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e-cult of autists posted:you pressed the kill alex button for your own ego and to prove a bunch of pinic princess level fractal science points against me oh yeah you will DEFINATELY get AIDS
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May 25, 2016 17:55
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dad gay. so what posted:you are gonna love having all those dicks up your rear end in a top hat. have you ever been "air tight" before? its one one big sweaty fat guy puts his dick in your rear end in a top hat, another stinky big dicked rear end in a top hat puts his dick in your mouth, and then some lovely gross fat guy pinches your tity penis in his mouth so no air can get out. then they are gonna poo poo on your chest and pass you around like trash so the rest can use you as a cum dumpster. if youre lucky they will go "mongolian" on your rear end, thats when they run out of holes they use a prison shiv to make some more in you and then they gently caress those holes too. you are gonna love it you scumbag rapist rear end in a top hat Everyone please leave the room I need some time with dad gay alone Now just breathe dad gasy, into the sack I have here. breathe
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May 25, 2016 17:56
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if you really raped someone though, youre a garbage person
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May 25, 2016 17:56
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Airborne Viking posted:I doesn't surprise me at all that you can't figure out when you're raping someone, and I can't wait until your day in court is on the public record ya me too considering im not charged and you're basically giving evidence that a group of people is timing their accusations against a person in a formulaic strategic way also unless you're sandy hook or nero there really is nothing i have to be worried about sandy hook has 2 kids, that shes really happy with, hated SA, i bought an account for her, i dont think she posts here currently, we hosed twice (so u want to charge me for invite over rape fantasy poo poo twice in a row and her marriage improved and she had a great orgasm and its 8 year old news that was talked about and left behind in my real life) i cant stand zealous social justice people because then u turn into a frothing at the mouth domestic abuser like daikatan rat sou throwing plates at her boyfriend at 2am
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May 25, 2016 17:57
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John Hinckley Jr. is staring at me again. Or is it a glare? He is at least 50 feet away, so it's hard to be sure. Either way, he doesn't seem pleased to see me. I'm sitting on a bench outside the guarded entrance of the John Howard Pavilion, a six-story brick building that houses the criminally insane at St. Elizabeths Hospital. For days I've been coming here to loiter near the front door and to watch Hinckley. Now he's returning my relentless gaze. Every day, it's been the same routine. I drive along Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE, counting the corner liquor stores right up to the hospital's fenced, hilltop perch in Anacostia. I turn into the gate, wave to the security guard, and head into the bucolic—if slightly seedy—campus, laid out nearly a century ago by Central Park architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Like Hinckley and many other patients, I'm now free to roam the sprawling grounds, which are dotted by decaying century-old buildings and graceful magnolias, among more than a hundred kinds of trees that shade these 350 acres. Following a winding road, I pass the Blind Crossing and the Deaf Crossing, to the far eastern corner of campus, where I park outside the Howard Pavilion. The real surprise is how remarkably easy this excursion is in the first place. It's probably harder to sneak onto a country-club golf course and play a few holes than it is to spend an afternoon at St. Elizabeths shadowing John Hinckley. Nobody asks me who I am or why I'm here. In fact, nobody approaches me at all. The lack of security suits me just fine, especially on my first visit, which feels like wandering onto a college campus and trying to find the right dorm: exactly what Hinckley did when he stalked Jodie Foster at Yale. Losing my bearings among the maze of Gothic buildings—most of which are dark and empty—I stop to ask a woman directions. She politely points the way, telling me to simply follow the road until the very end: The maximum-security Howard Pavilion is St. Elizabeths' very own leper colony, where the most dangerous mentally ill patients are confined at the farthest edge of the grounds. As for actually locating Hinckley himself, that's a cinch as well. I take the sidewalk around to the front of the U-shaped pavilion, and there he is, just sitting there right out in the open, as if he has been waiting for me. At first, Hinckley doesn't seem to notice me much. I take a seat at one of the benches that ring the circular driveway. Here patients gather to smoke cigarettes and drink sodas and exorcise their private demons in the muggy air. It's a motley crew of shipwrecked souls, clinging to the rotting, rickety benches like slabs of driftwood. A gray-bearded man, his gnarled, filthy toes jutting from bandaged sandals, sucks a honey bun from a plastic wrapper that's melting in the heat. Next to him is another elderly gent, rail-thin and impeccably dressed in a summer suit and tie. Everything's perfectly in order—except for a shock of ballpoint pens poking from his trim Afro like a crown of thorns. A few simply rock back and forth, staring at nothing; others rub their arms and legs compulsively and moan softly. Some chat amiably with each other or to me; still others talk quite loudly and emphatically only to themselves. But Hinckley doesn't talk to anyone. He doesn't sit on the circle, and he rarely socializes with the rabble. In fact, he shuns the group area altogether, with its mindless banter and obligatory greetings. Instead, he walks straight across the driveway to his own secluded spot—a green bench on the grass under two small trees. There he peruses a pile of newspapers, magazines, and books that he carries around in a plastic bag; sometimes he writes in a notebook—poetry, probably—or simply watches the scene. Nobody ever occupies Hinckley's bench. The folks here may be crazy, but they know rank when they see it. Hinckley's not just any patient, but someone special: the aloof sage of St. Elizabeths in his shady nook. In some sense, he is upholding a tradition as bard-in-residence here. He's not the first poet to make St. Elizabeths his home: Following World War II, Ezra Pound spent 12 years here after being indicted for treason and adjudged insane. Three days into my observation, Hinckley is more interested in me than in his muse. He's not happy about a newcomer in his domain. Whether it's a stare or a glare, his look definitely warns: Mind your own business. I don't blame him for raising his hackles. It's a perfectly understandable reaction, especially for a celebrity patient who for years received death threats. I'm close to his turf, and that's enough to make him supremely suspicious. Even as the guards ignore me and the patients accept me as their own, Hinckley seems to realize that I don't belong here. As for our staring contest, Hinckley's the easy winner. He burns a hole through me in no time flat. I nervously light a cigarette and go back to my own mass of reading material: newspapers, magazines, and some poems by Edgar Allan Poe...and John Warnock Hinckley. Poe is one of Hinckley's favorite poets, but his midnight lines prove thoroughly unreadable out in the blinding sunlight. Hinckley's own verse, though, fits right in with the mood, as I roast in the July humidity and feel the heat from the author's watchful eyes: Pretend you are a virgin on fire An outcast in the midst of madness The scion of something unthinkable Satan's long lost illegitimate son A solitary weed among carnations The last living poo poo on earth Hinckley doesn't need ominous ravens and fancy rhymes to get his point across. A heavy dose of old-school Romanticism and contemporary angst does the job quite well: Regardless of everyone's friends I plot revenge in the dark I plot escape from this asylum Regardless of Disneyland I follow the example of perverts I follow the long lost swine Reading these poems, you'd think Hinckley was bemoaning his incarceration in a mental institution, but he wrote these lines nearly two decades ago. (They appeared in his parents' 1985 memoir, Breaking Points.) Back then, in 1981, he was an aspiring poet and rock musician, bouncing back and forth between college in Texas and his parents' mansion in Colorado. Mostly, though, he was the consummate loner and ultimate loser—"the scion of something unthinkable." As he wandered about, Hinckley tried to woo a celebrity he'd never met—Jodie Foster—with poems, love letters, and phone calls. He told her he was her Napoleon and she was his Josephine. Ever so patiently, he courted his unattainable dream lover from afar. But finally he realized the sweet lines and other Petrarchan moves weren't doing the trick. So he decided it was time for action instead of words, time to prove himself—not just to her but to the whole world. He bought a couple of guns and tried to win her love by shooting President Ronald Reagan. That was all a long time ago. Who knows what he's scribbling in his notebook these days? Maybe Poe and Foster have dissolved into the mists of the past, the overheated stuff of adolescent fantasies. Maybe not. In person at least, John Hinckley Jr. remains instantly recognizable as "the guy who shot Reagan," a faded media icon trapped in a time warp. Except for a slightly receding hairline, the 42-year-old still resembles the stuck-in-the-'70s college dropout and failed assassin—right down to his shoulder-length sandy hair and sideburns. His pudgy baby face and preppy attire—usually a button-down shirt and khakis—betray his pampered upbringing as the son of an oil baron. They also set him apart at St. Elizabeths, especially compared to the haggard, time-worn countenances of his fellow patients, many of whom are poor and black. Hinckley is by no means rotting away at St. Elizabeths. The main difference between the Hinckley of today and the mug shots of old is a cosmetic detail: Contact lenses have replaced the clunky glasses that drooped down his nose and made him the exemplar of nerdy would-be assassins the world over. Now that his eyes are no longer obscured by reflection, they reveal no great mystery beyond a grim determination. Unlike the blank, medicated stares of many of his fellow patients, Hinckley possesses the look—not so much haughty as self-contained and stubbornly proud—of someone who's only too aware of his predicament. Even if Hinckley's physical appearance has barely changed, his lawyers and doctors say he's a completely different person from the psychotic gunman found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1982. More than 15 years of confinement at St. Elizabeths have rehabilitated Hinckley, they claim. He's no longer psychotic or delusional, and certainly not dangerous. He's more than ready, they say, if not for full release, then at least for limited excursions off hospital grounds. Last month at a hearing at U.S. District Court in Washington, Hinckley's lawyers officially requested that he be allowed to go on monthly field trips with his elderly parents. The four-day hearing featured a cast of characters—psychiatrists, Hinckley's father, even a femme fatale of sorts—similar to the one that starred in the original trial that riveted the country back in '82. While that trial focused on a supposedly insane act of violence, Hinckley's lawyer Barry Levine used the recent hearing to try to transform the Hinckley case into something different: a parable about crime and punishment in the morally ambiguous world of the mentally ill. "In this nation, we do not punish those who are sick, we try to treat them," Levine told a federal judge and a half-filled courtroom. "[Hinckley] went to St. Elizabeths in the '80s, and his stay there was somewhat stormy. But there was a slow and gradual progress....In the '90s, he responded properly to treatment....The improvement that we have witnessed, we submit—and the evidence will show—was remarkable." Levine presented a portrait of a model patient: Hinckley hasn't needed medication for five years, and he holds a steady clerical job at the acute-care hospital. He resides in a minimum-security ward and has full grounds privileges. (He could escape any time he wanted from the decrepit, low-security campus, says Levine, but he's never made an attempt.) His father, Jack Hinckley, who had broken down sobbing at the '82 trial, testified confidently that his son was fully recovered and had earned the right to the "modest" request. Most importantly, Levine emphasized, Hinckley's treatment team of doctors had unanimously recommended the requested furlough. Prosecutors argued that Hinckley remains a sick and dangerous man who cannot be trusted. As U.S. Attorney Robert Chapman pointed out, the scenario presented by Levine was eerily familiar: Back in 1987, Hinckley's treatment team unanimously approved a similar request. The doctors were convinced that Hinckley had recovered and was no longer obsessed with Jodie Foster. But shortly before a scheduled hearing on the furlough request, a search of Hinckley's room revealed 57 photos of Foster. The obsession seemed present-tense enough to deny the privileges he sought. During last month's hearing, prosecutors asserted that Hinckley has recently been up to his old tricks again, namely stalking and harassing a woman with whom he'd become acquainted. Their star witness, Jeannette Wick, is a longtime employee at St. Elizabeths; she testified that what started as a casual professional relationship with a patient in 1995 degenerated into something threatening, if not sinister. After he was told to stay away from Wick, Hinckley allegedly phoned her repeatedly and "stared her down" from afar. Levine argued that Hinckley had a close friendship with Wick that simply turned sour. Hinckley's version, which includes a back rub, a game of footsie, and personal conversations, was supported somewhat by Hinckley's own doctor, who testified that he found the patient's account more plausible than Wick's. The judge decided that Hinckley's progress didn't erase his spotty history at St. Elizabeths. "The history of this case suggests a deceptive individual who has, in the past, deceived those treating him in ways too numerous to recount," wrote Judge June Green in a 15-page ruling that emphatically denied the request. Is Hinckley a model patient who has recovered from mental illness, or a coolly manipulative madman? That has been the legal quandary for years now, as the two sides have reversed their positions since the insanity trial in 1982. Hinckley's lawyers contend that their client is healthy and cured and ready for a road trip, while federal prosecutors claim that the man they tried to prove was sane at the time of the shooting is mentally ill and remains a serious threat. Levine calls Hinckley a "political prisoner" who is being confined because of notoriety, rather than for his present mental condition and recent exemplary behavior as a patient at St. Elizabeths. According to Levine, Hinckley is still being unduly punished as the man who shot Reagan rather than the patient who is legally entitled to treatment, recovery, and eventual release into the community. "What makes this a high-profile matter is not him but his victims," says Levine, whose clients have included Mike Tyson and former Reagan administration officials Elliott Abrams and Bud McFarlane, who gained pardons during the Iron-contra investigation. "If one were to concentrate on his therapy and his achievements in the course of therapy, then he long ago would have been a person for whom release would have been appropriate." During the hearing, Hinckley himself never took the stand to testify. He sat impassively in nicely tailored suits and rarely changed his blank expression. He knew the judge was watching his every move. After spending the '80s mouthing off to everyone from Penthouse to the New York Times to serial killer Ted Bundy, he doesn't talk to the media, or to anyone else for that matter. If nothing else, Hinckley has apparently begun to understand that being famous, long an objective of his, is exactly what stands in the way of his current objective: shaking off the bonds of confinement at St. Elizabeths. Hinckley has wised up. The former bad boy—who once boldly mail-ordered (from his hospital room, no less) a nude drawing of Foster back in the crazy '80s—has apparently settled into a mellow middle age. No more Napoleon on his high horse. No more escapades and no more hi-jinks. Nothing but silence. Just Hinck the Sphinx. These days, it is others who are trying to rekindle interest in a case that many would rather forget, if they haven't already. His parents, Jack and Jo Ann, continue to crusade as their son's strongest advocates, pouring money into what some would consider a hopeless case. They visit their son regularly, and the couple say they've logged more than 200 family-therapy sessions at St. Elizabeths. During and shortly after the recent hearing in Washington, they appeared on the Today show and Larry King Live to plead their cause; they assured the public that their lost son has finally found himself and is ready for chaperoned field trips. His parents aren't the only ones who have an interest in keeping his case visible. His victims, former White House press secretary Jim Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy, and D.C. policeman Thomas Delahanty, have been hounding Hinckley for more than a decade. After the '82 acquittal, they filed a civil suit demanding millions in damages. In 1995, Hinckley signed an unusual agreement that gave them the rights to his life story, the only substantial asset he has. Apparently, the Hinckley saga is still considered hot property; publishers and producers are reportedly salivating at the chance to get a crack at it. "A well-written book with a point to make sells," says the victims' lawyer, Frederic Schwartz. As part of the agreement, Hinckley will grant an exclusive, no-fee interview for a nationally televised appearance. The event is intended to kick off media interest in a book (and movie and whatever) based on his life. But more than a year after the settlement, Schwartz is still waiting for Hinckley to choose an interviewer and get things rolling, and he's becoming impatient. "We simply can't wait any longer," says Schwartz. "Our clients are getting old." But Hinckley has been procrastinating and for good reason. His lawyers claim that any attempt by Hinckley to jump back into the media spotlight—even for the ultimate purpose of paying restitution to his victims—will damage his chances of gaining release. There are other unpleasant specters looming on the horizon for Hinckley: While he and the ailing Reagan have faded into relative obscurity, Foster's star shines ever brighter, which must be an irritant to Hinckley whether he's over his obsession or not. Her new movie Contact has opened in Washington, and it's being hailed as her latest triumph. In the flick, Foster plays a sky-watcher who communicates with extraterrestrials (here she is, making friends with beings from outer space, but she couldn't even give Hinckley the time of day). The two-time Oscar winner has done quite nicely for herself in the years following the incident she once said nearly destroyed her life. Now she's considered one of the most powerful players in Hollywood, and there are a few dozen web sites where her rabid fans can worship her from afar. Don't look for Hinckley to be logging onto the Jodie home page any time soon. Patients aren't allowed to have computers at St. Elizabeths. Besides, Hinckley abandoned his Foster fixation long ago, according to Levine, this time for good. He's supposedly got other things on his mind. He has a steady girlfriend, a woman he met when she was a patient at St. Elizabeths. In 1982, a high-society Washingtonian named Leslie DeVeau shot her 10-year-old daughter Erin to death and then turned the gun on herself, only to shoot herself in the arm, which was subsequently amputated. Found not guilty by reason of insanity, she was released from St. Elizabeths after five years. Now 54, she visits Hinckley daily and, according to Levine, is ready to marry him upon his release. And he's a willing would-be groom. All those plans—whether it be nuptials or TV interviews or even a drive in the country with his folks—must seem far off to Hinckley now, especially in light of the judge's recent denial. Watching him these last few days, it seems apparent that Hinckley believes he has paid his debt and done his time. Of course, most patients will swear they don't belong here, even as they speak in a manner that immediately belies their assertion. Which makes Hinckley's silent declaration all the more striking. Whether it's an act or a put-on, it's pretty convincing. The summer days can seem awfully long at St. Elizabeths, especially after 15 years. Hinckley has seen patients like DeVeau who come and go in only a few years, and he's seen others who have remained here for decades. Those are the lifers who are now resigned to the fact that they'll never get out of the nuthouse. His colleagues at St. Elizabeths say Hinckley is for the most part unremarkable. "Aw, Hinckley's an all right guy," says a patient, delicately nibbling a hard-boiled egg as if it were the finest caviar. He watches as Hinckley makes a beeline for the front door, head down and avoiding eye contact, carrying his sack of literature. The patient approves of the loner: "He just keeps to himself, that's all." Soon after, the remaining patients follow Hinckley inside Howard Pavilion; then the guards stub out their cigarettes and take their leave as well, and I'm alone. I wander over to Hinckley's bench. It really is a nice spot under the shady trees, and it feels several crucial degrees cooler than the baked-pavement area near the entrance. Scattered on the grass lie five empty cans of Diet Coke, which Hinckley has been guzzling all afternoon; on the bench is a Reader's Digest, apparently not even worth lugging inside. The view from here is altogether different from the one afforded by the group benches. The other patients sit with their backs to the building and have a vista of the campus, which now includes a vast mound of dirt, part of ongoing construction for a Metro stop. From his secluded spot, however, Hinckley reverses the perspective to dwell not on his campuswide freedom but on his confinement: He spends day after day contemplating the brick, barred-windowed building that looms above, the prison where authorities seem hellbent on making sure he spends the rest of his life. Long before he checked into St. Elizabeths for his indefinite leave of absence from society, John Hinckley Jr. stayed at the swank Park Central Hotel, two blocks from the White House. It was March 29, 1981. The next morning, he walked to a nearby McDonald's, where he had an Egg McMuffin and pondered the day before him. He had decided he needed to do something special to impress Foster, so he was mulling over all sorts of options: shooting into the crowd during a tour of the White House, storming the Senate gallery and opening fire, assassinating Sen. Edward Kennedy. Back at the hotel, though, something he saw in the newspaper settled his immediate plans: At 1p.m., President Reagan was scheduled to address a gathering at the Hilton hotel above Dupont Circle. Hinckley sat down and wrote a letter to Foster: There is a definite possibility that I will be killed in my attempt to get Reagan. It is for this very reason that I am writing to you this letter now. As you well know by now I love you very much, the past seven months I have left you dozens of poems, letters and messages in the faint hope you would develop an interest in me... Jody [sic], I would abandon this idea of getting Reagan in a second if I could only win your heart and live out the rest of my life with you, whether it be in total obscurity or whatever. I will admit to you that the reason I'm going ahead with this attempt now is because I just cannot wait any longer to impress you. I've got to do something now to make you understand in no uncertain terms that I am doing all of this for your sake. Jody, I'm asking you to please look into your heart and at least give me the chance with this historical [sic] deed to gain your respect and love. More than a decade later, this letter seems stilted and almost Victorian in its formal, prudish tone—awfully courtly for a stalker—and defense lawyers used it to demonstrate that Hinckley was crazy as a loon. Certainly, no one disputed that Hinckley was a severely disturbed and angry young man. At 25, he had yet to make a single friend in his life. Unable to hold steady jobs or stay in school, Hinckley survived by sponging off his wealthy father. But three weeks before, Jack Hinckley—ashamed of and fed up with his spoiled son—had finally cut him off and kicked him out for good. (According to Hinckley's '82 defense team, this traumatic expulsion from the House of Dad left him helpless in his descent into madness; other Oedipal interpretations emphasize that Hinckley's mother's nickname was, at that time, "Jodie.") More to the point, Hinckley had seen the movie Taxi Driver at least 15 times, becoming obsessed with the teen prostitute played by Foster. He also identified with the film's protagonist, Travis Bickle, the loner who tries to assassinate a political candidate to prove his love to her. The Taxi Driver-Hinckley nexus has long been part of pop-culture lore, and it has provided ammunition for those who claim the media turns couch potatoes into pathological murderers. Hinckley's desire to both worship a celebrity and become one is beyond argument. His fixation on Foster gave the aimless loner an identity and a real sense of purpose, for perhaps the first time in his life. "Under the shimmering diversions of the spectacle, banalization dominates modern society," wrote the philosopher Guy Debord in 1967. "The celebrity, the spectacular representation of a living human being, embodies this banality by embodying the image of a possible role." Put a bit more simply, worshiping a movie star can give any sap out there a reason to live. Thanks to Foster, Hinckley—who wasn't exactly busy with other projects—could feed on the fantasy that he had a girlfriend, whether she agreed or not. And being a celebrity, Foster was the Girlfriend, famous enough for the ascension with Hinckley: "One day you and I will occupy the White House and the peasants will drool with envy," he wrote her. Despite her fame, Foster remained approachable in a way that would be unthinkable now. Back then, it was easy for Hinckley to follow up on his cinema-inspired obsession and actually make contact with Foster. In that almost innocent era (which Hinckley's act ironically helped end), fans could quite easily enter the private world of their celebrity idols—or at least try to shatter the façade that separated them. All he had to do was get her phone number, call her up, and take it from there. During a seven-month mission, Hinckley not only spoke to Foster often on the phone, but he stalked her quite closely at her Yale dorm in New Haven, Conn. Staying at a cheap motel and dining at a nearby McDonald's, Hinckley hung around the dorm constantly, watching Foster go about her life as a student; he even slipped an epistle or two under the door of her room. He became such a presence that he soon became the butt of jokes. During one of the phone calls, played in court during the '82 trial, one can hear her roommates giggling in the background, as Foster tells Hinckley, "They're laughing at you." Her rejection of his advances was thus all the more palpable: It was actually Jodie who was telling Hinckley to get lost, not some PR flack or henchman. Hinckley's sense of desperation brought him to Washington, where he would make a last-ditch try to prove himself. After finishing his letter to Foster, Hinckley loaded his .22 revolver and took a taxi to the Hilton, where he loitered outside in a cold drizzle for a while, waiting for the right moment. He was almost ready to abandon his mission when Reagan and his entourage appeared at the hotel entrance. This was the cue. As Reagan headed toward his limousine, Hinckley pushed through the crowd and fired six shots at close range. Every bullet found a human target, but only one hit Reagan. The final shot ricocheted from the car door into Reagan's chest, where the slug lodged inches from his heart. He survived emergency surgery at George Washington University Hospital. Reagan's press secretary Jim Brady was shot in the head and suffered permanent brain damage; security officers Timothy McCarthy and Thomas Delahanty were also wounded in the shooting. At first, Hinckley's "historical deed" simply put him in a group of recent would-be presidential assassins who had bungled their big chance. Just a few years before, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme and Sara Jane Moore had each taken potshots at then-President Gerald Ford; both were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Hinckley seemed to fit nicely into this buffoonish trio of losers. Of course, Saturday Night Live and stand-up comedians had a field day. Not even an assassination attempt, it seemed, could get people to take Hinckley seriously. But his trial changed all that. His defense team, led by attorney Vincent Fuller of the famed Williams & Connolly law firm, methodically went about convincing the jury that Hinckley was mentally ill—and thus not responsible for his actions—at the time of the shooting. A gaggle of psychiatrists testified for both sides. Those for the defense claimed that Hinckley was indeed psychotic; one went as far as declaring him "a process schizophrenic," which meant that Hinckley had developed a delusional madness slowly over years of isolation and severe depression. The prosecution had its own stable of high-profile head doctors. Dr. Park Dietz, who later testified at the Jeffrey Dahmer trial, claimed that Hinckley was simply a disturbed opportunist, and a spoiled brat to boot; he suggested that the assassination attempt was simply "an easy way for Hinckley to achieve the fame he was unwilling to work for." The burden of proof rested on the prosecution, which had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hinckley was sane when he shot Reagan. Of course, that was a tough assignment. After a screening of Taxi Driver and a viewing of a medical photo of Hinckley's atrophied brain—among a bevy of controversial defense exhibits—and after 24 hours of deliberation, the jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity. Suddenly, the case wasn't so funny anymore. There was a national uproar, and every politician worth his pork clamored for changes in the law. Hinckley made the perfect scapegoat, and it didn't help that he was the son of a millionaire who had snagged the best defense that money could buy. In the years since, the acquittal has branded Hinckley not only as "the guy who shot Reagan," but also as the scoundrel who got away with it before slinking into the sanctuary of St. Elizabeths. Hinckley's various attempts to gain release—especially the '87 debacle—have convinced many that he remains a threat, whether he's "cured" or not. "John Hinckley is dangerous because he has the characteristics of a sociopathic assassin," wrote James Clarke in his 1990 study, On Being Mad or Merely Angry: John W. Hinckley Jr. and Other Dangerous People. "He is intelligent, shrewdly manipulative, and, of course, profoundly disturbed." For Clarke, Hinckley's good report cards reveal merely that he's obeying the dictums of a high-ticket defense team: "As Hinckley has demonstrated, sociopaths can fake normality when seeking hospital privileges or parole, just as they can fake insanity to avoid punishment during a trial. Prisons are filled with violent criminals who differ from Hinckley only in that they did not have the expensive legal and psychiatric talent that was summoned on his behalf." Hinckley's lawyer Levine points out that regardless of how much mistrust is out there, his client has a legal right to fight for eventual release. "When one has been found not guilty by reason of insanity, one is entitled to treatment," says Levine. "John Hinckley has worked very hard and has done very well in his therapy, and has, by millimeters, gained additional privileges. And going off the campus into the community is now the next step in that therapy." And yet, that may prove to be the hardest step of all. Authorities are well aware that the seemingly harmless furlough could open the door to Hinckley's eventual total release. Nobody wants to be the judge or review board that frees a would-be presidential assassin, even if only for a field trip with his folks. Like every patient at St. Elizabeths, Hinckley can petition every six months for release. Over the years, he has made several requests to go on furloughs. Last month's proceeding marked the first time a full-blown hearing has been held to consider his request. The hearing showed that Hinckley has made substantial progress during his stay at St. Elizabeths, which early on was fraught with suicide attempts and publicity stunts; and later, the discovery of his secret stash of Foster photos. Most of all, though, the hearing revealed that medical experts still can't agree about what's really going on inside the mind of John Hinckley. Two psychiatrists and two psychologists testified for the defense. They claimed that Hinckley's psychosis—which has never actually been pinned down—was in full remission. However, they said the patient still showed a severe narcissistic personality disorder. In other words, the former madman is now merely a middle-of-the-road neurotic. One psychiatrist outlined in detail the clinical definition of "narcissistic personality disorder." An individual must have at least five of the following symptoms, he testified: grandiose sense of self-importance; preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited power and success; believing oneself to be special; requiring a lot of admiration; sense of entitlement; tendency to be exploitative personally; lack of empathy; envy; being perceived by others as haughty or arrogant. (As a recent issue of the New Yorker drolly noted, the courtroom audience tittered at this grocery list of egomaniacal traits, which describe many a Beltway power player: "'Sounds like everyone in Washington,' someone whispered.") Not only was Hinckley now mentally sound, argued the defense, he was also no longer dangerous. "Under most conditions, his potential for violence could be virtually no different from that of the average person in the general population," testified clinical psychologist Mark Binderman. The assassination attempt—the only markedly violent act in his life—was simply the culmination of a madness that had plagued Hinckley for years. "His dangerousness emerged from a lengthy psychosis," testified psychiatrist William Carpenter, who went on to elaborate: "The violence that is associated with Mr. Hinckley's behavior occurred during a psychosis. He had a severe brain disorder; he was severely psychotic, and that, combined with the degree of isolation and a long period of time, is what created the circumstances for violence....His history does not have any indication of violent eruptions independent of being in the throes of a severe brain disorder." Carpenter went on to suggest that those potentially explosive conditions didn't apply to the John Hinckley of today, a stable, if a bit self-absorbed, patient who continues to respond well to therapy. But the prosecution had a psychiatrist who presented a very different view of Hinckley. Dr. Raymond Patterson said Hinckley had indeed made extensive progress through therapy, but this was a mostly superficial improvement in a controlled setting: "I have some concerns that some core personality issues remain unchanged," testified Patterson, who once served as the Hinckleys' family therapist at St. Elizabeths. Patterson said that Hinckley still showed disturbing symptoms from his initial diagnosis 15 years ago. According to Patterson, behind the kinder, gentler version of Hinckley presented by the defense lurked the old John Hinckley: deceptive, withdrawn, and unwilling to share crucial information with his treatment team. Most troubling of all, Hinckley had failed to tell doctors about his relationship with Jeannette Wick, which Patterson said bore "striking similarities" to his obsession with Foster. Wick is chief pharmacist at St. Elizabeths, and her testimony proved the most dramatic of the hearing. Though she is a petite, articulate blonde, Wick doesn't really resemble Foster, as the prosecution implied. Taking the stand in her starched, white uniform, she described herself on the job as a sociable, friendly woman who often lends books to fellow employees and patients. That's how Wick first met Hinckley, who often does errands at the pharmacy as part of his industrial therapy job at the acute-care hospital. In the spring of 1995, she was carrying a new book by mystery writer P.D. James, and Hinckley asked if he could borrow it after she had read it. They struck up a conversation, and soon Hinckley was spending time at Wick's office. According to Wick, their conversations at first centered on books but were mostly typical office chitchat. "I remember him telling me that he was extremely bored, and that he didn't have anything to do," she testified. "And I said to him, 'You should learn to crochet,' and he laughed and he said, 'The other guys at John Howard will make fun of me,' and I said, 'Who cares what the other guys think? If you want to crochet, crochet. I'll show you how.'" After a while, though, Wick decided that Hinckley was hanging around too much, making unannounced and sudden appearances, and intruding on her privacy: "There was one day when I was on the phone with my lawyer, and I frequently talk on the phone looking out the window with my back to the door, and I turned around and almost jumped out of my skin because John was sitting at the other side of my desk. He did at that point ask questions about my marriage, and I teared up and said, 'It's off-limits.'" Around that time, Hinckley "shocked" Wick by announcing that he knew her entire schedule; he also gave her love songs he had recorded on cassettes, which included a song featuring the pet name of Wick's daughter. Eventually, she consulted Hinckley's therapist, and Hinckley was told to call before visiting Wick at her office. According to Wick, he deluged her office with calls, sometimes as many as 15 a day. "As time went on, I started to get really irritated," she testified. "[And then] I was flat-out angry." Finally, she complained to a superior, and Hinckley was ordered to avoid contact with Wick. She said he still harassed her from a distance, not only at the office but on her daily power walks around the campus. Once, at the acute-care hospital, she was standing in the elevator as Hinckley watched her from outside: "The elevator door frequently does not close in this facility, and I was pushing madly and it would not close." And there stood Hinckley, a few feet away, "glaring into the elevator....He stares at me. I guess the kids would say he stares me down." According to Levine, Hinckley and Wick had an intimate relationship that she was in denial about. Hinckley claimed that he had given Wick a back rub after she complained of a muscle strain; he also claimed that they had played "footsie" under her desk, and that she had once presented him with a gift, a copy of Stephen King's novel Dolores Claiborne. (Wick denies all of this.) One of Hinckley's doctors, Dr. John Kelley, said he found his patient's version more believable than Wick's. "I knew about some of the incidents of personal information that John claimed that Jeannette Wick had told him," testified Kelley, who is chief medical officer for psychiatrists at Howard Pavilion. "I knew some of the incidents to be true from an independent source." Moreover, Kelley said he considered the relationship, excluding its bitter end, a rather healthy thing for Hinckley. "I don't attribute any malignant motives to Mr. Hinckley," he testified. "If anything, by his own admission, he was somewhat infatuated with her. She was a staff person who paid attention to him....The most you can say is that he was annoying after she told him to call before he came. In her version, he called an awful lot....But I would say that made him annoying. That doesn't make him dangerous." Levine emphasized that Hinckley stayed away from Wick once he was told to. He said that Hinckley's girlfriend Leslie DeVeau knew about his friendship with Wick and had encouraged it. According to Levine, the very fact that Hinckley even had the relationship at all—and not some fantasy—proved that it didn't echo his Foster obsession. However, Wick's testimony—cited extensively by the judge in her ruling—proved a major blow to Hinckley's case. Jack Hinckley has fought long and hard—and spent huge sums of money—to make sure his son gets every consideration in the eyes of the law. (This sort of support is rare at St. Elizabeths, where many patients don't even have visitors, much less a bottomless legal fund.) Hinckley's testimony at the recent hearing was just one more salvo in a battle that began the day his son shot the president. When he took the stand, the 70-year-old presented a portrait of unconditional love that any parent would recognize—but that many would be hard-pressed to emulate. Ever since the shooting, Jack Hinckley and his wife Jo Ann have all but dedicated their lives to trying to atone for their son's sin. The couple's bestselling memoir, Breaking Points, is a bizarre but heartfelt attempt to trace their son's downward spiral and to confront their own feelings of guilt. The retired oil baron not only describes his religious conversion but confesses that he failed his son in his time of need. "The one thing I want more than anything else in the world is John's freedom," testified Hinckley. "We've waited 15 or 16 years already, and I'm not asking for complete freedom. All we're asking [is] that he be allowed to take the next step." The proposed monthly 12-hour field trips, explained Hinckley, would be "modest," low-key excursions, probably entailing a trip to a restaurant or a record store John was interested in visiting. He said he would provide authorities with a full itinerary of their every move, and the Secret Service was welcome to tag along. "If we thought there was any chance at all that what we're requesting here is dangerous, we never would never do it," he says. (In fact, his son did receive one special leave in the late '80s: He had Easter dinner with his family at a Northern Virginia residence, and there was no incident.) Jack Hinckley told the court his son was a different person, "well-adjusted" and "outgoing," from the delusional maniac who tried to shoot the president or who hid pictures of Foster in his hospital room as late as 1987. "I don't think he's seriously mentally ill," he testified. "I don't think he's mentally ill at all to speak of....I would say that he's recovered to the point that he's ready to go out and do bigger and better things." The judge didn't think Hinckley was ready for "bigger and better things" just yet. Ultimately, even more than Wick's testimony it was Hinckley's own writing that helped seal the denial of his furlough request. The problematic entry comes from a journal titled A World of Mine Own, found in '87 in Hinckley's hospital room. In her ruling, Judge Green cited an entire passage: I dare say that not one psychiatrist who has analyzed me knows any more about me than the average person on the street who has read about me in the newspapers. Psychiatry is a guessing game and I do my best to keep the fools guessing about me. They will never know the true John Hinckley. Only I fully understand myself. Green seized on this as evidence of Hinckley's extensive record of deceit and manipulation: "What is particularly disturbing is that this statement was written at a time when the Petitioner had already undergone five years of treatment and had convinced his treatment clinicians that he had recovered sufficiently for conditional release," she wrote. "Statements such as these cause the Court to proceed carefully in weighing current assessments of the Petitioner by his experts." Levine reserved his scorn not for the judge's ruling but for the hospital's review board, which denied the request (and the treatment team's recommendation) and made the hearing necessary in the first place. "The review board has stopped practicing medicine and is wallowing in its version of politics," says Levine, who has appealed the ruling. At the next hearing, scheduled for December, Hinckley may testify, according to Levine. He's lucid and anxious to tell his side of the story, says Levine. It was only the prosecution's tactics that kept Hinckley from taking the stand last month. "It became very obvious to me during this hearing why John should not testify," says Levine. "The government's entire case was concentrating on the early years, and he was going to be cross-examined on those years, and I wasn't going to give them the chance to do that." Levine says the most damaging evidence in the hearing—such as the journal entry—is decade-old stuff dredged up to keep Hinckley confined indefinitely. That was back when Hinckley was a sick man, says Levine, but now he's healed. "The government's case rests on the old John Hinckley," says Levine. "And they do not ever come to grips with the new John Hinckley." "The friendliest people in the world are in West Virginia," says the patient, as if making a scientific pronouncement. "Everybody else is civil, but they're friendly. They're sane, for real." We're sitting on a bench outside the Howard Pavilion on another hot, muggy afternoon. Hinckley is ensconced in his usual spot, immersed in his stack of literature. Once in a while, though, he steals a look our way. My companion is a tall, talkative man, crowned by a black stocking on his head. He sits upright on his bench, as rigid as if he were behind a desk in class. Like most of the patients who hang out by the entrance, he's a dedicated chain smoker, rain or shine. He takes impossibly deep drags on his cigarettes, holds the fog deep in his innards until it hits bottom, and finally lets out massive billows of CO2 as if he were blowing all his troubles away. "Everything in West Virginia is friendly," he goes on. "Even the dogs and cats are friendly." Well, what about St. Elizabeths? It seems the obvious inquiry to make. He scowls and exhales his smoke too soon, spoiling his rhythm. "Here in this poo poo farm—excuse my language—they don't want you to be sane. To me, six months in here is too long for anybody. See, you regress. If you have any type of advancement in here as far as blending back with civilization, over six months, you deteriorate backward and there's no hope for you. People in here can't stay sane long." That's the way most afternoons go in front of Howard Pavilion. Once in a while, a name will stick out of the banter ("Hey Swann, man, how ya doin?"), and you realize you're sitting next to the Shotgun Stalker, who terrorized Adams Morgan and Mount Pleasant a few years back, allegedly gunning down four people in random drive-by shootings. Neighbors told authorities he often talked to squirrels, among other peculiar habits, and he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. But here at St. Elizabeths, the Shotgun Stalker's as friendly as the next guy. Indeed, the John Howard Pavilion boasts patients of all sorts. Out of the dwindling population of 755 at St. Elizabeths, 254 forensic patients currently reside in the pavilion, built in 1959. Like Hinckley, many have been found not guilty by reason of insanity. Some are here only temporarily, awaiting evaluation and trial. There are also residents who became mentally ill while in the D.C. prison system. Every Howard resident is locked down during the night, but many, like Hinckley, have earned privileges that allow them to wander the grounds. Out on the circle, patients bum cigarettes or change for sodas. Some are as generous as Christmas, while others keep an obsessively close tab on every penny that changes hands. One day a young man—probably no more than 18—asks me for a nickel, which I give him. The next afternoon, the moment he spots me, he saunters up and—flashing a mischievous smile—hands me a nickel. Hinckley apparently doesn't smoke, and he doesn't need spare coins for his sodas. Once in a while he gets up from his bench, and that's when you really notice what a short, dumpy guy he is. Then he ambles to the entrance in his slow, stooped-shouldered way—as if he has a lot of time to kill. In fact, the gold wristwatch slinking down his forearm seems to be weighing him down. Reappearing at the door with a can of Diet Coke, he heads straight back to his spot and settles back in until it's time for another. I watch Hinckley for long intervals when he doesn't read or write or do much of anything. He seems to be meditating. Sometimes he sits cross-legged, hunched over with his chin in his hand in The Thinker's pose; other times, he slouches casually, an arm outstretched on the back of the bench. He just stares ahead and takes it all in, and sometimes I'm reminded of a line by Poe: "They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." Then it strikes me that his thoughts are likely not mystical at all. He's probably wondering who the hell is this creep who keeps coming here to stare at him day after day. Watching Hinckley has got me reading too much into everything. Like the day before, Hinckley has my number. His renewed vigilance is definitely not a figment of my imagination. This time it's not exactly a staring match, but his strategic watchfulness is unnerving. A newcomer takes a seat on a nearby bench, plopping himself down with exaggerated relish, as if the warped, splintered boards—only two of four remain, making barely enough seat for a starving alley cat to take a nap—are the most comfortable cushions imaginable. He's obviously in a good mood, and I welcome his arrival to help ease the tension of my own private Cold War with Hinckley. He bellows some lines from Arlo Guthrie's '60s stoner anthem, "Coming Into Los Angeles." He stumbles over some verses and forgets the rest. No matter—he's celebrating some sort of triumph, and it doesn't take long to find out exactly what. "I refused to take my medicine, and I'm feeling loving great!" he shouts, limbs and hair flailing in a paroxysm of pure joy. "I couldn't feel any better than this." He bends toward me, apparently to share a secret. His dirty green-tinted eyeglasses are nearly the same color as his rotten teeth. His long, wild hair leaps from his head like a fright wig. His lanky limbs are all akimbo. "The doctors have a firm belief in medicine, but I don't believe in that garbage," he whispers. "That medicine they use is a chemical straitjacket."
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May 25, 2016 17:59
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dad gay. so what posted:oh yeah you will DEFINATELY get AIDS bitch u can get aids too then gently caress yourself and your mirroring/analgoy whatever stem math formula ur trying to use to predict me
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May 25, 2016 17:59
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Strange that our timing is exactly the same as when you showed up and admitted to raping a woman and thinking what you did is ok. Rapist
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May 25, 2016 17:59
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onald Reagan loved to tell stories. When he ran for president in 1976, many of Reagan’s anecdotes converged on a single point: The welfare state is broken, and I’m the man to fix it. On the trail, the Republican candidate told a tale about a fancy public housing complex with a gym and a swimming pool. There was also someone in California, he’d explain incredulously, who supported herself with food stamps while learning the art of witchcraft. And in stump speech after stump speech, Reagan regaled his supporters with the story of an Illinois woman whose feats of deception were too amazing to be believed. “In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record,” the former California governor declared at a campaign rally in January 1976. “She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.” As soon as he quoted that dollar amount, the crowd gasped. Four decades later, Reagan’s soliloquies on welfare fraud are often remembered as shameless demagoguery. Many accounts report that Reagan coined the term “welfare queen,” and that this woman in Chicago was a fictional character. In 2007, the New York Times’ Paul Krugman wrote that “the bogus story of the Cadillac-driving welfare queen [was] a gross exaggeration of a minor case of welfare fraud.” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews says the whole thing is racist malarkey—a coded reference to black indolence and criminality designed to appeal to working-class whites. Josh Levin JOSH LEVIN Josh Levin is Slate’s executive editor. Though Reagan was known to stretch the truth, he did not invent that woman in Chicago. Her name was Linda Taylor, and it was the Chicago Tribune, not the GOP politician, who dubbed her the “welfare queen.” It was the Tribune, too, that lavished attention on Taylor’s jewelry, furs, and Cadillac—all of which were real. As of 1976, Taylor had yet to be convicted of anything. She was facing charges that she’d bilked the government out of $8,000 using four aliases. When the welfare queen stood trial the next year, reporters packed the courtroom. Rather than try to win sympathy, Taylor seemed to enjoy playing the scofflaw. As witnesses described her brazen pilfering from public coffers, she remained impassive, an unrepentant defendant bedecked in expensive clothes and oversize hats. Linda Taylor, the haughty thief who drove her Cadillac to the public aid office, was the embodiment of a pernicious stereotype. With her story, Reagan marked millions of America’s poorest people as potential scoundrels and fostered the belief that welfare fraud was a nationwide epidemic that needed to be stamped out. This image of grand and rampant welfare fraud allowed Reagan to sell voters on his cuts to public assistance spending. The “welfare queen” became a convenient villain, a woman everyone could hate. She was a lazy black con artist, unashamed of cadging the money that honest folks worked so hard to earn. Ronald Reagan addressing a senior citizens group, New Hampshire, 1976. Ronald Reagan addressing a senior citizens group, New Hampshire, 1976. Photo by Constantine Manos/Magnum Photos After her welfare fraud trial in 1977, Taylor went to prison, and the newspapers moved on to covering the next outlandish villain. When her sentence was up, she changed her name and left Chicago, and the cops who had pursued her in Illinois lost track of her whereabouts. None of the police officers I talked to knew whether she was still alive. When I set out in search of Linda Taylor, I hoped to find the real story of the woman who played such an outsize role in American politics—who she was, where she came from, and what her life was like before and after she became the national symbol of unearned prosperity. What I found was a woman who destroyed lives, someone far more depraved than even Ronald Reagan could have imagined. In the 1970s alone, Taylor was investigated for homicide, kidnapping, and baby trafficking. The detective who tried desperately to put her away believes she’s responsible for one of Chicago’s most legendary crimes, one that remains unsolved to this day. Welfare fraud was likely the least of the welfare queen’s offenses. For those who knew her decades ago, Linda Taylor was a terrifying figure. On multiple occasions, I had potential sources tell me they didn’t think I was really a journalist. Maybe I was a cop. Maybe I was trying to kill them. As Lamar Jones tells me about his brief marriage to the welfare queen, he keeps asking how I’ve found him, and why I want to know all of these personal details. If I’m in cahoots with Linda, as he suspects I might be, he assures me that I won’t be able to find him again. He’s just going to disappear. Those who crossed paths with Linda Taylor believe she’s capable of absolutely anything. They also hope she’s dead. 2 “She Can Be Any Age She Wishes” Jack Sherwin knew he’d seen her before. It was Aug. 8, 1974, and the Chicago burglary detective was working a case on the city’s South Side. Though her name and face didn’t look familiar, Sherwin recognized the victim’s manner, and her story. She’d been robbed, Linda Taylor explained, and she was sorry to report that the burglar had good taste: $14,000 in furs, jewelry, and cash were missing from her apartment. Thank heavens, most of it was insured. After listening to her tale of woe, Sherwin asked Taylor if she’d mind getting him some water. When she returned, the detective kept the glass as evidence. Chicago police officer Jack Sherwin in uniform in December 1969, a few years before he met Linda Taylor. Chicago police officer Jack Sherwin in uniform in December 1969, a few years before he met Linda Taylor. Courtesy of Jack Sherwin The fingerprints collected from Taylor’s kitchen helped jog Sherwin’s memory. Two years earlier, the same woman had been charged with making a bogus robbery claim—that time, the thieves had supposedly made off with $10,000 worth of valuables. Sherwin knew Linda Taylor because, out of pure happenstance, he’d been called on to investigate both of these alleged burglaries. She was living in a different part of town, using a different name, and sporting a different head of hair. But this was the same woman, pulling the same stunt. Sherwin cited Taylor, again, for making a false report. But the 35-year-old police officer, a former Marine and a 12-year veteran of the force, didn’t stop there. “The more I dug into it, the more I found that just wasn’t right,” he remembers. First, he learned that she was getting welfare checks under multiple names. Then he discovered Taylor’s husbands—“Oh, I guess maybe seven men that I knew of,” Sherwin says. The detective and his partner, Jerry Kush, got to work tracking down this parade of grooms, and they found a few who were willing to talk. Sherwin’s hunch had been right: This woman was up to no good. In late September 1974, seven weeks after Sherwin met Taylor for the second time, the detective’s findings made the Chicago Tribune. “Linda Taylor received Illinois welfare checks and food stamps, even tho[ugh] she was driving three 1974 autos—a Cadillac, a Lincoln, and a Chevrolet station wagon—claimed to own four South Side buildings, and was about to leave for a vacation in Hawaii,” wrote Pulitzer Prize winner George Bliss. The story detailed a 14-page report that Sherwin had put together illuminating “a lifestyle of false identities that seemed calculated to confuse our computerized, credit-oriented society.” There was evidence that the 47-year-old Taylor had used three Social Security cards, 27 names, 31 addresses, and 25 phone numbers to fuel her mischief, not to mention 30 different wigs. As the Tribune and other outlets stayed on the story, those figures continued to rise. Reporters noted that Linda Taylor had used as many as 80 names, and that she’d received at least $150,000—in illicit welfare cash, the numbers that Ronald Reagan would cite on the campaign trail in 1976. (Though she used dozens of different identities, I’ve chosen to call her Linda Taylor in this story, as it’s how the public came to know her at the height of her infamy.) Taylor also gained a reputation as a master of disguise. "She is black, but is able to pass herself off as Spanish, Filipino, white, and black," the executive director of Illinois’ Legislative Advisory Committee on Public Aid told the Associated Press in November 1974. "And it appears she can be any age she wishes, from the early 20s to the early 50s.” For Bliss and the Tribune, the scandal wasn’t just that Taylor had her hand in the till and had the seeming ability to shape-shift. The newspaper also directed its ire at the sclerotic bureaucracy that allowed her schemes to flourish. Bliss had been reporting on waste, fraud, and mismanagement in the Illinois Department of Public Aid for a long time prior to Taylor’s emergence. His stories—on doctors who billed Medicaid for fictitious procedures and overworked caseworkers who failed to purge ineligible recipients from the welfare rolls—showed an agency in disarray. That disarray didn’t make for an engaging read, though: “State orders probe of Medicaid” is not a headline that provokes shock and anger. Then the welfare queen came along and dressed the scandal up in a fur coat. This was a crime that people could comprehend, and Linda Taylor was the perfectly unsympathetic figure for outraged citizens to point a finger at. MOCKUP OF TRIBUNE HEADLINE: Cops Find Deceit Photo illustration by Holly Allen Now that the Tribune had found the central character in this ongoing welfare drama, a story about large, dysfunctional institutions became a lot more personal. The failure—or worse, unwillingness—to ferret out Taylor’s dirty deeds revealed more about the flaws of state and county government than any balance sheet ever could. In his report to his superiors at the Chicago Police Department, Sherwin described ping-ponging from the Department of Public Aid to the state’s attorney’s office to the U.S. attorney, with none of the agencies expressing much interest in helping him out. The Tribune’s headline: “Cops find deceit—but no one cares.” Sherwin eventually found a willing partner in the Legislative Advisory Committee on Public Aid, a body put together by state legislators eager to take a stand against government waste. The detective also learned that Taylor was wanted on felony welfare fraud charges in Michigan. At the end of August 1974, she was arrested in Chicago, then released on bond in advance of an extradition hearing. A month later—and the day after the Tribune told her story for the first time—Linda Taylor didn’t answer when her name was called in Cook County Circuit Court. The most notorious woman in Illinois was on the lam. 3 “The Woman Was Smooth” On Aug. 12, 1974—four days after Linda Taylor told Jack Sherwin she’d been robbed—Lamar Jones met his future bride. The 21-year-old sailor was working in the dental clinic at Chicago’s Great Lakes Naval Training Center when a beautiful woman walked in to get her teeth cleaned. Something about her was totally fascinating, Jones remembers. “I met her because she was pretty and I was shooting game to her,” he says. “I guess her game must’ve been stronger than mine, because I met her that Monday and [got] married that Saturday.” Jones thought he was lucky to get hitched to the 35-year-old Linda Sholvia. She was beautiful, with the smoothest skin he’d ever seen. She also gave him $1,000 as a wedding present, and he had his pick of fancy new cars. But Lamar and Linda’s marriage lasted only a little longer than their five-day courtship. A few weeks after they exchanged vows, Linda was arrested. When Jones paid her bond, his new wife fled the state. To make things worse, she stole his color TV. The young Navy man realized that something was amiss with his new bride even before the television went missing. When she showed him a degree from a university in Haiti, he noticed that it said Linda Taylor, not Linda Sholvia. Jones says Linda had five mailboxes at her residence at 8221 S. Clyde Ave., and she’d get letters in all five, addressed to different names. He got a bit uneasy when Linda told him, after they were married, that he was her eighth husband. She also had a “sister” named Constance who seemed more like her adult daughter. Her skin was so pale and smooth, he says, that she could look Asian, or like a light-skinned black woman, or even white. One night, though, he woke up before dawn and saw that his bride’s smooth skin wasn’t so perfect—she had “1,000 wrinkles on her face.” After he caught this illicit glimpse, Linda locked herself in the bathroom for an hour. When she came out, she looked like a whole new person. MOCKUP OF TRIBUNE HEADLINE: Welfare Queen Jailed In Tuscon Photo illustration by Holly Allen Once Linda fled the state, that ended all hope of salvaging their three-week marriage. Jones says at that point he cooperated with authorities, who wiretapped his phone and traced one of the fugitive’s calls. On Oct. 9, “Constance Green” was apprehended in Tucson, Ariz., on behalf of Chicago police. Three days later, the Tribune’s George Bliss wrote that “the 47-year-old ‘welfare queen’ was being held in a [Tucson] jail.” It’s the first instance I’ve found of someone being branded a “welfare queen” in print. A month after his wife was brought back from Arizona, Lamar Jones testified against her in front of a Cook County grand jury. Jones says that around the time of that proceeding, he was shuffled into a car with another witness and told they had something in common: They were both married to Linda (or maybe it was Connie) at the same time. That was a surprise to Jones. His wife had told him that husband No. 7 was dead. The aliases used in Linda Taylor’s Illinois welfare fraud trial. The aliases used in Linda Taylor’s Illinois welfare fraud trial. Circuit Court of Cook County On Nov. 13, Taylor was indicted on charges of theft, perjury, and bigamy. (The bigamy charges were later dropped.) In court records listing the counts of the indictment, the defendant’s name is recorded as Connie Walker, aka Linda Bennett, aka Linda Taylor, aka Linda Jones, aka Connie Jarvis. She was either 35, 39, 40, or 47 years old, depending on whose story you believed. Given all the superlatives that attached themselves to Taylor—the executive director of the Legislative Advisory Committee on Public Aid told the Tribune, “She is without a doubt, the biggest welfare cheat of all time”—the charges against her weren’t all that impressive. One of the assistant state’s attorneys prosecuting Taylor told the UPI that all the rumors were “probably” true. “But what makes me angry about all the stories is that most of them are not indictable," she said. "We simply don't have the facts on all of those things.” The Tribune reported that Taylor was filching every form of public assistance imaginable: Social Security, food stamps, Medicaid, and Aid to Families With Dependent Children. But the hard evidence—canceled AFDC checks, and Medicaid ID cards under multiple names—allowed the state to charge her with stealing $8,000 from the public coffers, nothing more. Taylor’s welfare fraud case stalled in the courts for long enough that her 1974 indictment remained campaign fodder for Ronald Reagan in 1976. The yawning chasm between “probable” and “indictable” was wide enough for Reagan to label Linda Taylor a public scourge, and for the candidate’s critics to claim she was a media myth. In October 1976, Reagan—who had lost that year’s GOP nomination to Gerald Ford—devoted one of his regular radio commentaries to updating the story of the “welfare queen, as she’s now called.” (While I haven’t found any examples of him saying “welfare queen” on the stump in 1976, he did use the term in this radio address.) According to Reagan, it had now been revealed that this woman (he still didn’t identify her by name) had operated in 14 states using 127 names, claimed to be the mother of 14 children, was using 50 addresses “in Chicago alone,” and had posed as an open heart surgeon. She also had “three new cars, a full-length mink coat, and her take is estimated at a million dollars.” While Reagan sourced his report to “the chief investigative reporter of the Chicago Tribune,” I can’t find anything in the Tribune to support the claim that Taylor’s take reached $1 million. The bits about the new cars and the fur coat were accurate, though. And the part about her posing as a heart surgeon—that was probably true, too. The Tribune printed so many incredible stories about Linda Taylor that it really wasn’t necessary for Reagan to exaggerate the figures. As he’d said, Taylor had posed in Michigan as a heart surgeon named Dr. Connie Walker and, in the Tribune’s telling, “drove a new Cadillac bearing the physicians’ staff and serpent on both doors and the word ‘Afri-med’ on the rear.” According to other accounts, she allegedly practiced voodoo and had traveled to Jamaica after being released from jail. In September 1975, Taylor’s son-in-law and her daughter Sandra were indicted for getting fraudulent Aid to Families With Dependent Children payments. A month later, with Taylor out on bond and awaiting trial for welfare fraud, she told police that two men with guns had barged into her apartment and stolen $17,000 in jewelry—a crime reminiscent of those phony burglaries that led the Chicago police to start digging into her tangled life. In February 1976, Jack Sherwin dropped in on Taylor’s home to deal with yet another burglary case. This time, Chicago’s welfare queen was the alleged perpetrator, not the victim. Taylor allegedly had snatched $800 worth of items from a woman she’d been living with. The police found the victim’s electric can opener, color TV, and fur coat squirreled away in Taylor’s apartment building, though a three-piece polka-dot pantsuit was not recovered. The officers also found two small children living in squalid conditions. The boys, a white 7-year-old and a black 5-year-old, were taken into protective custody. The subsequent news stories focused on Taylor’s car, which was impounded because she’d allegedly used it in the commission of the crime. The headline in the New York Times: “ ‘Welfare Queen’ Loses Her Cadillac Limousine.” The newspapers did not mention all the other evidence found in Taylor’s home. A partial rundown of the items seized, as listed in the police report: A partial rundown of the property seized from Linda Taylor’s home. A selection of the property seized from Linda Taylor’s home. Circuit Court of Cook County phone bill carrying the name Mary Stevenson, c/o Willtrue Loyd Chicago Motor Club document bearing the name Yepez Juventino a Chicago Motor Club card for Linda C. Jones an AMOCO Motor Club card for Linda C. Wakefield Allstate Insurance Co. letter to Linda Bennett a department store credit card in the name Patricia M. Parks coroner’s death certificate for Frank Brown business letter from Martin Fertal attorney at law to Mrs. Lillian McIntosh Veterans Administration letter to Mrs. Constance Howard auto insurance policy in the name of Linda C. Wakefield Veterans Administration letter to Jessie L. Green membership document of “Epsilon Delta Chi” certifying Connie R. Walker, Ph.D., M.D., as member membership card for Epsilon Delta Chi in name Dr. Linda C. Wakefield birth certificates for children named Willie and Hosey a personal letter signed “Husband Ray” a rent receipt from Mrs. Linda Ray to Everleana Brame a mortgage receipt for J&P Parks a mortgage notice, for the same address, for Linda C. Wakefield a receipt for a safety deposit box in the name Linda C. Jones a telephone bill addressed to Sherman F. Ray envelope addressed to Linda Ray two lottery tickets In addition to this remarkable collection of documented pseudonyms, Taylor’s cache includes many other people’s names—on a credit card, a telephone bill, and all manner of documents. These are not aliases. They are possible victims. For much of the 1970s, Taylor had consistent legal representation from celebrated black Chicago attorney R. Eugene Pincham. In the run-up to Taylor’s welfare fraud trial, Pincham—who managed to delay the proceedings for years, winning continuance after continuance—positioned his client as a victim of coldhearted, overreaching prosecutors. “It would be a pretty sorry situation if the state tried to prosecute and send to jail everybody from the South Side that took welfare money they didn't have coming," he told the Tribune in 1976. "There'd just be nowhere to put them.” Prosecutors, meanwhile, called Taylor a “parasitic growth,” a leech who gleefully extracted taxpayers’ money. Taylor didn’t help her legal team sell the idea that she was a piteous victim. The AP described her courtroom attire as “brightly colored mod outfits with sparkling rings and bracelets,” a gaudy wardrobe that gave TV crews and newspaper photographers the perfect welfare queen action shot. Isaiah Gant, who eventually took over Taylor’s case from his colleague Pincham, says she’d position herself to be seen by the cameras but would not deign to speak. “Doing interviews would have made her commonplace,” Gant says. The trial of the welfare queen finally began in March 1977, two-and-a-half years after Det. Jack Sherwin cited Taylor for making a false burglary report. Sherwin testified that he’d observed Taylor with green Medicaid ID cards carrying the names Connie Walker and Linda Bennett. An FBI handwriting expert, too, took the stand to say that 13 of the Walker and Bennett signatures on her monthly AFDC checks, which ranged in value from $249 to $464, were “definitely” written in Taylor’s hand. Linda Taylor, 40, walks with her attorney T. Lee Boyd as they leave the Chicago Civic Center Tuesday, March 8, 1977 during a recess in her trial. Linda Taylor walks with one of her attorneys on March 8, 1977 during a recess in her trial. Photo by Charles Knoblock/AP via Corbis It took the jury seven hours to find Taylor guilty. Judge Mark Jones sentenced her to two to six years for theft and one for perjury, with the terms to be served consecutively. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Taylor, always poker-faced in court, had tears in her eyes when she learned her fate. Shedding a tear is a rational response to a felony conviction. Taylor’s behavior before, during, and after the trial, by contrast, was consistently bizarre and brazen. While Taylor was awaiting sentencing, Judge Jones revoked her bond when the home address she’d given a probation officer turned out to be a vacant lot. Though she’d been called Linda Taylor throughout the trial, she now told a different story: “They're looking for Linda Taylor, and I'm not Linda Taylor.” A few months later, she was released from custody briefly while her case was on appeal. According to Cook County prosecutor James Piper, she subsequently “applied for welfare, claiming she needed the money for medical purposes.” Piper told the St. Louis Globe-Democrat that she was suspected of falsifying information on the application. Was Taylor a cold and calculating grifter? Was she mentally ill? Isaiah Gant, who has been an attorney for nearly four decades, says his onetime client “was a scam artist like I have never run across since.” Gant, now an assistant federal public defender in Nashville, Tenn., says Taylor could change personalities in an instant. “If she wanted to be a ho, she could be a ho. If she wanted to be a princess, she could be a princess,” he says. “The woman was smooth.” When she was preparing to stand trial for the 1976 theft of an electric can opener and fur coat, another of Taylor’s attorneys had asked the court to have her submit to a behavioral clinic examination. In that petition, her lawyer explained that Taylor’s former attorneys had informed him “that the Defendant was incapable of knowing whether or not she was telling the truth.” In addition, there were “reports of two psychiatrists who examined her which referred to her as being psychotic and unable to understand the nature of the proceedings.” The petition for a medical examination was ultimately denied. In February 1978, the welfare queen entered Illinois’ Dwight Correctional Center. According to the Sun-Times, while incarcerated she worked cleaning her fellow inmates’ cottages. As of March 1979, she had a minor violation on her prison record, having “allegedly used state-owned materials to make cushions and sell them.” After that, Linda Taylor disappeared from newsprint. By the end of the 1970s, Taylor had become a historical footnote. The welfare queen was forgotten before anyone figured out who she really was. 4 “Enough Strychnine to Kill a Dozen People” It took a crew of cops nearly 20 hours to count all the cash. There were coins and bills stuffed in the furniture, sheathed in piles of clothes, and stuffed inside laundry bags, pillowcases, cardboard boxes, and an old foot locker. A deputy superintendent said that it was the biggest haul he’d come across in 23 years on the force. The final tally: $763,223.30. The Chicago police had gone to Lawrence Wakefield’s house on Feb. 18, 1964, after getting a report that he was deathly ill. When cops and firemen arrived on the scene, they spotted coin wrappers and betting slips—the calling cards of a gambling operation. Just hours after the authorities raided his living room, Wakefield died in the hospital of an intracranial hemorrhage. His death certificate identifies him as a 60-year-old “Negro.” Lawrence Wakefield Lawrence Wakefield, one of Chicago’s last black gambling kingpins, Aug. 25, 1960. Photo by UPI via Corbis Everybody on the South Side of Chicago knew Wakefield was a hustler, but they didn’t think he was this good at it. Wakefield operated a policy racket, a kind of underground lottery that thrived in the Windy City until the 1970s. Neighborhood proprietors fished numbers out of a drum, and bettors won by matching the resulting combination—the UPI termed it “the poor man’s stock market.” By the mid-1960s, the Italian mob had muscled most of the black kingpins out of the policy game, but they hadn’t hassled the shabby, modest-living Wakefield. Why bother? The guy was clearly small time. It was probably true that Wakefield’s glory days were long gone—some of the greenbacks the cops uncovered were a half-century old. But the money was still real, even if he preferred hoarding it to spending it. Since he hadn’t been charged with any crime, the police didn’t confiscate Wakefield’s bounty. Now, it wasn’t clear how to disburse this windfall. Wakefield hadn’t made out a will, and he had no known living relatives. When photos of all that cash hit the Chicago papers, more than a dozen alleged heirs emerged to grab for the money. One contender was Rose Kennedy, a 66-year-old white woman who said she was Wakefield’s common-law wife. According to Kennedy, she and her late husband—who had died 30 years earlier—had invested $160,000 to start their own policy operation in Chicago. When her husband passed away, Kennedy explained, Lawrence Wakefield had taken the reins of their operation, and she’d become his live-in companion. Kennedy’s toughest competition for the loot was a woman named Constance Wakefield. On April 18, 1964, the city’s black newspaper, The Chicago Defender, splashed a headline across its front page: “Dead Policy King’s $763,000 Demanded By His ‘Daughter’: Has Papers To Prove Her Claim.” The first two paragraphs of the story read skeptically: A 29-year-old woman who claims to be the daughter of the late policy king, Lawrence Wakefield, has unfolded a fantastic story of "plots" and intrigues which separated her from her "father." The claimant, Constance Beverly Wakefield, who lives on Chicago's Northside, showed the DEFENDER an array of "documents" which, she claims, prove she is the daughter of Wakefield. BLYTHEVILLE, ARK. MAP INSET Graphic by Slate. The Defender’s reporter described an unusual scene at Constance Wakefield’s home, which was protected by a bodyguard, decorated with “odd figurines,” and featured a myna bird that “constantly squawked the name ‘Lawrence.’ ” The 29-year-old Constance, who showed “signs of having been a beauty in her younger days,” produced a 1935 birth certificate listing her parents as Lawrence R. Wakefield and Edith L. Jarvis. Constance said she’d grown up in Blytheville, Ark., and had believed until recently that this Edith Jarvis was her grandmother. It got stranger from there. Constance told the Defender that Rose Kennedy, Lawrence Wakefield’s purported common-law wife, was no such thing. She also accused Kennedy of trying to poison her, saying, “The doctors said I had swallowed enough strychnine to kill a dozen people.” And in just the last few weeks, she reported, police had captured two white men trying to break into her house; a “swarthy Italian” had threatened to kill her; and her bodyguard had narrowly thwarted an attempt to blow up her 1964 Cadillac. A few days after that, the Associated Negro Press wrote that Constance Wakefield Steinberg—she was a “light-skinned Negro woman with a ‘Jewish’ surname”—“reported to police that her 11-year-old son, John, had been kidnapped and that she had received a number of threatening calls.” Whether she was going by Constance Wakefield, Linda Taylor, or any other name, the future welfare queen never went for subtlety. She was a woman of great ambition, and she conjured a universe in which the forces arrayed against her were equally extraordinary. Someone was always trying to kill her, or steal from her, or kidnap her, or take her children. These stories rarely checked out. Her son John, the Chicago Sun-Times would report, hadn’t been kidnapped. He was found by FBI agents wandering near his house, and explained that he’d run away after a fight with his sister. Census records and Lawrence Wakefield’s own death certificate reveal that Edith Jarvis was not Wakefield’s wife, as Taylor had asserted—she was his mother. When Taylor went to probate court to press her claim to the Wakefield fortune, even more of her story fell apart. Constance Wakefield was many people, but she probably wasn’t Constance Wakefield. In this and many of her other battles, Linda Taylor’s weapons were documents, paperwork of uncertain provenance that buttressed her version of events. Though her birth to Lawrence and Edith did not appear in contemporaneous records, she procured a delayed birth certificate from the doctor who she claimed had delivered her. She also furnished a pair of Lawrence Wakefield’s heretofore-undiscovered wills. The first, which dated to 1943, included a description of Wakefield’s daughter that matched her own, “specifically describing a scar and a mole and their location on her body,” the Tribune reported. The second will, from 1962, indicated that Wakefield had $2 million, that the vast majority of that lucre should go to his daughter, and that Rose Kennedy—who Taylor maintained was Lawrence Wakefield’s housekeeper, not his common-law wife—was entitled to precisely $1. "She is no good and will try to take everything from my baby,” the will read, according to the Tribune. “She has stoled enough from me since the death of my Edith." None of this evidence—the delayed birth certificate, the will that conveniently trashed her primary rival—convinced Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Gerald Mannix that he was dealing with Lawrence Wakefield’s real daughter. A long way from Chicago, he found someone who could help him prove it. “A surprise witness testified in Probate court yesterday that Miss Constance Wakefield, who claims to be the illegitimate daughter of the late Lawrence Wakefield, policy king, and thus heir to his fortune, actually is Martha Louise White,” the Tribune reported on Nov. 10, 1964. Hubert Mooney, who claimed to be Martha’s uncle, explained that his niece was born in Summit, Ala., around 1926, making her about 38 years old—nine years older than she’d claimed to be in the guise of Constance Wakefield. Martha, Mooney said, was the daughter of his sister Lydie and a man named Marvin White. The court didn’t have to take his word for it. Hubert’s 84-year-old mother came from Tennessee to testify that she’d assisted in her granddaughter Martha’s birth. Mooney said he’d seen his niece most recently in Arkansas—the state where “Constance Wakefield” had grown up, according to her interview with The Chicago Defender. He’d also run into her in Oakland, Calif. On that occasion, she’d asked her uncle to bail her out of jail. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the assistant state’s attorney produced fingerprints and “police records from Oakland, which he said were those of Miss Wakefield, listing arrests for prostitution, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and assault.” A police expert testified that those fingerprints matched those of Beverly Singleton, a woman who’d been arrested the year prior for assaulting a 12-year-old girl. Constance Wakefield, it seemed, was many people, but she probably wasn’t Constance Wakefield. MOCKUP OF TRIBUNE HEADLINE: Phony Heiress Photo illustration by Holly Allen This dramatic testimony didn’t clear everything up. For her part, “Constance Wakefield” said she knew Hubert Mooney but that she was not Martha Louise White. She also denied that she was the woman identified in all those criminal records, though she did confess that she’d been charged with assault in Oakland. Weighing all the evidence, Judge Anthony Kogut cited Taylor for contempt of court and sentenced her to six months in jail. She wouldn’t get any of Lawrence Wakefield’s money, the balance of which would go to Rose Kennedy, the policy king’s common-law wife. For Hubert Mooney, who died in 2009, this was a jarring experience. His daughter Joan Shefferd says Mooney was from a different era, and that he was a very prejudiced man. Taylor’s behavior, she says, made her father angrier than she’d ever seen him. His niece’s lying and scheming were one thing, but there was something else he’d never understand. Why was Martha Louise White passing herself off as a black woman? 5 A Mixed-Race Family in the Deep South Forty-five years before she became the welfare queen, Linda Taylor was a little girl on a farm in Mississippi County, Ark. The 1930 census identifies her as Martha Miller, one of three children of Joe Miller, a cotton farmer. Joe’s wife was Lidy Miller (written in other documents as Lyde or Lydie). Though her Uncle Hubert testified that Taylor was born in Summit, Ala., the census says her place of birth is Tennessee. She’s listed as 4 years old in 1930 and 13 in the 1940 survey, meaning she was born sometime between 1925 and 1927. As of 1940, the 13-year-old girl had attended school, but had gone only so far as the second grade. And in the box labeled “color or race,” she’s marked with a “W” for white, just like everyone else in her family. CENSUS RECORDS Martha Miller is listed as 13 years old in the 1940 U.S. census. Courtesy National Archives. Graphic by Slate. Those who, back then, knew Linda Taylor as Martha remember her as a willful child: If you told her she couldn’t do something, she’d set out to prove you wrong. She also didn’t look like her parents and siblings. Shelby Tuitavuki, who grew up near the Miller family in Arkansas, says Taylor had long black hair and dark skin. “I think she could’ve been black,” the 71-year-old Tuitavuki says. Joan Shefferd, who’s 62 and lives in Kansas, doesn’t believe Taylor was really black. She says her cousin’s pigmentation was a product of her family’s Native American heritage. It’s possible that Taylor’s biological father—identified by Hubert Mooney as a man named Marvin White—was black. Or perhaps a family secret was buried a few more generations back. No matter her bloodlines, the more persistent truth was that Martha Miller—who would later shed her childhood name for a nearly endless set of aliases—was a racial Rorschach test. She was white according to official records and in the view of certain family members who couldn’t imagine it any other way. She was black (or colored, or a Negro) when it suited her needs, or when someone saw a woman they didn’t think, or didn’t want to think, could possibly be Caucasian. The young Taylor moved between two very different worlds in the Jim Crow–era South, a type of flexibility that could get a young woman into trouble. Shelby Tuitavuki says that around 1950, Taylor had an affair with Tuitavuki’s uncle, a white man with blond hair and blue eyes. Tuitavuki says her aunt flew into a rage, throwing rocks at her husband’s car and jeering at his paramour, shouting, “Come out, you black friend of the family!” It wasn’t just Taylor’s skin and choice of men that drew scorn. By the early 1950s, she had four children, and they didn’t all look alike. The first, Clifford, was born in 1941, when she was a teenager. He was white. The second, Paul—who, for reasons that have been lost to history, was nicknamed Tojo after the Japanese prime minister—was born in Oakland, Calif., in 1948. On Paul’s birth certificate, his mother is listed as Connie Martha Louise White, a 21-year-old white housewife. (Even at this early stage, Taylor was trying on new names.) The father was Paul Stull Harbaugh, a 24-year-old white Ohio native serving in the U.S. Navy. Paul Jr.’s race is also recorded as white. His skin, though, was dark—much darker than his mother’s. Her third son, Johnnie, was born in 1950. A short while later, she had a daughter, Sandra. Johnnie, like his brother Cliff, was unmistakably white. Sandra, like her mother, was more racially ambiguous. Taylor and her children lived an itinerant existence. “We would go from Arkansas to Mississippi, then from there we’d go to Ohio, California, Chicago,” her son Johnnie remembers. Everywhere they went, there was trouble—the kind you’d expect when a mixed-race family traveled through the Deep South. To Johnnie, it seemed like his mother had succumbed to prejudice and hardship—that she’d given up on their mismatched family. “If Paul was with us, people used to say, We’ll give you $10, give us some of his hair,” says Johnnie, who is now 63 years old. When they lived in Louisiana, Paul wasn’t allowed to eat inside a white-owned restaurant. Johnnie remembers taking his food outside and joining his older brother under a tree. The two children were ordered to split up, he says, and told there’d be big problems if they were seen together again. His mother was called “a friend of the family lover and all kinds of prejudiced stuff,” Johnnie says. They spent more time in cars than houses, and Johnnie associates each place with a different make and model: a little green Nash in El Paso, Texas, a white Oldsmobile 88 station wagon in Peoria, Ill. When it was time to leave, they left quickly, with each child’s belongings in a single bag. They lived like fugitives. “As a kid, I didn’t know from one year, one day, one second to the next where I would be tomorrow,” Johnnie says. Cliff left home in his early teenage years, Johnnie says, and then it was just him, Paul, and Sandra. It was them against the world—and often them against their mother. Johnnie says Taylor was not a loving person. She used to beat him, he says, because “I was the odd one”—a white child who saw himself as a black sheep. When Chicago prosecutors unmasked Constance Wakefield in 1964, they revealed that she’d been charged in Oakland with (among other things) contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Later, in Arizona and Illinois, she’d have children taken from her after police found signs of neglect. Throughout her life, wherever she went, she was always picking up children and losing them, other people’s and her own. When Johnnie was young, he says, his mother would often hand her kids over to friends, family, and tenuous acquaintances, with no indication of when or if she’d return. In the mid-1950s, she left Paul with a black family in Missouri. After a brief reunion, she left him again, this time with a family in Chicago. His siblings wouldn’t see Paul again for many years. Johnnie loved his brother, and he missed him. “I asked her all the time, Where’s Paul? When is Paul coming back?” His mother would say that he was fine, that he was with his grandparents. But Johnnie knew she wasn’t telling the truth. To him, it seemed as though she’d succumbed to prejudice and hardship—that she’d given up on their mismatched family, ditching the child who happened to have the darkest skin. 6 Money and Bodyguards Life was good in Chicago. Johnnie, his mother, and his sister had a furnished apartment, and the kids all got new bicycles, something they never had when they were younger. Now that they were under the protective wing of Lawrence Wakefield, what could possibly go wrong? Taylor’s relationship with the black policy king was not a total fantasy she’d conjured in a bid to get a dead man’s money. Johnnie isn’t sure how his mother knew Wakefield, but he says it was clear when they got to Chicago around 1960 that the two of them had history. Johnnie says that his mother would call Lawrence “dad,” and Lawrence would call her his daughter. They didn’t have a sexual relationship so far as he knows, and Wakefield seemed driven to take care of Taylor and her children. They always had money, Johnnie says, and even bodyguards. EXTERIOR SHOT OF 1109 N DAMEN The home, at 1109 N. Damen Ave., that Lawrence Wakefield provided for Linda Taylor and her children. Photo by Josh Levin In the early 1960s, they settled in at 1109 N. Damen Ave., in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village. Wakefield was down the block in a building dotted with frosted-glass windows. As a kid, Johnnie says, he carried a few bags for the old man, dropping them off at a jewelry store a half-mile from his house. Even if he was running numbers for an illegal gambling racket, Johnnie remembers this as an idyllic time—a period of comfort and stability after years on the run. And then, suddenly, Lawrence Wakefield died. “It was like the whole Earth flipped on us,” Johnnie says. For all that he’d done for them in Chicago, Lawrence hadn’t provided for them upon his passing, unless you believed the dubious wills that “Constance Wakefield” waved around in probate court. With the family’s breadwinner out of the picture, Taylor and her children became vagabonds again, moving from house to house on Chicago’s predominantly African-American South Side. For Johnnie, this was devastating, an unwelcome return to the disjointed life he thought he’d left behind. Johnnie’s path to delinquency was now set. At 14, he says, he became a full-time criminal. For the next decade, he was in and out of juvenile detention and prison. Her son Cliff had left home as a teenager. Paul had been given away as a child. Now, Johnnie was roaming the streets. And on March 3, 1966, The Chicago Defender reported that “Constance’s” daughter was gone. Sandra Stienberg, 13, of 4325 S. Calumet Ave., has been missing from home for 18 days. Her mother, Mrs. Constance Wakefield, says she believes her daughter has been abducted. If she is seen, please notify Chicago police at WA 2-4747. There’s almost no chance that Sandra was really kidnapped. Two years prior, Taylor had falsely reported that Johnnie had been abducted. He says now that his mother likely just wanted the cops to do the hard work of tracking him down after he’d left home of his own volition. In 1967, she’d try the same line again, telling Chicago police that another of her children had been taken. When the cops investigated, they found that the child wasn’t missing. They also discovered that the kid didn’t belong to her. 7 Who Stole the Fronczak Baby? The first time I spoke with Raymond Pagan, he asked if I’d talked to any of the other kids that Taylor had kidnapped. (I had not.) Raymond, who is 46 and lives in Chicago, was very young when he was abducted—his mother says he was 3 when he was returned to her—but he says he remembers other children, and that they were all jammed into the same bed. “Thank God I was a kid and I didn't know what the hell was going on,” he says. Still, he had nightmares about Taylor for years. Raymond’s mother Rose Termini wasn’t worried about leaving her son with Linda Taylor—after all, she had been a good babysitter for her sister’s daughter Anna. When Termini needed someone to watch Raymond for a couple of days, she decided she’d leave him with Taylor, too. “She acted friendly, nice, kind, and I seen her with her kids, and I seen my niece there,” the now 62-year-old Termini says. There were four or five children there in all, she remembers. “I go, OK—then I trust her. But then when I went back for my son, he was gone.” It took Rose Termini two years to find her son, Raymond Pagan. It took Rose Termini two years to find her son, Raymond Pagan. Photo by Josh Levin Termini says she reached Taylor on the phone a few times, and she would assure her that she’d return Raymond soon. But she never did. Termini remembers taking the bus to the far South Side to search for her son, but Taylor kept changing her address. She didn’t call the police because she was just 16 years old, and she was afraid of what Taylor would do to her and her family. “I was scared of the lady because she had so much money, and I didn't know how to get to her,” she says. “She had money, jewelry, cars—I mean, she had almost everything she wanted.” Termini says she had a nervous breakdown, and that she ended up in the hospital for months. “I would keep on saying, I gotta find my son, I gotta find my son.” Termini claims it took her two years to get Raymond back. Her husband, who was in a gang called the Dragons, passed along a message to Taylor’s daughter Sandra that it was time for the abduction to end. Termini recalls that Sandra—who, like her, was a teenager at the time—would say, “I can't bring Raymond to you because [of] my mother.” But she says Sandra eventually relented, telling her mother that she was taking Raymond to a friend’s place for just one night. “Ever since then, [Raymond] stayed with me,” Termini says. And after that, she never saw Sandra or Linda Taylor again. Johnnie Harbaugh says Raymond and Raymond’s cousin Anna both stayed with Taylor, and “she didn’t want to let either one of them go.” He doesn’t know how Rose Termini got Raymond back, but he says he’s the one who rescued Anna. Johnnie says that when Taylor refused to part with Anna, he broke into Taylor’s house early in the morning, snatched the baby, and took the little girl to her mother, Lorraine Termini, on the “L” train. Lorraine Termini died in 2006, and Johnnie’s sister Sandra Smith has refused all interview requests. There is one third-party account that references the Termini kidnappings. In March 1975, when Taylor was waiting to be tried for welfare fraud, the Chicago Tribune’s George Bliss and William Griffin wrote that in 1967, Taylor had asked the police to find her son, “Lena Womack.” The cops discovered that the 19-month-old Lena was really Lorraine Termini’s child, and they reported that Johnnie had returned the baby to its real mother. Johnnie says the Tribune got part of the story wrong: Lena was Lorraine’s daughter, Anna, not a baby boy. He explains that Taylor, who at various times went by Constance Womack, simply gave the child a new name. The Tribune article also says that Lena/Anna was returned in 1967; Rose Termini’s account places the kidnappings slightly later. Johnnie, Termini, and the Tribune all agree, though, that Linda Taylor took children. The only question is how many. Did Linda Taylor pull off one of the most notorious kidnappings of the 1960s? In another Tribune story, Bliss and Griffin noted that Linda Taylor had been arrested twice in the 1960s for absconding with children, though she wasn’t convicted in either case because the little ones were returned. The reporters also laid out a possible motive. “Chicago’s welfare queen,” they wrote, “has been linked by Chicago police to a scheme to defraud the public aid department during the mid-1960s by buying newborn infants to substantiate welfare claims.”
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May 25, 2016 18:00
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I made this account ten years ago to taunt you about your crimes and contribute to your online harassment with other people in a secret irc chatroom Just kidding, you rape people
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May 25, 2016 18:00
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This theory is a little hard to believe. Given Taylor’s ability to fabricate paperwork, acquiring flesh-and-blood children seems like an unnecessary risk if all you're looking to do is pad a welfare application. Her son Johnnie believes his mother saw children as commodities, something to be acquired and sold. He remembers a little black girl—he doesn’t know her name—who stayed with them for a few months in the early 1960s, “and then she just disappeared one day.” Shortly before Lawrence Wakefield died, Johnnie says, a white baby named Tiger showed up out of nowhere, and then left the household just as mysteriously. I ask him if he knew where these kids came from or who they belonged to. “You knew they wasn’t hers,” he says. Before Wakefield’s death, Johnnie says, his mother’s behavior was unconscionable. After her benefactor passed away in February 1964, it got even worse. In the early 1960s, Taylor had a few babies who came from who-knows-where. Suddenly there were a whole lot more, kids like Anna and/or Raymond—and maybe a boy who was taken from his mother’s arms at Chicago’s Michael Reese Hospital. On April 18, 1964, The Chicago Defender ran its interview with “Constance Wakefield,” the one in which she claimed to be the rightful heir to her father Lawrence’s fortune. Nine days later, a newborn child was kidnapped by a woman dressed in a white nurse’s uniform. Dora Fronczak told police that the mystery woman whisked away her son Paul Joseph, telling the new mother that her baby boy needed to be examined by a doctor. Witnesses said the ersatz nurse carried the infant through a rear exit and disappeared. Chester and Dora Fronczak Chester and Dora Fronczak at a news conference at Chicago’s Michael Reese Hospital on April 30, 1964, three days after their son Paul Joseph Fronczak was kidnapped. Photo by AP via Corbis The Fronczak case transfixed Chicago and the nation. The Tribune, the Sun-Times, and the national wire services printed eyewitness accounts, sketches of the suspect, diagrams of the kidnapper’s probable path, and the family’s pleas for their child’s safe return. Within a day, 500 policemen were working the case, including 50 FBI agents. They were looking for a woman between her mid-30s and mid-40s, around 5-foot-4 and 140 pounds, with close-set brown eyes. Nine months after the kidnapping, the Tribune reported that a staggering 38,000 people had been interviewed in connection with the case, and that 7,500 women had been eliminated as suspects. Still, the baby-snatching nurse remained at large. Did Linda Taylor pull off one of the most notorious kidnappings of the 1960s? In early 1975, law enforcement officials got a tip from one of Taylor’s ex-husbands that she “appeared one day in the mid-1960s with a newborn baby, altho[ugh] she had not been pregnant.” Her explanation, the Tribune said, was that “she hadn't realized she was pregnant until she gave birth that morning.” Later that month, the Tribune revealed that Taylor had reportedly told police in 1967 “that she had given birth to a boy in Edgewater Hospital on Dec. 13, 1963—four months before the birth and kidnaping of the Fronczak baby. That child, she said, was living with foster parents in Chicago Heights.” Police discovered that the birth certificate for this supposed baby was signed by Dr. Grant Sill—the same doctor who had provided a bogus delayed birth certificate showing she was Lawrence Wakefield’s daughter. Dr. Sill, who is now deceased, had agreed to stop practicing medicine in 1970 to avoid prosecution on charges of “selling dangerous drug prescriptions to youngsters.” Johnnie says his mother often claimed that she worked in a hospital, and that she’d wear a nurse’s hat. Rose Termini, without any prompting, begins the narrative of her son’s kidnapping by saying that Taylor “once told me she was a nurse and she got around a lot with kids.” According to Termini, Taylor would often dress in a white uniform—she says she saw the getup with her own eyes. In 1977, a man named Samuel Harper told police prior to Taylor’s sentencing for welfare fraud that he believed she had kidnapped Paul Joseph Fronczak. He explained that he was living with her at the time, that several other white infants were in her home, and that she left the house in a white uniform on the day of the kidnapping. Johnnie Harbaugh confirms that Harper, who was 69 years old in 1977 and likely died many years ago, lived with his mother for a period in the 1960s. If anyone was in a position to know what Linda was up to, Johnnie believes, it was Sam Harper. Jack Sherwin, who retired from the Chicago Police Department in the mid-1990s, says he saw a composite drawing of the Fronczak kidnapper in an FBI office. “I looked at it for a second and knew it was her,” he says. In police reports from the 1970s, Taylor is listed at 5-foot-1 and 140 pounds with brown eyes—not that far off from the suspect’s description. Sherwin says she also had a station wagon at that time that matched the description of the potential getaway car. He believes she was “guilty as hell.” And yet, Linda Taylor was never charged in the kidnapping of Paul Joseph Fronczak. Ron Cooper, a retired FBI agent who worked on the Fronczak case in the 1970s, says that they “had no cooperation from people around her.” Everyone who talked “would tell you a story and it would just sort of be a flim-flam thing, and it wouldn’t make any sense.” If she had taken Paul Joseph in 1964, he was long gone. Johnnie says he doesn’t know anything about the Fronczak case specifically. He’s always suspected, though, that his mother sold the baby she called Tiger—that would explain her evasiveness, and how an infant could come and go with no explanation. Tiger’s whereabouts remain a mystery. The same goes for the baby abducted from Michael Reese Hospital in 1964. Fifty years later, Paul Joseph Fronczak has yet to be found. 8 “She Was Going to Get My Badge” For Jack Sherwin, the fight to take down Linda Taylor was a multifront war. Some battles were contested face to face. “At one point the arrestee Linda Taylor stated that no matter how much money it took she was going to get my badge and me,” the detective wrote in one police report. “She then blurted out that she had a bullet for me. [There] were other things said such as she would tell my wife about all the ‘Black rear end’ I had.” Taylor also waged a disinformation campaign, calling Sherwin’s superiors to complain that the detective had it in for her. She even took the fight to the astral plane, jabbing sharp pins into a voodoo doll, one she told Sherwin that she’d made especially for him. Sherwin did the digging that led to Taylor’s arrest for welfare fraud, and his testimony helped send her to prison. But four decades after he first met Linda Taylor, the 74-year-old retired detective can’t help but feel that she beat him. She was his prize catch, but Sherwin ended up getting snared in her net. EXCERPT FROM SHERWIN POLICE REPORT (THE TEXT OF SHERWIN’S REPORT IS EXCERPTED IN THE GRAF BELOW) An excerpt from Jack Sherwin’s police report regarding Linda Taylor’s 1976 theft of a television, can opener, and other items. Circuit Court of Cook County From early August to the end of September 1974, Sherwin unraveled several lifetimes’ worth of Taylor’s scheming. As the detective neared a breakthrough, he paused the investigation to go on his honeymoon. Upon his return, he saw his case splashed across Page 3 of the Chicago Tribune. The paper reported that Sherwin and his partner had used their “blood-hound instincts” to uncover Taylor’s public-assistance scams. Sherwin’s shock at seeing these plaudits in print quickly turned to anger. Thirty-nine years later, he’s still fuming. Having the story leak would’ve been bad enough. What made it much, much worse was that Sherwin’s superiors didn’t know he’d been digging into Taylor’s past. Sherwin says Taylor’s persistent complaints had succeeded—he’d been told to back off due to her allegations of harassment. Rather than heed that order, Sherwin and his partner gathered evidence off the clock. “I would’ve had it all put together in a bundle for the bosses,” he says. “They would’ve been happy.” Instead, the department’s higher-ups learned about his unsanctioned sleuthing on the same day Tribune readers did. George Bliss’ article depicted Sherwin as a swashbuckling hero fighting desperately to convince anyone to take interest in this incredible case of welfare fraud. That didn’t go over well at headquarters. “The boss who was in charge of my office at the time—oh, was he irate,” Sherwin remembers. He believes the leak torpedoed his career. It’s not just that Sherwin suffered professionally after the story hit the papers. In the aftermath of that Tribune article—and the one published two weeks later that gave Taylor her famous nickname—Sherwin and his partner were detailed to the investigative unit of the state Senate’s Legislative Advisory Committee on Public Aid. The detective had been looking into a wide range of Taylor’s crimes, but now a police matter had become a political one. The welfare fraud, it seemed, was all that mattered. For the Chicago burglary detective, Linda Taylor was never really the welfare queen. He believed she was a kidnapper and a baby seller. Maybe something worse. 9 “She Killed My Mother” Patricia Parks-Lee and her two little brothers went to Montessori school, and their mother took them shopping at the big department stores in downtown Chicago. Mrs. Parks, who was also named Patricia, earned her living as a schoolteacher. Her daughter describes her as polished, a woman with a master’s degree who hung out with college-educated types. Parks-Lee says that Linda Taylor, by contrast, looked weathered, like she’d done a lot of hard living. “She didn’t associate with people like that,” says Parks-Lee, who’s now 48. She believes her mother must have hired Taylor to keep house and watch the kids, nothing more. She says that Linda Taylor was the worst nanny they ever had. Taylor took up residence with the Parks family in 1974. At that point, Patricia Parks was a healthy woman with three young children. Less than a year later, she was dead. At the time, Taylor was out on bail, awaiting her welfare fraud trial. The Tribune explained that she was now under investigation yet again after authorities “learned that Mrs. Parks reportedly had willed her home to Miss Taylor and had made her the beneficiary of ‘several’ insurance policies and the guardian of her three children.” Taylor was pulling off a slow-motion home invasion, and the only witnesses to the crime were a few small children. Parks-Lee was 10 years old when Taylor moved in, and her brothers were 8 and 6. Taylor’s daughter Sandra’s two children stayed at the house for a time as well. Sandra wasn’t around much, but Parks-Lee says she was friendly and jovial, at least compared to her mother. Taylor “wasn't nurturing,” Parks-Lee says. Her attitude toward children: “I don't wanna hear you, I don't wanna see you.” Before Linda Taylor moved in, Parks-Lee had her fill of home-cooked Trinidadian cuisine: fish, rice, and homemade bread. Now, with her mother getting sicker and increasingly confined to her bed, she and her brothers barely had anything to eat—it was the only time in her life, Parks-Lee says, that she went to bed hungry. It got so bad that she found her brothers in the pantry with the door closed, trying to hide that they were eating dog biscuits. Parks-Lee had been raised to never question her mother, and now she felt completely lost. “We didn't go to church anymore, we didn't associate with the people who were my mother's regular friends,” she says. Taylor was pulling off a slow-motion home invasion, and the only witnesses to the crime were a few small children. There was nobody around to answer the questions swirling in the 10-year-old girl’s head: Who was this woman who’d taken over their lives? And what did she want from them? As Patricia Parks’ health declined, Taylor rearranged their home. She put Parks in her daughter’s room, and Parks-Lee moved in with her two brothers. Linda Taylor, the new woman of the house, took over their mother’s old room. “Linda would go in and feed her pills,” Parks-Lee says. The children were mostly banished to the back of the house, and Parks’ bedroom was always dark and closed off. Parks-Lee remembers that it was hard for her mom to talk. She would still smile, though, giving her children as much affection as she could muster. “I never thought my mom was going to die,” Parks-Lee says. Taylor kept saying that Parks was going to get better, but her health never improved. And then, she was gone. Patricia Marvel Parks passed away on June 15, 1975. She was 37. The death certificate identified the informant as Linda C. Wakefield, “friend.” Taylor told the funeral director that Patricia Parks had cervical cancer. When her blood was drawn at the funeral home, however, the sample contained a high level of barbiturates. On Parks’ death certificate, the coroner indicated that she had died of “combined phenobarbital, methapyrilene, and salicylate intoxication.” There is no indication that she had cancer. “She killed my mother,” Parks-Lee says. She’s so sure about what Linda Taylor did that she says it three more times: “She killed my mother. She killed my mother. I just, I mean—she killed my mother.” For Patricia and her two brothers, their mother’s death was devastating. For the Chicago newspapers, this potential homicide was an opportunity to gawk at the welfare queen’s strange lifestyle. TRIBUNE HEADLINE MOCKUP: Welfare Queen's role--Was it voodoo spell? Photo illustration by Holly Allen The Tribune reported that “when investigators entered the dead woman's bedroom they found five lamps directed toward a hospital bed, a pair of witch doctors' masks hung on walls, candles, a voodoo manual, and a religious statue on a nearby table.” The paper quoted a woman named Frances Fearn who said she had introduced Parks and Taylor. Mrs. Fearn “said Miss Taylor had identified herself as Linda Mallexo, an African doctor who practiced voodoo.” She also noted that at “their first meeting, Miss Taylor told Mrs. Parks that she would die in six months.” Linda Taylor used to tell people that she got her spiritual training in her supposed home country of Haiti. Johnnie says he remembers his mother practicing voodoo—or, her version of voodoo—as far back as the 1950s. “We lived in New Orleans and Albany, Louisiana, and all she did was that witchcraft stuff,” he says. Rose Termini, who says Taylor absconded with her son Raymond in the 1960s, says, “Oh yeah, she used to play with candles.” Parks-Lee remembers there being “potions” all over the house. The Tribune also found a woman named Jo Ann McFall who had paid Taylor $1,500 for a series of “spiritualism visits” in 1971. The article continued, “Miss McFall said she ended the sessions when one of Miss Taylor’s sons told her his mother was a ‘fake and a con woman.’ ” Taylor used her charms to seduce Lamar Jones and her many other husbands. But her powers of persuasion worked on more than just marriageable men. Patricia Parks-Lee says her mother was trusting and naive. As a native of Trinidad, where there’s a long tradition of belief in sorcery and folk magic, she may have been more inclined than most to buy what Linda Taylor was selling. It seems likely that Taylor convinced Parks that she had spiritual skills—and convinced her, somehow, to hand over her children, her property, and access to her bank accounts. When Taylor was arrested for stealing a can opener and fur coat the year after Parks’ death, the dead woman’s credit card was among the items found in her possession. A murder in Chicago is mundane. A sumptuously attired woman stealing from John Q. Taxpayer is a menace. As in the Fronczak kidnapping, Taylor was never charged with killing Patricia Parks. James Piper, the prosecutor in the welfare fraud case, also looked into the alleged Parks homicide. He tells me that he “was satisfied personally that there had been chicanery.” But Piper says that he wasn’t able to acquire blood samples from the hospital where Parks had been pronounced dead. He believed that without the samples there was no “connector”—nothing to convince a jury that Taylor had administered a lethal drug cocktail to Parks. Piper says that his decision wouldn’t have prevented the Chicago police from continuing their investigation. He believed, though, that indicting Taylor for murder would have created the perception that he was looking for more publicity for the welfare fraud case—a case with clearer evidence, and one that he didn’t want to jeopardize. For Jack Sherwin, this seemed backward. Despite his deep familiarity with Taylor’s criminal methods, Sherwin was never included in the Patricia Parks investigation—he says that would have required Chicago homicide cops to share their turf with a burglary detective, a nonstarter in the territorial department. Other than Sherwin, nobody seemed all that motivated to learn the full extent of Linda Taylor’s crimes. Though the Tribune wrote about Taylor’s purported connections to the Fronczak kidnapping and the Parks homicide, the paper treated her kid-snatching and voodoo spells as colorful details—odd facts to embellish the shocking welfare queen story. In 1975, the Tribune reported the allegation that Linda Taylor was “buying newborn infants to substantiate welfare claims.” Somehow, though, the welfare claims remained the bigger story, not the allegations of black-market baby trafficking. For Ronald Reagan, Taylor was a tool to convince voters that the government was in crisis. For Reagan’s detractors, she personified the candidate’s penchant for willful exaggeration. For Illinois politicians and prosecutors, the war against Linda Taylor and her ilk was a chance to vent some populist outrage and maybe launch a career. A murder in Chicago is mundane. A sumptuously attired woman stealing from John Q. Taxpayer is a menace, the kind of criminal who victimizes absolutely everyone. In the 1970s, it was possible for the Tribune, the Sun-Times, and the Defender to make Linda Taylor a national figure while her specific exploits remained local knowledge. This is how, in the days before the Web abetted the flow of information, Ronald Reagan could tell stories about a real woman and be accused of conjuring a fictional character. And it’s how, after Taylor’s brief window of infamy closed, all the disturbing allegations that had been raised in the mid-1970s just faded away. Patricia Parks-Lee says she thought that Taylor had been sentenced to 20 years behind bars, and that she’d taken comfort from that fact. In reality, the welfare queen was out of prison much sooner than that, and she had no trouble starting a new life, with a bushel of new names. Taylor did not get Patricia Parks’ house or custody of her children. After their mother’s death, Parks-Lee and her brothers lived with their father and paternal grandparents. It took more than a year for things to get back to normal, Parks-Lee says, at least as normal as they could possibly be. She remembers finding picked-over food, bones, and seeds that one of her brothers had secreted away underneath his bed—a precaution against future deprivation. Her grandfather would assure the boys that they didn’t have to worry anymore, that “they could eat till they puked.” As she says those words, Patricia Parks-Lee starts to cry. It’s still hard to talk about those days, and to think about the time when Linda Taylor came into her life and destroyed it before she could figure out what was happening. When I first reached out to her, Parks-Lee explains, she was suspicious. “I really thought you were working on her behalf,” she says. Now she has a mission for me: She wants me to track down Linda Taylor, and she wants me to report back that the welfare queen is dead. 10 “She Was Like a Ghost” Taylor began serving time for welfare fraud on Feb. 16, 1978. Though Illinois corrections officials say her prison records have been lost, she was a free woman by 1983 at the latest. By the time Taylor won her release, she was closing in on 60 years old, and she was no longer the object of public fascination. When she became a widow in 1983, it didn’t make any headlines. Now, her name was Linda Ray. MOMENCE, ILLINOIS MAP INSET Graphic by Slate On Aug. 25, 1983, 63-year-old Willtrue Loyd shot and killed 35-year-old Sherman Ray in Momence, Ill., a small town 50 miles south of Chicago. When police arrived at the scene, Loyd confessed to pulling the trigger, explaining that he’d done the deed with the 12-gauge shotgun that was now propped against his trailer. Loyd told the cops that he’d been trying to kill a 7-foot snake that was meandering through his corn patch. All of a sudden, he said, Ray came up behind him and started grabbing at his gun. As they struggled, the firearm discharged inches from Ray’s chest. He was killed instantly. Taylor had married Sherman Ray, a former Marine, before she landed in prison. Ray’s sister Patricia Dennis says her brother was caring, sincere, and hardworking. When he came back from Vietnam, though, Ray had “emotional problems.” His sister says he had flashbacks, and he’d become agitated if anyone touched him. Dennis, who’s 67 years old and lives in Arizona, says nobody in her family knew Linda Taylor—that she “came out of nowhere.” Along with Sherman Ray, Taylor had another man by her side in Momence: Willtrue Loyd. Johnnie Harbaugh’s wife Carol, Taylor’s daughter-in-law, says Loyd was one of the nicest people she’s ever been around, the kind of guy who’d do anything for you. He was an older gentleman, a World War II veteran, and he was particularly devoted to Taylor—it was as though she had some kind of hold over him. Johnnie and Carol say that Loyd and Ray were always scuffling, and that this mutual contempt was by design. They believe that Taylor pitted the two men against each other, then stepped back and watched the inevitable result. “Linda would never be present for anything that was happening or going on. Nothing could ever come back to her,” Carol says. “She was like a ghost.” After making his confession, Loyd was handcuffed and put in a squad car. The next day, he was released due to lack of evidence. At an inquest into the circumstances of Ray’s death, a detective stated that four potential witnesses all told him they hadn’t seen what happened. One man said he’d been drinking with Ray that day, and a bottle of wine was found on the scene. According to a toxicology report, the victim’s blood ethanol count was an extraordinarily high 0.333. In the aftermath of Ray’s death, the National Home Life Insurance Company requested a complete coroner’s report from Illinois’ Kankakee County. Byron Keith Lassiter, who looked into the case on behalf of the insurance firm, says such a contestable death claim investigation would have been routine. With no charges filed against Loyd, the money from Sherman Ray’s life insurance policy would be paid out to his wife, Linda. A Florida mortgage deed for “Rev. Linda Ray.” A Florida mortgage deed for “Rev. Linda Ray.” Holmes County, Fla., Clerk of Court. Graphic by Slate. A month after Sherman Ray’s death, Taylor bought a parcel of land in Holmes County, Fla. Her name is listed on the deed as “Rev. Linda Ray.” In the Sunshine State, public records reveal, she’d use at least six names and six different Social Security numbers. She wasn’t there alone. Her companion was her husband’s killer, Willtrue Loyd. This is Linda Taylor’s life in microcosm: a series of tangled connections, a death that serves as a potential windfall, a quick move, and a new start in a faraway place. Sherman Ray, the former Marine with emotional problems, was a man in uniform—a classic Taylor mark. Paul Stull Harbaugh, the man listed as her son Paul’s father on the child’s birth certificate, was in the Navy. So was another supposed husband, Paul Steinberg—the Tribune alleged that in the 1960s she was “obtaining federal support” as the widow of both Harbaugh and Steinberg. Lamar Jones, too, was in the Navy. He claims that when she filled out paperwork to become his dependent in 1974, Linda indicated that another of her husbands had been killed in Vietnam. Given her taste for military men, Jones’ first meeting with “Linda Sholvia” at Great Lakes Naval Training Center takes on a different cast. He thought he was lucky to find such a glamorous woman. It’s more likely that she found him—that Taylor saw something in the 21-year-old Jones that she thought she could exploit. In 1978, one of her lawyers wrote that Linda Taylor was likely psychotic, that she “was incapable of knowing whether or not she was telling the truth.” Johnnie Harbaugh is certain that’s not the case. “She was cold,” he says. “She knew what was right and wrong, but she was choosing wrong.” 11 “I’ll Blow Your Head Off” For Linda Taylor, people were consumable goods, objects to cultivate, manipulate, and discard. Once she’d extracted something of value—an identity, a check, a life insurance claim—she’d move on to someone else. No matter her circumstances, and no matter her surroundings, there was always a new target. What kind of person behaves this way? In the 1970s, psychologist Robert Hare developed a checklist to assess a given subject’s personality. The symptoms on Hare’s list read like a catalog of Linda Taylor’s known behaviors and personal characteristics: glib and superficial charm, pathological lying, manipulativeness, lack of empathy, parasitic lifestyle, frequent short-term relationships, and criminal versatility. Of the 20 items on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Revised, nearly every one describes the welfare queen to some degree. Dr. Steve Band, a behavioral science consultant and an expert on criminal behavior, says “people with that personality know right from wrong.” Dr. James Fallon, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the University of California at Irvine and the author of The Psychopath Inside, says that Taylor “screams psychopathy.” Along with deriving pleasure from criminal behavior, he says, psychopaths “really like getting away with it”—that “the ones who have intelligence, they don’t want to get caught.” Despite the striking synchronicity between this checklist and Taylor’s behavior, diagnosing someone as a psychopath isn’t as easy as ticking a set of boxes. As Dave Cullen wrote for Slate in 2004, it took an elite group of mental health experts to establish Columbine shooter Eric Harris’ psychopathic “pattern of grandiosity, glibness, contempt, lack of empathy, and superiority.” If a similar team of psychologists scrutinized the welfare queen, Hare’s checklist would be a logical place to start. For her part, Taylor’s daughter-in-law Carol Harbaugh has a simpler list, one with just three points: “She was brutal. She was mean. She was terrible.” Linda Taylor in Florida, circa the 1980s. Linda Taylor in Florida, circa the 1980s. Some of Taylor’s victims were spared her worst behavior—they just learned an expensive lesson and got on with their lives. Kenneth Lynch, who’s now in his early 80s, bought a property with Taylor in Holmes County, Fla. Lynch remembers her saying that her husband had been killed by mobsters in Chicago. He also says that Taylor never came up with her share of the money, though she did pilfer Lynch’s last name. Reta Hunter, who lives in Live Oak, Fla., says “Linda Lynch” led her to stop trusting people. Taylor told Hunter she was a psychic who’d descended from Caribbean royalty, and that she could help remedy her relationship with her daughter. “The last time I seen her it cost me $80 for about 20 minutes,” Hunter says. “She could take you, honey. She was a slick talker.” Not all of Linda Taylor’s relationships ended so harmlessly. Sherman Ray took a shotgun blast to the chest. Patricia Parks’ life ended in her daughter’s bedroom with her body pumped full of phenobarbital. And an elderly African-American woman named Mildred Markham died in Graceville, Fla., far away from her home and loved ones. Taylor and Markham met in Chicago in the early 1980s. Markham’s husband James, a retired Pullman porter, earned a good salary in his day. Soon after he passed away, Taylor convinced the railroad man’s widow that she was her long-lost daughter. “All [Mildred] used to do was talk about this Linda,” recalls Markham’s granddaughter, Theresa Davis, who is 75 and still lives in Chicago. By the time she fell under the sway of her new “daughter,” Mildred Markham was well into her 70s. Davis and her mother tried to convince Markham that Taylor was a con artist, but she wouldn’t listen. Markham went with Taylor to Momence, Ill. From there, they moved to Florida. All the while, according to Davis, “my grandfather’s money was going out the bank.” She says that as much as $50,000 went missing, along with Markham’s furniture, sewing machine, jewelry, and mink coats. And in 1985, Mildred deeded away 185 acres of Markham family land in Mississippi. The grantees were Linda Lynch and her son Clifford. For his part, Clifford says he had no idea that his name was on the deed, and that he played no part in this land deal. Mildred Markham deeded 185 acres of land in Mississippi to “Linda Lynch” and Linda’s son Clifford. Mildred Markham deeded 185 acres of land in Mississippi to “Linda Lynch” and Linda’s son Clifford. Lincoln County, Miss., Chancery Clerk Davis says she and her mother eventually saw evidence of their worst fears: Markham wrote them from Florida saying, without getting into specifics, that she was being mistreated. They tried to find Mildred, but all the addresses on her letters turned out to be phony. Johnnie and Carol Harbaugh say they saw that abuse firsthand. Johnnie worked as a trucker back then, and he and his wife would see Taylor two or three times a year. She was living on a farm in Graceville, Fla., along with Willtrue Loyd and Mildred Markham. Once, when the Harbaughs were in Florida for a visit, Markham begged them to take her back to Chicago. Carol says Taylor was verbally abusive, and that she watched her lock Markham in a room. Markham also told them that she wasn’t being fed. “She was forced to be there against her will,” Carol says. They did not rescue Mildred Markham. Johnnie says that he was determined to take her but that she changed her mind at the last minute and decided to stay. In Carol's recollection, Taylor told Johnnie, “You even think about it, and I’ll blow your head off.” She says her husband took the threat seriously, and he decided not to get involved. Mildred Markham died on Oct. 5, 1986. Her death certificate says she passed away of “presumed natural causes,” and that she had previously suffered a stroke. The Graceville police department reported that her husband, Willtrue Loyd, found her body in bed. Carol Harbaugh says she thought Loyd and Markham had gotten married. Florida records suggest that was probably the case. In March 1986, Loyd married a woman named “Constance Rayner” in Marianna, Fla. The marriage application says Constance’s home state is Louisiana; Theresa Davis says that’s where her grandmother, Mildred Markham, was born. The bride signed her supposed maiden name, Constance Wakefield, in a looping script. It’s a shaky signature, one that doesn’t much resemble Linda Taylor’s tidy penmanship. The death certificate for Mildred Markham (aka Mildred Constance Raner Loyd). The death certificate for Mildred Markham (aka Mildred Constance Raner Loyd). Florida Medical Examiner, District 14. Graphic by Slate. Taylor always took something from her prey. But this marriage record, with the telltale Wakefield surname, shows that even as she sucked this older woman dry, Taylor was grafting parts of herself onto Mildred Markham. Markham’s medical examiner’s file lists her name as Mildred Constance Raner Loyd. Her death certificate (which misspells her first name) indicates that she’s a citizen of Trinidad, and her parents’ names are Frank Raner and Edith Wakefield. According to her granddaughter, Mildred Markham’s maiden name was actually Hampton, and she was born in the United States. Markham’s mother was not Edith Wakefield—back in the 1960s, Linda had tried to convince a judge that Edith Jarvis Wakefield was her own mother. When Markham was still alive, Taylor made her believe that they were mother and daughter. In death, she slotted Markham into her long-running, fictional life story. As in the cases of Patricia Parks and Sherman Ray, Taylor stood to gain financially from Mildred Markham’s death. Mildred’s medical examiner’s file includes letters from Union Fidelity Life Insurance and Gulf Life Insurance, both of which were looking to verify the claims of one “Linda Lynch,” the decedent’s daughter. The file also contains a note in which someone, presumably the medical examiner’s assistant, writes that Markham’s daughter “took out insurance policies at varied times using different names (marriages).” The daughter needed a letter to clear up this misunderstanding, and the medical examiner complied. “To the best of my knowledge Mildred Constance Raner Loyd, Constance Loyd, and Mildred Rayner are one in the same person,” he wrote. A letter from Dr. D. Bruce Woodham in the medical examiner’s file for Mildred Markham (aka Constance Mildred Rayner Loyd). A letter from Dr. D. Bruce Woodham in the medical examiner’s file for Mildred Markham (aka Constance Mildred Rayner Loyd). Florida Medical Examiner, District 14. Graphic by Slate. That wasn’t the only confusion about Mildred Markham’s death. On May 15, 1987, Dr. D. Bruce Woodham sent a letter to the medical examiner’s office saying that his patient did not die of natural causes. Woodham, a neurological surgeon, wrote that Markham hadn’t suffered a stroke. Rather, she’d fallen and hit her head. “I believe that Ms. Loyd's death was the result of an injury, she fell, she sustained a subdural hematoma, and she herniated from this, and that caused her demise,” the doctor explained. On account of Dr. Woodham’s letter, Markham’s death was reclassified as an accident. Regardless, Taylor probably collected on those life insurance policies—so long as there were no accusations of foul play, the companies more than likely paid up. Dr. Woodham, who is still practicing, says that although he wrote that Mildred Markham fell and hit her head, there’s no way he can know with certainty. He’s not a forensic pathologist, and he doesn’t have the expertise to distinguish between injuries that are consistent with a fall or ones that might come from a car accident or a blunt instrument. Dr. Woodham says he doesn’t remember the particulars of this case, but in general he goes by what he’s told—information provided by a paramedic, or possibly a family member. Theresa Davis does not believe her grandmother fell and hit her head. She is convinced that Mildred Markham was murdered, and that Linda Taylor is somehow responsible. Six years after Mildred Markham’s death, her widower Willtrue Loyd died in Florida at age 72. The medical examiner’s report says he succumbed naturally, to heart disease. Loyd’s next of kin is listed as Linda Lynch, his granddaughter. Taylor was only about seven years younger than her “grandfather.” Nevertheless, as Loyd’s supposed heir, she presumably stood to receive the World War II veteran’s benefits. Another death, another check. A short time after Loyd passed away, Johnnie Harbaugh and his wife were on vacation in Florida. He says it was around 1994, and Johnnie’s sister Sandra called to say their mother was in bad shape. “She was a mess when we found her,” Carol Harbaugh says. Taylor was living in Tampa. She’d had several face lifts, and she was wearing raggedy clothes and shoes that were too big for her. She was also “making crazy things up,” clearly in the throes of dementia. Johnnie wanted to leave Linda in Florida, but he brought her back to Chicago out of a sense of obligation. “She is my mother,” he says. She lived with Johnnie for a short while, then moved in with Sandra. For the next decade, their mother continued her mental and physical decline. In 2002, she was hospitalized. “I don’t know what made me go to the hospital the day that she passed away, but I went there [for] maybe 20 minutes,” Johnnie says. The last thing she told her son was that she had a spider in her chest. She was pounding herself with her fist, Johnnie recalls, trying to kill this imaginary arachnid. It was a horrible, pathetic sight. Johnnie couldn’t stand to see it, so he left. His mother died later that day, April 18, 2002, of a heart attack. She was somewhere between 74 and 77 years old. The death certificate for Linda Taylor (aka Constance Loyd). The death certificate for Linda Taylor (aka Constance Loyd). Cook County Clerk For Linda Taylor, documents were never simple accountings of the truth. Pieces of paper always told a story—about her identity, her husbands, her children, her parentage, what was owed to her, and who owed it—and that story was usually self-serving, contradictory, and false. That didn’t change just because she was dead. Her death certificate, compiled from information provided by her daughter Sandra Smith, is a blend of truth, lies, and conjecture. The welfare queen’s name is rendered as Constance Loyd, which it wasn’t. Her date of birth is listed as Dec. 25, 1934. It wasn’t. She’s described as a homemaker, which she wasn’t. Her father and mother are given as Lawrence Wakefield and Edith Elizabeth Jarvis. They weren’t. Her race is white—the same as in the 1930 and 1940 census. Among her itemized medical conditions is bipolar disorder. That may be true, or it may be a fabrication. The welfare queen was cremated. She has no gravestone. For a few years in the 1970s, Linda Taylor’s name was synonymous with greed and sloth. Now she was dead, and nobody noticed. 12 “She Beat the System” Linda Taylor’s welfare fraud trial set off a tidal wave of prosecutions. After securing the welfare queen’s conviction, Assistant State’s Attorney James Piper was placed in charge of a special welfare fraud unit. In its first year, Piper’s crew indicted 241 people. “I think the welfare queen Linda Taylor brought about a change in thinking,” Piper told the Tribune. “Millions each year are being stolen and we decided to do something about it.” With news of indictments streaming across the front pages of the Tribune and Sun-Times, Illinoisans increasingly saw welfare fraud as a public danger. In a 2007 paper in the Journal of Social History, Julilly Kohler-Hausmann reports that a 1978 poll of Illinois voters found “that 84 percent ranked controlling welfare and Medicaid fraud and abuses their highest legislative priority.” The Tribune encouraged its readers to hunt down welfare cheats, regularly promoting a fraud hotline set up by the Department of Public Aid. In 1977 alone, that hotline received 10,047 calls. In 1979, close to 2,000 cases of potential welfare fraud were referred to law enforcement in Illinois, an increase of 1,015 percent since 1971. Illinois embodied a nationwide trend. According to Kohler-Hausmann, welfare fraud investigations increased 729 percent across the country between 1970 and 1979. This wasn’t because fraud was on the rise, she argues—it was because Illinois and other states criminalized welfare overpayments that had once been handled administratively. The rising level of prosecutions didn’t correspond to an increase in benefit levels either. In fact, monthly welfare benefits (that is, payments via Aid to Families With Dependent Children and, after President Bill Clinton’s 1996 welfare reform legislation, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) began a long, steady decline in real dollars around the time of Taylor’s trial, one that’s continued to the present day. Martha Louise White Martha Miller Connie Harbaugh Beverly Singleton Constance Steinberg Constance Wakefield Constance Womack Connie Reed Constance Green Amos Lewis Sandra Lewis Dr. Constance Harbough Dr. L. Howard Dr. Connie Walker Linda Gasby Connie Gasby Connie Jarvis Connie Johnson Linda Spence Linda Shoulia Linda Wakefield Linda Bennett Linda Taylor Linda Taylor Jones Sandra Brownlee Linda Mallexo Linda Ray Rev. Linda Ray Linda Lynch Linda Springer Linda Yawson Linda Loyd Constance Loyd It’s impossible to define the exact scope of welfare fraud in America then or now. A 1983 publication sponsored by the Department of Justice, for example, estimated annual Aid to Families With Dependent Children overpayments at between $376 million and $3.2 billion—not exactly a precise range. What’s clear, though, is that Linda Taylor’s larger-than-life example created an indelible, inaccurate impression of public aid recipients. The plural of anecdote is not data. The plural of the craziest anecdote you’ve ever heard is definitely not data. And yet, the story of the welfare queen instantly infected the policy debate over welfare reform. Sociologist Richard M. Coughlin notes that in 1979, AFDC families had a median of just 2.1 children and a very low standard of living compared to the average American. In 2013, Bureau of Labor Statistics data continue to bear out the stark economic gap between families on public assistance and those who are not. Linda Taylor showed that it was possible for a dedicated criminal to steal a healthy chunk of welfare money. Her case did not prove that, as a group, public aid recipients were fur-laden thieves bleeding the American economy dry. If Linda Taylor had been seen as a suspect rather than a scapegoat, lives may have been saved. Even so, Ronald Reagan regularly dusted off the welfare queen’s lurid misadventures, arguing that rampant fraud demanded decisive government action. In pushing for welfare reform as president in 1981, he told members of Congress that “in addition to collecting welfare under 123 different names, she also had 55 Social Security cards,” and that “there’s much more of [this type of fraud] than anyone realizes.” The recent debate over cuts to the federal food stamp program, too, has featured Republican claims that we can save $30 billion by “eliminating loopholes, waste, fraud, and abuse.” In truth, Reagan wrung savings out of the federal welfare program by slashing benefit levels and raising eligibility requirements. And with regard to today’s food stamp cuts, as Eric Schnurer explains in the Atlantic, “none of the savings actually come from fraud, but rather from cutting funding and tightening benefits.” If Linda Taylor had been seen as a suspect rather than a scapegoat, lives may have been saved. Prosecutors have great discretion in choosing what cases to bring—that’s how the rate of welfare indictments could shoot up so dramatically in a single decade. When politicians and journalists whip the public into a frenzy about welfare fraud, the limitations of municipal budgets and judicial resources dictate that less attention be paid to everything else. Linda Taylor’s story shows that there are real costs associated with this kind of panic, a moral climate in which stealing welfare money takes precedence over kidnapping and homicide. Taylor was a hard woman to pin down. She was canny, incorrigible, and mobile in a relatively primitive technological era, one in which a determined lawbreaker could make it very difficult to follow her tracks. To gather enough evidence to convincingly tie Taylor to her most serious crimes, the Chicago Police Department would’ve needed to commit to the effort fully. Clearly, they did not. In preventing Jack Sherwin from devoting his abundant energy to stopping the Windy City’s most resourceful criminal, the Chicago police prioritized day-to-day bureaucratic expedience. Sherwin says he wanted to trace Taylor’s husbands and find out what happened to every one of them, but he couldn’t get the go-ahead. He says he “wasn’t given the leeway to do what I really wanted to do.” When cops and prosecutors let Taylor slip through their grasp, they weren’t just setting a dangerous woman loose. They also tossed away their institutional memory of her past schemes. Given the confusion she intentionally sowed, her only match was someone like Sherwin, who’d spent countless hours puzzling out her methods and movements. If Sherman Ray or Mildred Markham had turned up dead in Chicago, then law enforcement hopefully would have been wise enough at that point to launch a full-blown investigation. But Taylor was too smart for that. Once she got her freedom, she relocated to Momence and Graceville, places where nobody knew her many names. Jack Sherwin lost track of Linda Taylor a long time ago. When I tell him that his greatest antagonist died in Chicago in 2002, he says he doesn’t condone anything she did, but that “in her own way, she was a great person. She beat the system.” Patricia Parks-Lee says she gets a small amount of comfort from knowing that Taylor is dead, but it doesn’t bring her any closure. “My mom is gone,” she says. “I’ll never get answers to my questions. I’ll never know why she did what she did.” Chester and Dora Fronczak never found their son Paul Joseph. Two years after he was kidnapped from a Chicago hospital, the Fronczaks adopted a child who’d been found abandoned in New Jersey. They were certain this was their missing son, christening him Paul Joseph and raising him as if he were the baby that had been taken from them. Just more than a year ago, the Fronczaks’ adopted son posted a short note on a message board called “Orphan Memories”: Hi, I was identified by the FBI as Paul Joseph fronczak, the kidnapped baby from Michael Reese hospital in Chicago, IL. ... I was abandoned in newark nj on July 2, 1965, found in a stroller outside a variety store. I was placed in an orphanage. When the FBI found me, I was placed in a foster home and given the name "Scott McKinley." I have just found out that I am not Paul Joseph fronczak. I need help to find out who I am. This ersatz Paul Joseph is now on a quest to find his true identity. He’s also trying to find the baby that was taken from his adoptive parents. The FBI says it’s pursuing new leads, and ABC’s Barbara Walters recently hosted a 20/20 special on the Fronczak mystery. The man raised as Paul Joseph Fronczak, who is 49 years old (he thinks) and lives in Nevada, tells me that he was not aware of Linda Taylor’s potential connection to the 1964 kidnapping. Special Agent Joan Hyde, the media coordinator for the FBI’s Chicago field office, says the bureau will not comment on an active investigation. Johnnie Harbaugh says he left his criminal ways behind in the 1970s, and insists that he’s no longer the man his mother raised. But his life hasn't been easy. He’s most often unemployed, and he and his wife struggle to pay their bills with his granddaughter, his son, and his son’s girlfriend living under his roof. He’s got several cars in his garage in Chicago’s northwest suburbs: a truck, a PT Cruiser. He waits until he’s almost broke and then he sells one. Today, Johnnie Harbaugh and his family live in Chicago’s northwest suburbs. October 2013. Today, Johnnie Harbaugh and his family live in Chicago’s northwest suburbs. October 2013. Photo by Josh Levin Johnnie believes that his mother was capable of almost anything—that for her, family was a means to an end. His wife Carol says that after Taylor got out of prison, they learned to put padlocks on their interior doors to protect their property and themselves. Johnnie tells me his mother tried to poison him with castor oil when he was 2 or 3 years old. His older brother Cliff told him that if he hadn’t taken Johnnie and run away, then he would’ve been dead. Eleven years after his mother died, there’s one mystery that Johnnie isn’t sure he wants to solve. Johnnie Gilbert Harbaugh’s birth certificate says he was born on Jan. 7, 1950 in Blytheville, Ark. That document, though, wasn’t issued until May 29, 1957. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to file for a delayed birth certificate—it’s possible that Johnnie’s birth, in rural Arkansas, wasn’t recorded right away. Johnnie Harbaugh’s mother, though, once used just such a document as a means of deception: In the 1960s, she procured a delayed birth certificate to prove she was “Constance Wakefield,” Lawrence Wakefield’s daughter. When he was a child, Johnnie says, he’d see birth certificates just lying around the house. Is his own birth record a phony? “I might have even been somebody else’s kid,” he says. “She might have grabbed me when I was a baby.” He thinks it’s likely he was stolen, that he belongs to someone else. “I’ve always felt like that, even as a kid, even as far back as I can remember.” Over the years, he says, he had several people back in Arkansas pull him aside and say they’d tell him his life story one day—who he is, and who his mother is. But those conversations have never happened. Now, most of the people who might know the truth are dead.
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May 25, 2016 18:00
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e-cult of autists posted:bitch u can get aids too then gently caress yourself and your mirroring/analgoy whatever stem math formula ur trying to use to predict me why does it have to be a STEM math formula? i remember when plain old arithmetic was the way it was done. btw dare, hes using your cell phone's location metadata to track your habits. you should probably smash that
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May 25, 2016 18:01
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kill yourself dare you piece of poo poo rapist
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May 25, 2016 18:01
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lol when did i admit to raping a woman and what is your definition of rape cuz if we're going strictly by anything past the first no is rape and ihave to die because of this then id at least like to have it on record and charge the goonettes that have done the exact same poo poo to me sandy hook has 2 boys btw and likes living where its sandy and thinks the cliquey idiot girls of this forum like celia, caroline, katherine, hidi, angela, etc are all fake vapid roach like valerie solanas wannabes
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May 25, 2016 18:01
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Blazing Zero posted:why does it have to be a STEM math formula? i remember when plain old arithmetic was the way it was done. btw dare, hes using your cell phone's location metadata to track your habits. you should probably smash that and by smash that, i mean with consent you weirdo
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May 25, 2016 18:02
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On the afternoon of March 15, as voters across five states streamed to the polls, Donald Trump’s campaign advisers gathered by the pool at Mar-a-Lago, the billionaire’s private club in Palm Beach. Hope Hicks, Trump’s 27-year-old press secretary, wearing a cover-up over bikini bottoms, her hair still wet from the pool, scanned headlines on her iPhone next to Trump’s square-jawed campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. That morning, Politico had reported that Trump allies wanted Lewandowski to be fired for roughly grabbing a female reporter while she tried to ask Trump a question at a press conference (an incident for which he has since been charged with battery). Lewandowski didn’t appear to be worried about his job. He was kicking back in a Trump-brand golf shirt, drinking a 16-ounce Monster energy drink, and chatting with deputy campaign manager Michael Glassner, a former Bob Dole adviser, who at age 52 has been seen as the campaign’s grown-up. Dan Scavino, who first earned Trump’s trust as his golf caddie at the Briar Hall club in Westchester and now handles the campaign’s social media, sauntered over in baggy mesh shorts and a baseball cap. “We go to bed and we’re winning, and we wake up and we’re winning!” Scavino said with a cocky smile. There is perhaps no better representation of the singularity of the Trump campaign than this handful of political outsiders lounging poolside. They fit no one’s description of a dream team. Hardly any of Trump’s staffers arrived at their positions with high-level political experience. The last time Lewandowski ran a campaign was in 2002, when he managed a losing Senate reelection bid in New Hampshire. Hicks and Scavino spent zero time in politics before this. Hicks did PR for Ivanka Trump’s fashion line and promoted Trump resorts. Scavino graduated from caddying to serve as general manager at Trump National Golf Club; he spent his free time as an unpaid disc jockey at a local radio station. Trump’s national spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, is a onetime Obama supporter turned tea-party activist who once was arrested for shoplifting. His foreign-policy advisers include a former banker who writes a foreign-policy blog that quotes Kanye West and Oprah, and an energy consultant whose LinkedIn page cites as a foreign-policy credential being one of five finalists for a model-U.N. summit. “I would take capable over experienced all day long,” Trump said. “Experience is good, but capable is much more important.” Furthermore, he’ll take few over many. Trump’s campaign employs a core team of about a dozen people; his campaign lists 94 people on the payroll nationwide, according to the latest Federal Election Commission filing (Hillary Clinton has 765). Trump has no pollsters, media coaches, or speechwriters. He focus-groups nothing. He buys few ads, and when he does, he likes to write them himself. He also writes his own tweets, his main vehicle for communicating with his supporters. And it was his idea to adopt Ronald Reagan’s slogan “Make America Great Again!” “I’m the strategist,” Trump told me. Which would make him, no matter what your feelings about his beliefs or his qualifications to govern a country, one of the greatest political savants of the modern era. But now that the race is shifting into a significantly different phase, Trump’s innate talents — and his tiny team — will be challenged. His goal, of course, is to cross the delegate threshold that would guarantee him the nomination before the Republican National Convention in July, but that is nowhere near a sure thing. If he comes up short, he will have to maneuver through an extremely complicated convention, protecting his delegates and making sure the party feels obligated, or cowed enough, to give him the nomination even if it is not legally bound to do so. The focus of the race is changing from what he is naturally good at — riling up the populace — to something closer to what happens on Capitol Hill: horse-trading, negotiating, working levers behind closed doors. Trump may soon need to change how his campaign operates, raising outside money, engaging the super-pacs he has denounced, and widening his circle beyond, essentially, himself. To that end, in late March he hired Paul Manafort, famous in GOP circles for running Gerald Ford’s successful floor fight at the ’76 contested convention, to play delegate hardball. It’s a start, and he is determined. “I’m a closer,” he told me. “I want to close. I have to beat the leftovers. Okay? These are leftovers.” 2016 U.S. Presidential Candidate Donald Trump Headquarters And Interview A wall inside campaign headquarters at Trump Tower. Photo: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg Inside the pink-marble lobby of Trump Tower, tourists were snapping pictures of the giant waterfall that ripples down the wall of the atrium, while a visiting high-school brass band played in the “Trump Parlor.” At the welcome desk, copies of Trump’s book Crippled America were for sale alongside placards that read make america great again! and the silent majority stands with trump. Security guys patrolled everywhere. The place is a microcosm of Trump’s campaign thus far: cheesy, quaint, and menacing. I left the ostentatious glitz of the lobby and took the elevator to the fifth floor, where two unmarked frosted-glass doors open onto a raw-concrete space with electrical wires and pipes hanging from the ceiling. Sheets of plywood were stacked haphazardly against the walls; plastic buckets and garbage cans were scattered across the floor. It looked like an abandoned construction site. In an unfinished room, I counted seven 20-somethings sitting at scuffed wooden desks and plastic foldout tables. Trump memorabilia festooned the walls. “This is all stuff people sent in,” said an earnest young man in a suit who works in voter outreach. He was sitting under an architectural rendering of the border wall that Trump insists Mexico will pay for. On the floor nearby was a model of the White House topped with a cardboard Trump cutout, American flags, and a pair of pink flamingos. Across the room, a wall of shame featured grim-faced photos of the 13 GOP candidates Trump has so far dispatched, with handwritten dates of their campaigns’ demises. I was well aware that Trump runs a bare-bones operation, but college-newspaper offices have more robust infrastructure than his national campaign headquarters—to say nothing of Hillary Clinton’s 80,000-square-foot headquarters in Brooklyn Heights. As I tried to square all this in my mind, Hope Hicks strode over in five-inch heels. “He’s ready for you.” We took the elevator to the 26th floor. “It’s been so crazy,” she said. “I haven’t really been home since Thanksgiving.” A guard outside Trump’s executive suite waved a wand over me before opening the locked doors. Trump stood and shook my hand, wearing his usual uniform: crisp navy suit and bright-red tie. Not surprisingly, given the state of the race — this was a few days after Trump trounced Marco Rubio in Florida — his mood was good, boastful even. “So much for the face of the Republican Party—that’s the end of that!” he said of Rubio. “He was going to be president. By the way, Jeb Bush was going to be president. Walker was going to be president. They were all going to be president, except for the fact I got in their way!” Trump turned to Hicks. “How many states have I won?” “Twenty,” she said. “So I’ve won 20. Cruz has won five. And I see Cruz on television last night saying, ‘I have proven I can beat Donald Trump!’ He didn’t say I beat him 20 times! It’s why I call him Lyin’ Ted!” (Cruz had actually won eight states by this point.) I asked him about the lines that have become his signature. In most other campaigns there are speechwriters (and pollsters) for this. But there is clearly no team of comedy writers squirreled away downstairs. “I’m the writer,” Trump said. “Let me start with Little Marco. He just looked like Little Marco to me. And it’s not Little. It’s Liddle. L-I-D-D-L-E. And it’s not L-Y-I-N-G Ted Cruz. It’s L-Y-I-N apostrophe. Ted’s a liar, so that was easy.” Trump’s wall of candidates who have dropped out of the race. All his utterances are, by his account, spontaneous. “It’s much easier to read a speech, obviously,” he said. “I speak from the brain and from the heart in combination, hopefully in equal combination.” In person, it’s difficult to see exactly where Trump the man blurs into Trump the character. He moves in and out of his bellowing stump-speech persona and his “normal” persona, which is the same in many ways, just dialed down a few notches. There is, however, a vulnerability to Trump in private that you don’t often see; he comes across as genuinely wounded that he’s not taken seriously. Rubio, he said, “talked about my hands because he had nothing else to talk about. I said to him, ‘It’s pretty sad when after the long career I’ve had the best he can do is talk about my hands,’ which are really good.” Trump paused and spread his five fingers for me to inspect. “He probably got it from that sleazebag Graydon Carter, who said I had short stubby fingers.” He seemed particularly upset that his fellow billionaires don’t show him respect. “Murdoch’s been very bad to me,” he said. “Bloomberg’s been quite bad to me. I thought he was a friend of mine; he’s no friend of mine. He was nasty.” When a middle-aged executive wandered in during our interview, Trump shouted, “What do you want, Mike?” “I just wanted to show you something,” said the man, indicating that he would come back later. It was a reminder that Trump is ostensibly still running a business through all this. Later, Hicks would tell me about the time they were driving to a campaign event when Ivanka called to update Trump on a development. “He said, ‘Go with the marble. Now I have to run, baby. I’m about to give a speech.’ ” Trump deflected most questions about policy (“I have policy on my website”), strategy (“I think I’ll win before the convention”), and controversies around his campaign (“It’s totally blown out by the press. There’s very little violence”). He said he would choose a politician as his running mate — “I don’t want to have two people outside of politics” — but he wouldn’t name any possibilities. What he talked about most was winning. It’s a truism, but it’s still true: His worldview is that life is a contest, and he’s been winning it for years. “I always get good crowds,” he said. “I’ve always had ratings from the time I was born, for whatever reason. It hasn’t, you know, just started. The Apprentice went on, and no one thought it would be successful.” The transition in our conversation from his presidential run to his reality-TV show was seamless. “In fact, get up, Gabe, take a look there, see the picture on the wall—Variety. I mean, No. 1 show on television. You remember how amazing that was. That wasn’t a surprise to me, but everyone else in show business couldn’t believe it. ‘Wow, you got the No. 1 show on television!’ ” In this conversation, The Apprentice was the subject that had him most animated. Related Stories Trump to the Republican Party: It’s Me or Else Trump ‘Got’ a Lawyer for His Campaign Manager Charged With Battery Fox News Statement Taunting Trump Was ‘100 Percent’ Roger Ailes As much as his campaign appears off the cuff, Trump diligently laid the groundwork for his 2016 run over the course of several years, cultivating relationships with powerful allies in the conservative firmament and in the media, inviting them to private meetings at Trump Tower and golf outings in Florida, all the while collecting intelligence that he has deployed to devastating effect. As early as 1987, Trump talked publicly about his desire to run for president. He toyed with mounting a campaign in 2000 on the Reform Party ticket, and again in 2012 as a Republican (this was at the height of his Obama birtherism). Two years later, Trump briefly explored running for governor of New York as a springboard to the White House. “I have much bigger plans in mind — stay tuned,” he tweeted in March 2014. Trump taped another season of The Apprentice that year, but he kept a political organization intact. His team at the time consisted of three advisers: Roger Stone, Michael Cohen, and Sam Nunberg. Stone is a veteran operative, known for his gleeful use of dirty tricks and for ending Eliot Spitzer’s political career by leaking his patronage of prostitutes to the FBI. Cohen is Trump’s longtime in-house attorney. And Nunberg is a lawyer wired into right-wing politics who has long looked up to “Mr. Trump,” as he calls him. “I first met him at WrestleMania when I was like 5 years old,” Nunberg told me. Throughout 2014, the three fed Trump strategy memos and political intelligence. “I listened to thousands of hours of talk radio, and he was getting reports from me,” Nunberg recalled. What those reports said was that the GOP base was frothing over a handful of issues including immigration, Obamacare, and Common Core. While Jeb Bush talked about crossing the border as an “act of love,” Trump was thinking about how high to build his wall. “We either have borders or we don’t,” Trump told the faithful who flocked to the annual CPAC conference in 2014. Meanwhile, Trump used his wealth as a strategic tool to gather his own intelligence. When Citizens United president David Bossie or GOP chairman Reince Priebus called Trump for contributions, Trump used the conversations as opportunities to talk about 2016. “Reince called Trump thinking they were talking about donations, but Trump was asking him hard questions,” recalled Nunberg. From his conversations with Priebus, Trump learned that the 2016 field was likely to be crowded. “We knew it was going to be like a parliamentary election,” Nunberg said. Which is how Trump’s scorched-earth strategy coalesced. To break out of the pack, he made what appears to be a deliberate decision to be provocative, even outrageous. “If I were totally presidential, I’d be one of the many people who are already out of the race,” Trump told me. And so, Trump openly stoked racial tensions and appealed to the latent misogyny of a base that thinks of Hillary as the world’s most horrible ballbuster. It was also thanks to some information he had gathered that Trump was able to do something that no other Republican has done before: take on Fox News. An odd bit of coincidence had given him a card to play against Fox founder Roger Ailes. In 2014, I published a biography of Ailes, which upset the famously paranoid executive. Several months before it landed in stores, Ailes fired his longtime PR adviser Brian Lewis, accusing him of being a source. During Lewis’s severance negotiations, Lewis hired Judd Burstein, a powerhouse litigator, and claimed he had “bombs” that would destroy Ailes and Fox News. That’s when Trump got involved. “When Roger was having problems, he didn’t call 97 people, he called me,” Trump said. Burstein, it turned out, had worked for Trump briefly in the ’90s, and Ailes asked Trump to mediate. Trump ran the negotiations out of his office at Trump Tower. “Roger had lawyers, very expensive lawyers, and they couldn’t do anything. I solved the problem.” Fox paid Lewis millions to go away quietly, and Trump, I’m told, learned everything Lewis had planned to leak. If Ailes ever truly went to war against Trump, Trump would have the arsenal to launch a retaliatory strike. In January 2015, Trump hired Corey Lewandowski as campaign manager at the recommendation of Citizen United’s Bossie. On paper, Lewandowski’s credentials didn’t shine, but what he lacked in pedigree he made up for in raw ambition and ruthlessness. Lewandowski grew up poor in the mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts. As an undergraduate at the local UMass branch, he ran unsuccessfully for state representative. After graduating in 1995, he moved to Washington, D.C., got a master’s in politics at American University, and worked as a House aide on Capitol Hill. In 2001, he got a job with the Republican National Committee. But Lewandowski’s time as a member of the GOP Establishment was short-lived. In 2002, he managed the reelection campaign of New Hampshire Republican senator Bob Smith, who was loathed by George W. Bush’s White House for briefly leaving the party in 1999 to launch an independent run for president. Against Smith, the Bushes backed John Sununu Jr., the son of George H. W. Bush’s former chief of staff. “I told Corey that the Establishment is coming after me, even the president of the United States,” Smith said, recalling his interview with Lewandowski for the job. “I said, ‘If that bothers you in any way, if you don’t want to touch this with a ten-foot pole because of your political career, I understand.’ He just said, ‘No problem.’ ” Smith lost, and Lewandowski, as Smith had warned, found himself cast into the political wilderness. He settled in New Hampshire, got married, and raised four children while bouncing around a series of jobs, at one point selling real estate and serving as a police officer. In 2008, he landed a position with Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-brothers-backed free-market group. Lewandowski rose through the ranks at AFP to become national director of voter registration but stalled after a voter-recruitment project he spearheaded failed to yield results in 2014. Politico also reported that Lewandowski once threatened to “blow up” a colleague’s car and even called a female co-worker a “oval office.” One former Koch executive told me he was going to be fired. (Lewandowski denies this.) Luckily, Trump came calling. He hired Lewandowski thinking that the 42-year-old operative had two crucial assets: his Koch connections and an intimate knowledge of New Hampshire’s quirky political terrain. The first assumption was wrong, but on the second, Lewandowski proved his worth. And he gained Trump’s trust by demonstrating he possessed the quality Trump values most: loyalty. “This campaign, above all other things, is about loyalty,” Lewandowski said. In what’s been said to be a unique arrangement for a campaign manager, Lewandowski travels everywhere with Trump, a role normally reserved for the campaign’s “body man.” Trump turned to an equally unlikely candidate to handle communications. One day in January 2015, Hope Hicks got a call from Trump’s office asking her to come in. At the time, she was working on the 25th floor with Ivanka. “Mr. Trump looked at me and said, ‘I’m thinking about running for president, and you’re going to be my press secretary,’ ” Hicks said. “I think it’s ‘the year of the outsider.’ It helps to have people with outsider perspective.” Her mother told her she should write a book about this experience someday. “She said it would be like Primary Colors, and I told her, ‘You don’t even know.’ ” Six months later, Lewandowski and Hicks worked into the early hours of the morning prepping for Trump’s campaign announcement in the lobby of Trump Tower. “It had to be perfect,” Lewandowski said. “We had to build the stage, make sure the flags hung perfectly; the eagles faced out; the carpet was red, and he would wear a red tie.” And hire plants. The campaign paid actors $50 each to wear Trump T-shirts and wave placards. Later that morning, they watched from the wings as Ivanka introduced her father in front of reporters and photographers and the manufactured crowd. “It looked like the Academy Awards!” Trump recalled. “You saw the cameras, forget it. You couldn’t get another person in.” Trump didn’t read a prepared speech, but he knew what he wanted to say, which hardly mattered anyway because hardly anyone took his candidacy seriously at the time. “Nobody said anything,” Trump said about the fact that he had accused Mexico of sending “rapists” over the border into the U.S. “Then two weeks later, they started saying, ‘Wait a minute! Did he really say that?’ ” He hadn’t tested the line, but Nunberg’s deep dive into talk radio had shown him that this was the sort of thing that would resonate with a certain segment of the Republican base. He also knew that this kind of outrageous statement would earn him the free media attention ($1.9 billion worth and counting, according to the New York Times) that would propel his campaign. This strategy did not go over well in all corners of the Trump empire. Ivanka, Trump’s 34-year-old daughter, had carefully tended her public image as the softer, more refined face of the Trump empire. Now her father’s hard-edged nativist rhetoric risked damaging not only her brand but her business. A few days after the announcement speech, Ivanka received a terse email from Kimberly Grant, the CEO of ThinkFood Group, the holding company behind celebrity chef José Andrés, whose restaurant was supposed to be the anchor tenant in one of Ivanka’s biggest projects: the $200 million redevelopment of the Old Post Office in Washington, D.C., into a luxury hotel. “We need to talk. Getting crushed over DJT comments about Latinos and Mexicans,” Grant wrote her, according to legal filings. Ivanka forwarded Grant’s email to her executives. “Ugh,” one responded. “This is not surprising and would expect that this will not be the last that we hear of it. At least for formal, prepared speeches, can someone vet going forward? Hopefully the Latino community does not organize against us more broadly in DC / across Trump properties.” Ivanka’s older brother, Donald Jr., also weighed in. “Yea I was waiting for that one. Let’s discuss in the am.” Ivanka did her best to salvage the partnership. She asked her father to issue an apology, even submitting several drafts for him to release to the press. But he refused. “Rapists are coming into the country! You know I was right,” Trump later told me. On July 8, Andrés backed out of the restaurant deal, citing Trump’s immigration comments. The two sides are now battling in court. Despite any differences of opinion, Ivanka is by all accounts thrilled at the possibility of her dad becoming president. She managed to persuade him to support Planned Parenthood—at least the part of the organization that doesn’t provide abortions—an extreme position for a Republican to take. “She’s very much into the concept of women’s health issues,” Trump said. (He no doubt embarrassed her last week by saying that women should be punished for getting abortions if the procedure were outlawed, a position held by almost no one even in the pro-life community, and one Trump recanted several hours later.) Ivanka also pushed him to act more “presidential,” but in one of our conversations, Trump said he disagrees: “You know, there’s a difference between being presidential when you’re now president of the United States than being presidential when you’re running against 17 other people.” “No one can control him,” said Nunberg. Not even his family. Ivanka’s husband, the real-estate scion and Observer owner Jared Kushner, has also gotten involved in the campaign, serving as an emissary to the Jewish community. He helped plan Trump’s trip to Israel last December, though it didn’t go exactly as planned. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized Trump’s proposal to halt Muslim immigration, Trump canceled the trip. “This was all your idea!” Trump scolded his son-in-law, according to a source. He fared better with Trump’s aipac speech, which Kushner wrote with input from Observer editor Ken Kurson. It was one of the most subdued of his public statements so far, perhaps because it was the only one he has read from a Teleprompter. Kushner has tapped his network in an attempt to help his father-in-law. He reached out to hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer to introduce him to Trump (Singer declined), and during Trump’s feud with Fox, he called Rupert Murdoch to try to make peace (Murdoch told him to deal directly with Roger Ailes). But this is where Kushner’s involvement makes for the strangest of bedfellows. One of Trump’s most prominent endorsers, Chris Christie, happens to be the man who, as U.S. attorney, sent Jared’s father, Charles Kushner, to federal prison for tax fraud, among other felonies, in 2004. Trump’s Team: Corey Lewandowski, campaign manager; Hope Hicks, press secretary; and Paul Manafort, campaign convention manager. Photo: Charlie Neibergall/AP/Jim Young/Reuters One way in which Trump’s campaign is like others is that its advisers have jousted for primacy. Over the summer, Lewandowski became embroiled in a battle for control with Stone, Nunberg, and Cohen. The principal fault line was over Stone and Nunberg’s belief that Trump needed to invest money into building a real campaign infrastructure and Lewandowski’s contention that their current approach was working fine. On July 31, the dispute spilled into public view when Business Insider published an article revealing racist Facebook posts Nunberg had written years earlier. Nunberg believed Lewandowski was involved in the leak, hoping to use it as a pretext to force him out of the campaign. “I have been told by past colleagues that he has bragged about ‘ratfucking’ me in private,” Nunberg said. Lewandowski adamantly disputes this. “I am denying 150 percent on my kids’ lives that I had anything to do with it,” he said. Trump is not usually one to be put off by a few racist tweets, but Lewandowski convinced Trump that Nunberg needed to go. (Nunberg now supports Ted Cruz.) A week later, Stone quit, although he continues to advise Trump informally. Cohen remains in the Trump organization but is no longer part of the core political team. Having won the power struggle with Nunberg and Stone, Lewandowski focused on letting “Trump be Trump,” which is what Trump wanted too. There would be no expensive television ad campaigns, no bus tours or earnest meet-and-greets at greasy spoons. Instead, the cornerstones of Trump’s strategy are stadium rallies and his ubiquitous presence on television and social media. “Mr. Trump is the star,” Hicks said. Pundits have scoffed at this. Trump has no “ground game,” they say. His refusal to spend money on television ads spells disaster. But from the beginning, Trump knew he was onto something. “I remember I had one event in New Hampshire right next to Bush,” Trump told me. “I had 4,500 people, many people standing outside in the cold. Bush had 67 people! Right next door! And I said, ‘Why is he going to win?’ ” The Trump team is on the road — or rather in the air — five to six days a week on average. Lewandowski, Hicks, Scavino, Donald Jr., and security chief Keith Schiller travel with Trump, while Glassner often stays behind at headquarters. When they travel, they live on the plane, returning to New York or Palm Beach at night whenever possible, even if it means flying in at 2 or 3 a.m. When they’re in New York, Hicks spends most of her day sitting in Trump’s office with her laptop, fielding press inquiries and taking dictation from him to tweet. Lewandowski spends most of his time in the campaign office, organizing logistics. He’s said to approve every invoice himself. Trump has given them both free apartments at a nearby Trump building. The small scale and near-constant proximity mean they can respond to events quickly. In February, when the pope suggested Trump might not be a Christian owing to his plan to build a wall along the border, the campaign struck back within minutes. “If and when the Vatican is attacked by isis, which as everyone knows is isis’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president,” his statement said. Lewandowski recalled how it happened: “We found out about it as Mr. Trump was giving a speech on Kiawah Island in South Carolina, and within three minutes or less, he provided the response to Hope.” (By contrast, Clinton’s tweets are vetted by layers of advisers. “It’s very controlled,” one said to me.) But if speed is the advantage of the small campaign, insularity is its inherent disadvantage. By all accounts, Trump doesn’t seek much counsel beyond his staff and children. There is, of course, his circle of declared foreign-policy advisers whom no one had heard of, but it’s unclear how much he talks to those he cites publicly. Carl Icahn told me that Trump didn’t call him before he invoked his name as a potential Cabinet member. “I saw one day he was on TV talking about making Carl Icahn secretary of the Treasury,” Icahn said. “I’m certainly not going to be Treasury secretary.” A conservative source close to the campaign told me that Trump only truly consults one person, Alabama Republican senator Jeff Sessions: “When Jeff Sessions calls, Trump listens.” It’s hard to overstate Sessions’s influence on trade and immigration policy within the GOP. As far back as 2007, Sessions led the right-wing revolt to scuttle comprehensive immigration reform. Trump set out to win his endorsement early, calling him shortly after he launched his campaign and asking him to advise him. Then, while in D.C. for the anti-Iran-nuclear-deal protest in September, he met privately with Sessions in the basement of the Capitol. “That was a very long meeting,” recalled Stephen Miller, then an adviser to Sessions. “They discussed immigration, taxes, welfare, the Supreme Court, and entitlements.” Trump stayed in contact with Sessions throughout the fall and in January strengthened ties by hiring Miller to serve as his campaign’s policy adviser. A 30-year-old Duke philosophy grad, Miller grew up liberal in Los Angeles but converted to the right as a teenager after reading NRA president Wayne LaPierre’s book Guns, Crime and Freedom. He said Trump inspires him. “I am here because in the bottom of my heart I see this election as a last-chance election,” he told me. Since then, Trump and Sessions seem only to have grown closer. Sessions stood with Trump onstage near Huntsville just before the Alabama primary in late February. And when Sessions called Trump last month and criticized him for coming out in favor of H-1B visas, which allow companies to recruit high-level talent abroad, Trump promptly changed his position. “Sessions has told him to get off the personal attacks,” the source told me. “He says, you’ve got a policy position that’s resonating with the country, just stay on illegal immigration.” A Trump supporter sent in a rendering of a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Meanwhile, the Trump team has poured almost all of its efforts into producing rallies down to the most minute details. At a Christmas-themed one I attended in Cedar Rapids in December, eight perfectly symmetrical Christmas trees lined the stage. As Lewandowski told me, “It’s all about the visual.” He requires reporters to stay behind metal barricades and positions television cameras for the most dramatic shots. “We want to know, what does it look like when he walks out on the stage?” Lewandowski said. “Sometimes we’ll allow cameras up close, sometimes we’ll show Mr. Trump on the rope line.” And the networks, hungry for ratings, have played by these strict rules. Trump is personally very invested in the theater of the campaign. In August, his private 757 buzzed a football stadium in Mobile, Alabama, that was packed with 30,000 supporters. “I was sitting up front,” Trump recalled, “and I saw a tremendous crowd of people. I went up to the pilot, I said, ‘Hack a left here and go right over.’ And the people went crazy. It’s my instinct.” In Florida last month, Trump’s helicopter hovered over a rally in Boca Raton. After the rallies, Trump makes sure his fans stay mobilized. Everyone who attends a rally has to register by email, and the campaign uses this list, which Lewandowski estimates is “in the millions at this point,” to turn out voters. Most campaigns spend a lot of money to acquire voter lists; Trump largely built his own. “If you look at what the Obama campaign achieved many years ago, they were successful at bringing new people in, and then communicating with those people. What we’re doing is not dissimilar,” Lewandowski explained. “He had a brilliant plan, which was to go in and attract huge crowds,” added Ed McMullen, Trump’s South Carolina co-chair. “We had extremely strong interaction with them, and we were dedicated to keeping track of who those people were.” Trump supporters receive frequent email updates and phone calls from phone-bank volunteers. Trump has refined the rally concept over the course of the campaign. To save time and money, he now does events at airports. “We’ll take a hangar because it’s not as expensive as a ballroom,” Trump said. “Look at the rally we did in Mesa, Arizona, December 16th,” added Hicks. “That was the first one when we pulled the plane in and ‘Air Force One’ [the theme song of the 1997 movie starring Harrison Ford] was playing. It’s efficient. It’s for branding, and we don’t have to pay for the cars.” His ad strategy, too, is inexpensive. Trump has aired only six unique TV commercials, according to Hicks, while his GOP rivals have aired more than two dozen separate ads each. Through February, he spent only $10 million on ads; Jeb Bush spent $82 million. Trump relies mostly on essentially free Instagram spots produced by 29-year-old Justin McConney, the son of Trump’s corporate comptroller, whom Trump put in charge of building his social-media profile a few years ago. (One ad he made that featured Hillary barking and Putin laughing got a ton of — free — press.) Trump is cheap, and proud of it. Indeed, Lewandowski’s bonus for winning New Hampshire was a paltry $50,000. It’s part of Trump’s central argument: He will run the government like a business. (Though, truth be told, there are few businesses that operate the way his does: Trump’s company is primarily a marketing vehicle at this point, licensing his name to other firms’ developments.) “I don’t spend much money,” he told me. “In New Hampshire, I spent $2 million” — actually $3.7 million — “Bush spent $48 million” — actually $36.1 million — “I came in first in a landslide, he came in sixth” — actually fourth. “Who do you want as your president?” Donald Trump, a Republican presidential hopeful, reaches for a sign to autograph for a supporter after a rally at Youngstown?Warren Regional Airport. Trump at a rally at Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport in Ohio, March 14. Photo: Mark Makela/© The New York Times This formula has worked thus far better than anyone, including Trump, could have imagined. When he launched his campaign, Trump suspected it would eventually fizzle and he would return to The Apprentice. “You know, when I first got into this, it was for other reasons,” he told a friend. As weeks and then months passed with him remaining out front, he began to think winning the nomination was a real possibility, even as he resisted calls to professionalize his campaign. Why bother, when what he was doing was working so well? But now the cracks are starting to show. Lewandowski’s criminal charge is just the latest self-inflicted setback for the campaign. There was also the canceled Chicago rally that sparked a near riot; Trump’s inability to blunt the criticism over Trump University; and his woefully unprepared performances recently before the Washington Post and New York Times. Until last week, when Trump hired Manafort to oversee his delegate strategy, there was virtually no serious plan to wage a battle for delegates in anticipation of a contested convention. As of now, Cruz may secure more delegates in Louisiana despite losing to Trump in the primary (Trump says he’ll sue over this). A Republican official in Texas recently told Breitbart News Network that Trump has no visible delegate operation in the state. “I’ll buy the delegates,” Trump joked to a friend over dinner. Trump demurred when I asked him about his strategy to win the nomination at a contested convention. “I have people looking at it,” he said. What about his intimation that there will be riots in the streets if he loses on a second ballot? “You will have a lot of very unhappy people,” he said coyly. The threat is thinly veiled given the violence associated with his campaign, especially after he told NBC he’d consider paying the legal fees of a white supporter who punched a black protester in the face. One explanation for all this raggedness is that the Trump team is simply burned out. People who know Trump say they’ve never seen him so tired. Several months ago, he began wearing a bulletproof vest, two sources close to the campaign told me, which has added to his discomfort on the stump, leaving him sweaty and spent after events. And given that his unfavorables among women already are at ruinous levels (a CNN poll last month found that 73 percent of registered female voters held a negative view of Trump), his ill-advised comments about punishing abortion-seekers seem like they might have been a function of sheer exhaustion as well. Outrageous comments may have gotten him attention early on, but now Trump is talking about pivoting. “I’ll have to expand the team and the theme,” he told me. Some have speculated that the arrival of Manafort and the shifting strategy of the campaign mean that Lewandowski’s role will be reduced, and not just because of the battery charge. People inside Trump’s world, while praising Lewandowski’s talents as an advance man, are privately expressing doubts about his strategic abilities. One prominent conservative told me Trump surrogate Jerry Falwell Jr. complained about Lewandowski’s brusque demeanor. Another source told me Ivanka doesn’t think Lewandowski can handle the pressures of the next stage and has told her father as much. “Generally, her feeling is he’s low-level and doesn’t have a good rep and is not going to bring her father to the next level,” the source explained. A third source close to the campaign suggested Glassner is taking a more hands-on role. Recently, he persuaded Trump to dump the campaign’s data analyst and recruit a more experienced consultant. But publicly, Trump is still standing by Lewandowski, coming to his defense after the battery charge. If Trump makes it to the nomination, he will face other challenges for which he seems right now completely unprepared. He’ll have to rally at least some of the GOP Establishment, which he’s spent the last year vilifying. “People are calling me, that you have interviewed, that you see on television, who have total disdain for Donald Trump, and they’re calling to see if they can join the Trump train,” he said. During one conversation, he told me Paul Ryan called him “very nicely, twice.” But when I later checked that with Ryan’s communications adviser, Brendan Buck, he said the two spoke only once and it was after Trump’s office called. In recent days, Trump named a new “House Leadership Committee” headed by Republicans Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins. On March 31, he sat down with Priebus at RNC headquarters. There are plans to open a D.C. campaign office. He will also have to figure out how to raise money. Trump won’t fund a general election himself, and he has no national fund-raising apparatus in place. During my tour of Trump’s campaign office, I overheard Glassner on the phone discussing the nascent state of their finance efforts. “I have to find a place for these rich guys to go to,” he said. “Dinners, receptions, events. We need everything, because we don’t have a finance committee.” It will be a hard sell for Trump, one of the hardest of his career, to persuade GOP donors to pony up, especially after his attacks on the donor class. Groups like the Club for Growth have been committed to stopping Trump. And the Koch brothers have also been unhappy; the assumption is that they will sit this election cycle out. In February, Trump got some encouraging news when Sheldon Adelson said at a Las Vegas gala that he would support Trump if he were the nominee. The campaign has been talking to veteran GOP fund-raiser Ray Washburne about taking outside money, according to the Washington Post. Trump perked up when I asked him about the prospect of running against Hillary Clinton, as if that were the thing he looks forward to more than anything. “Oh, I’m the only one who will beat Hillary,” he said. “Look what happened two months ago when she brought up the sexist thing about me. They went into a deep coma. They had a rough weekend, the two of them.” He began to impersonate a conversation between Bill and Hillary. “He’s saying, ‘Why did you say that?’ And she’s saying, ‘You sonofabitch.’ Because of his past problems.” Trump smiled. A confluence of factors created the conditions for this election and Trump’s surprising success in it: the turbulence of economic change, anxiety about terrorism, the rise of social media, Obama-inspired racism, Hillary-inspired misogyny, resistance to all manner of social change; the list can go on and on. But one factor that’s been particularly crucial to Trump’s rise may be the way that reality television, cable news, and talk radio have shaped the culture’s sense of “reality” — in other words, its relationship to truth. If Ronald Reagan showed us that Hollywood was good training for politics, Trump is proving that the performance skills one learns in the more modern entertainment arenas are even more useful. Talk and reality shows are improvised operations, mastered by larger-than-life personalities expert at distorting and provoking, shifting and commandeering attention. As Trump sees it, his television instincts are better than any of the network executives. “CNN is up 75 percent because of me. Call Jeff Zucker and you ask him. Because of me. You know 1010 wins? They say ‘All news all the time.’ CNN is called ‘All Trump all the time.’ ” The same goes for Roger Ailes. “You know my weekly call-in at 7:15” — on Fox & Friends — “was the highest-rated 15 minutes of the show.” But a couple of things happen when reality-TV standards are applied to politics: One is that the level of sleaze gets so high that nothing is shocking — casual racism, misogyny, a campaign manager charged with battery, allegations about candidates’ affairs or sexual orientations, constant gossip about “even worse” revelations on all sides to come (“Tune in next week!”). This primary season would seem implausible if it were fiction. But as reality TV, it’s spot-on. The other phenomenon is that everyone is assumed to be playing a role at some level, so it’s hard to tell what is real and what is just for attention. Trump has already started using this as a strategy to help him try to pivot to the general election. Those terrible things he said about and to women while playing himself on The Apprentice? Oh, he was just in character. He was playing “himself,” not being himself. The way he acted so unpresidentially in the primary? Oh, that was just to break out of the pack of all those pesky other candidates with some good ol’ provocation. And aren’t you glad? Because now that the field is almost clear, he can start to be presidential. But I suspect Trump will have a hard time pivoting — not because of what he has said in the past, but because this is the script he knows best. He has been cultivating the character of “Donald Trump” for decades now, and it seems apparent that he can’t turn it off. Back at Trump Tower, it was striking how often he kept going back to the well of The Apprentice, unprompted. “They wanted to renew The Apprentice with me so badly,” he told me. “Steve Burke” — CEO of NBCUniversal — “good guy, came out and sat right in that chair along with the head of NBC. ‘Please, please, I want you to renew. The Apprentice, after 14 seasons, is still a big hit.’ I said I’m not going to do it, because I’m going to run for president. They didn’t believe it, so they renewed anyway. Then I ran. Now they have Arnold Schwarzenegger. Let’s see how Arnold does. I hope it does well, because I still have a big chunk of it.” He talked about it almost wistfully. Now that his campaign seems more vulnerable, I can’t help but wonder if sometimes he wishes he could go back to a reality show where he can’t be fired.
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May 25, 2016 18:03
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"No, I'M THE VICTIM of rape! I'm not the rapist!" I can't wait for a judge to hear the word gymnastics you try to get away with.
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May 25, 2016 18:05
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Blazing Zero posted:and by smash that, i mean with consent you weirdo ive had very little consent in my whole life and the puritanical definition of consent you people stand by is used to railroad minorities or anyone that doesnt understand the nuances of the highest levels of no means no or the legal system to an extreme degree case in point one of ur goon womyn should have been charged by police for breaking and entering and assault but i didnt go through with it because u are all hosed up and out to gut each other for ur own internet glory/irl careers this is not what the internet is about i wuld be surprised if sandy hook charged me after 6 or 8 years at the same time i wouldnt be because this place has so much peer pressure by so many shallow vapid users
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May 25, 2016 18:05
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e-cult of autists posted:this is not what the internet is about what is the internet about, you dirtbag rapist?
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May 25, 2016 18:06
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Airborne Viking posted:"No, I'M THE VICTIM of rape! I'm not the rapist!" court really is terrible but i guess internet political revolutionaries with insecurity issues in teenage years or aspirations to live Kids the movie know best this is like the i walked 15 miles in the snow t oget to school argument you either got bullied or stalked or raped or u didnt, and your own perspective matters but so does the social context of the overall situation as well it is not all memememememmememe little princess poo poo irl
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May 25, 2016 18:07
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I'm coral
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May 25, 2016 18:07
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e-cult of autists posted:ive had very little consent in my whole life and the puritanical definition of consent you people stand by is used to railroad minorities or anyone that doesnt understand the nuances of the highest levels of no means no or the legal system to an extreme degree rapist
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May 25, 2016 18:07
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Captain Yossarian posted:I'm coral
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May 25, 2016 18:08
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