Allison Peacock, another forensic genetic genealogist and founder of FHD Forensics, teamed up to identify the remains with the help of a grant from audiochuck, true crime podcast producers. It took Gillis and Peacock just days to identify relatives of the remains.
&#8220;We were able to call [Dean&#8217;s] sister and find out, yes, he had been missing for 40 years, and he was married,&#8221; Peacock told People.
Clouse’s sister then asked Peacock if anyone had discovered what became of baby Holly.
&#8220;That was the biggest shock I&#8217;d ever had in my life,&#8221; Peacock told the outlet. &#8220;We were focused on finding them. It didn&#8217;t occur to us they would have had a child.&#8221;
It would be years before investigators discovered what happened to Holly Marie. In January, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the formation of a cold case task force to try to solve some of the state’s 20,000 unsolved murders. This task force began to look into Holly Marie’s disappearance, and just a few months later, found her alive and well, now 42 years old.
“Baby Holly has been located alive and well and is now 42 years of age. Holly has been notified of the identities of her biological parents and has been in contact with her extended biological family and they hope to meet in person soon,” Paxton’s office said in a <a href="https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-paxtons-cold-case-and-missing-persons-unit-locates-woman-who-has-been-missing-over">statement</a> on June 9.
People <a href="https://people.com/crime/holly-marie-clouse-left-at-church-women-religious-group/">reported</a> that investigators discovered that Holly had been left at an Arizona church in November 1980 by two women who were part of a nomadic religious group.
&#8220;They indicated the beliefs of their religion included the separation of male and female members,&#8221; Webster told the outlet, adding that the members were &#8220;practicing vegetarian habits and not using or wearing leather goods.&#8221;
Webster added that the family who ended up raising Holly were not suspects in her disappearance or parents’ murders. Authorities are still investigating those murders.
Meanwhile, Holly was able to meet her biological family in a video conference.

Side view of pram in an empty room

How Texas Police Found Holly Marie Clouse, 40 Years After Her Disappearance

Ken Paxton

March 30, 1981, should have been just another day for <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/ronald-reagan">President Ronald Reagan</a>. Just 69 days after his inauguration, the president was giving a <a href="https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/permanent-exhibits/assassination-attempt#:~:text=On%20March%2030%2C%201981%2C%20President,when%20several%20shots%20were%20fired.">speech</a> to about 5,000 members of the AFL-CIO at the Washington Hilton Hotel in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/washington">Washington, D.C.</a>
At around 2:30 p.m., Reagan left the hotel, waving to supporters as security walked him to his limousine. Waiting in the crowd, however, was John Hinckley Jr., a mentally ill young man with a .22 revolver and an intent to murder.
Hinckley, who was born in Ardmore, Oklahoma, in 1955, suffered from emotional problems and was prescribed anti-depressants and tranquilizers. In 1976, Hinckley saw the movie “Taxi Driver,” starring Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle, a mentally disturbed taxi driver who becomes obsessed with Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), who volunteers on the presidential campaign of Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris). Bickle repulses Betsy when he takes her to a porn theater on a date, and his attempts to apologize are rejected. Distraught by her rejection, Bickle has violent fantasies and begins buying guns. He also starts attending Palantine’s rallies to learn about his security, with the intent of assassinating the candidate. When Bickle finally makes his move, he&#8217;s stopped by Secret Service agents as he draws his gun. While all this is going on, Bickle is also attempting to save a child prostitute, played by Jodie Foster.
Hinckley became obsessed with Foster after watching the movie, and even moved to New Haven, Connecticut, to stalk her when she began attending Yale University. He took a Yale writing course and left love letters and poems in her mailbox. He also repeatedly called her and managed to speak with her twice, reportedly telling her he wasn’t a “dangerous person,” according to Hinckley’s <a href="http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hinckley/HBIO.HTM">biography</a> at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. Foster steered clear of the stalker who would one day make history.
In addition to Foster, Hinckley was also obsessed with the idea of assassination. After being rejected by Foster, he began thinking that if he could become a household name by assassinating the president of the United States, he may prove that he was worthy of her “respect and love.”
Reagan was not Hinckley’s first potential target. In 1980, Jimmy Carter was still president, so Hinckley began stalking him on the campaign trail. Hinckley was arrested by airport security in Nashville after they found handguns in his suitcases. The guns were confiscated, and he was fined $62.50.
Hinckley was not deterred. He purchased two new guns but began seeing a psychiatrist in the fall of 1980 after his parents insisted. Hinckley’s parents owned an oil company and were quite wealthy, and his new psychiatrist believed that the best way to help their son overcome what was believed to be emotional immaturity was to cut him off financially.
Hinckley was unable to find work and eventually made his way to Washington, D.C. on March 29, 1981. The next day, he wrote Foster <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110108054234/http:/www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hinckley/jfostercommun.HTM">a letter</a> detailing his plan to assassinate Reagan, who was inaugurated at the end of January that year.
“I will admit to you that the reason I&#8217;m going ahead with this attempt now is because I just cannot wait any longer to impress you,” Hinckley wrote. “I&#8217;ve got to do something now to make you understand, in no uncertain terms, that I am doing all of this for your sake!”
On March 30, Hinckley stepped out from a crowd of reporters outside the Hilton Hotel and fired six shots at Reagan and his security team. One bullet ricocheted off of Reagan&#8217;s limousine and struck the president under his left arm, <a href="https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/permanent-exhibits/assassination-attempt">according</a> to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. It was initially thought that Hinckley missed Reagan, until the president began coughing up blood and was taken to the hospital. It was later discovered that the bullet grazed one of the president’s ribs and became lodged in his rib just one inch from his heart. The injury left Reagan with a punctured lung and internal bleeding, resulting in a 12-day hospital stay.
Also injured in the attack were Press Secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy, and policeman Thomas Delahanty. Brady was hit in the head and became permanently disabled, requiring a wheelchair for the rest of his life and affecting his speech. He died on August 4, 2014, with a medical examiner <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/08/08/338949267/james-brady-s-death-is-ruled-a-homicide">ruling his death a homicide</a> resulting from Hinckley’s gunshot 33 years earlier.
Delahanty was struck in the back of his neck trying to protect Reagan, while McCarthy was struck in the abdomen. Both men survived and fully recovered.
Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and confined to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. One of his attorneys, Greg Craig, went on to become assistant to the President and White House special counsel under Bill Clinton and White House counsel under President Barack Obama. In 2019, he was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-heres-really-big-obama-admin-scandal-media-james-barrett">indicted</a> for lying to federal prosecutors about his work at a private law firm for the former president of Ukraine without registering as a foreign agent.
By 2011, Hinckley was allowed to leave the hospital for several days at a time to visit family in Virginia. In 2012, therapists in Virginia withdrew a plan that would allow Hinckley to leave the hospital and live full-time with his mother. At the time, the Department of Justice said Hinckley hadn’t changed and should remain in the hospital. Four years later, in 2016, Hinckley was released from St. Elizabeth’s to live with his mother and gain more privileges.
In September 2021, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman announced that Hinckley would be fully released without conditions if he continued to show he was “no longer a danger to himself or others,” The Associated Press <a href="https://apnews.com/article/john-hinckley-shootings-ronald-reagan-government-and-politics-010f86fce04b213a526e209eccfe6c47">reported</a>. Hinckley was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/time-to-rock-and-roll-would-be-reagan-assassin-john-hinckley-freed-announces-music-debut">granted his freedom</a> without any restrictions on June 15, 2022. He immediately attempted to enter the music industry, as he posted videos of himself performing covers and original songs on his YouTube page. At least one venue had originally booked him to perform but has since canceled, citing “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/not-worth-a-gamble-nyc-music-venue-cancels-performance-by-john-hinckley-jr-the-man-who-tried-to-assassinate-reagan">threats and hate</a>.”

President Ronald Reagan Waves To Onlookers Moments Before An Assassination Attempt By Jo

John Hinckley Jr.: The Now-Free Man Who Tried To Assassinate President Ronald Reagan

John Hinckley Jr.'s Attempted Assassination Of President Ronald Reagan

assassination

John Hinckley Jr.

Ronald Reagan

John Hinckley Jr., the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/john-hinckley-jr">man who attempted to assassinate</a> President Ronald Reagan decades ago, began his <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/time-to-rock-and-roll-would-be-reagan-assassin-john-hinckley-freed-announces-music-debut">unconditional release</a> on Wednesday, and immediately tried to enter the music industry.
Earlier this month, Hinckley <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnHinckley20/status/1533107600966950913?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">posted</a> an email address on Twitter for anyone who wants to “book a show or other offers” with him. While still serving his sentence for attempting to assassinate the president, Hinckley began posting original and cover songs to his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCck3J5KR3INUP1K-hrBe8iA/videos">YouTube channel</a>, which now has nearly 30,000 subscribers. Before he even began his unconditional release, he had booked a show at Market Hotel in Brooklyn, New York.
On Wednesday, however, the venue <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Ce1OeRErG1x/">announced</a> that it had canceled Hinckley’s performance, citing alleged “threats and hate.”
“We do believe that ex-cons and people with mental illness can recover, and that we should want them to maintain hope that they can better themselves and earn a chance to fully rejoin society,” the venue wrote in a lengthy Instagram post. “[B]ut we are living in dangerous times, and after being presented with and reflecting on some very real and worsening threats and hate facing our vulnerable communities – our family here in nightlife – and after seeing the nature of who this booking has antagonized, and who and what else those same folks are upset about: we don’t see the need to allow someone who did something awful to skip the line and play even our middle size independent community stage.”
The venue also acknowledged that Hinckley wouldn&#8217;t have sold tickets without his association with the assassination attempt.
“If we were going to host an event for the principle, and potentially put others at risk in doing so, it shouldn’t be for some stunt booking — no offense to the artist,” the venue added. “We might feel differently if we believed the music was important and transcended the infamy, but that’s just not the case here (though any artist can get there — even someone who committed awful crimes and suffered mental illness).”
“It is not worth a gamble on the safety of our vulnerable communities to give a guy a microphone and a paycheck from his art who hasn’t had to earn it, who we don’t care about on an artistic level, and who upsets people in a dangerously radicalized, reactionary climate,” the venue concluded.
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Hinckley attempted to assassinate President Reagan on March 30, 1981, later claiming he did so to get actress Jodie Foster’s attention. Reagan was wounded enough to spend 12 days in a hospital, after a bullet ricocheted off the presidential limousine and struck him under his left arm. Press Secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy, and policeman Thomas Delahanty were also wounded in the shooting. Brady, who died in 2014, spent the rest of his life partially paralyzed due to the attack.
Starting in 2016, Hinckley was given permission to live full-time with his mother, but was still required to attend therapy and had travel restrictions. On June 15, 2022, he began his unconditional release, writing on Twitter: “After 41 years 2 months and 15 days, FREEDOM AT LAST!!!”
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After 41 years 2 months and 15 days, FREEDOM AT LAST!!!
— John Hinckley (@JohnHinckley20) <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnHinckley20/status/1537105834571976704?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 15, 2022</a>
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John Hinckley Jr. Posing in Front of White House

‘Not Worth A Gamble’: NYC Music Venue Cancels Performance By John Hinckley Jr., The Man Who Tried To Assassinate Reagan

NYC Music Venue Cancels Performance By John Hinckley Jr., The Man Who Tried To Assassinate Reagan

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