One of the largest counties in Arizona parted ways with its elections director after the office failed to print enough ballots for voters in its Tuesday primary.
Pinal County’s government announced Thursday that David Frisk was no longer employed after “recent issues” with the primary election.
It’s not clear whether Frisk was fired or resigned. However, County Supervisor Jeffrey McClure said in a Wednesday news conference that the county would be “taking action” in response to the debacle, according to Arizona KVOA.
County officials are explaining the ballot shortage as a human error, having underestimated the turnout in the primary election.
The shortage disproportionately impacted registered independents who wanted to vote in the Republican primary at a polling place. County officials didn’t anticipate the turnout of independents who wanted to vote in the contest.
“Quite frankly, we underestimated, that’s what happened,” said county attorney Kent Volkmer.
“There were more people that showed up than we thought were going to show up.”
Volkmer admitted that some Pinal County voters were unable to vote at a polling place due to a lack of ballots.
Lengthy lines deterred some citizens from voting.
He says everyone who waited in line had the opportunity, but people still felt disenfranchised. "Some people chose to leave and not come back." - County Attorney Kent Volkmer
It was the second big mistake for the Pinal elections office in a month. In early July, the county mailed 60,000 misprinted early ballots to voters.
Thursday’s announcement said Pinal County Recorder Virginia Ross would be filling the role of elections director, resigning from her position as an elected county official to do so.
McClure, the chairman of Pinal County’s Board of Supervisors, expressed his remorse for the county’s mismanaged election in the news release announcing Frisk’s replacement.
“As a Board, we are deeply embarrassed and frustrated by the mistakes that have been made in this primary election, and as such, we are taking immediate steps to ensure the November election runs smoothly, as elections in Pinal County have historically done prior to this primary,” said McClure.
The county officials rejected claims that the ballot shortage was intentionally manufactured, describing the situation as a mistake.
[Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and senate candidate Blake Masters triumphed in Arizona’s Republican primary.]
Caroline Schermerhorn Astor ruled New York City in the Gilded Age. / Wikimedia Commons // Public Domain (Caroline Schermerhorn Astor); ShutterWorx/Getty Images (gilded background)
From a German immigrant who arrived in America with nothing to a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, the Astor family’s story is one of hard work, ruthless business tactics, snobbery, and savvy investment in real estate. For more than a century, they were the richest family in America, and their shrewd marriages linked them to some of the most politically powerful families. Here are 11 facts about this fascinating family.
1. The Astor fortune was partly founded on drug smuggling.
John Jacob Astor I. / Oscar White/GettyImages
The wealth of the Astor family originated in fur trading, guided by the intelligent but ruthless business tactics of their American founder, John Jacob Astor I. Having tried his hand at being a butcher like his father and an instrument maker like his brother, John I emigrated to America in 1783. He used the voyage to learn about the fur trade.
Always on the look out for a new opportunity, he began trading with China in around 1800, but the Chinese were resistant to Western goods—so in 1816, Astor became involved in the lucrative opium smuggling trade.
Opium was first banned in China in 1729 in an attempt to halt a growing epidemic of users, but 115 metric tons were still being imported into the country in 1798. With the Indian supply of the drug monopolized by the British, Astor made deals to buy huge quantities from Turkish suppliers, which he smuggled in via small vessels and large bribes. During his involvement between 1816 and 1825, the amount of opium being smuggled into China continued to rise; by 1839, 2500 metric tons entered the country from India alone.
Astor made millions from a trade the future U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt described as “fair, honorable, and legitimate.” He used the money to buy tea, porcelain, and silks, which he imported into America at a huge profit. Astor used that fortune to invest in New York real estate, and by the time of his death in 1848, he was America’s first ever millionaire.
2. John Jacob Astor I’s wife was so good at the business, she reportedly charged her husband $500 an hour.
John married Sarah Cox Todd in 1785. She was the daughter of his landlady—and had a $300 dowry, plus connections to sea captains, merchants, shop owners, and ship owners. Her dowry allowed them to open their first shop selling musical instruments, which gradually gave them the opportunity to invest in furs.
Astor called his wife “the best business partner any man ever had.” He would always credit Sarah’s part in his success, not just in the connections that she brought or the financial independence that her dowry allowed him, but also in her business acumen. Sarah’s knowledge of furs grew until she had turned herself into a leading expert in quality pelts; when John was away, she ran their New York business.
She was shrewd, thrifty, and intelligent, involved in both day-to-day decisions and plans for how they would expand their enterprises. Sarah encouraged John to invest in real estate, the foundation of their multi-million dollar fortune.
By the end of her life they were so successful that John reputedly paid her $500 an hour for her work, which she invested in religious causes.
3. Caroline Schermerhorn Astor ran America’s social hierarchy, known as the “four hundred.”
In the New York of the 1880s and 1890s, if you wanted to be accepted into society, it was not enough just to be wealthy. Anyone could have money in the fast moving and socially mobile America of the Gilded Age—what was important was to have the right sort of money.
Although America did not have a class system in the same way as much of Europe, the families who were descended from New York’s original settlers and had inherited their money considered themselves the aristocracy of American society. Those making their fortunes from new industries like the railroad were upstarts who, although sometimes even richer than the old money crowd, would never quite fit in.
At the forefront of these old families were the Astors. Now 100 years on from the self-made John Jacob Astor I, they believed that as old money, they had a superior role in New York society. Caroline Schermerhorn was descended from the Dutch immigrants who had settled Manhattan in the 17th century—and she had even considered the Astors beneath her own pedigree when she married John I’s grandson, William Backhouse Astor II, in 1853.
Caroline put herself at the forefront of fashionable society, establishing a hierarchy of people who met her standards of etiquette, behavior, and breeding that became known as The Four Hundred. Legend has it that the number was arrived at simply because it was the capacity of the Astor’s ballroom, but, whatever the reason, membership was essential for anyone who wanted to be someone in New York. Budding social climbers would engineer ways to get Mrs. Astor’s approval. But, as the Vanderbilts and others discovered, her approval was not easy to get—and her word was always final.
4. The family was torn apart by a feud about who would be called Mrs Astor.
John Jacob Astor I’s second son, William Backhouse Astor Sr., inherited his fortune; he in turn passed it to his two sons, John III and William Backhouse Jr. But if he thought the two sides of the family would live in harmony, his plan was thwarted by a disagreement over who would be known as Mrs. Astor.
John III and William Jr.’s wives were known by their husband’s names—Mrs. John Charlotte Astor and Mrs. William Caroline “Lina” Astor. When Charlotte died in 1877, Lina let it be known that she was now to be addressed as simply Mrs. Astor.
The Astors believed in elder sons taking precedence, and Charlotte’s son, William Waldorf Astor, took enormous exception to the fact that this seemingly innocuous act threatened the superiority of his line. It was also an insult to his own wife, Mary, who he considered the senior woman of the family.
John III died three years later, and William Waldorf became the head of the family. Using his new position, he tried to persuade his Aunt Lina to relinquish the use of the title, but with her position in society to maintain, she refused. She continued to be known as the Mrs. Astor.
Although William Waldorf was forced to concede, he had his revenge and the incident created a feud between the two branches of the family that would last years: The brothers, John III and William II, had lived in neighboring houses on 5th Avenue, but after John’s death, his son demolished their house in 1893 and built the 13-story Waldorf Hotel on the site, right next to Aunt Lina.
She spent the next three years living next to a building site. The humiliation of her prestigious residential area becoming a bustling tourist destination was more than she could bear, and she was finally persuaded to move. But her humiliation wasn’t quite over—her new home was farther up 5th Avenue, surrounded by the new money families.
In true Astor fashion, her son, John Jacob Astor IV, used the episode to make more money. Following his cousin’s example, he demolished the family house and built a 16-story hotel called the Astoria in 1897. That same year, the family merged the two hotels in a new business venture: The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The original structure was demolished in 1929 and replaced by the Empire State Building.
5. William Waldorf Astor moved the senior branch of the family to Britain.
William Waldorf Astor. / Hulton Archive/GettyImages
The difficulties with his aunt would have an unexpected outcome for William Waldorf Astor. Not only did it lead him into the hotel business, but it also resulted in his emigration to Britain.
Although he was born in New York, William Waldorf was raised in Italy and Germany, where he developed a passion for the European lifestyle. He returned to America and studied law, but after a short period involved in politics—where he unsuccessfully ran for Congress—he returned to Europe in 1882 for three years as the U.S. Minister to Italy.
On his father’s death in February 1890, he reportedly inherited $100 million, and, disillusioned with his failure in politics, upset by the war with his aunt and her son, and ridiculed by the U.S. press, William Waldorf declared that America was “no longer a fit place for a gentleman to live” and moved his family and business operations to Britain.
He retained his interest in politics, giving generously to the Conservative Party. Despite his hatred of the American press, he bought several UK publications, including The Observer newspaper. In 1899 he became a British citizen, and in 1917 he was raised to the British peerage when George V created him the 1st Viscount Astor of Hever.
6. The Astors once owned Hever Castle, the childhood home of Anne Boleyn.
Hever Castle in Kent was built in 1270, but its most famous residents were the Boleyn family, who had owned it between 1462 and 1540. It was Anne Boleyn’s childhood home and, after returning from France in 1522, she frequently stayed at the castle with her parents, enticing Henry VIII to visit on several occasions during their courtship. Later, Henry’s fourth—and unwanted— wife, Anne of Cleves, lived there, leasing the manor for an annual rent of £9, 13 shillings, and 3.5 pence.
By the time William Waldorf purchased Hever in July 1903, the house had passed through several families and was almost derelict, with all traces of its Tudor gardens gone. But, as a history buff—who had written several historical novels—with a passion for art and architecture derived from his time spent in Italy, he immediately recognized its potential.
The series of renovations William undertook were sensitively done, preserving the original structure while installing modern luxury. Part of his vision included building a new wing in the style of a Tudor village, and he redesigned the 125-acre gardens to incorporate a 38-acre lake, an Italian loggia, a rose garden, a Tudor garden, and a woodland. Under Astor ownership, Hever Castle was saved. People can still visit the historic site today.
7. Nancy Astor was the first woman to take a seat as a Member of Parliament.
Nancy Astor. / Keystone Features/GettyImages
Nancy Witcher Langhorne was born into an impoverished Virginian family in 1879, but by the time she was 18 her father had made his fortune and she was sent to New York, where she met her first husband, Robert Gould Shaw II. The marriage ended in divorce in 1903, and, at the persuasion of her father, she sailed to Britain at the end of 1904 with her son and sister, Phyllis. Her arrival in London put her in the company of several American-born women who had become the wives of British peers, including Pauline Astor, whose brother, Waldorf Astor, Nancy married on April 19, 1906.
Waldorf was the eldest son of William Waldorf, Viscount Astor. The Viscount gifted them the family home, Cliveden Estate, which they turned into the center of political and literary thought. Like his father before him, Waldorf had an inclination for a career in politics and, with Nancy’s support, he was elected as the Member of Parliament for Plymouth Sutton in 1910. On his father’s death in 1919, he inherited the title of 2nd Viscount Astor and was promoted to the House of Lords, leaving his seat in the House of Commons vacant.
Nancy seized the opportunity the 1918 Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act gave her and ran as the Unionist Party (now Conservative Party) candidate to replace her husband as Plymouth Sutton’s MP. Her victory on November 15, 1919, meant that the first ever female MP to take her seat in the House of Commons was a member of the Astor family. She remained an MP until 1945.
8. John Jacob Astor IV died on RMS Titanic while returning from his honeymoon.
John Jacob Astor IV was the son of the Mrs. Astor, Caroline, and cousin of the 1st Viscount Astor. For much of his early life, he tinkered as an inventor and wrote novels—while still managing to increase the family fortune through real estate, particularly the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
In 1910, the 47-year-old millionaire caused a scandal when, five months after his divorce, he began courting the 18-year-old debutant Madeleine Force. The two married on September 10, 1911. The couple then set off on honeymoon, traveling from New York to Bermuda to Egypt and then on to Europe. When Madeline became pregnant during the trip, the couple decided to go home. They boarded the RMS Titanic at Cherbourg, France, on April 10, 1912.
No amount of wealth could save them from the horrific events that unfolded on the night of April 12, 1912, when the liner struck an iceberg and began to sink. Madeline, her maid, and her nurse were all given a place on lifeboat 4, but John was told that he and his valet would have to wait until all the ladies were off the ship before they could be evacuated. Reports claimed that John then helped two women—Ida Hippach and her 17-year-old daughter Jean—into the boat before telling his wife, “You are in good hands and I will meet you in the morning.”
John’s corpse was one of only 333 bodies recovered from the sea. He was brought back to New York and buried in Manhattan, and the gold watch he was found with was given to his oldest son and heir, Vincent, who wore it for the rest of his life. Madeleine gave birth to a healthy son on August 14, 1912, christened John Jacob Astor VI (although he is sometimes incorrectly called John V), who immediately inherited a $3 million trust. Madeleine received his house and a $5 million trust fund, though she lost both after remarrying, as John’s will stipulated that she must forfeit the fortune unless she remained single.
9. John Jacob Astor V won an Olympic gold medal for Great Britain.
After his father, William Waldorf, moved to Britain with his family, John V was raised as an English gentleman. He attended Eton College and Oxford University and excelled at sports, including racquets, a game said to have originated in prisons before becoming popular in the alleys of London. By the early 20th century it had become a game for gentlemen, played in some of the most exclusive schools and clubs where specially built courts could be found.
The 1908 Olympics in London featured a number of sports that are no longer found in the modern games, including running deer shooting, tug-of-war, and Jeu de Paume. Racquets was also included, though only Britain fielded a team; Astor was a member in both singles and doubles. He and his partner, Vane Pennell, played only twice—on April 30 and then May 1—to beat their fellow Brits and win the doubles gold medal. Astor then won a bronze in the singles tournament despite only playing one match.
Astor continued his love of the game and that of its sister-sport, Squash Racquets. In 1922, he followed his sister-in-law, Nancy, into politics as MP for Dover, and, despite losing a leg during World War I, he competed in and won the parliamentary squash racquets championship in 1926 and 1927.
10. The Astors count presidents and monarchs as their relatives.
Marriage in 19th-century New York became a slightly socially incestuous affair. Wealthy and politically ambitious families intermarried to the point that by the end of the 19th century, it was possible to claim kinship with almost everyone else. In 1981, Brooke Astor recalled, “My husband, Vincent, used to say that one of the reasons for the various Astors success was that they always married above themselves! It became a family tradition he said, as later on they married with the Schermerhorns and Willings and Beekmans.”
In politics, the Astors had close ties with the Roosevelt family. In 1844, William Backhouse I’s daughter, Laura, married Franklin Delano, the great-uncle of future President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The family connection continued when, in 1878, Helen Schermerhorn Astor, daughter of The Mrs. Astor, married James Roosevelt, becoming Franklin D. Roosevelt’s sister-in-law. And lastly, Helen’s daughter (also Helen), married Theodore Robinson, the nephew of Theodore Roosevelt.
The English branch of the Astor family, meanwhile, found itself mixing with the aristocracy to the extent that they can count members of the British royal family as their relatives. In 1929, Rachel Spender-Clay, granddaughter of William Waldorf, 1st Viscount Astor, married David Bowes-Lyon, the brother of Elizabeth, Duchess of York and the future Queen Consort of George VI. The Astor family could now claim kinship with monarchy—not only was Rachel the sister-in-law of George VI, but her son, Sir Simon Bowes-Lyon, is Elizabeth II’s first cousin.
11. A party given by the Astors helped bring down the UK Conservative government.
William Waldorf Astor II, 3rd Viscount Astor / J. Wilds/GettyImages
Nancy Astor’s son, William Waldorf Astor II, continued the family’s interest in politics by becoming an MP himself. Although he was forced to quit the role in 1952 when he became the 3rd Viscount, he continued to mix in political and social circles at his home on the Cliveden Estate.
In July 1961, William was hosting a party that included John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War, at the same time his friend and osteopath, Steven Ward, was throwing a party elsewhere on the estate. When the two groups mingled at the swimming pool, Profumo met Christine Keeler, a model and friend of Ward’s. The affair that ensued was brief and over by the end of 1961. But unfortunately for Profumo, Keeler was also the girlfriend of another of Ward’s guests, a Soviet Union naval attaché named Yevgeny Ivanov.
By 1963, the affair was becoming public, and whispers were circulating that the three were involved in a spying ring. Profumo made a statement to the House of Commons claiming that “there was no impropriety whatsoever in my acquaintanceship with Miss Keeler,” but by June he was forced to admit the affair and that he had lied to Parliament. While no evidence was ever found that he had passed secrets to Ivanov via Keeler, he resigned his ministerial position.
The Conservative government, under the Prime Minister Harold McMillian, was seriously damaged by the scandal and, unable to recover, they lost the subsequent general election. William was accused of having an affair with one of the other models, Mandy Rice-Davies, and although there was no evidence that he orchestrated the meeting between Profumo and Keeler, he was investigated by the police. His standing was irreversibly damaged and he became a social pariah. When he died of a heart attack in 1966, the Astor family left Cliveden, never to return.
US Postal Service Makes Announcement on Mail-In Ballots Ahead of Midterm Elections
JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) confirmed it has created a division that will oversee mail-in ballots in future elections.
Adrienne Marshall, executive director of the newly created Election and Government Mail Services, said that it will oversee “election mail strike teams” in local communities to deal with possible problems.
“We are fully committed to the secure and timely delivery of the nation’s election mail,” she told media outlets on July 27.
Several months ago, the Biden administration requested $5 billion to support the USPS’s mail-in voting operations over the next 10 years.
“This proposal expands on the essential public services that the Postal Service provides to the American people and will also help to relieve budget strain on local election offices across the country,” the administration wrote in March.
It also includes policies to make “official ballot materials free to mail and reducing the cost of other election-related mail for jurisdictions and voters” while “enhancing the Postal Service’s ability to securely and expeditiously deliver and receive mail in underserved areas,” the White House said at the time.
The USPS claimed it delivered 97.9 percent of ballots from voters to election officials within three days, and 99.89 percent of ballots were delivered within seven days, during the 2020 election.
The Postal Service is sending guidance letters to election officials in each state and territory this week. So far, nearly 40 million ballots have been mailed to and from voters during primary elections.
Reliability and Fraud
Former President Donald Trump and some Republicans have said that mail-in ballots invite fraud and are unreliable. Numerous lawsuits were filed in the wake of the 2020 election over the ballots, drop boxes, and related policies, while some GOP-controlled legislatures have tightened rules around absentee voting since then.
Jimmy Carter 2005: “vote-buying schemes are far more difficult to detect when citizens vote by mail.”
In 2005, former Democrat President Jimmy Carter and former White House chief of staff James Baker released a report (pdf) that found mail-in and “absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud” while adding that “vote-buying schemes are far more difficult to detect when citizens vote by mail.”
Carter Center 2020: The Carter Center urges federal and state governments to expand access to vote-by-mail…”
But years later, Carter in May 2020—months before the election—released a statement that called on states to expand mail-in voting due to COVID-19.
“To address this threat,” the statement said, “The Carter Center urges federal and state governments to expand access to vote-by-mail options and to provide adequate funding as quickly as possible to allow for the additional planning, preparation, equipment, and public messaging that will be required.”
Earlier this year, USPS officials confirmed they were investigating two separate incidents where mail-in ballots were found in Southern California. A woman allegedly found a box of ballots on a sidewalk in Hollywood in May, while a man in San Diego found ballots discarded near an interstate.
The USPS has not responded to a request for comment from Epoch Times.
Individual Investors Ramp Up Bets on Tech Stocks – The Nasdaq Composite Index has fallen 21% in 2022. Yet many of its biggest stocks remain popular among individual investors, who say they expect the companies to continue powering the economy. B1
Data on the Murder Accountability Project’s website. Photos by Cait Oppermann for Bloomberg Businessweek.
Thomas Hargrove is building software to identify trends in unsolved murders using data nobody’s bothered with before.
On Aug. 18, 2010, a police lieutenant in Gary, Ind., received an e-mail, the subject line of which would be right at home in the first few scenes of a David Fincher movie:
“Could there be a serial killer active in the Gary area?”
It isn’t clear what the lieutenant did with that e-mail; it would be understandable if he waved it off as a prank. But the author could not have been more serious. He’d attached source material—spreadsheets created from FBI files showing that over several years the city of Gary had recorded 14 unsolved murders of women between the ages of 20 and 50. The cause of each death was the same: strangulation. Compared with statistics from around the country, he wrote, the number of similar killings in Gary was far greater than the norm. So many people dying the same way in the same city—wouldn’t that suggest that at least a few of them, maybe more, might be connected? And that the killer might still be at large?
The police lieutenant never replied. Twelve days later, the police chief, Gary Carter, received a similar e-mail from the same person. This message added a few details. Several of the women were strangled in their homes. In at least two cases, a fire was set after the murder. In more recent cases, several women were found strangled in or around abandoned buildings. Wasn’t all of this, the writer asked, at least worth a look?
The Gary police never responded to that e-mail, either, or to two follow-up letters sent via registered mail. No one from the department has commented publicly about what was sent to them—nor would anyone comment for this story. “It was the most frustrating experience of my professional life,” says the author of those messages, a 61-year-old retired news reporter from Virginia named Thomas Hargrove.
Hargrove spent his career as a data guy. He analyzed his first set of polling data as a journalism major at the University of Missouri, where he became a student director of the university’s polling organization. He joined an E.W. Scripps newspaper right out of college and expanded his repertoire from political polling data to practically any subject that required statistical analysis. “In the newsroom,” he remembers, “they would say, ‘Give that to Hargrove. That’s a numbers problem.’ ”
In 2004, Hargrove’s editors asked him to look into statistics surrounding prostitution. The only way to study that was to get a copy of the nation’s most comprehensive repository of criminal statistics: the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, or UCR. When Hargrove called up a copy of the report from the database library at the University of Missouri, attached to it was something he didn’t expect: the Supplementary Homicide Report. “I opened it up, and it was a record I’d never seen before,” he says. “Line by line, every murder that was reported to the FBI.”
This report, covering the year 2002, contained about 16,000 murders, broken down by the victims’ age, race, and sex, as well as the method of killing, the police department that made the report, the circumstances known about the case, and information about the offender, if the offender was known. “I don’t know where these thoughts come from,” Hargrove says, “but the second I saw that thing, I asked myself, ‘Do you suppose it’s possible to teach a computer how to spot serial killers?’ ”
“linkage blindness”
Like a lot of people, Hargrove was aware of criticisms of police being afflicted by tunnel vision when investigating difficult cases. He’d heard the term “linkage blindness,” used to describe the tendency of law-enforcement jurisdictions to fail to connect the dots between similar cases occurring right across the county or state line from one another. Somewhere in this report, Hargrove thought, could be the antidote to linkage blindness. The right person, looking at the information in the right way, might be able to identify any number of at-large serial killers.
Every year he downloaded and crunched the most recent data set. What really shocked him was the number of murder cases that had never been cleared. (In law enforcement, a case is cleared when a suspect is arrested, whatever the eventual outcome.) Hargrove counted 211,487, more than a third of the homicides recorded from 1980 to 2010. Why, he wondered, wasn’t the public up in arms about such a large number of unsolved murders?
To make matters worse, Hargrove saw that despite a generation’s worth of innovation in the science of crime fighting, including DNA analysis, the rate of cleared cases wasn’t increasing but decreasing—plummeting, even. The average homicide clearance rate in the 1960s was close to 90 percent; by 2010 it was solidly in the mid-’60s. It has fallen further since.
These troubling trends were what moved Hargrove to write to the Gary police. He failed to get any traction there. Sure enough, four years later, in October 2014, in Hammond, Ind.—the town next door to Gary—police found the body of 19-year-old Afrikka Hardy in a room at a Motel 6. Using her phone records, they tracked down a suspect, 43-year-old Darren Deon Vann. Once arrested, Vann took police to the abandoned buildings where he’d stowed six more bodies, all of them in and around Gary. Anith Jones had last been seen alive on Oct. 8; Tracy Martin went missing in June; Kristine Williams and Sonya Billingsley disappeared in February; and Teaira Batey and Tanya Gatlin had vanished in January.
Before invoking his right to remain silent, Vann offhandedly mentioned that he’d been killing people for years—since the 1990s. Hargrove went to Gary, reporting for Scripps, to investigate whether any of the cases he’d identified back in 2010 might possibly be attributed to Vann. He remembers getting just one helpful response, from an assistant coroner in Lake County who promised to follow up, but that too went nowhere. Now, as the Vann prosecution slogs its way through the courts, everyone involved in the case is under a gag order, prevented from speculating publicly about whether any of the victims Hargrove noted in 2010 might also have been killed by Vann. “There are at least seven women who died after I tried to convince the Gary police that they had a serial killer,” Hargrove says. “He was a pretty bad one.”
Hargrove has his eye on other possible killers, too. “I think there are a great many uncaught serial killers out there,” he declares. “I think most cities have at least a few.”
The police have never been great at leveraging the power of their own statistics. Police culture is notably paper-based, scattered, and siloed, and departments aren’t always receptive to technological innovation. The National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database gives police access to information such as fugitive warrants, stolen property, and missing persons, but it’s not searchable for unsolved killings. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Violent Death Reporting System compiles death-certificate-based information for homicide victims in 32 states, but, again, can’t be searched for uncleared cases. Some states have their own homicide databases, but they can’t see the data from other states, so linkage blindness persists.
Hematology Oncology Medicine Health Policy Epidemiology Associate Professor
Dr. Kristin Collier is an assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan, where she has served on faculty for 17 years. She also is the director of the medical school’s Program on Health, Spirituality and Religion and has been published in publications including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Many describe her as a consummate physician and superb teacher—deeply liked and respected by her peers. That’s why, out of some 3,000 faculty at Michigan, Dr. Collier was chosen by students and her peers to be this year’s White Coat Ceremony speaker. The White Coat ceremony is one bookend of medical school (graduation is the other), where students put on their white coats for the first time, take a modified Hippocratic oath and begin the long path to becoming a doctor.
The trouble is that Professor Collier has views on abortion that are out of step with many Michigan medical students—likely the majority of them. She has stated that she defines herself as pro-life, though she does not state the extent of her position (i.e. whether she allows exemptions for rape or incest). In that same interview, in which she talks about her personal transformation from a pro-choice atheist to a Christian, she laments the intolerance for religious people among medical colleagues. “When we consider diversity in the medical profession, religious diversity is not—should not—be exempt from this goal.”
After Michigan announced her speech, the university made it clear that Dr. Collier would not be addressing abortion in her talk. “The White Coat Ceremony is not a platform for discussion of controversial issues, and Dr. Collier never planned to address a divisive topic as part of her remarks,” the dean of the medical school, Marshall Runge, wrote to students and staff earlier this month.
That didn’t stop hundreds of students and staff from signing a petition demanding Dr. Collier be replaced with another speaker. “While we support the rights of freedom of speech and religion, an anti-choice speaker as a representative of the University of Michigan undermines the University’s position on abortion and supports the non-universal, theology-rooted platform to restrict abortion access, an essential part of medical care,” they wrote. “We demand that UM stands in solidarity with us and selects a speaker whose values align with institutional policies, students, and the broader medical community.”
The school stood firm. But on Sunday, just as Dr. Collier rose to give her remarks, dozens of students and family members began walking out of their white coat ceremony.
By now we are all accustomed to such displays from American students. The particular shame here is that those who walked out missed a transcendent lecture about the meaning of practicing medicine in a culture that increasingly treats human beings like machines.
“The risk of this education and the one that I fell into is that you can come out of medical school with a bio-reductionist, mechanistic view of people and ultimately of yourself. You can easily end up seeing your patients as just a bag of blood and bones or human life as just molecules in motion,” Dr. Collier said.
“You are not technicians taking care of complex machines, but human beings taking care of other human beings,” she said. “Medicine is not merely a technical endeavor but above all a human one.”
I urge you to watch the whole thing here, beginning at 1:45:50:
Dr. Collier has handled the whole thing with grace. She tweeted yesterday: “I’ve heard that some of the students who walked out have been harassed and targeted—please stop. Everyone has a right to stand up for what they believe in.”
I do not share Dr. Collier’s faith or her views on abortion. But ultimately, the decision of students to walk out of the lecture because they disagree with the speaker on another topic has no limit.
In medicine, abortion is an important life or death issue. So too is universal health care, immigration and school closure. All these topics have the highest stakes. And all are controversial. If students walk out on speakers discussing unrelated issues, where does it end? Would they learn about the nephron from a nephrologist who favors strict immigration limits? Could they learn how to perform CPR from an instructor who lobbied to keep schools open during Covid-19?
Most concerning, what does it mean for American patients, if their future doctors cannot sit through a speech by a beloved professor who has a different view on abortion? Could you trust a physician knowing that may judge you for holding views that they deem beyond the pale?
As a professor at UCSF medical school, I worry deeply that we are not preparing our future doctors for practicing medicine on real people in the real world. Medicine has to meet patients where they are; often that means caring people and working with people with whom we disagree. We can’t walk out on that.
FILE - President Donald Trump arrives to speak during a rally protesting the electoral college certification of Joe Biden as President in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021. Members of the House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 will hold their first prime time hearing Thursday, Jan. 9, to share what they have uncovered about former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, culminating in the deadly storming of the Capitol building. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
WASHINGTON (TND) — A Capitol Police timeline of the days and weeks surrounding Jan. 6 shows former President Donald Trump’s Department of Defense (DOD) offered the National Guard’s assistance in the days leading up to the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, validating claims from Trump administration officials that were said to be false by liberal fact-checkers.
What we also know is that President Trump wanted to make sure that the people that came, that there was a safe environment for that kind of assembly,” former President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told Fox News’s Sean Hannity.
And I’ve said that publicly before — the 10,000 National Guard troops that he wanted to make sure that everything was safe and secure,” Meadows said. “Obviously having those National Guards available, actually the reason they were able to respond when they did, was because President Trump had actually put them on alert.
Liberal “fact-checkers” like The Washington Post and PolitiFact argued the claim about National Guard assistance coming from Meadows and other top Trump administration officials was false, but an official timeline of the events leading up to Jan. 6 apparently shows differently.
According to the timeline, a DOD official reached out to Capitol Police Deputy Chief Sean Gallagher four days before the attack on the U.S. Capitol to inquire about whether Capitol Police anticipated they would request National Guard troops be deployed to prepare for Jan. 6.
“Carol Corbin (DOD) texts USCP Deputy Chief Sean Gallagher, Protective Service Bureau, to determine whether USCP is considering a request for National Guard soldiers for January 6, 2021 event,” the timeline reads in an entry listed for Saturday, Jan. 2, 2021.
The next morning, the timeline indicates, “Gallagher replies to DOD via text that a request for National Guard support not forthcoming at this time after consultation with COP Sund.”
However, that initial rejection from Capitol Police came as they were beginning to change their assessment of the potential threats of violence.
Just hours after Gallagher’s rejection of DOD’s offer for troops, Capitol Police issued a new warning to its commanders and executives, as well as to the two congressionally appointed House and Senate Sergeants at Arms responsible for congressional security, the timeline shows.
Due to the tense political environment following the 2020 election, the threat of disruptive actions or violence cannot be ruled out,” stated the new assessment, chronicled in Capitol Police’s Jan. 6 timeline. “Supporters of the current president see January 6, 2021 as the last opportunity to overturn the results of the presidential election. This sense of desperation and disappointment may lead to more of an incentive to become violent.
Within 24-hours of the new assessment’s circulation, then-chief of the Capitol Police Steve Sund changed course and began requesting permission to deploy National Guard troops from the House and Senate Sergeant at Arms – both of whom report to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer, respectively.
“COP Sund asks Senate Sergeant at Arms (SSAA) Michael Stenger and House Sergeant at Arms (HSAA) Paul Irving for authority to have National Guard to assist with security for the January 6, 2021 event based on briefing with law enforcement partner and revised intelligence Assessment,” the timeline notes. “COP Sund’s request is denied. SSAA and HSAA tell COP Sund to contact General Walker at DC National Guard to discuss the guard’s ability to support a request if needed.”
As Sund’s requests were denied, the Trump administration continued working on getting then-President Trump to formally authorize the deployment of as many as 20,000 National Guard troops to the Capitol ahead of the Jan. 6 rally, according to Just The News, which conducted interviews with then-acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller and his Chief of Staff Kash Patel.
The Capitol Police timeline shows what we have been saying for the last year — that DOD support via the National Guard was refused by the House and Senate sergeant at arms, who report to Pelosi,” said Patel. “Now we have it in their own writing, days before Jan. 6. And despite the FBI warning of potential for serious disturbance, no perimeter was established, no agents put on the street, and no fence put up.
Furthermore, as word began circulating around Washington of the Capitol Police’s changing stance on the need for National Guard troops on Jan. 6, Democratic Mayor for the District of Columbia, Muriel Bowser, wrote a letter to Miller and other Departments of Defense and Justice officials asking that National Guard troops not be deployed unless the local Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) approved.
Bowser cited an earlier event from the summer of 2020, when National Guard troops were deployed to Lafayette Park outside the White House amid social justice protests that took place in the nation’s capital, spurred by the death of George Floyd. Bowser argued the deployment “caused confusion” and could have led to “a national security threat with no way for MPD and federal law enforcement to decipher armed groups.”
“To be clear, the District of Columbia is not requesting other federal law enforcement personnel and discourages any additional deployment without immediate notification to and consultation with MPD, if such plans are underway,” Bowser wrote in her letter, adding that MPD was “well trained and prepared to lead the way” on ensuring safety during the rally in the nation’s capital on Jan. 6.
I, for one, am tickled pink that our ruling class has finally come out against child rape. This is something new. For several decades now, the position of government officials, both political parties, think tanks, the Bush family, district attorneys and the entire media has been: We’re going to foist primitive, peasant cultures on America and then lie to the public about how this is changing our country.
We recently found out about one big way that third-world immigrants are enriching us. Soon after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the media began talking nonstop about a “10-year-old rape victim” who couldn’t get an abortion in Ohio and had to travel to Indiana. The “10-year-old rape victim” was discussed on a loop on MSNBC and even made it into a speech by President Joe Biden.
But then, a bunch of spoilsports started questioning whether “10-year-old rape victim” existed. The attorney general of Ohio said on July 12 he had no evidence of a 10-year-old rape victim, despite the reporting of such a crime being mandatory.
With their backs against the wall, the pro-abortion crowd broke longstanding strictures against mentioning the rapey-ness of our “New Americans” by producing the rapist: Gerson Fuentes, 27, an illegal alien from Guatemala.
Oh, now I see.
The abortion ladies thought they could get away with revealing the child rape victim, while refusing to reveal the child rape perpetrator. When that failed, they wantonly defied the rest of their coalition and told the truth about one of the Democrats’ pets, an illegal immigrant.
Once the pro-abortion crowd identified the rapist, nothing about the story was surprising. It has all the earmarks of an immigrant child rape:
The crime is particularly vile — CHECK!
The raping had been going on for some time — CHECK!
The rapist is shocked that anyone thinks he did anything wrong — CHECK!
Luckily, I am Johnny on the Spot when it comes to immigrant child-rapists, having included nearly 100 such cases in my book “Adios, America!” — as well as the sensational, flood-the-zone news coverage the U.S. media devote to criminal immigrants. (Sarcasm.)
As far as I know, there’s only one group in the country trying to keep a running tally of immigrant child rapes: North Carolinians for Immigration Reform and Enforcement (NCFire.info). Here’s NCFire’s list of illegal immigrant child rapists in North Carolina, so far this year:
2022 Monthly Child Rapes by Illegal Aliens:
6. June 2022: 20 illegal aliens arrested for 42 child rape/child sexual assault charges
5. May 2022: 18 illegal aliens arrested for 42 child rape/child sexual assault charges
4. April 2022: 19 illegal aliens arrested for 72 child rape/child sexual assault charges
3. March 2022: 30 illegal aliens arrested for 110 child rape/child sexual assault charges
2. February 2022: 27 illegal aliens arrested for 84 child rape/child sexual assault charges
1. January 2022: 18 illegal aliens arrested for 96 child rape/child sexual assault charges
Again, that’s only in a single state. And only when the immigrant is illegal.
WHY DOESN’T THE PUBLIC KNOW ABOUT THIS?
Unfortunately, our media are too busy reporting on apocryphal gang rapes by the Duke lacrosse team and “frat boys” at the University of Virginia to bother mentioning the epidemic of child rape by immigrants from peasant cultures pouring into our country by the million.
How far into the stories about UVA and Duke did you have to read to find out that the (falsely) accused rapists were “privileged white men”?
By contrast, whenever the media deign to mention an immigrant rapist, the story will appear in — at most — one local newspaper. Further, both the heinous nature of the crime and the immigration status of the rapist will be hidden. (How about a news report on the Duke lacrosse case, appearing exclusively in the local paper at the bottom of page A-18, titled, “Area Men Arrested.”)
In 2013, an illegal alien from Guatemala, German Rolando Vicente-Sapon, was convicted of kidnapping his 16-year-old cousin, transporting her to the U.S. (also illegally), and holding her as his sex slave for years.
Only one newspaper in the country reported the story: the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
Quiz: Was the headline —
“Illegal Alien sentenced for Incest, Child Rape, Kidnapping and Sex Slavery,” OR
There’s no question that the national media would never have breathed a word about the Fuentes case — but for the doubters. So a big shoutout to the feminists for putting abortion-on-demand above open borders. If only politicians cared as much about our country as pro-choicers do about abortion.
Anessa Paige Gower, a 35-year-old former biology teacher at Making Waves Academy in Richmond, California, was charged with 29 counts of child molestation on April 8. (Richmond Police Department)
140 of the arrests, or 77%, involved alleged sex crimes against students
At least 181 K-12 teachers, principals, and staff have been arrested for child sex crimes in the United States so far this year, according to an analysis of reports.
At least 181 educators been arrested between Jan. 1 and June 30. The analysis conducted by Fox News Digital looked at local news stories week by week featuring arrests of principals, teachers, substitute teachers and teachers’ aides on child sex-related crimes in school districts across the country. Arrests that weren’t publicized were not counted in the analysis, meaning the true number may well be higher.
The analysis found that at least 181 have been arrested between January 1 and June 30, which works out to exactly an arrest a day on average
Four principals, 153 teachers, 12 substitute teachers, and 12 teachers were arrested on a litany of charges, including sexually assaulting students and possessing child pornography. About 140 of those who were arrested carried out alleged crimes against students. Men also made up the vast majority – 78% – of the arrests.
Many of the arrests involved especially heinous allegations.
Roger Weaver Freed, the 34-year-old former principal at Williamsport Area High School in Pennsylvania, was arrested in June and charged with sexual contact with a student, corruption of a minor, furnishing liquor to a minor, sexual assault and aggravated indecent assault without consent. Freed is accused of having a years-long sexual relationship with a male student. (Too close for comfort for me — TPR)
An educator in Delaware, identified as High Road School teacher James Garfield, was arrested last week for allegedly assaulting a 15-year-old student. He was charged with two counts of felony rape and related charges, according to local media.
Days before that, another teacher in Warren, Pennsylvania, was arrested and charged after he allegedly sexually assaulted a 15-year-old student. He was charged with aggravated indecent assault, institutional sexual assault, and other charges, it was reported.
Weeks before that, a Hoboken, New Jersey man admitted to raping two 17-year-old girls while he worked as a gym teacher in two different public school districts in Hudson County, New Jersey. In late June, 45-year-old Francisco Realpe pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault, prosecutors said.
Shannon Hall, a 31-year-old former teacher at Jamaica Gateway to the Sciences High School in New York City, was arrested in June and charged with forcible touching, endangering the welfare of a child and aggravated harassment. Hall is accused of grabbing a 14-year-old female student’s breast inside his classroom and of sending texts to a 16-year-old student that said he wanted to have sex with her and threatening to kill her if she told anyone.
Norman Merrill, a 45-year-old former teacher at Green Mountain Union High School in Vermont, was arrested in May and charged with production of child sexual abuse material and possession of child sexual abuse material.
Merrill is accused of secretly video recording female students walking past him at school and of producing videos showing nude children.
Anessa Paige Gower, a 35-year-old former biology teacher at Making Waves Academy in Richmond, California, was charged with 29 counts of child molestation on April 8. (see lead off photo)
Gower is accused of sexually abusing seven students between 2021-2022 when she was a teacher at Making Waves, with allegations including forcible sodomy of minors and sharing sexually graphic photos over online platforms.
John Doty, a 35-year-old former biology teacher at Career Academy South Bend in Indiana, was charged with two counts of rape, one count of attempted rape and six counts of child seduction on Feb. 9.
(La Porte County Sheriff’s Office) Doty is accused of repeatedly raping a 16-year-old female student and threatening to kill her. He is scheduled to stand trial in January 2023.
Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute an activist who has battled the spread of critical race theory in classrooms, called for a new study on child sex abuse in schools.
“This is a scandal that the political Left is doing everything in its power to suppress,” he said in a statement to Fox News. “The basic fact is incontrovertible: every day, a public school teacher is arrested, indicted, or convicted for child sex abuse. And yet, the teachers unions, the public school bureaucracies, and the left-wing media pretend that the abuse isn’t happening and viciously attack families who raise concerns.”
In an article published in April, Rufo noted that the Department of Education last released a report in 2004 (pdf), which said nearly 9.6 percent of students have been targeted by teachers for sexual misconduct in K-12 classrooms.
“The most comprehensive report about sexual abuse in public schools, published by the Department of Education in 2004, estimates—on the basis of a 2000 survey, conducted by the American Association of University Women, of 2,065 students in grades eight through 11—that nearly 10 percent of K-12 students have been victims of sexual misconduct by a public school employee,” he wrote.
If that figure is correct, he noted that it would “translate into an approximately 4.5 million children nationwide suffering sexual misconduct by public school employees, with an estimated 3 million suffering physical sexual abuse.” That figure, Rufo said, could be “more than 100 times greater than the physical abuse committed by Catholic priests, who, at the time the report was published, were undergoing a reckoning for the crimes within their ranks.
The Epoch Times has contacted the Department of Education for comment.
This article also contains material produced by FOX News Digital.
