William Balfour, the man suspected of killing Jennifer Hudson’s mother, brother and seven-year-old nephew found out he will remain in prison without getting parole during an Illinois Prisoner Review Board today.
In the 35-minute hearing the board, Balfour denied any involvements in the murders, he also denied the allegations he was spotted carrying a gun similar to the one used in the murders after his girlfriend said she spotted him carrying a .45 caliber gun, which matched the murder weapon.
He has still not been charged of the killings but remains the only suspect. Meanwhile, Hudson’s sister Julia paid tribute to her mother =,who would have turned 58 on Nov. 7 – with a MySpace message that reads, “Happy Birthday Mama!!!!!”
Sad news to report, Jennifer Hudson’s mother and brother, Jason have been found dead in a home in Chicago.
According to CBS, two adults were found fatally shot at a home at 70th Street and Yale Avenue at 3 p.m. Friday, authorities said. A representative of the family’s church, Pleasant Gift Missionary Baptist, confirms that 57-year-old Darnell Hudson was one of the victims
TMZ reports that a cousin of the family found the bodies at around 2:44 PM, hen the fire department arrived and discovered the bodies, police were brought in and the home was declared a crime scene.
Prosecutors cleared JonBenet Ramsey’s parents and brother Wednesday in the 1996 killing of the 6-year-old beauty queen, saying they were “deeply sorry” for putting the family under a cloud of suspicion that hung heavy for more than a decade.
New DNA tests, which focus on skin cells left behind from a mere touch, point to a mysterious outsider. They came too late to clear the name of JonBenet’s mother, Patsy, who died of cancer in 2006.
“To the extent that we may have contributed in any way to the public perception that you might have been involved in this crime, I am deeply sorry,” Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy wrote in a letter to the little girl’s father, John Ramsey. “No innocent person should have to endure such an extensive trial in the court of public opinion.”
Lacy said new “touch DNA” tests on skin cells that were left behind on JonBenet’s long underwear point to an “unexplained third party” and not a member of the family.
John Ramsey, a software entrepreneur who now lives in Michigan, said Wednesday he is hopeful the killer will be found based on the DNA evidence.
“I think the people that are in charge of the investigation are focused on that, and that gives me a lot of comfort,” he told KUSA-TV in Denver. He added: “Certainly we are grateful that they acknowledged that we, based on that, certainly could not have been involved.”
For years after the slaying, tabloids and crime shows went after the couple, and Lacy’s predecessor as district attorney, Alex Hunter, said in 1997 that the parents were under an “umbrella of suspicion.” News reports also cast suspicion on JonBenet’s older brother, Burke, who was 9 when his sister was killed.
The suspicions outlived Patsy, who died at age 49 in Atlanta, where the family moved after JonBenet’s death.
“My first thought was obviously I wish Patsy Ramsey was here with us to be able to at least share vindication of her family,” said L. Lin Wood, an attorney for the Ramsey family. “There are many people in this country, if not around the world, that also owe John and Patsy Ramsey and Burke Ramsey an apology.”
Early in the investigation, police found male DNA in a drop of blood on JonBenet’s underwear and determined it was not from anyone in her family. But Lacy said investigators were unable to say who it came from and whether that person was the killer.
Then, late last year, prosecutors turned over long underwear JonBenet was wearing to the Bode Technology Group near Washington, which looked for “touch DNA,” or cells left behind where someone has touched something.
The lab has only been using this technology for about three years.
The laboratory found previously undiscovered genetic material on the sides of the girl’s long underwear, where an attacker would have grasped the clothing to pull it down, authorities said. The DNA matched the genetic material found earlier.
Lacy said the presence of the same male DNA in three places on the girl’s clothing convinced investigators it belonged to JonBenet’s killer and had not been left accidentally by an innocent party.
“It is therefore the position of the Boulder District Attorney’s Office that this profile belongs to the perpetrator of the homicide,” she said in a statement. In her letter to the Ramseys, she said the DNA evidence “has vindicated your family.”
She said investigators hope someday to find a DNA match in the ever-expanding national DNA databank.
Through a spokeswoman, Lacy declined to comment any further.
John Ramsey found his daughter’s strangled and bludgeoned body in the basement of the family’s home in Boulder on Dec. 26, 1996. Patsy Ramsey said she found a ransom note demanding $118,000 for her daughter.
In all honesty, I don’t think they’ll ever figure out who killed this poor little girl.
source: JonBenet’s family cleared by DNA [chicago sun]
As I was sorting through my Sunday Washington Post so that I could throw everything but the Parade and Washington Post Magazine my wife reads into the recycle bin, my attention was grabbed by this photo montage on the front of the Style section:
For a second, I thought they had juxtaposed Barack Obama with Malcolm X (the newsprint version is grainier than the digital one). But the Obama as Will Smith and John McCain and John Wayne comparison is more apt.
Wonderful moment in John Ford’s “The Searchers,” from way back in 1956: John Wayne, as the surly, violent Ethan Edwards, signals to his young compadre that it’s time to move on in their pursuit of Scar, the Comanche chief who’s murdered their family and kidnapped the youngest daughter, Debbie.
“Let’s go, blankethead,” he scowls to the young Martin Pawley.
I love the Duke’s pronunciation of the word “blankethead”; it radiates contempt for the young and the untested. Ethan is using the blast of scorn to tell the young man not only to get going to his horse but to get going in growing up, to acquire sand, grit, salt and all the other granular metaphors for old-guy toughness and savvy. Blankethead: It’s a three-syllable telegram on the theme of the fecklessness of youth, and nobody but Wayne could turn it into poetry.
But in the same instant, I remember Will Smith in the original “Men in Black.” The hotshot young cop has been recruited to an alien-hunting team secretly HQ’d in a New York bridge, and now he’s working for Tommy Lee Jones and Rip Torn. Torn and Jones are babbling about something and not paying attention to Smith. There’s a moment of frustration on the young face, and he interrupts with his own blast of scorn: “Hey, old guys!”
It’s a voice full of impatience, annoyance, even contempt, suggesting they haven’t the energy, the quickness or the attention span to take care of business. It’s on him, now, the new guy, the kid: He’s got to keep them from wandering off, losing track, drifting as the old are wont to do.
Rex Mettler is a 42-year-old man from Ohio who has ADMITTED to stalking sisters and pop stars Ally & AJ.
The Lancaster Police Department, with the assistance of The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office, arrested Mettler this week.
Lancaster police say 42-year-old Rex Mettler is charged with felony menacing by stalking. Police say he made violent threats against 19-year-old Alyson Michalka and her 17-year-old sister, Amanda Michalka.
Investigators said Mettler somehow obtained the sister’s personal e-mail and admitted to a plan to abduct, sexually assault and murder the girls when they come to Cincinnati later this year.
source: Police: Ohio man accused of stalking teen singers [mail.com]
Dunkin’ Donuts has pulled an ad spot featuring Rachael Ray wearing a scarf around her neck because some thought it was a subtle nod of support to Palestinians.
Does Dunkin’ Donuts really think its customers could mistake Rachael Ray for a terrorist sympathizer? The Canton-based company has abruptly canceled an ad in which the domestic diva wears a scarf that looks like a keffiyeh, a traditional headdress worn by Arab men.
more stories like this
Some observers, including ultra-conservative Fox News commentator Michelle Malkin, were so incensed by the ad that there was even talk of a Dunkin’ Donuts boycott. ‘‘The keffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad,’’ Malkin yowls in her syndicated column. ‘‘Popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos, the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant and not-so-ignorant fashion designers, celebrities, and left-wing icons.’’
The company at first pooh-poohed the complaints, claiming the black-and-white wrap was not a keffiyeh. But the right-wing drumbeat on the blogosphere continued and by yesterday, Dunkin’ Donuts decided it’d be easier just to yank the ad.
Said the suits in a statement: ‘‘In a recent online ad, Rachael Ray is wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design. It was selected by her stylist for the advertising shoot. Absolutely no symbolism was intended. However, given the possibility of misperception, we are no longer using the commercial.’’
The terrorists have won. Or maybe we’ve just gone collectively insane.
I was blissfully unaware of both the commercial and the the controversy surrounding it until seeing a link on memeorandum this morning. But, seriously?
It’s true that wearing the keffiyah as a fashion symbol has been a recurring trend among Palestinian sympathizers and various hipsters over the years. But Ray’s scarf doesn’t look anything like Yasser Arafat’s.
Further, the terrorists wear headdresses because that’s how men throughout the Middle East and North Africa dress. It’s a protective covering for the head in brutally hot climates. In any case, none of them are paisley.
The iconic “spider-web” black-and-white keffiyeh is often displayed symbolically by members of Arafat’s Fatah party (which more generally uses yellow as its party colour), although it has never been able to expropriate it as their exclusive symbol. The zig zag style of stitching is sometimes described as symbolic of their historic struggle and their inability to progress towards their objectives without having to avoid obsticles. This is in contrast to how many members of the radical leftist PLO factions (such as PFLP, PFLP-GC DFLP) prefer the checkered red keffieyhs — red being both the traditional colour of the workers’ movement and the red scarf supposedly more indicative of a bedouin and rural (thus poorer, more popular) background. The Islamist factions, such as Hamas, use green — representative of the Islamic faith — as a party color, but for keffiyehs they stick to the traditional black-and-white or red variants, with no particular preference evident. While widely known, this color symbolism is by no means universally accepted by all Palestinians, and its importance should not be overstated — red or black-and-white scarves are used by Palestinians of all political stripes, as well as by those with no particular political sympathies.
But, just to be safe, we should assume that every white chick wearing a scarf is a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer. Ray’s lucky her ad’s just been canceled and she hasn’t been hauled off to Gitmo for questioning.
UPDATE: Via Steven Taylor, I see that Tom Grant has discovered a much more egregious example of terror chic:
These fiends are everywhere. (While Taylor is reminded of an old Monty Python sketch about communists, it seems more to me like Ray Stevens’ “Santa Claus is Watching You.”)
Meanwhile, Doug Mataconis thinks sympathy for Arafat is the least of Ray’s crimes.
(And while we’re on the subject, what’s with the extraneous “a” in Ray’s first name? Perhaps another homage to Arafat? Or . . . Al Qaeda?)
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has even caught Meghan McCain — daughter of Juan McCain, hero of the Reconquista — wearing a purple plaid scarf keffiyah! Gawker has the photographic evidence. Nick Denton’s terrorist loving staff thinks it’s funny. They won’t think it’s funny, though, when the Straight Talk Express rams into Gawker HQ and explodes!
Alec Baldwin as the governor? Not even a movie could I believe this. Yet Alec would like your vote for governor of California. Scarey huh? Alec has diarrhea of the mouth and would probably start a war with Canada or Mexico. If he can go off on a little girl that he claims to love the rest of us had better look out.
“There are other things I want to do besides acting” he tells Morley Safer on “60 Minutes” this Sunday. “In a matter of weeks, I’m going to be 50.” Baldwin was thinking of running for governor two years ago. Just before he went nut-so and left a voice mail for his daughter Ireland, then 11, calling her “a rude, thoughtless little pig.”
When asked if he wanted a chance to apologize for calling Kim Basinger’s lawyer, Judy Bogen, a “300-pound homunculus with a face like a clenched fist,” Baldwin replied, “I was being kind, Morley.”
In the past, Baldwin has done nothing to hide his brand of politics. He has called the vice president Dick Cheney a terrorist, then said he wasn’t a terrorist but rather “a lying, thieving oil whore and murderer of the U.S. Constitution.” Wasn’t Alec the one who said he would move to Canada if George W. Bush was elected President? Guess he couldn’t find a flight!
source: Alec Baldwin Coming to an Election Near You? [CitizenSugar]; Political Office In Alec Baldwin’s Future? [cbs news]
Conan O’Brien reviews the new ‘Grand Theft Auto IV‘ for the late night viewers.
The Grand Theft Auto game series has been dogged by controversy, due to it’s carjacking, prostitution, drunken driving and coldblooded murder — which is only a partial list of sins present within its dozens of hours of gameplay.
John Lennon’s crazy and incarcerated murderer has become infatuated with Lindsay Lohan. Mark David Chapman has renovated his cell into a dedication to Lohan. He has also tried numerous times to get her to visit him in prison. Good luck with that. Just wave the promise of blow. It is like her Bat-Signal.
He has been begging prison big-wigs to let him at least write her and forge a relationship. Wisely, the authorities have tried to put the kibosh on his obsession, but Chapman isn’t giving up. His confinement to Attica is the only thing keeping this weirdo from turning Lohan’s role as Chapman’s girlfriend in the movie Chapter 27 into some sort of sick game.
Great! We have a reformed Christian who is nuttier than squirrel crap and the newly named “Dumbest Person in Hollywood” teaming up to form a combination of creepy, stupid and media whore. Fantastic. It is like Paris Hilton 2.0.
Source: John Lennon’s Killer Obsessed with Lindsay Lohan [Hollywood TV]
CNN personality Richard Quest was busted in Central Park early yesterday with some drugs in his pocket, a rope around his neck that was tied to his genitals, and a sex toy in his boot.
Quest, 46, was arrested at around 3:40 a.m. after a cop spotted him and another man inside the park near 64th Street, a police source said.
The criminal complaint against Quest said the park was closed at the time - something Quest should have known because of all the signs saying “Park Closed 1 a.m. to 6 a.m.”
Quest was initially busted for loitering, the source said. Aside from the oddly configured rope, the search also turned up a sex toy inside of his boot, and a small bag of methamphetamine in his left jacket pocket.
It wasn’t immediately clear what the rope was for.
The criminal complaint says the officer at the scene was able to ID the drug because of “his prior experience as a police officer in drug arrests, observation of packaging which is characteristic of this type of drug, and defendant’s statements that . . . ‘I’ve got some meth in my pocket.’ ”
He was charged with loitering and criminal possession of a controlled substance. His unusual get-up didn’t lead to a lewdness charge because he wasn’t exposing himself, the police source said.
Quest’s unidentified companion was given a summons for not carrying any identification, the source said.
Quest’s lawyer, Alan Abramson, had a much more innocuous version of events.
“Mr. Quest didn’t realize that the park had a curfew,” Abramson said. He was simply “returning to his hotel with friends.”
At a hearing in Manhattan Criminal Court, Quest agreed to undergo six months of drug counseling in return for an “adjournment in contemplation of dismissal,” which means the misdemeanor charges against him will be dropped and the case sealed if he stays out of trouble and completes his drug program.
He was released with no bail after spending most of the day behind bars.
Both news people and politicians have gone to the shitter. Although it’s been a long time since Richard has posted on his blog at CNN — it might be a good place to leave him a message.
What others said:
Dlisted says, “And I thought Anderson Cooper was the kinky bitch at CNN.”
Gawker says, “Using the trash can drug meth makes a person mighty paranoid. So it was probably fear of having his genitals stolen that moved CNN talker Brian Quest (who is British) to attach them to his neck with a rope.”
source: KINKY NEWS NETWORK-CNN’S QUEST A VERY ‘KNOTTY’ BOY [new york post]
Quest, 46, was arrested at around 3:40 a.m. after a cop spotted him and another man inside the park near 64th Street, a police source said. 
