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A Deep Dive - Ghislaine Maxwell: Silver Spoons and Hard Times

A Deep Dive - Ghislaine Maxwell: Silver Spoons and Hard Times
This story was published in Frank's Report. Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist. Frank Report is one of the internet’s best destinations for true, unfiltered, hard-hitting journalism run by the acclaimed journalist Frank Parlato.
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Ghislaine Maxwell – Silver Spoons and Hard Times

August 9, 2020
By Paul Serran
https://frankreport.com/2020/08/09/ghislaine-maxwell-silver-spoons-and-hard-times/
http://archive.is/by7md
Ghislaine Maxwell led much of her life under the world’s fascinated microscopic view, always enthralled by her – famous and infamous – as it watched her fortunes wax and wane.
From the celebrated miracle daughter of media tycoon Robert Maxwell; to the broken young woman who fled scandal in the UK to a small New York apartment, trying to launch a new life; the rebirth Jet-set Ghislaine, who was everywhere at once, longtime companion of Jeffrey Epstein, a man even richer and more shady than her father; the sophisticated middle age woman, a runaway alleged criminal trying hard to avoid detection by her pursuers – finally, to the incarcerated, indicted suspected sex trafficker and perjurer.
Ghislaine was Robert and Betty Maxwell’s miracle baby, born on Christmas Day, 1961. Two days after that, their eldest son suffered a fatal car accident.
In 24 hours, it all had been somehow foretold: joy – and then tragedy.
During the Swinging Sixties, Robert Maxwell served two terms as a Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for Buckingham. He led a multimillionaire lifestyle, and was the host of star-studded parties at Headington Hill Hall, his baronial fifty-three-room Oxford mansion.
The Maxwells spent a million dollars redecorating the mansion. In a stained glass window scene for the imperial staircase, Israeli sculptor Nehemia Azaz depicted Robert Maxwell as the biblical hero Samson tearing down the gates of Gaza: “a titan of luck, impossible achievement, and unlimited wealth”.
They had the use of chauffeured luxury cars. They traveled the world in Robert’s Gulfstream IV Jet and his sleek 180-foot yacht, named Lady Ghislaine.
“If Bob Maxwell didn’t exist, no one could invent him,” Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock celebrated the bombastic, demanding mogul who dined with kings and presidents and had a bottomless appetite for family, food, fortune, and fame.
The first brush with financial and professional hardship came at a age when young Ghislaine would have been mostly sheltered from it.
In the early seventies, after Robert Maxwell tried similar shenanigans in a failed attempt to swindle the American financier Saul Steinberg, who was interested in a strategic acquisition of Pergamon Press. Steinberg claimed that during negotiations, Maxwell falsely stated that a subsidiary responsible for publishing encyclopedias was extremely profitable.
At the same time, Pergamon had been forced to reduce its profit forecasts for 1969 during the period of negotiations, leading to a suspension of dealing in Pergamon shares on the London stock markets.
It was found that Maxwell had contrived to maximize Pergamon’s share price through transactions between his private family companies. This was a criminal practice he would utilize again in the future.
Inspectors from Britain’s Department of Trade and Industry declared Maxwell unfit to run a public company: “Notwithstanding Mr. Maxwell’s acknowledged abilities and energy, he is not in our opinion a person who can be relied on to exercise proper stewardship of a publicly quoted company.”
‘Captain Bob’ established the Maxwell Foundation in tax haven Liechtenstein, in 1970. By the 1980s he come back roaring, prompted by money later said to have originated in the Soviet Union. He bought the Mirror Group built and a massive media conglomerate.
The good times were on: Ghislaine was nicknamed “The Shopper” because of her wild spending funded by Robert’s millions. He also bankrolled her failed corporate gifts business.
During this period, she reportedly had a VERY close relationship with her father and was widely credited with being her father’s favorite child.
In Oxford, Ghislaine led a student life of wealth and privilege. Her father would send Filipino servants to the college house she shared to clean, arrange the table and cook, in the event of a party.
Her career piggybacked on her father’s businesses. She was made director of the Oxford United, and later, put in charge of “special projects” of the New York Daily News.
With her father’s money, she found her way into society, especially in New York — a haven where she could escape his complete control.
But the good times were not to last. Overextended and over-leveraged, Maxwell’s empire was about to crumble.
At this time, Maxwell reportedly was a regular at London’s casinos, playing three tables at once, even dropping $2.5 million in a single night. For years, he had been an inveterate gambler, but this was the behavior of a desperate man whose time was running out.
“He was a very crude man,” said a female writer for Time magazine. “His polish was not very deep. If you were with him for any length of time, it peeled away. I was in his library in the Maxwell House penthouse—a beautiful apartment with marble and servants all over the place—and while I was admiring his books, his valet said to me, ‘You should see Mr. Maxwell’s collection of pornographic tapes’.”
Ghislaine visited her father in his office before he flew off to Gibraltar. “He was looking for an apartment in New York—a sort of pied-à-terre, where he could talk and have meetings—and he wanted me to help him,” she told Vanity Fair. “He asked me to go see a particular apartment. He said, ‘If you like it, I’ll make time to see it and come to New York.’ ” But the next time Ghislaine saw her father, he was dead.
”Ghislaine is the baby of the family and the one who was closest to her father,” her mother Betty told Vanity Press. ”The whole of Ghislaine’s world has collapsed, and it will be very difficult for her to continue.”
When she finally appeared before the reporters, she had collected herself. “How did your father die?” a journalist shouted at Ghislaine Maxwell. “He did not commit suicide. That was just not consistent with his character. I think he was murdered. ”
Maxwell, it turned out, had debts of nearly $5 billion, and had stolen hundreds of millions from the Mirror Group’s pension funds to shore up his faltering companies. That left 32,000 employees exposed to retirement ruin.
The irony was not lost on the hard-hitting British press: Robert Maxwell, a socialist, stealing hundreds of millions of pounds from the Mirror’s pension fund!
He swindled money from two of his public companies, transferred millions in and out the secret family trusts in Liechtenstein, to manipulate the share price of his Corporation.
Robert was called “rogue,” “crook,” “bully,” “thief,” “megalomaniac,” and “gangster.” The press told lurid tales of his sex orgies with midget Filipino hookers.
He was seen as a 310-pound aberration gorging on spoonfuls of caviar. An erratic and cruel tyrant who used Turkish towels for toilet paper. Journalists wrote that he was a spy for the K.G.B. or Mossad or Czech intelligence—or all three.
“My daughter Ghislaine has no money, no trusts, no funds anywhere.” her mother Betty told Vanity Fair. “Neither of [my children] had any money. Their father never gave them any money.”
Their assets were frozen. His son Kevin’s house was put up for sale, as were the Lady Ghislaine and the Gulfstream IV Jet. Their passports were seized.
A friend told The Times of London, “[Ghislaine] had always been the life and soul of the party wherever she wanted to go in the world and never had to worry about money.” Now she was the broken child of a monster, his name forever synonymous to scandal. “She was catatonic,” the friend said.
Forced to vacate her huge company-provided residence, she moved into a small apartment. When a friend came to visit, Ghislaine told her, “They took everything—everything—even the cutlery.”
Little did she know how many more times things in her life would shift from silver spoons to hard times. A woman brought up in luxury, she had everything taken from her, before she came to the United States to begin again.
“He wasn’t a crook,” Ghislaine told Vanity Press. “A thief to me is somebody who steals money. (…) Did he put it in his own pocket? Did he run off with the money? No. And that’s my definition of a crook.”
“I’m surviving—just,” she said. “But I can’t just die quietly in a comer. I have to believe that something good will come out of this mess. It’s sad for my mother. It’s sad to have lost my dad. It’s sad for my brothers. But I would say we’ll be back. Watch this space.”
Ghislaine Maxwell was also being hunted by the tabloids. The Maxwell name was so detested in London that she is said to have had to walk around in a blond wig so people wouldn’t recognize her.
Ghislaine Maxwell’s reinvention didn’t take long. Maxwell moved to the United States just after her father’s death. Her photograph boarding a Concorde to cross the Atlantic caused outrage – her father had just defrauded pensioners out of 750 Million Sterling Pounds.
According to the Mail on Sunday: “Unnoticed by almost everybody, traveling with her was a greying, plumpish, middle-aged American businessman who managed to avoid the photographers. It is to this man that 30-year-old Ghislaine has turned to ease the heartache of her father’s shame.”
“His name is Jeffrey Epstein.”
“Whose house is this, Ghislaine?” a friend asked her in the early 1990’s. “Who lives here?”
My friend,” Maxwell replied.
“Well, is he banging you?” the friend demanded. “What’s the scoop here?”
A trust fund is said to have provided her with an income of $145,000 a year. A far cry from her previous seemingly unending wealth. She “never, ever had any cash. Lots of credit, of course, but no cash”, one friend recalled to the press.
And yet, she lived the high life. She was known in New York as the “female Gatsby” for her lavish entertaining. Had a “reputation for being charming and funny, and a glittering lifestyle straight out of the pages of a society magazine”.
She was now “far from the ever watchful eye of the British press,” Hello! magazine wrote in 1997.
“She is proud of the fact that her new life is all down to her own hard work and has her elegant apartment to show for it,” the magazine mistakenly added. One day, she would “get married and have kids. But it has never been a focus: My focus is my business.”
Ghislaine’s presence added more fuel to the question: “How did Jeffrey Epstein amass his fortune?” For one of the most propagated theories is that Maxwell’s father Robert bankrolled him with funds hidden from the UK authorities.
Jeffrey Epstein built a 21,000-square-foot mansion on a massive ranch in New Mexico, which – he boasted – made his New York townhouse “look like a shack”. He named it the Zorro Ranch. He also acquired a 72-acre island in the Virgin Islands and an 8,600-square-foot home in Paris, with a specially built massage room.
She had found a path back to the lifestyle she’d lost when her father died. “She was used to living very well,” says a friend who knew her then. “She didn’t want to go back to where she was.” All she had to do to keep it was to give ‘the monster’ what he wanted.
Maxwell was expected to drop everything to serve Epstein.
She had to keep everyone in line, because one misstep would unleash the wrath of Epstein, one of the few people who could make Maxwell cry. “He would be screaming over the phone,” recalled an Epstein victim, “and she would burst into tears.”
The New York townhouse became a social nexus; guests could have included members of the Kennedy and Rockefeller clans, “along with the requisite sprinkling of countesses and billionaires,” according to The Times of London.
She was “a modern-day geisha” in a “domain filled with the richest people in the planet. “It’s a world frequented by young half-naked girls in bikinis, billionaires and lavish lifestyles, but it borders on the grotesque. You are never really sure what is going on behind closed doors.”
Royalty was specially prized, which is why her friendship with Prince Andrew became so treasured. In 2000, Maxwell and Epstein attended a Prince Andrew’s party at the Queen’s Sandringham House estate in Norfolk, England. It has been reported that the event was in honor of Maxwell’s 39th birthday.
And yet, Ghislaine began trying to distance herself from Epstein long before he went to jail. In the early 2000s, she hooked up in California with a man much richer than Epstein: Ted Waitt.
Waitt lived in a seven-bedroom, 14-bath mansion in La Jolla, sailed the world aboard a 240-foot mega-yacht, the Plan B. It was equipped with a helipad, Jacuzzi, elevator, gym, and HAD AN ONBOARD SUBMARINE, which Maxwell soon was licensed to pilot.
After Epstein went to prison in Florida for a short period, Maxwell saw the silver spoons turned into hard times again.
Acquaintances that crossed her path reported how she was almost unrecognizable. She was not stylish and attention grabbing anymore, seemed determined to go unnoticed. Her face had no makeup. There was a hint of gray in her black hair, she put on some weight.
“I was so shocked by her look,” a friend recalled to the British press. “I didn’t recognize her.”
She even gave up her once proud name, sometimes introducing herself to new acquaintances only as “G.”
“Where are you living, Ghislaine?” the friend asked. “I lost touch with you.” Maxwell suddenly went blank. “Oh,” she replied, “a little bit everywhere.”
December 2014: Virginia Roberts Giuffre filed a motion in the Southern District of Florida describing Maxwell as Epstein’s “primary coconspirator and participant in his sexual abuse and sex trafficking scheme.”
Maxwell made a huge mistake, issuing an “urgent” statement to the media dismissing the claims as “obvious lies.” That allowed Giuffre, to sue Maxwell for defamation in federal court in New York, a lawsuit “widely viewed as a vessel for Epstein’s victims to expose the scope of Epstein’s crimes,” according to the Miami Herald.
Maxwell affirmed her innocence with fury, at one point of her testimony banging her fists on the table. She also, according to charges filed by the DOJ SDNY, committed two counts of perjury.
2019: when the SDNY reopened the criminal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine was far away, living the high life.
She met with her friend Prince Andrew in Buckingham Palace, and participated in “Cash & Rocket”, an annual charity road rally. Between races of the rally, she joined the super rich in attending a Masquerade Ball in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, as well as a White dinner at La Reserve in Geneva and the Red party at the Yacht Club de Monaco.
Those were to be her last reported events. Cash & Rocket scrub Maxwell’s photo from its website once Epstein was arrested and the scandal assaulted the headlines again.
On July 6, 2019, Epstein was arrested by federal agents at Teterboro Airport, arriving from Paris. The FBI raided his mansion, and charged him with sex trafficking of minors.
“Epstein’s pimp girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, a very well-connected Brit socialite cannot just walk free,” actress Ellen Barking tweeted the day after Epstein’s arrest. “This woman is his pimp. She pilots planes [sic] to and from the island. I know because she told me.”
Maxwell again went into hiding, unreachable during legal proceedings. It surfaced in December 2019 that Maxwell was among the people under FBI investigation for facilitating Epstein’s crimes.
She was faced with a tabloid frenzy even bigger than the one that accompanied the death of her father. She again uprooted herself and tried to start over in Manchester-by-the-Sea, a quiet village 30 miles north of Boston, she lived for a time in the $3 million, five-bedroom colonial home of Scott Borgerson, CEO of CargoMetrics, a hedge fund investment company involved in maritime data analytics.
Since Epstein was found dead in jail, last August, she is reported to have moved 36 times, out of fear for her safety. Credible Death threats arrived by social media, email, phone, text, and postal service. It began in earnest with Epstein’s arrest, multiplied with his death, and accelerated in the months that followed. They soon became a routine part of her life.
She hired a professional security firm, with operatives that are veterans of intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
This photoshopped photo of Maxwell surfaced last year to mislead the public into thinking she was in Los Angeles. Frank Report was the first to report the photo a fake, a story that went viral.
“Where in the world was Ghislaine Maxwell? Everyone, it seemed, had a theory, each wilder than the last. She was said to be hiding deep beneath the sea in a submarine, which she was licensed to pilot. Or she was lying low in Israel, under the protection of the Mossad, the powerful intelligence agency with whom her late father supposedly tangled. Or she was in the FBI witness protection program, or ensconced in luxury in a villa in the South of France, or sunning herself naked on the coast of Spain, or holed up in a high-security doomsday bunker belonging to rich and powerful friends whose lives might implode should Maxwell ever reveal what she knows—all the dirty secrets of the dirty world that she and Epstein shared.”
(Vanity Fair – Jul 3, 2020)
Maxwell remained at large, beyond the reach of attorneys, tabloid reporters, and a 10,000-pound reward from The Sun in London.
“It’s a little bit like Elvis—you get lots of reports but they’re hard to verify,” a victim attorney said in May.
She was periodically said to have been spotted around the world, usually in places where she was not. Reporters scoured the globe. Some said she was in Russia trying to get a Oligarch to protect her. Others pointed to Israel or Brazil, China, Singapore, the Middle East, England.
She was “both everywhere and nowhere,” lamented UK’s The Guardian.
On August 2019, she was apparently photographed eating a burger and fries in the Cahuenga Boulevard, in the San Fernando Valley. She held The Book of Honor: The Secret Lives and Deaths of CIA Operatives. Given Ghislaine and her father Robert’s alleged ties to Intelligence Services, this choice does not seem accidental.
Papers were running out of incredible stories to account for her disappearance. A bizarre new theory emerged she could be hiding in a submarine which – as we saw – was not downright impossible, since she DID have a license to pilot underground vehicles.
On July 2nd 2020, Maxwell was arrested by the FBI and NYPD in the small New England town of Bradford, New Hampshire. It is situated at driving distance of the NYSD. They finally found her in a luxurious four-bedroom, 4,365-square-foot home on a wooded lot, called Tuckedaway.
Ghislaine Maxwell was charged with six federal crimes: luring and enticement of minors, sex trafficking of children and perjury.
The crimes took place between 1994 and 1997, the years of her “intimate relationship with Epstein,” when she “assisted, facilitated, and contributed to Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of minor girls.”
One of the three unnamed victims was “as young as 14 years old when they were groomed and abused by Maxwell and Epstein, both of whom knew that certain victims were in fact under the age of 18.”
FBI assistant director William F. Sweeney Jr. described Maxwell as “one of the villains of this investigation,” who had “slithered away to a gorgeous property” in New Hampshire, where she was “continuing to live a life of privilege while her victims live with the trauma inflicted upon them years ago.”
“I am optimistic about my future,” she said in 1997, “and believe things will continue to improve for me as time passes.”
Now, according to sources close to her, “I don’t think [Ghislaine] sees there is a future,” came the reply.
If found guilty of all charges, Maxwell could face a prison sentence of 35 years. She denies the accusations, and has pleaded not guilty to all six charges.
She will await trial locked up in the Metropolitan Detention Center, in Brooklyn. A dreadful prison that is as removed from her previous “silver spoon” upbringing as it’s possible in the US. Hard times.
She used to be a larger than life character, who once hosted a dinner for NY socialites on ‘the fine art of giving a blow job’. But then, she really blew it.
A report from a source familiar with the Metropolitan Detention Center gives a glum picture of Ghislaine Maxwell’s present conditions.
She is in the women’s section and believed to be confined to a solitary cell. Because of the past history of the MDC, it is not impossible to suspect that Ghislaine could be having sexual relations with one or more corrections officers, either male or female. Her available wealth would permit her to buy some privileges directly from the corrections officers who could smuggle in items for her.
MDC has a history of guards, male and female, enjoying sex with prisoners and smuggling in everything from alcohol to cell phones to drugs. While she is not enjoying what anyone would call a privileged life, and is most likely [because of Covid protocols] confined to her cell, dank and cold [in summer] perhaps as much as 23-24 hours per day and possibly getting only one hot meal per day, our source says, with her wealth and talent to charm, if there is any privilege, any opportunity, any luxury to enjoy at MDC, she is enjoying it.
Of course, she is probably under near-constant surveillance, for no guard wants to go to prison for letting her get murdered or commit suicide – as did her former lover Epstein. It is not known how frequently she is meeting with lawyers in special rooms set aside for the purpose. But an MDC source tells Frank Report that prison officials are known to eavesdrop on those conversations with lawyers and defendants and do so on high profile cases. Whether they report to the prosecution what they learn is unknown.
In the end, Maxwell has a hard road to hoe and will remain in the brutal and unsanitary MDC until she stands trial or makes a plea deal or dies. The possibility of additional charges other than those currently charged against her – for hebephilia crimes in the last century – remain a possibility.
The late Jeffrey Epstein was a convicted hebephile, a person who has urges for post pubescent but under the age of consent children. Is Ghislaine one also? And are there others, famous and prominent men of power who have indulged as Jeffrey and allegedly Ghislaine have done?
The ace in the hole for her, obviously, is, if she has info on other prominent hebephiles that the DOJ for its own partisan or PR reasons might like to selectively prosecute, she can trade that info for a lenient sentence and hopefully not be murdered for doing so.
Her former lover, Jeffrey Epstein, might have committed suicide, as the Mainstream Media and the US Govt. urges you to believe, but there are some who find the coincidences, cameras being off, bones broken indicating he was strangled, guards happening to fall asleep as they were assigned to watch the most famous prisoner in the world, such that that it just might cause reasonable people to doubt the official narrative a little more than the corporate media and prison officials would wants us to doubt.
The same fate might befall Ghislaine and we may never know just what she did. Whether her crimes were confined to herself and Epstein or whether there was a vast network of hebephiles joining in – or – in fairness to her – she is innocent as she claims, something that a trial, if she makes it to trial, might help us determine.


stretcher during the funeral service in Jerusalem’s main convention hall on Nov. 10, 1991. The body is laying on a stretcher, draped in a white Jewish prayer shawl with black stripes as is it tradition of Jewish burials in Israel. (AP Photo/Natik Harnik) Ghislaine is fourth from the left.


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$NFG.v has more immediate value than $NAK

New Found Gold keeps drilling on their project in Newfoundland and keep hitting. They have a 100,000 meter drill program and seem to be releasing positive news results every week or two. This is the biggest gold discovery in years and it is shallow and in an mine friendly jurisdiction. There is way too much to list but this company is only going up. Most forecasts I have seen is for it to be trading over $10 but you should do some DD and confirm that for your self. I have been in and out of this one for the last three months and missed more gains than I got because I have been trading it instead of holding. If you want a long play I think this is it.
Some info I received yesterday.
NFG’s Keats Zone Compares Favorably with KL Swan Zone Bob Moriarty Archives Oct 29, 2020 Just an interesting aside for those considering cutting their wrists after Wednesday’s decline, the DSI for gold is 19 and for silver 17. I would like to see both go down to 10 or below. I may not get my wish. We are near a bottom. Loyal 321gold readers and Novo shareholders are well aware I am writing a book about the Novo saga. I plan to release it the day Novo does their first gold pour now scheduled for the first half of Feb 2021. In the process of talking to Quinton about events in the book, he talked about his participation in going to Australia on behalf of Eric Sprott to Fosterville. 2015 was not a good year for Eric. He had pretty much been booted from the company he founded as a direct result of the terrible correction in resource juniors that took place from 2011 and didn’t end until the start of 2016. During 2015 Quinton went to Toronto for meetings and stopped in to see Eric to brief him on Novo. Eric indicated that on occasion he would ask Quinton to look over a project for him. In April of 2016 Eric asked Quinton to go visit Newmarket Gold’s Fosterville project in Victoria Australia. Eric owned a lot of Kirkland Lake Gold and was actively buying Newmarket primarily for their Fosterville gold mine. On little more than a hunch he liked the project and wanted Kirkland Lake to merge with Newmarket. Quinton went, did the tour and came back suitably impressed. He encouraged Newmarket to drill down plunge and deeper. They did one deep hole in July and while it had geological sniffs it missed the G-Spot. Quinton went again in August to do a due diligence report for RBC Bank in anticipation of a Kirkland Lake offer. He was still convinced they were about to hit something big. He favored the merger, as did Eric Sprott. At the time Eric was the Chairman of Kirkland Lake. He owned 6.7% of Kirkland Lake Gold and 15% of Newmarket Gold. He pushed for the merger in spite of a lot of pushback in Toronto including from executives in Kirkland. The merger went through and closed in December of 2016 making a combined company worth about $2.4 billion. I’ll guess Eric owned about 10% of the new merged company worth somewhere in the $240 million range. Kirkland shares were about $8. On January 17th of 2017 the new Kirkland Lake reported intercepts of 1,429 g/t Au over 15.15 meters, 356 g/t Au over 7.2m and 83.9 g/t Au over 3.5m just as Quinton Hennigh had predicted they would. If Eric Sprott hasn’t sold any of his Kirkland Lake shares, as of today his $240 million investment would have turned into somewhere in the $1.68 billion range. Listening to Quinton and ignoring the naysayers made him a cool $1.5 billion if he didn’t sell any shares. The zone where KL hit was called the Lower Phoenix Footwall and that doesn’t exactly roll off your tongue so management renamed it the Swan zone. KL has mined 1.5 million ounces of gold from the Swan zone in three years. They still have a mineral reserve of 1.6 million ounces at a grade of 38.6 g/t Au. The Swan zone has made KL the lowest cost gold producer in the world while taking their market cap from $2.4 billion to $16.85 billion. At Fosterville they can produce for $127 an ounce with an AISC of $293 per ounce of gold. It’s not their only mine but it is their richest and contributes 44% of the gold they produce and most of the profit. (Click on image to enlarge) 📷 There is a new kid on the block that appears at first glance to have similar grade but rather than being a kilometer deep such as is the case at Swan, mineralization begins between 20 meters deep at Lotto and 70 meters down at Keats. That could be easily done in an open pit and would be a whole lot cheaper than working underground. Of course, that is New Found Gold (NFG-V) who released a hole back in January that showed 92.86 g/t gold over 19.0 meters. A month ago the company released assay results from the first target on their 100,000-meter drill program at Queensway. The first drill hole targeting the Lotto zone reported two intercepts of incredible mineralization. A near surface hit of 41.2 g/t gold over 4.75 meters began at a depth of 35 meters. That would be about 20 meters below surface and easy to strip and do an open pit. The hole continued with 25.4 g/t gold over 5.15 meters at 57 meters down dip. But what the market really wanted to see were the first holes for the Keats zone, home of the monster hole from January. Those results arrived on October 27th and did not disappoint. Hole 18 reported 24.1 g/t Au over 7.9 meters. Hole 19 showed 31.2 g/t Au over 18.85 meters and hole 23 gave an incredible 41.35 meters of 22.3 g/t gold. Hole 21 showed a still respectable 15.8 g/t gold over 18.35 meters. There are a few takeaways investors should ponder. The distance between the Lotto zone and Keats is about 2.5 km. Lotto has similar grade and thickness to the latest holes at Keats. Lotto is very near surface, which means open pit is certainly possible. If the system connects between Lotto and Keats, which is again possible, only drilling will tell the tale, NFG, has a deposit that is going to make Swan look like chump change. Don’t forget, Swan helped take Kirkland Lake from $2.4 billion to $16.85 billion. Someone did a grade/thickness report for me based on the five holes released to date by New Found Gold. It shows 39.8 g/t Au over 21.25 meters and certainly is similar to that of the Swan zone of Kirkland. But Queensway appears to be a lot larger and much closer to the surface. The market has been looking for a good story to get behind. I believe this is it. You have an incredibly high grade gold deposit near surface located on a highway and only a couple of miles away from a major airport in one of the most mining dependent countries in the world. The mob of unwashed investors who have been chasing Hertz into bankruptcy, Tesla and Bitcon need something to wake their ass up. New Found checks all the boxes. They have a major drill program in progress so there will be news on a constant basis. The company has something like $75 million in the till and can work year round. This is a story that legends are made of. Collin Kettell got together with Denis Laviolette at the end of 2015. (Is that the same Collin Kettell that I taught how to shoot craps about 15 years ago and got him tossed out of a Vegas casino? Who says a 15 year old can’t throw dice?) Correctly they believed the correction in gold was about to end and they wanted to put something in a shell and move it forward. After a lot of searching they settled on the Queensway property near Gander Newfoundland. Noranda and Rubicon had worked on the project in the 1980s and early in the 21st century but had walked away from the area. The claims reverted to the original prospectors in spite of some great sniffs of gold. By 2016 the market began to turn and after working with nine different landowners, the pair locked up Queensway. Rob McEwen was a first round investor, Eric Sprott stepped up to the plate and the company spent $10 million doing a systematic evaluation of the project. Part of the project was called Keats for Allen Keats. At surface it didn’t show any signs of gold but their technical people said it was the best target. Denis liked it a lot and hired Greg Matheson in early 2019. So while Denis Laviolette and Collin Kettell founded the company, found financing and got it moving forward, Greg Matheson was actually the genius that picked the spot to do their first hole. It was a home run out of the park. And about this time Collin and Denis got in touch with Quinton Hennigh, the guy that Eric Sprott credits with the discovery of the Swan zone for Kirkland Lake. Quinton took a look at the core and realized it is identical to that of the Swan zone in Victoria. Quinton took a 15 million-share position for Novo Resources. All together the insiders and management control about 81% of the shares. The price of shares could be explosive once the market gets it. This is going to be a giant home run for everyone involved. When the shares get above $5 in US pesos brokers in the US will be allowed to recommend it. I’d highly suggest to management that they prepare for a US big board listing right now. I think Queensway is bigger than Fosterville. And I believe it will make the same sort of contribution to the market cap of NFG that Swan did for Kirkland Lake. Today NFG has a market cap of right at $450 million Canadian. That’s going to change a lot in a hurry. Investors at this price are going to see a return of hundreds of percent. Soon. NFG is an advertiser. I have bought shares so naturally I am biased. Do your own due diligence. There is no limit to where this company could go. New Found Gold Corp NFG-V $3.15 (Oct 28, 2020) NFGFF-OTCBB 142 million shares New Found Gold https://newfoundgold.ca/ ### Bob Moriarty President: 321gold Archives 321gold Ltd
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History of Clifton Hill Part 5 (Final): What Could Have Been, and What Can Still Be

Thank you to everyone who has followed this series or voted for it's creation. I'm glad you've enjoyed it and I'm always happy to spread the important history of the amusement industry, especially pertaining to the place that inspired me to go into the industry. For parts 1-4 scroll back in this sub or click my profile.
In 1989, Welland Securities, who owned the entire south-west side of the Hill, would develop the final portion of unused land on Clifton Hill. They would become HOCO (Harry Oakes Company) and gain ownership of almost all the attractions on land they leased out. This included Movieland, The Space Spiral Tower and the Cliffside Motel. The only attractions that would continue being leased were Ripley's and Circus World, meaning HOCO not only owned all the land on the South-West side of the hill, they now ran everything between Circus World and Ripley's, as well as the Fudge Factory (in its original spot) and an ice cream stand immediately down the hill from Circus World. They planned to keep everything that was on the hill but build on it.
Movieland was remodeled and the outside was given a more noticeable Egyptian theme to match the lobby. This meant large lion statues and Costello's talking pharaoh. The lobby was remodeled as well. Rather than a cameraman and a director filming Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra, they would now be filming Costello's Indiana Jones figure, who lowered up and down on a rope above a fogging pit with a cobra rising out of it. Many of the early talkie-era stars in the hall immediately after the entrance (along with Elizabeth Taylor) were moved to 2 large display cases in the middle of the attraction with multiple figures, instead of each one having their own scene. In their original spot just inside the entrance an intentionally scary scene was created to match the popular Indiana Jones series. Many of the figures Costello had added since he became the museum's artist were slightly frightening, like a lunging alligator or a startling Joker scene with a machine gun sound effect. The museum had been expanded at the end, and a large horror section had been added, with many figures like the mummy being from the same mold as the House of Frankenstein/Castle Dracula mummys. Unlike when it would move to it's current location in 2005, the old location's chicken exit was placed before the horror section rather than the haunted house portion. In fact, there was no haunted house section, many of the figures that would end up in the haunted house section of the new location were simply scattered throughout the museum. Many of the figures in the horror section of the original museum were actually less scary and less animated than the Jurassic park scene or the alligator encountered earlier in the museum. To prevent unsuspecting parents who had no clue what kind of attraction this was dragging their children in and expecting static figures of washed-up movie stars, getting the living daylights scared out of them, then end ending up filing complaints with HOCO's customer service department, an intentionally scary scene was put at the beginning. This let people know what they were walking in to, an experience rather than a museum. Costello designed figures behind plexiglass such as a man upside down in a cocoon thrashing around, a skull that popped up from the floorboards in a scene full of snakes, a man on a bed of spikes that fell towards you, and a scene with spiders on fishing line "jumping" all over a rotting corpse.
The Cliffside Motel was amalgamated into a wing of the Quality Inn, and the driveway into it off the hill was removed as it was no longer necessary because it could be accessed from the Quality Inn parking lot. In the driveway's place was now a large empty space between Circus World and Movieland, with the Space Spiral Tower (with a relatively small footprint) stuck in the middle. HOCO called upon attraction design and layout firm White Hutchison Leisure Learning Group (WHLLG) to design an attraction around the Space Spiral that would use the final undeveloped land on Clifton Hill. And so WHLLG designed Dazzleland Family Fun Centre. Dazzleland was a courtyard of buildings arranged in roughly the same layout as the Great Canadian Midway (for reasons we'll get to later) that sits on the land now. The buildings around the outside of the courtyard were long and narrow, picture a courtyard of carnival game trailers but permanent, appealing buildings. These buildings included a Skee-ball building, a sports game building (basketball games, football toss etc.), a racing game building, a pinball building, a funnel cake shop, and the prize counter. In the back corner, roughly where the XD Theatre now is in the midway, was a larger building: an arcade housing video games and more pinball machines. In the middle of the courtyard was a small carousel, and a small building housing games that dispensed their own prizes (claw machines, prize egg games, etc.) and coin-op kiddie rides.
The Space Spiral was incorporated into Dazzleland, still being accessible directly off the hill. As mentioned in part 3, the tower was exactly where the Fudge Factory now is, as the circular store was once the loading area for the tower. At this time the snack bars beside the tower right on the hill were constructed: a pretzel/hotdog stand and an ice cream stand, both of which are still there. The Wendy's was built on top of Circus World, replacing the mini golf that had formerly been on the attraction's roof. Across the entrance to Dazzleland's courtyard from Wendy's was a Domino's Pizza, roughly where the photo booth just to your right is when entering the Great Canadian Midway now. Between the Space Spiral and the Dominos was a fortune teller machine built right into the wall: "Ask the Brain". The brain still lives on inside Movieland, except now he wants a loonie instead of a quarter. Just up the hill from the Space Spiral, on top of the hot dog and ice cream stand, a small sports bar was built. Very little is known about this sports bar, but obvious remnants of it still exists. The area of Boston Pizza closest to the hill (the back corner near the kitchen, the bar area, and the raised dining area) was the originally the sports bar. It featured a small coin-op bowling lane, arcade games, and food. The stairs in the Midway up to Boston Pizza beside Ghostblasters is the original stairs up from Dazzleland to the sports bar. Additionally, the Boston Pizza entrance closer to the hill (not the one with the big bowling pin, other one) was the main entrance to the sports bar. Little is known about the bar, including it's name. It may not have had one, simply being part of the Dazzleland complex. Many of the areas in Dazzleland didn't have a name, simply having signs heralding "Arcade", "Sports Games", "Skeeball" rather than naming the areas like the "Game Factory", "Sports Zone" or "Strike! Rock 'n Bowl" like in the Midway. For this reason, the bar may have been nameless, simply being part of the Dazzleland complex, but it's unlikely a dining establishment geared at adult nightlife wouldn't have a name.
Because the mini golf on Circus World's roof had been operated by the Cliffside Motel operators, HOCO acquired all the assets from it when they stopped leasing the land out. When the aforementioned Wendy's was built, the mini golf was moved just up the hill from the sports bar. It's entrance was right on the hill, but the course wrapped around the sports bar and ran back behind Dazzleland, between the back of Dazzleland and the parking lot of the Quality Inn. It would now be dinosaur themed and heavily landscaped. WHLLG designed the course and HOCO contracted Costello to build all the fiberglass dinosaurs. It's unknown what it's original name was, but in the early 90s, with the smash hit of Jurassic Park, it was renamed Dinosaur Park and given a similar logo. Up until the 2018 remodel, Boston Pizza had a patio. This patio was the exact location of the entrance to the mini golf, and the reason the restaurant's building curved in such a bizarre way surrounding the patio was originally to accommodate the course. Underneath the sports bar and mini golf and was an underground building accessible from a back corner of Dazzleland's courtyard. This area housed all of Dazzleland's miscellaneous ticket redemption games and 2 shooting galleries. The low-ceiling area of the Midway called the "Game Factory" is this original building. The Bonanaza Company shooting gallery is still there albeit heavily remodeled, but Blasteroids, an early project by arcade game company Lazer-Tron, was removed in 2016. Interestingly, the chase lights along the back wall of the Game Factory are Dazzleland holdovers. Between the shooting gallery and where what's left of the racing games now are is a bank of maintenance doors. If you get lucky and see them open, you'll see a stairs that was originally an entrance to Dazzleland from further up the street, beside Dinosaur Park. This now lets out somewhere in Boston Pizza's arcade (although I haven't been able to figure out where) and is used by staff to get from "a" to "b" faster.
Dazzleland has been the hardest to dig up information on in my research on Clifton Hill. Although I now know what was in each of the buildings around the outside of this "courtyard", I haven't been able to find which one was where. The only things I've confirmed is where the video game building was, what was in the building in the middle, and confirmed that the Game Factory was originally part of Dazzleland. The rest is beyond me and my memories of it have long faded. If anyone worked here or visited it frequently and has any answers, they would be greatly appreciated. Additionally there was a small pool near the front with a Costello dragon figure in it that spit water out it's mouth. I've heard conflicting reports that this was just a fountain, and others saying it was a small bumper boat or RC boat attraction, but my guess is it was just a fountain as it seems like a pretty small pool. The same year, fiberglass dragon waterslides were added to the Quality Inn pool. Although bearing striking resemblance to Costello's dinosaurs and Dazzleland dragon, at least one more of each of the dragon slides exist, all the way down in Texas. It was originally thought this Texas waterpark bought them off HOCO when Quality Inn closed, but one of the Quality Inn dragons appeared on an episode of shipping wars going to Kansas and the other was recently found abandoned on a private residential property in Niagara, proving they are in fact not the ones at the Texas waterpark. This is evidence they may have been mass produced.
By the time Dazzleland opened in 1989, it was the 8th arcade on the hill (after Circus World, Q-Balls Billiards Pub in Quality Inn, the arcade in Ripley's, the arcade in the Foxhead, the arcade in Castle Dracula, Funland in the basement of the House of Frankenstein, and an arcade that had recently opened in the Pilgrim Motel in their gift shop.) These were just the large-scale, dedicated arcades right on the hill. Many others could be found nearby in Maple Leaf Village, the Skylon, the Seagram, Pyramid Place and the Imperial Hotel as well as many mini golf courses and family fun centres along Lundy's Ln. and the QEW. Also, virtually every gift shop on Clifton Hill and Victoria Ave. had a game or 2.
The mix of arcades, haunted houses, fast food, nightlife and stores selling t-shirts and posters had started a well-known rock culture in Niagara Falls among Southern Ontario youth. The epicenter of this was "Rock World", a rock-themed gift shop that had opened in 1983 on Centre St. (the street Clifton Hill becomes just above Victoria Ave.) They would later add a second story and build Rock Legends Wax Museum above it, with all the figures sculpted by the store's owner Pasquale Rammuno. In 1996, Maple Leaf Village was replaced by Casino Niagara, and many of the attractions found new homes on Victoria Ave., including Screamers and Nightmares. The Elvis Museum, Antique Auto Museum, 50s diner nightclub, and arcade all moved to Pyramid Place adjacent to the IMAX pyramid. Screamers prospered on Victoria Ave., and 2 "sequel attractions" were built in the early 2000s: Creatures of the Night on Victoria Ave. and Horror Manothe Zombie Zoo Nightclub on Centre St. Another attraction, Alien Encounter, would open at the corner of Victoria Ave. and Clifton Hill beside the Criminals Hall of Fame. This slightly thematically darker "north of the hill" area with the Screamers chain, the Criminals Hall of Fame, Rock Legends, Nightmares and Alien Encounter became a "main strip" all in it's own.
As mentioned before, since the cabin courts were all town down in the early 50s, nothing had been torn down on Clifton Hill. The only exception was the Houdini Hall of Fame that burnt to ash in 1996. Some of Houdini's Last Words were claiming that anything revealing his secrets would perish in flame, and even though the fire completely leveled the museum, the plywood and fiberglass paneled House of Frankenstein only separated from it by a 2-foot wide alley was completely untouched, leading a lot of Houdini's fans to believe he was conducting some kind of post-mortem practical joke. The metal objects like handcuffs and the water tank could be saved, and were bought by David Copperfield. Ripley's Moving Theatre was built in it's place. Over the 30 years from Tussaud's opening in 1959 to Dazzleland in 1989, Clifton Hill had expanded and filled up the land. However that didn't mean it was time to tear things down. Things were simply moved around or remodeled to keep them fresh, not out of an unwillingness to change, but because these things had become ingrained in the landscape. Examples of this were Tussaud's moving to its current home in the old building of a restaurant that had since moved on Victoria Ave., rather than the attraction shutting down, or the Adventure Dome Theatre oepneing in part of the Honeymoon City's gift shop. In Tussaud's old place was built the MGM walkthrough/store, Pink Panther ride and 4D Ride in 2002. The beer garden beside it was replaced with the WWE building and the Piledriver ride, but the beer area was moved to between the 2 attractions. In 2004 the Foxhead's arcade was expanded and re-themed into the Marvel Superheros Adventure City.
Another great example of re-freshing an existing attraction was Dazzleland. A simple realization was made, more games = more money and higher guest enjoyment. The outdoor courtyard style with it's room for walkways between the buildings was re-designed, and HOCO again called upon WHLLG. WHLLG designed not only a remodel of Dazzleland, but an incredible 5-step plan that would have made Clifton Hill financially on par with a major theme park. Steps 1-3 came to fruition. Step 1 was remodeling Dazzleland into the Great Canadian Midway in 2002. The level, concrete foundation Dazzleland was built on was kept as the foundation of the Midway, hence why it has the same layout. The former video game building at the back became the FX Ride Theatre (now XD Theatre/Wild West Coaster) in the Midway. The funnel cake shop was kept where it was in Dazzleland except now it was in the Midway, between the FX Ride and the Prize Counter. The area housing Dazzleland's ticket redemption games became the Game Factory. The middle building housing the claw games and kiddie rides was demolished, as it was no longer needed because the Midway was fully indoors and there was now a massive space to put games. The sports bar was expanded and became Boston Pizza, so Dinosaur Park was moved to in front of the Comfort Inn. Under the expanded Boston Pizza, Sally Corp. was hired to build the interactive Ghostblasters dark ride. All of Dazzleland's old games made the transition into the Midway, however very few are still around.
With the Midway making serious buck, HOCO went ahead with phase 2 of WHLLG's plan. Movieland was moved to Circus World's former location in 2005, and Circus World's owners moved the attraction to what was then the popular Victoria Ave. area. In Movieland's old home, Cosmic Golf, a blacklight golf was temporarily set up. 2 years later in 2007, the golf moved to it's permanent home in the basement becoming Galaxy Golf and the gift shop that had been formerly in the basement was moved upstairs. Movieland retained all the figures and sets they had at the time of the move, moving them all into the new space. All the scary elements were put in the new "House of Horrors", a small optional haunted house at the end of the attraction.
Phase 3 involved beginning to demolish the only thing that WHLLG's 5 phase plan would have torn down: Quality Inn. In it's place an amusement park would have been built, anchored by Canada's largest ferris wheel. The wheel would be phase 3 and the amusement park phase 4. Though both WHLLG and HOCO recognized the historical value of the hotel, it had reasons to go. The hotel may have been full of your usual hazardous mid-century building materials (however Comfort Inn built by the same firm the same year was found to have no hazardous materials when it was torn down in 2015, so who knows) but the main issue was elevators and the amount of space it took up. Comfort Inn only had 2 wings, one on each side of the lobby, and only 2 elevators would have needed to be installed. This wasn't legally necessary, as no law states that buildings of age absolutely have to be 100% accessible, it was more something HOCO wanted to do. Quality Inn had multiple wings that weren't accessible from one another, so an elevator would need to be installed in each wing. In addition to the elevator issue, Comfort Inn was chosen as the hotel to keep because the building was integrated with Kelsey's, Rumors Nightclub, Ripley's, and Dinosaur Park, all of which wouldn't have been touched in WHLLG's 5 phase plan. Finally, Comfort Inn's land wasn't big enough for an amusement park whereas Quality Inn's was. 2 things would justify the demolition of Quality Inn. One, it's sister hotel, Comfort Inn, would have been kept. The other reason justifying the demolition would be phase 5: a skyscraper hotel and indoooutdoor waterpark in the field between Clifton Hill and the Skylon Tower. The dragon figures from Quality Inn's pool were kept in HOCO's storage for a time for this waterpark. The final vision can be seen here.
Phase 3 would go ahead in 2006, with the lobby, Golden Griddle and Q-Balls Billiard pub of Quality Inn being torn down and the Skywheel built in it's place. For the last year Quality Inn was open, you would need to register at Comfort Inn's lobby. The same year, the Space Spiral was torn down, as 2 observation attractions wouldn't be needed on the hill. However, a new spiral tower would have been constructed during phase 4 in the theme park. The reason the tower would be demolished rather than moved was because a tower manufactured by the same company in Wildwood, NJ, had begun to sway a few years earlier, resulting in it needing to be removed entirely for safety reasons. Phase 4 was set to go ahead in 2010, so in 2009 the remainder of Quality Inn was demolished. It seemed as though everything would fall into place, and with the exception of Quality Inn making it's sacrifice, everything on Clifton Hill that had been there for 20-60 years would be there forever, just greatly expanded on.
Unfortunately, this came at a turning point for Clifton Hill, when the recession was in full swing and tourism had declined since 9/11. Changing technology and interests, but no real nostalgia trend yet, created a perfect storm, and the idea was scrapped. Especially now that there would be no amusement park, a lot of area attractions closed. HOCO now needed to find a new design company to completely re-design the project. The problem was, Quality Inn was already torn down to make way for the amusement park. HOCO reluctantly found a new design company who had no projects under their belt yet, IDS. HOCO was hopeful the Canadian company could help give them a similar vision to their previous 5 stage plan, that would help them re-use many of the already implemented stages and despite scrapping the amusement park, would simply scale down and redesign the hotel. This was done in hopes that the city would be much more likely to approve just another high rise hotel than an amusement park as well. IDS' new plan was much different than what HOCO was looking for. It featured tearing down Ripley's, Comfort Inn, Kelsey's, and Rumours Nightclub and building a Titanic Museum shaped like the boat. It also featured building a large mall within the hotel rather than a waterpark and relocating and expanding Dinosaur Park into Dinosaur Adventure Golf on Quality Inn's old land. While HOCO thankfully chose not to go ahead with the mall and Titanic Museum, they would build Dinosaur Adventure Golf and work with IDS to make a more feasible plan that better suited Clifton Hill.
The new plan featured Dinosaur Adventure Golf and Strike! Rock 'n Bowl as phase 1. It also included removing a lot of the thematic brand identity elements WHLLG had implemented to coincide with their final amusement park vision and replacing Galaxy Golf with Wizard's Golf as phase 2. Phase 3 would feature tearing down Comfort Inn (that never got it's elevators due to it no longer being planned to be kept), building Niagara Speedway in it's place, and removing Rumors Nightclub to accommodate the new Kelsey's bathrooms and Zombie Attack. Phase 4 would feature remodelling Wendy's, Boston Pizza and Kelsey's. Phase 5 would feature a mall (no hotel) in the field between Dinosaur Adventure Golf and the Skylon, but this final phase will likely never come to fruition.
Multiple attractions have closed since the late 2000's, such as the entire Screamers chain, Circus World, The Criminals Hall of Fame, Funland Arcade and Alien Encounter. The Hilltop Motel became the current home of the Upside Down House, and the Pilgrim Motel became Captain Jack's. Ironically, the only part of the building that's not part of the entertainment centre is a Mini Mart at the back that was the original arcade in the Pilgrim. Virtually everything in the Falls. Ave. complex other than Rainforest Cafe and the 4D theatre is gone. Marvel Superheroes Adventure City lost its license after Disney bought Marvel, and it simply became Adventure City. The Hulk Mini Golf became jungle themed, Spider-Man references were (poorly) removed from the dark ride, and X-men referenced were (also poorly) removed from the bumper cars. References to Marvel can still be found in the arcade, such as Spider-Man's face on a tree that was only covered up a few years ago. The WWE Store, after being abandoned since 2012, was turned into the Niagara Brewery Beer Store in 2016, fitting considering the land's history as a beer garden. Planet Hollywood on Falls Ave. closed around 2014, and is still abandoned. The MGM walkthrough was abandoned for over 10 years before becoming a barbecue restaurant in 2019.
The changes in the Falls Ave. complex are an example of good change, replacing abandoned attractions with ones that if anything are closer to what used to be there, such as Adventure City becoming an unthemed arcade again or the Beer Store being where the Beer Garden once was. Another example of this good change would be the long abandoned (and burnt) Adventure Dome that had briefly held a Lego attraction being turned into the Amazing Big Top Mirror and Lazer Maze in 2017. However a perfect example of negative change is the Rock Legends Wax Museum being forced out of business because a YouTube video of the museum was flagged for copyrighted music by YouTube's algorithms. This lead Sony Music to investigate the museum and shut it down last year if it wouldn't pay ridiculous licensing fees, which it couldn't afford.
Another example is IDS' redevelopment plan. HOCO is now locked in a contract with them, even though they obviously have very different ideas on the direction of Clifton Hill. Phase 1 was implemented in 2011, with Boston Pizza expanding their arcade to include Strike! Rock 'n Bowl and Dinosaur Park moving to where Quality Inn was and being renamed Dinosaur Adventure Golf. All of Costello's original dinosaurs (with the exception of the original Pterodactyl) would "migrate" to the new location where they would be joined by dozens of new mass-produced dinosaurs. Interestingly, foundations were built back in 2011 for the original 2 Brontosaurs to appear as if they were coming out of the ponds, but they wouldn't show up until 2019 when they were brought back out of storage to be installed, only to lay on the ground for a few months before going back into storage. Although it didn't use new hand-made figures, this attraction was a change that fits the spirit of Clifton Hill and was a good replacement for the empty plot of land that had once housed Quality Inn, even if an amusement park would have been better. The same cannot be said about the rest of IDS' plan. Many thematic elements installed throughout the hill by WHLLG (especially in Movieland and the Midway) were removed in phase 2 in 2013 simply to fit with IDS's image better, costing HOCO a lot of money. Phase 3 went ahead in 2015, and the 60 year old Comfort Inn was demolished, along with the old HOCO offices in it that if you remember from part 1, was the original nearly 200 year old stable building for the Zimmerman estate. Niagara Speedway was built in it's place, and if you look at the prices to drive it, then watch how many people do, you realize just how much they're making off it. Rumors Nightclub, originally the Queen's Door Nightclub in 1956, was gutted and turned into Zombie Attack and the new Kelsey's bathrooms, as the old ones had been in the Comfort Inn building. Phase 4 in 2018 extensively remodeled Wendy's as well as Boston Pizza, removing the patio.
Ghostblasters is now the final untouched WHLLG era attraction on the land. This is made even more troubling by the fact the signs for it were just removed and replaced with temporary ones, as I said in the post that started the entire discussion on whether or not I should do this series. If the attraction does go, we can only hope that a new interactive dark ride utilizing artistry, dimensional scenes and props much like Ghostblasters does is built, however that likely won't be the case. Triotech is the lead designer of ride through shooting games, that feature a dark ride car that travels through a hallway with screens on each side of it rather than real props. Triotech has dealt with HOCO before, building both the Wild West Coaster and Zombie Attack, so all signs point to one of these attractions replacing Ghostblasters if it closes.
There is still hope that Clifton Hill can retain it's spirit, but it stands at a crossroads. The House of Frankenstein for example, while retaining many original scenes, has had many removed and replaced with nothing, and many areas of the museum taken out entirely. Castle Dracula on the other hand hasn't updated a thing, but hasn't cared for the original scenes either, leaving them to fall into disrepair and only having 7 or 8 of the original 70 still lit, and none of them still functional. There are 2 directions Clifton Hill can go. With many attractions like the ones on HOCO's side being demolished to make way for whatever is trendy and lucrative, and many hanging on by a thread like Castle Dracula or Ghostblasters, the Hill is in real danger of becoming an endlessly overturning and developing area. However, with money recently being poured back into attractions like the Haunted House, Ripley's, and Guinness and attractions being redeveloped like the Falls Ave. complex or the Big Top Mirror maze, there is hope. If people, including the companies that own them, can recognise the historical value of attractions like Castle Dracula, The House of Frankenstien, Movieland, Tussaud's, etc., this can be promoted and the recent nostalgia boom can create large profits if this is played up. Additionally, future developments can still be more in the vein of what WHLLG envisioned for Clifton Hill, or what the Burlands recently did with the well done Big Top Mirror Maze. This is both profitable and economically sensible, as repeat customers that make memories and come to the area for generations with occasional new updates/re-themings (like what Clifton Hill did from the 50s-2010s), is far more profitable than a constantly turning over wave of new developments that cost millions to build that changes with each generation.
Thank you to everyone who has followed this series. Sorry for the length of this, but I promised this would be the last installment, so it has to be longer. If you have any information pertaining to Dazzleland or anything you know that I didn't cover in this series, let me know. Additionally, if you would like me to dig up photos on anything that I mentioned in the series, let me know, as unless it's the Dazzleland dragon, I probably have a photo of it. I will likely post many of them here anyway in time. Thanks again.
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John Gilbride Jr.-murdered on September 7, 2002 in Maple Shade, New Jersey- “He's been raised by MOVE his whole life. I hope when he gets older, he'll ask questions. I want him to know that his father fought for him.”

The execution-style murder of former MOVE member, 34 year old John Gilbride Jr., in Maple Shade, New Jersey on September 27, 2002 remains unsolved. MOVE is a black liberation group founded in 1972 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by John Africa (born Vincent Leaphart) and Donald Glassey, a social worker student from the University of Pennsylvania. In a 2018 Guardian article about the group, MOVE's political views were described as "a strange fusion of black power and flower power which melded the revolutionary ideology of the Black Panthers with the nature- and animal-loving communalism of 1960s hippies.” John’s father, Jack, believes the organization has “blood on its hands” and had his son followed after he fled the movement. Alberta Africa (now Wonderlin), John’s ex-wife and the ex-wife of MOVE founder John Africa, claims that John is alive and “forgoing any contact with the son he was fighting for in court for a life of seclusion, courtesy of the U.S. government” surmising “maybe he went off the deep end or something and is hiding somewhere….he seemed like he was deeply involved in the government.” Jack stated that it is hurtful Alberta still makes those kinds of statements since he identified his son's body, attended his funeral, and buried his cremated remains saying he “could only wish…she knows more than anyone else that it isn't true." According to the Burlington County Prosecutor’s office, the case is still an open investigation.
John, a baggage supervisor for U.S. Airways, was found dead inside his Ford Crown Victoria at 12:08 a.m. outside the Ryan's Run apartment complex in Maple Shade, New Jersey. The killer fired multiple bullets into John’s head and chest at close range from an automatic weapon after which the individual then disappeared into the highways adjacent to the apartment complex leaving behind John’s personal belongings. Police believe the killer knew his schedule because “they were there at the perfect time” noting they shot him just as he was coming home from work late at night and “the purpose was to take his life, nothing else.” John was scheduled to have his first unsupervised visit with his 6- year old son Zackary later the next day-a visit that Jack claims Alberta and other MOVE members had threatened to stop. After a Philadelphia judge decided that John should have unsupervised time with Zackary, MOVE vowed to fight the order and boarded up windows at its Philadelphia headquarters. They also held a rally at the Cherry Hill municipal building protesting the custody order saying the judge’s order was “an attempt to persecute the group and that Cherry Hill police were helping.” John had mentioned to his father that he felt his life was at risk and he knew “he was taking a big gamble.” Before Alberta married John, she was the widow of John Africa, founder and leader of the controversial radical group MOVE. John Africa and 5 other adults and 5 children died in May 1985 when Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on MOVE’s Osage Avenue rowhouse headquarters after a day-long standoff. Given the group's turbulent history, Alberta said police would have arrested MOVE members by now for John’s death if they had evidence saying “we are not murderers.”
John first learned about MOVE as a student at Temple University in the late 1980s and later joined the organization. During one of John's visits from college, Jack suspected John was under a "new influence" as during a drive around the neighborhood, John mused "this is nothing...these big houses, this money, it doesn't mean anything; this surprised Jack as John's "goal in life had always been to become a millionaire and drive a Cadillac." In 1991, John announced he was going to live in MOVE's headquarters and seeing that they could nothing to dissuade him, Jack decided to "keep communication open and maintain whatever relationship John would allow them" using an 800 number to keep in contact. In the fall of 1992, John married Alberta, who was twice his age, against his family's wishes; the family, nonetheless, felt the wedding should be celebrated so they all went to dinner at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse in Philadelphia. Jack noted that "at no time did we sympathize with MOVE but in order to have a relationship with John, we did what we had to do."
The name of the group (MOVE) is not an acronym and was chosen by John Africa “to say what they intended to do” as in "everything that's alive moves…if it didn't, it would be stagnant, dead"; as an example, when members greet each other they say "on the MOVE.". The group combined revolutionary ideology with animal rights and “advocated a return to a hunter-gatherer society” based on vegetarianism while remaining “opposed to science, medicine, and technology.” John’s followers changed their surnames to Africa to “show reverence to what they regarded as their mother continent.” John Africa and MOVE members lived in a communal house in the Powelton Village section of West Philadelphia. As activists, they staged bullhorn-amplified, profanity-laced demonstrations outside their homes against institutions that they opposed, such as zoos, circuses, “Three Mile Island”, “puppy mills” and police brutality. MOVE made compost piles of garbage and human waste in their yards which attracted rats and cockroaches that they refused to kill as they "considered it morally wrong to kill the vermin with pest control.” MOVE activities were scrutinized by law enforcement particularly under the administration of Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo, a former police commissioner known for hard stance against activist groups. Mayor Rizzo threatened in 1978 to dispatch his Police Department to MOVE's Powelton Village headquarters "to drag 'em out by the back of their necks."
In 1978, complaints from neighbors about "profanity-laced tirades, arms stockpiling, garbage piled in the yard, and naked children" led to a standoff with members of the group who had not vacated their rowhouse headquarters; a resulting shootout took the life of a police officer and put nine MOVE members in prison for life. In 1981, MOVE relocated to a row house at 6221 Osage Avenue in the Cobbs Creek area of West Philadelphia. Neighbors again complained to the city about trash around their building, confrontations, and the obscene political messages by bullhorn. In 1985, the police obtained arrest warrants in 1985 charging four MOVE occupants with crimes including parole violations, contempt of court, illegal possession of firearms, and making terrorist threats; by now, Mayor Wilson Goode and police commissioner Gregore J. Sambor had classified the group as a terrorist organization. Residents of the area were evacuated from the neighborhood and told to return after 24 hours.
On Monday, May 13, 1985, nearly five hundred police officers attempted to clear the building and execute the arrest warrants. Water and electricity were shut off in order to force MOVE members out of the house and Commissioner Sambor exhorted them to come out stating "Attention MOVE: This is America. You have to abide by the laws of the United States." When the MOVE members did not respond, the police decided to forcibly remove the members from the house. There was an armed standoff with police who lobbed tear gas canisters at the building. The MOVE members fired at them, and a gunfight with semi-automatic and automatic firearms ensued. Police went through over ten thousand rounds of ammunition when Commissioner Sambor decided the rowhouse could be bombed. From a Pennsylvania State Police helicopter, Philadelphia Police Department Lt. Frank Powell dropped two one-pound bombs made of FBI-supplied Tovex, a dynamite substitute, which targeted a fortified, bunker-like cubicle on the roof of the house. The resulting explosions ignited a fire from fuel for a gasoline-powered generator stored in the rooftop bunker. The fire spread and eventually destroyed 61 nearby houses. Officials said they feared that MOVE would shoot at the firefighters so they were held back. John Africa and 5 other adults and 5 children died. There were only two survivors; a child, Birdie Africa and an adult woman, Ramona Africa.
John Gilbride eventually left the movement and filed for divorce from Alberta in 1999 which led to years of heated court battles over custody of Zackary; John also filed for bankruptcy. John had gone deep into debt paying for in-vitro fertility treatments as they were desperately trying to have a child. John had also grown frustrated with "MOVE's meddling in his marriage" which "staged hours-long interventions" whenever the couple argued. According to Jack, the timing of the murder and the custody dispute is “more than a coincidence.” Philadelphia Police Captain William Fisher, the head of the department’s civil rights division who knows the MOVE leaders well, stated that John’s murder “seemed like a textbook mob hit” and John had a gambling problem and other enemies as well; Jack dismisses Captain Fisher’s claims saying he did a "disservice to the investigation" and “was simply trying to ease the department’s relationship with MOVE”. Captain Fisher continues to doubt that MOVE was involved saying Jack wants to think that “MOVE did it because it solves his problem…I’m a parent too, and it’s an emotional thing.” He believes a professional gunman could have known of John’s problems with MOVE and could have timed the murder accordingly saying if MOVE was involved, they would not have “outsourced the job to someone outside their organization.” He acknowledges “there was a lot of rhetoric and everything else, but keep it in perspective, it's a child custody thing” saying MOVE's members "defend themselves when needed but do not go out and kill people." Captain Fisher suggested a trip to Las Vegas a few days before his death needed to be looked into further; Jack avers John went to Las Vegas for an Earth, Wind, and Fire concert. John also had a "secret..and brief" second marriage to Rosario Bienvenida Arias-a 24-year-old casino dealer from the Dominican Republic. They married in Maryland on April 25, 2002, but, according to the annulment initiated by John May 19,2002, "she used him and then fled the country." The marriage had not been "nullified by the time John died, so as his widow, Rosario-not Zack-collected death benefits."
Others disagree such as former MOVE supporter Tony Allen who runs an anti-MOVE blog; he believes MOVE would never have put someone in their closest family circles at risk by killing John and would have given that task to a supporter saying “my hope is that there's people in and about MOVE whose consciences will eat away at them." Burlington County Prosecutor Robert Bernardi mentioned that MOVE members had been questioned in the investigation but did not comment further. In 2012 the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that John had told friends and family that he had recorded incriminating evidence in a notebook as "security against a hit" by MOVE. John said he had placed the notebook inside a locker for safekeeping. Jack confirmed one of John’s coworkers had contacted him and he tried to get police to search the locker but to no avail. At the time, Prosecutor Bernardi had no comment when pressed on the topic. It is unclear if the locker was ever searched.
In a 2009 news article, Jack mentioned that he continues to speak with investigators every three weeks but acknowledged "they get tired of telling me there's nothing new." Zackary, at the time 13 years old, was “a happy home-schooled teen, active in swimming and fencing.” In the interview, Alberta admitted that her son continues to miss his father recalling how they “found a picture of his dad, and he just fell into me..he's a big boy, but he was in tears. She also says "the tears she cried for John were real in 2002" and she continues to feels his absence noting that she remarried after John’s death, “not out of love, but to give her son a stable home.”
Jack said “his life has been anything but stable” since his son's death. His wife, Fran, died of cancer two years after his son was killed, and he speaks to Zack only once every three to six months. He knows that “wishing his son were still alive is pointless” so he focuses on resolving the case so Zack can come back into his life saying “he's been raised by MOVE his whole life. I hope when he gets older, he'll ask questions. I want him to know that his father fought for him."
Anyone with information about John’s murder can contact the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office at 609-265- 7113.
Questions:
Do we know more about John's gambling debts and other enemies he supposedly had? There is much discussion on the MOVE angle but I really couldn't find much information on any other theories besides the statement made by Captain Fisher.
Was John's locker ever searched?
Links:
https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/20090926_Slaying_of_ex-MOVEr_still_roils_feelings_7_years_later.html
https://www.theintelligencer.com/news/article/Man-in-Custody-Battle-Shot-to-Death-10572580.php
https://www.inquirer.com/philly/blogs/inq-blinq/A-clue-hidden-in-a-lost-locker.html
https://www.inquirer.com/philly/hp/news_update/20140928_A_slain_man__a_lost_son_and_a_grandfather_s_quest.html
https://culteducation.com/group/1060-move/14601-breaking-silence-over-a-sons-slaying.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE#2002_murder_of_John_Gilbride
http://antimove.blogspot.com/2012/09/?m=1
https://www.religionnewsblog.com/4623/unsolved-death-angers-move-grieves-parents
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/8/8/20747198/philadelphia-bombing-1985-move
https://www.inquirer.com/philly/entertainment/20131020_A_haunting_look_at_when_Phila__burned.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/movies/let-the-fire-burn-relives-1985-siege-of-the-move-group.html
https://www.phillymag.com/news/2014/02/27/birdie-africa-lost-boy/
http://kalamu.com/neogriot/2015/05/13/history-lest-we-forget-today-is-the-30th-anniversary-of-the-bombing-of-move/
MOVE has been “an anomaly in Philadelphia ever since it was founded, in the mid-1970s, by a white graduate student who became enthralled with the musings of a local black handyman who took the name John Africa and held beliefs ranging from vegetarianism to odd bathing rituals to preparation for worldwide racial conflict.” Several city officials were reprimanded in an investigation which called “dropping a bomb on an occupied row house…unconscionable” but none were criminally charged for the bombing. The 61 destroyed homes were rebuilt with government funds ($35 milion) but the houses were eventually condemned since a potential carbon monoxide leak was found in the heating systems. In 2000, the city paid again to buy out the residents and move them.
Ramona Africa, the only adult who came out of the house fire alive (along with 13-year old Birdie Africa), served seven years in prison for her role in the confrontation. As she stood outside MOVE's current house in 2013, she dismissed the notion that the home had code violations stating “they say it is a fire hazard but the only fire MOVE has ever been involved with is the one the city of Philadelphia set on May 13, 1985."
submitted by trifletruffles to UnresolvedMysteries [link] [comments]

Lost in the Sauce: Feb. 16 - 22

Welcome to Lost in the Sauce, keeping you caught up on political and legal news that often gets buried in distractions and theater. (the previous edition can be found here if you are super behind).
House-keeping:
  1. How to read: the headings will guide you through this piece. The Main Course covers the “big” stories and The Sides covers the “smaller” stories. IF YOU FOLLOW THE NEWS CLOSELY: you likely know about the stories in the Main Course section, so you will be best served by scrolling down to The Sides portion.
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Let’s dig in!

MAIN COURSE

Trump’s war on the intelligence community: 10 days under an authoritarian administration

I wrote a stand-alone piece covering the biggest news from last week: Over the past 10 days, we've seen Trump fully indulge his authoritarian impulses in an attempt to stamp out any inkling of facts that he dislikes - whether that be for personal, egocentric reasons or to shore up political strength. This began with a briefing given to the House Intelligence Committee that Russia is seeking to re-elect Trump. In response, Trump purged the Office of the Director of National Intelligence of officials he perceived to be disloyal, installing loyalists in their place.
Also covered: how Trump gets away with a cabinet full of acting officials, Richard Grenell’s numerous dis-qualifications, a pardon offered to Julian Assange, and the hunt for “Never Trumpers” in the administration.

Sunday night update

On Sunday, Trump made a veiled threat toward House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff while claiming without evidence that the Democrat had leaked information from the Russia briefing on Feb. 13: “Somebody please tell incompetent (thanks for my high poll numbers) & corrupt politician Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff to stop leaking Classified information or, even worse, made up information, to the Fake News Media. Someday he will be caught, & that will be a very unpleasant experience!” tweet
Later, while speaking to reporters, Trump called for an investigation into the leak - more concerned about the public learning of the briefing than he is about Russia’s repeated interference in U.S. elections. “They leaked it, Adam Schiff and his group. They leaked it to the papers and - as usual - they ought to investigate Adam Schiff for leaking that information,” Trump said.
Schiff responded: “Nice deflection, Mr. President. But your false claims fool no one. You welcomed Russian help in 2016, tried to coerce Ukraine’s help in 2019, and won’t protect our elections in 2020.”

Pardon-palooza

Authoritarians also dispense largesse, but they do it by their own whims, rather than pursuant to any system or legal rule. The point of authoritarianism is to concentrate power in the ruler, so the world knows that all actions, good and bad, harsh and generous, come from a single source. (The New Yorker)
Last week, Trump granted pardons and commutations to 11 people with one thing in common: connections. Trump bypassed the process of formal procedures typically used to determine who is given a pardon, instead relying on connections to his wealthy friends and political allies.

Roger Stone going to prison

Perhaps not coincidentally, Trump’s pardoning of corrupt public officials like Blagojevich occurred just two days before Roger Stone’s sentencing for lying to investigators, obstructing a congressional investigation, and witness tampering. Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Stone to 40 months - or 3.3 years - in prison, much lighter than the original 7-9 year sentencing recommendation made by career prosecutors who withdrew from the case in protest of AG Barr’s intervention.
Lawfare has a great line-by-line breakdown of the sentencing hearing, if you’d like the nitty-gritty details. But if you only have time to read one excerpt from the hearing, I suggest the following:
Judge Jackson: “The truth still exists. The truth still matters. Roger Stone's insistence that it doesn't, his belligerence, his pride in his own lies are a threat to our most fundamental institutions, to the very foundation of our democracy...The dismay and the disgust at the attempts by others to defend his actions as just business as usual in our polarized climate should transcend party. The dismay and the disgust with any attempts to interfere with the efforts of prosecutors and members of the judiciary to fulfill their duty should transcend party.
"Sure, the defense is free to say: So what? Who cares? But, I'll say this: Congress cared. The United States Department of Justice and the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia that prosecuted the case and is still prosecuting the case cared. The jurors who served with integrity under difficult circumstances cared. The American people cared. And I care."
Judge Jackson pushes back
During the hearing, Judge Jackson said that the jurors in the case "served with integrity." Stone’s lawyers took this statement and moved to disqualify the judge from the case, claiming that her remarks “rendered her unable to fairly rule on his bid for a new trial.”
"Stone’s Motion for New Trial is directly related to the integrity of a juror. It is alleged that a juror misled the Court regarding her ability to be unbiased and fair and the juror attempted to cover up evidence that would directly contradict her false claims of impartiality," his lawyers argued.
"The premature statement blessing the “integrity of the jury” undermines the appearance of impartiality and presents a strong bias for recusal," they added.
As expected, Jackson denied the motion to have her disqualified...
A pardon for Stone?
But the goal may be to reach the ears of the president instead. According to Politico, a former senior administration official who remains in contact with Trump and his senior advisers says about a pardon for Roger Stone: “It’s not a question of if; it’s when.” Following the sentencing, Trump argued that Stone’s jury was “tainted” and said that “Roger has a very good chance of exoneration.”
On Sunday, Trump was asked about the possibility of a pardon for Stone and instead took the opportunity to attack the jury forewoman, again:
"That juror is so biased and so tainted, that shouldn't happen in our criminal justice system… You have a juror that is obviously tainted. She was an activist against Trump. She said bad things about Trump and bad things about Stone," the President claimed without evidence. "She somehow weaseled her way onto the jury and if that's not a tainted jury then there is no such thing as a tainted jury."

More info on Stone’s lenient sentence

In the week since four prosecutors withdrew from Stone’s case in protest of AG Barr’s interference, we have gotten a slow drip-drip of new information. A piece by The New York Times Sunday summed it up nicely: Timothy Shea, appointed to replace Jessie Liu as head D.C. attorney, was sent to the office specifically to steer cases to the president’s benefit after previous efforts failed.
A new boss, Timothy Shea, had just arrived and had told them on his first day that he wanted a more lenient recommendation for Mr. Stone, and he pushed back hard when they objected, according to two people briefed on the dispute. They grew suspicious that Mr. Shea was helping his longtime friend and boss, Attorney General William P. Barr, soften the sentencing request to please the president.
...The tensions between the office, the Justice Department and the White House date back further than the tumult in the Stone case. They have been simmering since at least last summer, when the office’s investigation of Andrew G. McCabe, a former top F.B.I. official whom the president had long targeted, began to fall apart.
Mr. Shea’s predecessor, Jessie K. Liu, a lawyer whom Mr. Trump had appointed to lead the office in 2017, pressed the McCabe case even after one team of prosecutors concluded that they could not win a conviction. After a second team was brought in and also failed to deliver a grand jury indictment, Ms. Liu’s relationship with Mr. Barr grew strained, people close to them said. She left the position this year, though she and Mr. Barr have both stressed to associates that her departure was amicable.

Undoing Mueller’s work

Trump’s efforts to derail the sentencing of Stone can be seen as part of a larger campaign to rewrite history, and specifically, erase the findings of the Mueller investigation. Roger Stone’s indictment shows that Stone was acting on Trump's personal order to find Hillary Clinton’s campaign emails stolen by Russia. In order to cover-up his role in the Russia-Wikileaks-Trump network, Stone lied to investigators and threatened a witness. By claiming that Stone did not commit a crime, Trump is attempting to reverse the findings of the Mueller report and make himself the victim.
Last week, Trump embarked on a rambling Twitter thread calling for all cases stemming from Mueller’s probe to be “thrown out.” He continued, saying: “If I wasn’t President, I’d be suing everyone all over the place.......BUT MAYBE I STILL WILL. WITCH HUNT!”
Hours later, while discussing the spate of pardons he had issued that day, Trump made the astounding assertion that he is “the chief law enforcement officer of the country” and thus has the “legal right” to interfere in criminal cases. “I’m allowed to be totally involved,” the president added. While technically he is incorrect - the Attorney General is the chief law enforcement officer - in practice Trump has been proven right. A lawless chief executive is in fact in charge of enforcing the law when the Attorney General acts as his personal fixer.
This is in the style of autocrats across the globe, who weaponize the law to help themselves and their friends and hurt their enemies. The nation’s legal system is now run by a man who has spent his life mocking it. (NYT Editorial Board)
Meanwhile, the president’s allies have reportedly been urging him to fire anyone who was involved in Mueller’s investigation:
The MAGA punditry’s outsized influence over the president means their campaign against the so-called Mueller “holdovers” is likely not falling on deaf ears, especially given Trump’s fixation with what his defenders and detractors are saying about his administration in their frequent appearances on his favorite TV programs.
“It's totally unclear to me why any members of the Mueller team need to remain in the Trump DOJ,” the pro-Trump conservative blogger Will Chamberlain wrote after news broke of the Stone sentencing recommendation.
...GOP operative Arthur Schwartz, a close friend of Donald Trump Jr. who has been described as the eldest son’s “fixer,” said of the career officials in question: “I think they should all be investigated.”
...John Dowd, a former Trump lawyer who remains in touch with the White House, characterized the line attorneys in the Stone case as “insubordinate,” and “the same crowd of prosecutors wedded to the Mueller agenda” who need to be “cleaned out” from DOJ. “And Bill Barr is doing that,” Dowd said.
What can be done about the politicization of the DOJ? In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Cass Sunstein of Harvard Law School suggests that “Congress should transform the Justice Department into an independent agency, legally immunized from the president’s day-to-day control.”

Public charge rule takes effect

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow the government to implement new “wealth test” rules making it easier to deny immigrants residency or admission to the United States if they might depend on public-assistance programs. Legal challenges will continue in lower courts in the meantime. Doug Rand, co-founder of Boundless Immigration who formerly worked on immigration policy in the Obama White House, estimates that as many as 400,000 people every year could be denied green cards or visas because of the new rules.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a written dissent that was sharply critical of both the federal government and her conservative colleagues, warning that they are “putting a thumb on the scale in favor of” the Trump administration. Read her full seven-page dissent here.
The justice wrote that granting emergency applications often upends "the normal appellate process" while "putting a thumb on the scale in favor of the party that won." Targeting her conservative colleagues, she said "most troublingly, the Court's recent behavior" has benefited "one litigant over all others."
"Claiming one emergency after another, the Government has recently sought stays in an unprecedented number of cases," Sotomayor said. "It is hard to say what is more troubling," she said, pointing to the case at hand, "that the Government would seek this extraordinary relief seemingly as a matter of course, or that the Court would grant it." CNN

THE SIDES

Justice Department’s new rules benefit Giuliani

In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, the DOJ indicated that the agency has implemented another layer of approval that would make it difficult for prosecutors to widen their probe into Rudy Giuliani:
The Justice Department revealed Tuesday that law enforcement officials running Ukraine-related investigations must seek approval before expanding their inquiries — a move that could have implications for Rudolph W. Giuliani, as President Trump’s personal attorney pushes for scrutiny of the president’s political foes while facing a federal probe into his own conduct.
Assistant Attorney General Stephen E. Boyd wrote to Nadler that the department had tapped two U.S. attorneys to assist in the process — Scott Brady in Pittsburgh to receive and assess new information, and Richard Donoghue in Brooklyn to help coordinate personnel throughout the Justice Department involved in Giuliani’s case and others with a focus on Ukraine. An accompanying internal memo, circulated by Rosen in January, says that he and Donoghue must approve expansions of any inquiries.

Related: The Hill admits John Solomon’s columns were misleading

The Hill’s review of Solomon’s work can be found here. I have found the review itself to be overly generous to the publication (no surprise), so I will quote from a WaPo summary of the review:
In effect, the Hill said Solomon amplified an inaccurate and one-sided narrative about the Bidens and Ukraine that was fed to him by Giuliani, “facilitated” by businessman Lev Parnas, who was working with Giuliani at the time, and reinforced by Solomon’s own attorneys, who also represented clients embroiled in U.S.-Ukraine politics.
But the Hill stopped short of retracting or apologizing for Solomon’s articles, nor did it say it shouldn’t have published them. It also didn’t characterize Solomon’s motives in presenting what appears to be a largely debunked conspiracy theory about Ukraine.
“In certain columns, Solomon failed to identify important details about key Ukrainian sources, including the fact that they had been indicted or were under investigation,” said the internal investigation, which was overseen by the newspaper’s editor, Bob Cusack. “In other cases, the sources were [Solomon’s] own attorneys” — Victoria Toensing and Joseph DiGenova, who have also represented President Trump and Giuliani, who was also a key source for Solomon’s columns.
Solomon didn’t disclose this connection in his columns nor did he disclose to his editors that he shared drafts of his stories with Toensing, DiGenova and Parnas, the review noted.

Trump tries to block Bolton book

The Washington Post reports that Trump is attempting to block the release of former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s book, instructing aides that it should not be released until after the November election.
Trump has told his lawyers that Bolton should not be allowed to publish any of his interactions with him about national security because they are privileged and classified, these people said. He has also repeatedly brought up the book with his team, asking whether Bolton is going to be able to publish it, they said.
Trump told national television anchors on Feb. 4 during an off-the-record lunch that material in the book was “highly classified,” according to notes from one participant in the luncheon. He then called him a “traitor.”
“We’re going to try and block the publication of the book,” Trump said, according to the notes. “After I leave office, he can do this. But not in the White House...I give the guy a break. I give him a job. And then he turns on me,” Trump added during the West Wing lunch. “He’s just making things up.”

Susan Rice tells Bolton the truth

During a panel discussion at Vanderbilt University on Wednesday, Bolton shared the stage with Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice. Bolton made excuses for his failure to testify in Trump’s impeachment trial, blaming the House for committing “impeachment malpractice.” Rice challenged Bolton repeatedly, denigrating his decision to promote his book instead of testify:
"I thought a lot about if I had been in that position how would I have approached it, and I'll be honest: It's inconceivable to me that if I had firsthand knowledge of gross abuse of presidential power that I would withhold my testimony from a constitutional accountability process.”
"I can't imagine withholding my testimony, with or without a subpoena," Rice said. "I also can't imagine, frankly, in the absence of being able to provide the information directly to Congress, not having exercised my First Amendment right to speak publicly at a time when my testimony or my experience would be relevant. And, frankly, when my subordinates ... were doing their duty and responding in a fashion consistent with their legal obligations to provide information."
"I would feel like I was shamefully violating the oath that I took to support and defend the Constitution."

Trump corruption update

President Donald Trump’s choice to stay at his own Las Vegas hotel each night during the western states swing that wraps up Friday likely cost taxpayers a million extra dollars as well as diverted thousands of them into his own cash registers.
Breaking with precedent, Trump flew back to Vegas to stay every night at his Trump International Hotel, despite his day activities taking place in California, Arizona, and Colorado.
Had Trump held the same events but done so in a geographically logical order ― starting in Beverly Hills and finishing in Colorado Springs, but overnighting each day in the city where he would begin the following morning ― Trump would have spent four fewer hours aboard Air Force One, thereby saving taxpayers about $1.1 million.
...Indeed, the repeated overnight trips to Las Vegas may have forced the Secret Service and other support personnel to keep a motorcade there for a full four days, rather than move it to the site of an upcoming presidential trip
This week, Trump has a whole new country to focus on: India, home to the largest portfolio of Trump real estate projects outside North America, according to the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. According to The Washington Post, since the elder Trump’s last trip to India in 2014, two of his business partners have encountered massive legal and financial trouble.
During Trump’s time as president, the Trump Organization has vigorously promoted their properties in India, earning millions of dollars in royalties:
In 2018, the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr. — who runs the Trump Organization with his brother, Eric Trump — spent several days in India promoting the family’s developments, attending a champagne dinner with condo buyers who plunked down $39,000 deposits and bringing in millions of dollars in new sales. While there, he also met with Modi behind closed doors. The next year, Trump’s Indian business partners flew 100 early buyers of his luxury condos near Delhi to visit Trump Tower and Trump Ferry Point golf course in New York City as a way to generate interest in the properties in India. One attendee gushed afterward about meeting the son of a U.S. president on the trip.

Trump 2020: Cambridge Analytica and Facebook

President Donald Trump’s campaign is bringing on an alum of the controversial data firm Cambridge Analytica...Matt Oczkowski, who served as head of product at Cambridge before it went bankrupt and shut down in 2018, is helping oversee the Trump campaign’s data program...Oczkowski, who also worked on Trump’s 2016 effort, joined the reelection campaign in January, and payments to his company, HuMn Behavior, are expected to show up on Trump’s next campaign finance disclosure later this month. (Politico)
An Axios report revealed where most of Trump’s re-election campaign is spending its advertising budget: on Facebook ads. “Last fall, the campaign urged Facebook to keep the same tools for political advertisers that they make available to companies...Facebook ultimately decided not to change its policies around microtargeting.” However, unlike in 2016, the campaign is also diversifying, “testing new strategies on several dozen platforms, including YouTube, Google, ad exchanges, publisher networks and conservative podcasts.”
  • Side note: The IRS is suing Facebook for $9 million in back taxes, alleging the social media company undervalued intellectual properties when selling them to an Irish subsidiary in 2010. Ireland has lower corporate tax rates than the United States, so the move reduced the company’s tax bill.

Erik Prince investigations

There is apparently another investigation into Blackwater Founder - and brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos - Erik Prince. The FBI is reportedly investigating Prince “for his 2015 attempt to modify two American-made crop-dusting planes into attack aircraft — a violation of arms trafficking regulations...The planes became part of private military services Prince proposed to sell or use in mercenary operations in Africa and Azerbaijan.”
This new investigation adds to Prince’s legal problems, though he insists that he is untouchable “under this guy,” referring to Trump. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Justice Department is “in the late stages of deciding whether to charge” Prince for allegedly lying to Congress in its Russia probe and violating U.S. export laws in his business dealings overseas.

Trump blocking prominent climate change warning

The United States is against mentioning climate change in the communique of the world’s financial leaders, G20 diplomats said, after a new draft of the joint statement showed the G20 are considering including it as a risk factor to growth...G20 sources said the United States was reluctant to accept language on climate change as a risk to the economy. Reuters
On Sunday, it was announced that the U.S. ultimately agreed to a less-prominent placement for the risks of climate change. It will now appear in language referencing the Financial Stability Board’s work examining the implications of climate change for financial stability.
One of the G20 sources said it was the first time a reference to climate change had been included in a G20 finance communique during Trump’s presidency, even though it was removed from the top of the joint statement. U.S. officials have resisted naming climate change as an economic risk since Trump took office in 2017. One of his first acts as president was to announce Washington’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord.

Rightwing threats

Last week, two men were arrested in separate incidents involving threats to President Trump’s perceived opponents.
A Michigan man, Brittan J. Atkinson, was arrested on Thursday for sending death threats to Mark Zaid, an attorney for the Ukraine whistleblower. Atkinson sent the threats in November, on the day that Trump held up a photo of Zaid and read some of his tweets at a rally in Louisiana.
"All traitors must die miserable deaths," Atkinson's email read in part, the indictment says. "Those that represent traitors shall meet the same fate[.] We will hunt you down and bleed you out like the pigs you are. We have nothing but time, and you are running out of it, Keep looking over your shoulder[.] We know who you are, where you live, and who you associate with[.] We are all strangers in a crowd to you[.]"
On Wednesday, Salvatore Lippa of New York was arrested for threatening to assault and murder Rep. Adam Schiff and Sen. Chuck Schumer in voicemails last month.
Lippa started the threatening message by calling the congressman "Schiff, Shifty Schiff," invoking the nickname used by President Donald Trump for Schiff, the lead House manager during Trump's impeachment trial.
...When questioned by U.S Capitol Police, Lippa admitted to making the threatening calls to Schiff and Schumer because he said he was upset about the impeachment proceedings, prosecutors said.

State news

  • Washington Post: A second court has temporarily blocked North Carolina’s new voter identification law on the argument that it discriminates against African Americans. The ruling reduces the likelihood that the rule will be in effect in a key swing state during November’s elections. A three-judge panel of the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that intent to discriminate was a “primary motivating factor” behind the voter ID law, which passed the Republican legislature in late 2018.
  • CBS News: Florida cannot bar felons who served their time from registering to vote simply because they have failed to pay all fines and fees stemming from their cases, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
  • CNN: Mississippi's law banning abortions at the detection of a fetal heartbeat -- as early as six weeks into pregnancy -- will remain blocked, a panel of circuit judges ruled on Thursday...The three-judge panel on the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court's ruling that the Mississippi law unconstitutionally prohibited pre-viability abortions.
  • Tampa Bay Times: A curious request arrived in the inboxes of Florida tax collectors last week from an employee of the Republican National Committee. He asked for “all email addresses that have been collected and are in the possession of the Tax Collector’s Office.” He also wanted any names, property addresses and phone numbers connected to those emails in their records. If the tax collectors had complied, the Republican Party would soon have a valuable trove of personal information for millions of Floridians as it gears up for the 2020 election: A detailed database of many taxpayers’ emails plus the name, address and phone number tied to that email.
  • Associated Press: Most Republican lawmakers refused to attend a Tuesday night session of the Oregon House of Representatives amid a slowdown over anger at a sweeping bill on climate change. Earlier, Republican lawmakers, who are a minority in the House, insisted that bills coming to the floor be read in their entirety instead of being summarized, which slowed things down substantially. The 2020 session of the Legislature lasts only 35 days, being an even-year short session.
  • Q13 Fox News: Efforts to expel a controversial state representative from the Washington Legislature are likely over after no Republicans would sign a letter calling for state Rep. Matt Shea’s expulsion. The Spokesman-Review reports that all 98 members of the state House of Representatives were asked Thursday to sign a letter calling for the expulsion of Spokane Valley Republican. All 56 Democrats signed the letter, but no Republicans did.
CONTINUED BELOW
submitted by rusticgorilla to Keep_Track [link] [comments]

History of Clifton Hill Part 2: Boom Years

Thank you to everyone who read and commented on part 1, your feedback is much appreciated. If you haven't read part 1 or want to see the original poll that brought me here, scroll back in this sub or (if you're reading this in the future and it's long since buried) click on my profile and find them there in my posts.
By the 50s, it had become clear that using Clifton Hill as a series of budget, away from the falls tourist camps wasn't nearly as lucrative as the land could potentially be. Welland Securities opened the Quality Inn Fallsway where Dinosaur Adventure Golf now sits and the Park Motor Inn (later Venture then Comfort Inn) where Niagara Speedway now is. Clifton Touring Camp was torn down to make way for these, save for the snack bar where Wizard's Golf now is that was an original Zimmerman estate gate house. The guest house building and gardens of the estate that remained at this point were torn down, but the stable building was gutted, re-enforced and turned into the Welland Securities offices in the Park Motor Inn. This remained Welland Securities (now HOCO)'s offices until Comfort Inn was torn down in 2015 (and the nearly 150 year old stable building with it). Quality Inn featured a restaurant and nightclub in it's lobby building: the T-bird room. The T-bird hosted a variety of early rock and roll acts over the years until it's eventual transition into a Golden Griddle and Q-Balls Billiards Pub in the 70s. The hotel also featured 4 swimming pools: a large outdoor pool, an outdoor kiddie pool, an indoor pool and an indoor hot tub. The Park Motor Inn only featured a single outdoor pool and hot tub (area became an enclosed atrium in the 70s.) However, it featured a gift shop (where Kelsey's has been since the 80s), the Queen' Door Nightclub (became Rumors Nightclub in the 80s, now divided up into multiple things like the relocated Kelsey's bathrooms and Zombie Attack) and Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum. Ripley's leased the land from Welland Securities. It was the second attraction in the Ripley company's popular chain of "Odditoriums", predated only by the original St. Augustine FL location. The Niagara Falls History Museum had opened a few blocks away in the early 1900s in the building currently occupied by the Bird Kingdom, but it was closer to a museum than a tourist attraction. Ripley's was the first real attraction to open up in Niagara.
Ripley's was a massive success, becoming Niagara's must visit location second only to the falls itself. It (along with Marilyn Monroe's breakthrough film "Niagara" in 1953) opened the floodgates, and by 1960, all the cabin courts had been demolished. In 1955, Charles Burland tore down his Niagara Falls Tourist Camp and bought all the land from the aforementioned field where Captain Jack's now is to Tussaud's. He tore down all the cabin courts on this land, building the Honeymoon City Motel (known as Travelodge since the early 2000s) in the place of Reinhard's Riverhurst Inn and his Niagara Falls Tourist Camp, a parking lot (now Castle Dracula) in the place of the Darling Cabins, and the Clifton Motor Inn (known as Thriftlodge since early 2000s) where Clifton Camp was. The Honeymoon City Motel had a restaurant where the Guinness museum now is, as well as the gift shop that's still there beside Guinness. Clifton Motor Inn had the Clifton Hill Family Restaurant in the old Camp Clifton restaurant building (still there), a "Bonanza" company shooting gallery (now replaced with a newer gallery) and the iconic Dairy Queen, which was then a Frostee Freeze. Burland responded to Ripley's in 1958 by opening the Life Museum in the former restaurant in the Honeymoon City and moving the restaurant a floor up (now Ruby Tuesday's.) The Life Museum was a bizarre attraction celebrating the life cycle from conception to death for both the male and female body, incredibly taboo for the time. Ripley's and the Life Museum would begin Clifton Hill's staple of bizarre attractions themed to the curious and macabre. In 1959 Louis Tussaud's Wax Museum had opened attached to the Foxhead Hotel where the building with the Pink Panther ride/former MGM attraction is now.
In 1960, 2 hotels opened between the Frostee Freeze and the old Victoria Ave. railway station at the top of the hill. These were the Clifton Motor Hotel (renamed the Pilgrim just 3 years later, now the building now occupied by Captian Jacks) and the Hilltop (the land now occupied by the Upside Down House.) With these hotels came Oneida Ln. running off Clifton Hill towards what's now Casino Niagara's Parking lot. Of course, in 1960, this was the parking lot for the Oneida Plate Factory that was the Casino Niagara building's original life. At the front of the factory between the 2 Falls Ave. hotels was the Antique Auto Museum, opened the same year, and a few years later in 1964 they would add a large observation tower sticking out the top as part of the factory tour, now the abandoned steel-plated tower that simply says "Casino". The Clifton Motor Hotel had a restaurant and gift shop on the main floor adjacent to the lobby as well as a pool on the third floor at the back of the building in a room with a glass ceiling. The Hilltop Motel's office was where Beavertails now is, and the motel contained a snack bar (now burger king), and 2 gift shops. One was in the current location of the Crystal Caves attraction. A fun history tidbit: this basement gift shop was leased out, and apparently a brother of the motel owner conspired with the gift shop operator in the mid 60s to run a bookie racket, but a Toronto investigator seemingly found out the jig fairly fast. This brother would mysteriously disappear years down the road in the 80s, which may or not have been related to his criminal activity nearly 20 years before. The other gift shop was what's now the first floolobby of the House of Frankenstein. The building was only one story at this point, seen here. The second story wouldn't be added until 1969, in a business move by local businessman Robert Dunham that would forever change the face of Niagara Falls, the world of animatronics, and the amusement industry as a whole. We'll cover that later in part 3.
Meanwhile, riding high on the success of Ripley's, Welland Securities leased more land to private companies for more attractions to be built starting in 1965. The first was a motel built between Quality Inn and the hill, the Cliffside. The Cliffside resided roughly where the employee parking space is now between Dinosaur Adventure Golf and the large cliff down to Victoria Park. It's driveway in off the hill was where the Great Canadian Midway now resides, as can be seen here. At the end of the motel farthest from the hill, it was adjacent to one of the wings of the Quality Inn. This often created confusion as to things like which lobby was who's, if guests from one were allowed to use the other's pool, etc. This confusion would end much later in 1989 when Welland Securities stopped leasing the land out and amalgamated the Cliffside into being part of the Quality Inn. Just down the hill from the driveway into the Cliffside was a small snack bar on land leased from Welland Securities by the same people as the Cliffside, with a miniature golf course on the roof.
Further up the hill, the last remaining gate house from the Zimmerman estate that was being used as a snack bar was torn down in 1965 to make way for a new attraction. Malcolm Howe leased the land from Welland Securities and would take 2 years to build a pivotal attraction: Movieland Wax Museum. Opened in 1966 in the building now occupied by Wizard's Golf and the Upper Canada Trading Co., the museum was on the main floor with a gift shop called Niagara Marketplace in the basement. All of the figures were sculpted by legendary halloween mask creator, artist Don Post at his Don Post Studios in Florida. Chances are, if you know anything about trick or treating from 1950 to the early 90s, you're familiar with a celluloid plastic mask created by Don Post. However, Post's artistic abilities went far beyond disposable plastic monsters. His team at the Florida factory, headed by sculptor Pat Newman, created 60 wax figures for the museum. The lobby was Egyptian themed, with two torches on either side of the door in to the white building and simulated Egyptian sandstone walls in the lobby. Beside the ticket booth in the lobby, just beside the entrance was Elizabeth Taylor dressed as Cleopatra from the 1963 film of the same name, with a cameraman and director filming her. The museum itself contained many stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Bing Crosby, Lucille Ball and Laurel and Hardy. The most impressive figure however was a 12 and half foot tall King Kong figure, the largest wax figure ever made at the time. The news article about his creation can be read here, however it incorrectly calls Movieland the "Hollywood Wax Museum". Noticeably absent from Movieland on opening day was a horror section. The notion of putting horror movie sections in wax museum hadn't caught on yet, with Tussaud's "Chamber of Horrors" being dedicated to torture methods and historical tyrants rather than film. This would later change and Movieland would receive a horror movie section as we'll cover in part 3.
To coincide with Movieland's opening, Howe also leased the land from Welland Securities just up the hill from the driveway into the Cliffside. On this land he constructed the 184 ft. tall Space Spiral Tower, built by Universal Design of Wildwood, New Jersey. The tower was half ride-half observation deck, with a large, circular, slowly spinning observation deck that rose up the tower that held 30 riders. This is exactly where the Fudge Factory now sits, as the store is circular because that was originally the loading area for the tower before it was demolished in 2006.
So by this point, the hill had gone from a budget, off the main strip camping and cabin area to a strip of motels and small attractions, with a large observation tower ride it's focal point. Motel strips like this could be found all throughout North America in the 60s, in tourist hot spots like Lake George, Gatlinburg and Myrtle Beach. But a single attraction was about to usher in a wave of arcades, haunted houses and testaments to the weird that would make Clifton Hill unlike anything else on earth... And it would all be thanks to a young artist, beloved city engineer, avid horror fan and technology wizard who was about to change everything. Stay tuned for part 3!
submitted by G-N-R to niagara [link] [comments]

The Locked Cabinet and the Virus

I had been called to the city of sin for a bi-annual conference that I had taken for the past 24 years. I had sat through it in health, in the cold, rain, and sickness. I was there 10 days after Tupac was murdered, and was walking down Fremont street several months later on the day when they took Christopher Wallace. A year later in 1998, a colleague and I woke up to a phone call from my then wife telling me about what happened to President Clinton, and that was when the words, "For a blowjob?" coming from my companion led me into a similar predicament. For the next several years, a tangled divorce that I've never fully unwinded from, occupied my attention. It wasn't until the morning of September 11th in 2001 that gave me the wakeup call I needed. I scooted the young blonde out of my room and told her to call her dad, since I knew Tom was in New York that day.
Mosque bombings, terrorism, market bubble bursting, swine flu, recession, succession, shootings, a shooter, second divorce, new house, new life, and the same old job on the same old beat all meant that Las Vegas and I had been doing this dance through the thick and the thin for over two decades.
And I have never seen it like this.
My uber driver nodded, "Yeah man. Shit is wild. I only picked up 8 people in the last 9 hours."
He was young, the new leather interior in a wide bodied Escalade smelled like an expensive loan. His eyes were twitchy as he tried not stare at me, wondering if I was going to cough from all the dry mouthing I had been doing from the LAS to my hotel.
I had grown used to the stares, the selective social distancing for looking Chinese and all of its stereotypes as the weeks leading into March of 2020. The beginning trend of people instinctively coughing whenever they saw me soon became a daily ritual. It was all a part of tribe mentality I convinced myself, chuckling as I remembered the pie scene from the movie Stand By me.
That made my uber driver nervous.
"Here we are," he finally breathed.
I thanked him and proceeded to the service counter with my carry on.
"Sorry for the wait," replied the representative, "We laid off 80% of our staff this morning."
I was taken aback by her candid greeting.
"Looks like you'll be in a private room owned by one of our guests. And as it is not through the hotel, please contact your host for any services that you require. We will need a $500 deposit on a credit card for any incidentals."
Several minutes later I found myself riding the elevator up 26 stories and into my rental. I contacted my host through the app to let him know that I had arrived. It was my first time using the app service so if anyone wants to chime in on how necessary or unnecessary that action is, please, enlighten me.
I had chose this room because there was a large, deep soak bathtub. I don't have many preferences in life but if there is a chicken fried steak on the menu I must get it at least once, coke over pepsi, and onion rings. Don't ask me why they are all food based, but they are, except for the bathtub. At nearly 6'1 I am always trying to find a decent soak. When I was younger my grandmother owned a Japanese soaking barrel, and ever since then I have been chasing after that nostalgic experience. Instead I often find myself cramming, contorting, and cold above the chest.
There was not much for me to do as President Trump had canceled his conference with the Jewish Coalition, which meant that other subsequent CEO's began withdrawing from all the other Vegas conferences. Something that I should have foreseen, which could have otherwise prevented me from traveling during this time. But there was no helping it, and this was definitely not the worst place to be stuck in.
I looked into the bathroom mirror and decided to wash the trails of the airport from my face and then made my way down to the casino floors. Everything was closed. All the restaurants anyways. So I hailed a cab and found my way to Gordon Ramsay's Hells Kitchen. The best lobster risotto I ever had, a mediocre bar experience, a change of hands for an 8 ball on the street, and I was on my way into Caesar's Palace. I had reasoned with myself that my foresight was not the best at this time so blackjack and poker were out of the question. I stuck to roulette and craps, winning big at the dice. And if you've ever been to a high roller table then all the movies are true, there you will find willing women to blow on the ivories for you.
Somehow we found our way back to my room, a slew of fancy cocktail dresses and Victoria secret's underwear were strewn in a near comical fashion. A rolled Benjamin walked down Abbey road. And there's nothing quite like two young and beautiful women taking pictures of your junk to brag to their friends later to accentuate your high. Everyone loves an anomaly.
The two of them were in town for CONEXPO, one of the world's largest construction gatherings. One was 28 and a leading architect for a large firm and the other was a 32 year old forewoman who was sent to accompany her to fill in the job's specifics.
"You've got soft hands for a construction worker," I quipped.
She raised her drawn in eyebrow at me, "Not as soft as a desk jockey's."
We both laughed until our eyes were drawn to the young architect who had begun to slowly undress in front of us. She swayed her hips to the lofi soul of Joji. My champagne glass sparkled in the light as the smells of girl scout cookies lit up the bathroom.
"You don't mind if I smoke do you?"
"Oh, give it here," came the architect's voice.
"I should probably get an ashtray."
I got out of the tub and walked into the living area. I pulled open a few drawers, and found nothing. I tugged on the handles of the cabinet underneath the wetbar only to find it locked. That was when I noticed the notice stickied on its door, "Please do not open. These are my private possessions," made with a cheap labeler. "There's probably alcohol in this thing," I said aloud. I turned to look into the bathroom but neither of them seemed to care as I watched the water falling from their hair and down their backs. The rest of the night was well, you can imagine.
I woke up around 4:30 A.M. and heard an ungodly rattling. As I stirred in bed, I heard a voice asking sleepily, "What was that?"
"I don't know," came another voice. "It's probably the pipes or something."
The architect was unsure so she got up and turned on a light. She turned to look at me, "Did you get this on AirBNB?"
"Yeah, something like that."
We heard the rattle again. I could tell that she was afraid so I decided to get up with her.
"Do you know where the light is," she asked?
"Nope," I said as I struck a match for dramatic effect.
"Oh god," she rolled her eyes.
I smiled, "It's more fun this way."
She grabbed my arm as we made our way into the larger part of the suite in search of the noise. We looked in the closet, the bathroom, the enclosed toilet, and I even pulled a few drawers open for effect.
"What is this," she asked me. She had found the cabinet under the wetbar.
"I don't know. It was locked when I got here." I struck another match, "It says not to touch it or something, owner's possessions I think."
"Oh god, that is so creepy," she moaned. "I once went to this place in Lake Tahoe and it wasn't until the last day that my boyfriend found a loft that was hidden because the stairs had been removed. When he climbed it, there was a router and a twin sized bed in the corner. Super chills man."
"Well, the cabinet is too small for anything weird to be in there," I told her.
"You don't know that, have you ever seen those double jointed circus people?"
"Well, if there's some more champagne in there, then I wouldn't mind breaking the lock."
"It would be warm," she said.
"Ah yes, the important things."
We laughed, but just as we were going to get back into bed she ran into the bathroom and got a towel and tied an extensive knot around the handles.
Several hours later we were woken up with a loud banging. I bolted up in bed.
"Sir!"
My mind raced to gather itself and assess at least 9 things wrong with my current situation. Cops, someone's boyfriend, my wife? Oh shit, why was I still getting myself into these predicaments? You would think I've learned a thing or two by now.
"Sir! This is hotel security. Are you in there sir? We're asking everyone to evacuate the building."
I got out of bed and rushed to open the door before they keyed their way in, "Hey what is going on?"
A man in an N95 mask and gloves was at the door, "Sir, we've been asked to evacuate everyone out of the building immediately. The hotel will be closing due to SARS-COV-2."
"What's going on," one of the girls asked.
"Miss, everyone needs to leave. We are evacuating the building. Please gather your belongings."
I looked at my companions and subsequently told them, "I can't believe they canceled Vegas."
For the next 20 minutes we scrambled to get ready. For a group of strangers it worked decently well. We cut the last lines and split it between the three of us. A smile, a kiss, and a hurried goodbye later meant that we found ourselves rushing for the elevator.
"Oh god, I forgot about the towel I tied to the cabinet," the architect said.
"It shouldn't be that much of a problem. Someone will just take it off later," I tried assuring her.
"What if no one gets back in there for weeks?" She looked at me slightly anxious, as if she was afraid to breathe the words, and a side of me knew what she was going on about.
"Alright, I'll go back," I told her.
The forewoman looked confused.
"I'll got with you," the architect said.
"No, you two get downstairs and see what is going on."
She looked at me with these doe eyes, the same look that has kept me awake for the past several days as I am laying here in boredom.
"I'll be fine I told her."
I ran back to the room, slid my keycard and began to untie the knot on the cabinet. And in my paranoia I took a video recording of the place before leaving, just so that I had evidence that the room was left in relatively good order later. The door slammed behind me, I pulled up my app to request an Uber as I made my way to the elevator. My phone vibrated, it must be the app I reasoned as I began shifting through my luggage to make sure I had gotten everything. When I reached the ground floor I searched for my two companions but found hotel personnel were rushing people into open taxis and Ubers to the airport. An entitled prick stood outside the valet desk as a manager profusely apologized for the inconvenience and how the hotel would compensate for one thing or another as he opened the door to a Porsche Panamera.
There was nothing for me to do except get into an Uber. I pulled up my phone expecting to see a familiar message that notified me that my driver would be arriving in 3 minutes, but instead it was a message from my host that simply said, "Thank you."
submitted by FingerFlares to nosleep [link] [comments]

Police Find a Human Leg and the Missing People Along The River Irwell, is there a Connection to the Manchester Pusher?

The Manchester Evening News Reported on the 28th Nov 2018 Police check missing persons list after 'human leg' found in River Irwell. Police are checking a list of missing people after human remains - believed to be a leg - were recovered from the River Irwell in Salford. The force says 'enquiries into the circumstances are ongoing'. The alarm was raised by a passer-by. Emergency services were scrambled to a stretch of the river near the red Jubilee Bridge, off Britannia Street. The North West Police Underwater Search and Marine Unit was also sent. A large cordon was erected as the investigation began. The bridge was closed off, with officers standing guard. The Jubilee bridge spans the river from Littleton Road playing fields at Lower Kersal to the Whit Lane area of the city (less than a few hundred yards from the Kersal Cell a well known paranormal hotspot with reports of dark cloaked figures being reported in the area since the 1500's, this is also an area of a recent sighting of the Salford Wildman in Jan of 2017, sightings of which go back to the 1970's). Police divers were seen entering the water, while officers were seen trawling the banks of the river. Witnesses said two black bags were later placed in a van by police after being pulled from the water.
Witness Stacey Sherratt, 29, said: "I first heard the sirens at around 11am, so I came outside and saw a boat pulling up two black bags. “I saw someone pulling a rope to bring the boat back in and then they put the two bags on the floor and put them in a van.” Police have released few details about the incident. There was however a discovery made two weeks later. A Human leg found in Manchester river belonged to missing mother of two. Police reveal recovered body part from 58-year-old Marie Scott, not seen for almost a year. DNA testing then confirmed the leg belonged to Marie Scott, who was reported missing from her home in Hale near Altrincham on 18 December last year, said Greater Manchester Police (GMP). The force said an investigation is ongoing, but at this stage there is no reason to believe there was any foul play or suspicious circumstances? Marie was last seen heading to a local shopping centre. Also along the Irwell and reported by the BBC is the strange case of missing man Nathan Tomlinson 2011.
Police investigating the disappearance of a man who went missing after a Christmas party are trying to identify a body found in the River Irwell. Nathan Tomlinson, 21, of Stockport, was last seen leaving the Mitre Hotel, near Manchester Cathedral, on 17 December 2011. Police believe he asked a bus driver how to get back to Stockport before he was captured on CCTV walking through Salford near the River Irwell. A body was found near Meadow Road in Lower Broughton on Thursday. Greater Manchester Police said Mr Tomlinson's family had been informed and efforts to confirm the identity of the body would be made later. Footage released by police may show Mr Tomlinson leaving the bar and jumping over a wall near the cathedral before walking across Victoria Street. He is believed to have ended up in Chapel Street, Salford, where a man fitting his description asked a bus driver how he could get home to Stockport. As part of inquiries to trace Mr Tomlinson, officers carried out a week-long operation in the area around the University of Salford, Peel Park and Salford Crescent railway station. 'A police spokesman said: “The identity is confirmed as that of Nathan. “A post-mortem examination has taken place. Further tests to establish the exact cause of death are to be carried out, but there are not believed to be any suspicious circumstances.” The news comes eight weeks after trainee sports science teacher Nathan, 21, from Brinnington, Stockport, disappeared following a works Christmas party at the Mitre Hotel in Manchester city centre. The body was recovered from the Irwell at 2pm on Thursday near Meadow Road in Lower Broughton, Salford. Nathan must of been lost and fallen into the river on his walk home?
In the same area there is another case of a missing man who was found in the River Irwell under 'no suspicious circumstances' a report in the Trafford Local News dated ) Oct 2018 stated Police are piecing together the movements of a Salford man in the days before he was found dead in a river. The body of 62-year-old Stephen Jordan was sadly found in the River Irwell near to Cromwell Bridge in Higher Broughton on Sunday 7 October 2018. (This area is less than a mile from the littleton Road site where missing Marie Scott severed leg was found and as discussed above this was also found in no suspicious circumstances) In the case of Mr Jordan the coronar stated 'There were not believed to be any suspicious circumstances surrounding his death a Home Office post-mortem examination, concluded 17 October 2018, proved inconclusive. Police are trying to piece together Stephen’s movements, with the last confirmed sighting of him being on 24 September 2018 at his house on Levens Street, Charlestown, Salford. Detective Inspector Joe Clarke of GMP’s Salford Borough, said: “At this stage, we’re treating Stephen’s death as unexplained and we’re working with the coroner to find out exactly how he came to die. “We have to keep an open mind in these circumstances but we are not currently treating this as a murder inquiry. “I appreciate the photo we have of Stephen isn’t the best and it is from a few years ago, but I’d ask people to study it and let us know if they saw him between 24 September and 7 October 2018.
It would seem that none of these deaths are being linked to the 'pusher' they did not happen in the busy centre of Manchester but further out of the city into the small neighbourhoods of Salford and Bury the Irwell itself runs North to the Ramsbottom area of Lancashire and the missing and sadly deceased people are being found all along that route. Is it the River itself that calls to people or is it just a sad fact of our society that people go missing or turn up in our local River and its barely noted, no huge headlines or hundreds of police out looking for clues, just a small statement in a local rag that will never make the National newspapers as the post code is not M1. As we follow the Irwell to its source we will see the same pattern over again. CCTV footage of a missing man from Bury has been released by Greater Manchester Police officers. Steven Dyson, 22, was last seen at 9am on Monday 1st January leaving a New Year’s Eve Party on St. Andrew’s Close in Ramsbottom. The CCTV shows Steven on the day he was last seen at Longsight service station around 4am and then later that morning using a cash machine on Bridge Street at 6am.
Detective Inspector Vicky Shaw, of GMP’s Bury Borough, said: “It’s been five days since Steven was last seen and his friends and family are worried sick. “Searches will continue around the Nuttall Lane area, with officers being supported by the underwater search unit, NPAS and the dog unit to find Steven. “We’ve had lots of help from people in searching for Steven so far and we’d ask for people in the area to please check your sheds and garages in case he’s seeking shelter. “It is likely that he is still in need of medical attention, which is why it’s so important that we find Steven as soon as we can.” A body found yesterday by police searching for Steven Dyson has been confirmed to be that of the missing Bury man. Officers searching for the missing 22-year-old found the body yesterday morning in the River Irwell in Bury, near to Railway Street. Steven's mum Lorraine Roach posted on Facebook: “I am devastated to say that the body found today is my lovely beautiful boy Steven. I am heartbroken. “I thank you Ramsbottom people for the massive overwhelming support. My angel my son. My love.” Greater Manchester Police said yesterday that "there are not believed to be any suspicious circumstances surrounding this man’s death."
The Body of elderly man found in River Irwell behind Salford casino not being treated as suspicious, police confirm Oct 2014 The circumstances surrounding the body of an elderly man who was recovered from the River Irwell in Salford yesterday evening are not being treated as suspicious, police have confirmed. Officers were called around 7pm on Wednesday after a body was spotted from the towpath near the A57 Regent Road, behind the Grosvenor Casino in Salford. An underwater diver team recovered the body of a man, believed to be in his 60s, though he has not yet been identified. A formal identity process is now due to take place. Greater Manchester Police have now confirmed that they believe there were no suspicious circumstances around the death.
As I normally report paranormal and cryptid reports it does stand out when I see a missing person found close to one of the above, at Holcombe Moor there is an account from a serving soldier on duties who saw along with his partner a 'huge hairy Ape Man type Creature' on two occasions in the 1980's so when the story of missing local woman Valerie Weston 58 appeared in the paper it caught my interest. POLICE searching for a missing woman have found a body in the River Irwell close to Bury town centre. Officers were called to a stretch of the river close to Bury Grammar School at just before 1pm yesterday after a passer by spotted what he thought was a body. The discovery the disappearance of Valerie Weston, aged 58, of Chapel Terrace, Ramsbottom, who was last seen at home at 10.50pm on Monday by neighbours who had left her address after spending the evening with her.
Her best friend Janice Johnson, who had known the former Coney Green High School teacher for 25 years, said the ‘whole community is in shock’. She said: “She was with my friend on Monday night and the next morning she called me to say she had not slept in her bed. “We were on a weather warning and she would’ve gone out to look and check on the river as we usually do. It was really windy and she could have been blown in. A Lancashire Police spokesman said: "There are no suspicious circumstances and a file will be prepared for the coroner. " Inspector Andy Carter, of Lancashire Police, said: "We believe she went out for a wander in the back garden and fell into the river. "Officers are supporting the family at this difficult time and our thoughts are with them."
Of course all of the above could be mere coincidental as the River has claimed many over the decades, when looking for bodies found along her route I found a story as old as 1814 The death of Lavinia Robinson, the Manchester Ophelia The body of 20-year-old Lavinia Robinson was found in the River Irwell on 7 February 1814, over seven weeks after she went missing from her home in Manchester. Had she done away with herself or, as some suspected, was she pushed into the water? And what was the nature of the furious argument she had with her fiancé on the night before she disappeared? Lavinia was described as “a young lady possessing superior mental accomplishments, with a person lovely as her mind, and of the most fascinating manners,” Lavinia’s sister Esther, having a cold, had gone to bed early but at 2am was startled awake as if by a loud noise. She could find nothing amiss and went back to sleep but at 3.45 got up to prepare for the chimney sweeps who were coming early in the morning. She noticed that the front door was unlocked. A short time later she discovered that Lavinia was not in the house.
Lavinia’s family reported her missing at the police office and advertised a reward of 30 guineas for her return “live or dead.” During their agonising wait, in the middle of a particularly cold winter, the River Irwell froze over. Their hopes may have been raised when a young woman arrived in distress at the home of a magistrate in Thatcham. He suspected that she might be Lavinia Robinson and, when questioned, she said she was – but it turned out that she was lying. Finally, at the beginning of February, the ice on the Irwell began to break up and on 7th Mr Goodier, a millworker, came across Lavinia’s body on a sandbank at Barton. She was still in the fawn-coloured gown she was wearing on the night she left her home, a pink and yellow silk handkerchief around her neck. She had lost a shoe, her mantle and a black beaver hat.
The next day a two-day inquest opened at the Star Inn, under the Coroner Nathaniel Milne. One of Lavinia’s brothers described hearing snatches of the argument between the lovers, her sister Esther spoke of being woken suddenly in the night, and James Bentley detailed his dealings with Holroyd after Lavinia disappeared. Holroyd, who declined to give evidence in person but submitted a written statement, left the court before the verdict was returned. The Coroner state “That Lavinia Robinson was FOUND DROWNED in the river Irwell… but how or by what means she came into the water we will never know. There was not enough evidence for a murder charge, nor for the certainty that Lavinia had committed suicide.
The inscription on her gravestone included the following lines:
More lasting than in lines of artThy spotless character’s imprest;Thy worth engraved on every heart,Thy loss bewail’d in every breast
Sadly sometime it is simply a case of bad things happening to good folks, mysteries abound and I am sure there will be more to come as the years move on from the River and along her bank.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/human-leg-found-river-irwell-15524654
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMH0c2q4uY8
submitted by BigfootDogmanReports to u/BigfootDogmanReports [link] [comments]

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