My family of 6 will be visiting the city and staying in NJ close to the George Washington Bridge. We’re driving, but figure that public transportation will be easier once we get there. My husband and I have been there several times without kids and have taken the subway. It’s been several years though and I’m not sure how to pay anymore or even how to use it. Is there an app? I understand we’ll have to take the bus into the city from NJ then use the subway. How do you pay for the bus? Can I download an app and us all use it, or do we each need our own tickets? Would it be less expensive to take a cab? Would we all even fit in a cab? Please advise. Thank you!

I want to introduce you to several of our board members that are here. So if you guys work your way up front. So Deacon Mark Lagreeve works at St. Francis as Deacon and is on the board of the Haven and was the founder of the Haven. So he has a little bit of an experience with this. Janky is current director of the Hope House and has a long history in Manitowoc, serving on common council at one time, business owner, and again, brings a lot of experience to what's needed here. So welcome. Brittany Punches is a teacher in town. She recently completed her master of social work degree, is a parent, and has been a Starworth volunteer at the shelter for the last two seasons, where she actually did part of her. Did they call them clinicals? Is that the right word, clinicals?
For her master of social work degree there. And so we're happy to have her joining the board. And then we also have Michael Etheridge, the director of the haven. He can't be here today, but is also on the board. And Amy Sonoman, who is the president of the board of Hope House and works at United one credit union. So these are the six and myself, six people from those three agencies that have initially created the board of the neighborhood. Now, we have a lot of work. Like, we don't even really have bylaws yet, but you know that we fill out the paperwork, but we have that. And then, of course, that will expand. But that's the core group.
And again, that's a sign of seeing that these main agencies that are addressing homelessness in our community are working together to make this a positive experience for the whole community. So at this moment, I want to say thank you to all of you for coming out. I don't know what motivated you to come out today. It might have been because you think this is the greatest thing that could ever happen. It could be that you've been a constant volunteer and supporter. It may have been because you have certain questions, but I'm glad that you're here because if we don't come together as a community, if we don't share our questions, we don't raise these things, we can never move. We can never move forward as a community.
So even if you have concerns or questions, that's what we want to make sure this is a community project and that we're able to address those concerns. So I'm going to open it up. If any of the three of you want to say anything, just something really short.
The reason we're doing this is, you know, there's market forces with the rental market, vacation rental properties, people buying second homes. A lot of snowbirds buying property here because they want to win. They want a winter here or summer here. So those are market forces. There are a lot of the new properties, condos that are being built. They're being bought by people that are wintering and have moved away to Florida and now are buying properties here to spend their summers here. So that's where some. Some of these things are happening and these are the market forces. So that's beyond our control. You know, landlords are. We love them. They serve a purpose in our community. But there's limited supply of properties, so the prices are going through the roof. I know of $800. What were $800?
Apartments that are now $1400, apartments that just changed last month, $500 or $600. So that's beyond our control. So we, as nonprofits, we have to do something of response much beyond our control. And that's to figure out how can we get into becoming landlords. How can we end up buying properties, converting them, and serving an unmet need of, you know, the people, the working class, the people that are trying to work through and find their way to home ownership or to find their way to restore their records. They need a starting place. And without us doing this, they don't have a starting place. And these are our community members. These are our family members. There are people that. That we love, that we want to care for. So that's why. What's the motivation to doing this?
And there are some generous donors in the community that see it, and they're asking, how are we going to resolve this? And they've been really asking, how do we collaborate and how do we do something to respond? And it's not just a Manitowoc issue, it's a national issue. So this is just what we're doing. Starting to do here at Manitowoc. 25 apartments here is going to make a little dent. The number of affordable apartments we determine are needed in the community is 150. There's 150. There's a lack of 150 apartments in this community. And that's what's driving supply and demand. That's what's driving up the prices of apartments. I lost my train of thought. There was something else I was going to say about. It'll come back to me. Jan, do you want to say anything?
Okay.
While you're thinking at Hope House, our priority has always been the family. So we have concentrated on, you know, single parents, couples with children, and we've not been able to really help the single female and the couples without children. So this gives us an opportunity to expand our facility that we currently have to help the single and the couple, along with our families, of course, and move them out of our current 90 day program into transitional housing, because those two groups really need help. It will not necessarily be big enough for our families, because our average family is, what, five, six people, which, you know, could be a single mom and five kids. Single mom, four kids, a couple. And these apartments may not be big enough for them. So that will help them through other means.
But we need to get the single female and the couples off the street, and this will help.
Waiting list. That's what they came up. So, Janine, what's the waiting list at the haven now? 100, 150, probably pretty close.
Single men.
Just single men. 100, 150 men get into the haven, and we can't accept them. We have to say, sorry, we gotta wait till someone moves out, but they don't have a place to move out to. What's the waiting list saying? Hope house.
It's over 100, and it's mostly single female and couples because we prioritize the family first.
So it's so hard saying no to these people. We just can't. It breaks our hearts. We have to do something, and this is the something.
So the neighborhood will put a dent in that. And obviously, it's not going to solve everything, but we start somewhere. Brittany, do you want to add anything?
I think it's just really important to press that this is a step in that transition and that it's going to move that process along. When we get our friends off the street, our guests, our neighbors that are those members of our community that, like pastor said, are exactly like us. We have had friends that have had months saved. They have an operation, and they get sick. We have had city bus drivers, we have had teachers. We have had individuals from every walks of life that something happened, and whatever it was their fault or not, oftentimes not. They need just a step up. And this is just one way to help them get back into the community and make our community stronger.
So do we have any questions? I mean, there's probably thousands of questions, but, yeah.
Who's going to do the video tour of the facilities? You've got meetings coming up. You need explanation. Video tour.
Okay, so we need to add to our list to have some folks make some. Some video walkthroughs of the facility. So people who have never seen them. We can get a kind of a look up. This is what the haven looks like. This is what the hope house looks like currently, as well as how this looks and what it can become.
So you mean video tours of Hope House, the haven and this building?
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah, I know that there's a property listing for this that has pictures of it. We have figured out how to share that so we can share that. I know there's a property listing for it that has pictures, but yes, a video would be a great idea to share them before. Pictures.
Yeah, share the pictures and then share the vision.
This is what it is, but this.
Is what it could be.
CONT. RECORDING TRANSCRIPT:
I want to know what you're going to do. They have no place to go during the day. I don't want them sitting on my mom's porch. I don't, you know, I know. Worked at places where I work at a convenience store where we've had them hang out at a convenience store. And I know a couple that, hey, they went and got a home and, you know, in another city, and they came back and what they wanted to do was be at that convenience store. So what plans you guys have for the neighborhood to keep everybody safe for the ones that not live here, but the warm.
Thank you. That's a great question. I'm sure a lot of people share that concern as well. So the first way I'll answer that is that. Oh, I'm. Thank you. Just what. Can you repeat the question? We had a hard time period. Yes, that's what. Yeah, that's what I was about to do. So the question was, is, what can we do to help those leaving the shelter each morning, to not just congregate on people's porches and such around the neighborhood, right around here? Is that a fair? Okay, so I'll answer that two ways. The first way is that, you know, the current warming shelter is less than half a mile from here, so it's already in this neighborhood. And so we have not had. Any of the neighbors have had concerns about that.
Most of the guests, when they leave, typically, at least at any given time, I'd say a quarter of the guests are working. So they're going to work. Some of them, of course, work a different shift. But one of the other gaps we have is what do they do during the day? I mean, a lot are at the library and stuff. We have found our guests to be respectful and kind and are. And if we ask them, you know, this, we have never had a problem with them hanging out at private property. And I think if we. That's one of the rules, if you will. We have rules at the shelter. There's conditions and, you know, and just simply to let them know that private property is private property. I, you know that.
I think you use the phrase what can we do to guarantee or insure we can't? Just like we don't now.
Well, you had mentioned earlier about being.
In, you know.
That'S what this area is. How do you keep them out of the alley? How do you keep them out of people's garages, as you had mentioned?
I'd say typically they're not. I mean, the guests at the shelter are not those people. It's the people who can't find room at the shelter, but that's just overnight.
So you kick them out in the morning, to put it one. So from morning to night, where are they going? Where are they going?
They're going to the library. I know the Salvation army two days a week has. They're walking to Walmart, they're walking out to Lowe's. I mean, they're getting on the bus. The location of being a few more blocks away from certain things is not going to impede them at all. I say Salvation army twice a week is offering lunch, which expanded beyond. I mean, it's not just like a half hour thing to hang out on Sundays. We had ascend services has opened up one of their facilities during the day. So I think that they'll be respectful of private property like they have been. I mean, we haven't had, crime rates have not increased around the shelter and things. So I think the guests will go. So typically they're not staying. They're not staying around the shelter.
I have a question.
Yeah, I want to. I just want to.
Well, I've been holding my hand for quite a while. You said that these people in the program in the apartments are background checked. What about the people that are overnight? Are they background checked? Do you know where they come from.
As a low barrier shelter, as we've run that the last two seasons? No, though they do not have background checks on them. We do have a policy that works with law enforcement that if there is a. I can't remember the law enforcement phrases, but if they have, we can have a relationship where they can come in. And if there is, if they are looking for somebody and have reasonable cause, is that the right phrase? Plausible cause that they're welcome to.
So they could have a record for all, you know.
Sure. Just like everybody else here who has a record here? I do.
I don't. Also, you had said that you have a very generous donor for the first year of expenses. What about the following years? Is that going to ever be passed on to the taxpayer?
No, this is not a city project. And so we have. No.
What about maintenance?
So one of our goals is that when we will fundraise for what high level expense? About 8 million. Okay. And then we want to add into that automatically another million that will create an endowment at the Lakeshore foundation so that there will be just generated money to help do maintenance. But also there will be. There will be funding generated by the rental of the apartments that will work. And then as any nonprofit, there will be additional, you know, community fundraisers. But this is not a county or a city project. So there's. This isn't a tax thing.
Well, what about extra police force that we pay for that.
So you would have to ask law enforcement. But at this point, they haven't added any extra law enforcement. You have something to add to that?
At the shelter, were open two seasons, 150 days each total of 300 days. I was there 294 of them. So I can. That's my background. When we called 911, were calling for rescue squad. We were calling because someone was having a stroke. We were calling because someone was having an apparent heart attack. We weren't calling because we had an illegal situation. Now, we have been told that we have saved the life of the person who was having a stroke, that had he been sleeping in his car or worse, he would have passed away. Obviously, these medical incidents would take place whether they were in the shelter under the watchful eye of volunteers, or out in the public.
Yeah, but you're comparing apples to oranges. You've never had a building this size in the middle of a residential neighborhood, and you've never had any trouble at all?
Let's have everyone have a chance. I want to go back to you because you had your hand up.
Check that out with the police.
I was just wondering if the vision could include some kind of cottage industry that. For training, for maybe helping those people that haven't worked in a while. I don't know if there's any programs like that, but that might also help generate some income and good teaching, still something to do during the day that maybe some of them would be a good fit for. And I also wanted to say that I had a family member before the warming shelter downtown who almost froze to death on a night when it was below zero. And yes, they were a drug addict.
But they told me when they were in recovery, they asked me to take them to the lutheran church on Meadow Lane, and they wanted to specifically talk to the assistant pastor because they knocked on his door and he gave them a voucher for a motel for two nights, or they could have possibly frozen to death. She was so grateful. So I just want to put that out there that if it hits home.
For you.
I appreciate your idea, and we'll certainly have that.
So this question probably goes beyond only the neighborhood, but at the concern is this program going to stay within the people that live in this town, or are we going to be welcoming people with Chabot, Green Bay, and all that? That would be an issue because, you know, sometimes the id doesn't match something from Manitowoc. They don't know the streets and things like that. So is there any chance that you guys are going to just take before all the managewalk people that we already know?
We would like to have a Manitowoc county first. Is that the right way to say it, Jan?
Yeah. We always take Manitowoc county residents first. That's the priority.
And also with the warming shelter, that's why we don't want to have more beds than we see the current need for this community.
Well, yeah, but at the end, if they're already here from Sheboygan, they took the right and all that, and they're already here. All the issues that they already mentioned, if they're gonna happen, they're gonna tend in this area or in the alley, walk around, you know, so I don't see. We don't see so much of that.
Issue of being homeless.
So is this gonna trigger something that is gonna make more people from other states?
You know, again, you know, there's certain things which, you know, I don't have a crystal ball, but. But again, though, the last two seasons of having a warming shelter have not created that. And the ten years at the Haven and the 20 years have not. Have not statistically shown that people are intentionally saying, I now need to use the last of my financial resources to travel to Manitowoc, particularly during the winter. So I want to let Brittany had a.
So I really want to mention that part because, like, not only have we seen from historically that it doesn't. It hasn't increased in any of the programs we currently have that open my.
Brain, I was like, oh, I was ready.
Was that.
Okay? Yeah. Yeah. Describe the security plans you have for the warming, Shelley, as to what types.
Of people are.
And how they go about doing that. Okay. I can talk a little bit about what it is now, knowing that isn't the same as what it will be here. And between now and 18 months, we haven't, you know, as far as, like, well, what does that mean with. With lighting and with camera systems? I can't. I can't answer all those questions about this. Personnel, currently. Personnel has been, has all, is currently, is all volunteer with training, and that includes involvement with law enforcement. They serve on the steering committee for the warming shelter and things. So that's how it's currently being staffed.
Pastor.
The main thing I did was I was officially the line monitor. It fell to me to count off the twelve people who were going to be allowed in. When I would walk up to number 13 or number 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, the fear in their eyes was so intense, I often had to turn away. I'm not an overly emotional person, but when I look at someone who has now got to figure out what piece of pavement they're going to sleep on, it rips me apart. Now, what does that mean for the security of the people who are staying in the shelter? The people staying in the shelter. Pay attention when we go over the guidelines, which we do every time there's a new person, or any time on a frequent basis, not every single day, because we have repeat guests.
They all know and they understand that because there is this pressure of these up to eight people out here, they mess up or they go against the guidelines, they could be asked to leave so that someone else would come in. This fear combined with the safety of a warm, safe, clean environment with a hot meal and people who care, keep the guests in a very comfortable, easy to talk to manner. Out of the twelve that come in at a night.
It'S already happening.
It's happening now with everything over twelve.
One voice at a time. Folks, this is a community.
You're bringing it into our neighborhood. We're asking what you're going to do to help protect our neighborhood.
By increasing our capacity to twelve beyond the eight that, up to eight that we know we shouldn't have that. I suspect that if there are homeless in this area, and I believe there are, they're already in places that you don't even know about because they've adapted to their environment. What we're doing is we're pulling them off the street. In the twelve most vulnerable times of the day. From the shelter, there is a migration. South. Library, painting pathways.
YMca.
YMca.
Grow it forward.
Grow it forward. There's all these places that they're headed towards. They have no interest in going away or north in this case, because there aren't resources up there. There's not meals, there's not warm, safe places for them.
Okay, we'll go back. And they have created a community themselves and they hang together.
And so they don't, they're not going.
To the peace by themselves.
They hang together.
They have created a community where they.
Are safe in their numbers with each other and they look out for each other. So I just can't imagine that they would branch out, that they are going to stay, as Ken said, they're going.
To go where their opportunities are to be together.
Well, that's what we're here today for, and that's what history stands for. We didn't see no flyers or anything.
Nothing.
And that's on you now. I would take it even a step farther. Something in this bank should be a referendum.
We have election six months coming.
Off. Yeah, I mean I can appreciate that sentiment, but this isn't, this isn't a city funded thing and therefore it's a dictatorship. Well, we haven't purchased the building. I told you what the conditions for purchase are. Yeah, I believe Mister Cummings. Well, and this, you may not live here, literally right here that the shelter is Mike Cummings. And I believe over there is. Yes. You always said about security and everything and getting people back to work. I know you guys have a shelter down the history every time, because I live here, every time I pass a quick tripod, there's always two or one squad car outside. There's always fights in there all the time. Okay, I hear that. I appreciate that.
Absolutely.
A sweat equity is something that may happen. Absolutely. And they take advantage of many opportunities like that now. So I'm not going to tell you something that we have a plan worked out where they will do all necessary maintenance and janitorial thing. Because what I hear is similar to another one about how can, you know, what are some ways that we can help both teach them or give them some skills that they may take advantage of the incredible skills that they already. So, yeah, I mean, I think that certainly is part of our long term, you know, discussion on how we can do that. I use the term sweat equity. You know, that they're putting something into those resources.
Not a question, statement. The reason you had mentioned, first of all, that neighborhoods or neighbors may be concerned about their taxes, property, you know, their values going down, their property they will go down. I mean if you cross Washington to where all of your very wonderful programs are, the taxes or the property values are lower than they are in this neighborhood? It's just a fact. Just a fact.
Couldn't that because the houses on the south side are older?
No, no.
Are you saying that the property taxes.
No, I'm talking about value tax or property values. Yeah. I'm a realtor. I know that this. This side of the city is. I'm not talking about the hope house reputation or anything. I'm just stating a fact that the south side's property values are lower than they are here.
Always works.
Okay.
Thank you.
And this is just a question to everybody. Are you guys concerned about putting people from encourage Hope House Haven, all of those places that are separated now because we need security for the men's shelter. You need security for domestic violence, you need security for sexual assault victims, you need security for all of those people. And you have them in all different places due to that and background check them. You do all these kind of things. Programs are great that they're working for. I 100% agree with that. But now you're going to put them all in one area, in one apartment complex. So that is my thought about this. Or concern about. About that.
Sure. Can they trigger each other or something.
Coming in and those people haven't been bedded and there, I understand locks and everything, but if they both walk out the same door, they're in the same area. Is that a concern? Because if you have somebody in the warming shelter who isn't supposed to have contact with somebody here who says they're not becoming a nice.
There's a lot of things to work out as we work it out.
Yeah.
Big thing is how do we secure, make it secure and safe for people? Because we're helping people transition to safety as they move out into society. So, yeah. So do we have the answer yet? No, but we know we need to. We know we need to. But, yeah, we're just starting. We started talking a couple months ago when this all started coming together. So we're in the process of getting there. We have 18 months to figure it out.
And you know, too, then the safety of the building and everybody in it, and then the safety of all the neighborhood and everybody around it as well. Because if there's going to be issues with that community and there's going to be issues around the neighborhood community as well, if you're bringing, you know what I'm saying? If there's nothing that conflict, that's just.
I like, I learned what to answer a question with a question. Who's controlling who's living in all the.
Rental apartments in this neighborhood?
No. Who's controlling who's living in the neighborhoods in this community? Who's making sure they're all safe in these rentals in this community?
Police.
Who's making sure that?
Police. Our local police. No, landlords don't do ___. They don't have to do ___.
Stop. Police.
Well, hi.
Are we on opposite sides on this?
Actually, yeah. And I don't even live here. I live in two rivers.
It's gonna be a __ show.
Making advancements 150. And I don't see that 150 number getting smaller as the real estate market.
Remember that they're coming to where they are under total programs, where they're under rules.
I mean, I get that.
And that's not going to change when they come here from the news.
Doesn't mean that they always follow the rules of the program.
I work every day.
And so if they don't, you know, if they don't follow the rules, they're out. And we answer people when they don't, you know, find child care for their children. And, you know, so all these things are totally case management at home.
It would come. It would come through the agency that they entered.
Okay, so it wouldn't be here directly. It would be from. If they're at the case management.
Correct.
So it's not here.
They're having case management not through here, but it may physically happen. Yeah. I would just say the mix of people. The nice thing is that because they are in a program and we know something, they'll be able to determine that this person may not be in the right. We'll know more about them than other apartments and or just home buyers and home rental things. So we try to address some of that, and some people just are tension built with other people around. And some of that we may know. So clearly, if we work with encourage, there's not going to be the person seeking services there, and the person who helped make them go into service are going to be the same.
Transitional housing. Some people, you know, as we've said before, some people might need 120 days of, you know, being in home, and they may never be ready for transitional living. So we have to help them through the rest of the process. So the people that will be here are those that are ready to learn, be on their own, and then get out to be independent members of the.
I live in the neighborhood. Okay. The most important, the important thing about each one of you and me and anybody who might be here is their intrinsic value as a human being. But each human being has an intrinsic value because they're human. So we don't have to trust everyone, right? Maybe not everybody deserves our trust, but everybody deserves respect. And when we don't have compassion, that's looking at us. So I understand, and I bet you they have really smart people working on.
All of it, and they're going to.
Want input so that everybody sees public.
Insurance.
That we are truly responding as a human being, compassion for one another, because as we're compassionate, it's going to grow. A compassionate community. That's right. Now, you have two important meetings coming up, right.
The city.
The first one's Wednesday evening, 06:00 p.m.?
Right? Yes. That's what the public hearing with the site or the plan commission. And then June 17, we would love to have people come and to share your thoughts, your values. I mean, the same types of things that were shared today.
Thank you.
Okay.
Your thought is also that with this transitional housing, those people, there will be.
Someone here that will be case managing.
24/7 not necessarily living.
There will be someone here, like at the warming shelter.
There will be somebody here.
Whenever the warming shows shelters open and the traditional housing, they'll be case managers, checking in daily or weekly or however.
Far along they are.
Yeah.
On their own, running around, doing whatever. They will be under an umbrella of monitor.
They can do whatever they want. Right. They're adults. They can leave.
Yeah.
Go and do whatever they want. So that doesn't stop people from doing. Right. Just like any homeowner, any apartment, any.
Apartment.
We have more control over that. So if they live here and they do something wrong, and he says, you're out. So if they put them on the street, where do they go? Do they go to the warming shelter? Do they stay in our neighborhood? That's our concern. They're going to where they go without it right now, which is, unfortunately where they are right now. All across the community, usually more out in the rural areas under the 21st.
Street Cathay.
Down from the cemetery where they have it should have come out Thursday.
So on Thursdays. Well, should have been. I'm saying should have been. So the plan commission meeting is next Wednesday, and with every plan commission meeting, there's a community mailing within some radius of the area. So the city should have mailed this out already. So if you don't have it, you should be getting it soon. If you have it, contact the plan commission and say, why do I. Why haven't I received the mail and.
I couldn't tell you what that radius is.
So we wanted to. We wanted to have this gathering before you receive the mailing.
And if you. Yeah. And remember, if you don't own your house, unfortunately, you don't get a mailing.
The property owner.
Property owner does. So I mean, that, again, that's. That's it. That's a city thing. So if you're a renter, you may. Your. Your landlord may not share that with you.
Okay, one.
One more that I want to be respectful of our hour.
We've had homeless for longer than we can ever imagine. I had taken a course at Green Bay, and I said, well, we don't have that many. She said, they're coming to us. We have no place.
Thank you for bringing this to fruition. We never thought about it two seasons ago.
Thank you, pastor, so much.
Okay, so I want to be respectful of our hour together. So, again, thank you all for coming. Continued dialogue, it makes us a healthier community, so thank you.
I guess so.

I have a playlist called "reflective" that is full of music that kinda locks you inside your own thoughts. What could I add to it?

Coals - Weightless
Ørka - Phantom
Misc. Inc - I Never Felt like This
Aes Dana - Anthrazit
Local Natives - Mt. Washington
Haux - Homegrown
Daughter - Still
Billie Eilish - I Love You
.anxious - memories
Daughter - Drift
Oh Wonder - All We Do
Death Cab for Cutie - Company Calls (Epilogue)
The Neighbourhood - Prey
Nuages - Dreams
Koda - I Don't
Message to Bears - Mountains
Mogwai - Take Me Somewhere Nice
Death Cab for Cutie - Title Track
Ben Howard - Black Flies
Daughter - Touch
Bring Me the Horizon - Memorial
Death Cab for Cutie - A Lack of Colour
Koda, Bijou - Waking
Petite Biscuit - You
Nuages - Shadows
Nuages - Gone
Bloc Party - Compliments
Aqualina - April Showers
Azaleh - Rainy Nights
Koda, Bijou - There

Happy off day friends. With tomorrow’s Game 7 the only thing on the NHL docket until the Conference Finals start on Wednesday, I wanted to deep dive into something I had found mildly interesting: there will be four teams in the Conference finals this year, each of whom have not won the cup in 25 years. Dallas is the most recent in 1999 and exactly 25 years ago, followed by the Rangers in 1994, and the Florida Panthers who were founded in 1993 but have never won the cup. The Canucks also have never won the cup and were established in 1970 while the Oilers last won in 1990. This has never happened before.
That’s the tl;dr: Every Semi- or Conference Finals in the history of the league has featured either a team that won the cup in the 25 years prior or a team that hadn’t existed for 25 years.
This started as I looked for the last time the most recent cup winner among the four finalists was at least 25 years prior. That would be in 2004, when the Flames, Sharks, Lightning, and Flyers were the Conference Finalists. The Flames were the most recent cup winner of those four teams, having won in 1989, exactly 25 years previously (I love this coincidence with the Stars also being at exactly 25 years this year). The Flyers were also nursing a 29-year drought at the time, while the Lightning and the Sharks hadn’t existed for the requisite years.
Edit: I can't math, this isn't 25 years. I return to the deep dive to try and find the last time the most recent cup winner in a conference finals was 25 years prior.
Edit 2: I believe I return to the 94 Conference Finals. With the Devils setting the pace with their inception in 1974 and the Canucks not having won the cup, the most recent cup winner in 94 conference finals was the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1967. That was 27 years prior.
This is where the deep dive started, as I was next interested in if any conference or semi-final in the history of the league featured teams with such large cup droughts. So, let’s go all the way back to the beginning.
Pre-Original Six Era. 1927-1942
The NHL became the only league with claim to the Cup in 1917, but it wasn’t until 1926-27 that the league began using a playoff format that included four teams in the Semi-Finals. That year, the Ottawa Senators won the cup with ten teams in the league. From 1927 to the beginning of the original six era in 1942 (15 years), every team that played in the league other than New York Americans and Pittsburgh Pirates/Philadelphia Quakers won the Stanley Cup. Many of those teams were only founded within the few years prior to the 26-27 season, and those that weren’t had already won a Stanley Cup.
Original Six Era. 1942-1967
When the league reduced down to six teams in 1942, all of the remaining teams had won the Stanley Cup during the prior era. The longest drought at the time belonged (somewhat ironically) to the Montreal Canadiens, who had not won since 1931. They ended their 13-year drought in 1944. Two of the six teams never won the cup in this era, the Bruins and the Rangers. But since four of the six teams made the playoffs, it would be impossible in this era for four teams to make the playoffs with none of them having won in the past 25 years.
Expansion Era. 1967-1992
When the league expanded to 12 teams, they made a fascinating decision to split the league into the Original Six and Expansion Six divisions. Even when two more teams were added to the league in 1970, and two more in 72, the only non-expansion team in the West Division was the Chicago Blackhawks (hilariously, the Vancouver Canucks played in the “East Division”). So for those five years, it was impossible for the Semi-Finals not to include at least one expansion team.
In 1974, the league introduced the Wales and Campbell conferences, which remained in place through the end of this era in 1992 (which is conveniently 25 years since expansion). While it would not have been impossible for four different non-expansion teams to make the conference finals, it never happened. From 1967 to 1992, at least one non-original six franchise made the Semi/Conference Finals. It could have gotten close in 1979, when the Islanders were the lone non-original-six team in the Conference Finals. But, even had the Black Hawks beaten the Islanders in the Quarterfinals, the Canadiens were on the verge of a four-peat.
(Other of note here was the 1980 Semi-Finals, the first time in history that the Semis only featured non-original-six franchises)
But by virtue of at least one expansion team in the conference finals before any of those teams had a chance to have 25 years in the NHL, there was always at least one team in the Semis/Conference with a drought no more than 25 years.
Pre-Salary Cap Era. 1992-2004
By the time the clock turned on the 92-93 season, 25 years after the Expansion Six joined the league, only two of those teams had won the Stanley Cup. More teams would hit the 25 year threshold in this era, but with more teams joining the league and the lingering years of the 70s and 80s dynasties, the buffer remained for at least one team. This era did have 1994 conference finals with the Canucks, Maple Leafs, Rangers, and Devils, all of whom had 20+ year droughts at the time. This is also a significant year, in that the Devils “set the pace” at exactly 20 years since their inception in 1974. The first time since 1928 that a team’s inception was more recent than another Conference finalist’s last cup.
A close call in the 1997-98 playoffs featured the Dallas Stars, the Washington Capitals, and the Buffalo Sabres, all of whom had never won the cup and were over 25 years old at the time. The Red Wings rounded out that group, though, and they had just won the year prior. The St Louis Blues lost in the quarterfinals to the Wings; had they won, they would also have had a 25+ year drought.
And then, the era ends with the last time the most recent cup winner of the remaining teams was 25-years prior. The aforementioned 04 Conference finals featured two teams with 25+ year droughts and two teams that weren’t yet 25 years old. The Lightning, established in 1992, were 12 years old.
Edit: See above, I can't math
Salary Cap Era. 2006-Present
Since then, each conference finals featured a cup winner more recent than 25 years prior. 2010 featured the long droughted Chicago Blackhawks, with the Flyers hitting another milestone year of their drought, but the Sharks were just coming up on just 20 years in the league and the Habs had won 17 years prior in 1993. And when the Golden Knights joined the league in 2017-18, they made the conference finals four times in their short existence (along with appearances from teams who had won the cup in the previous 25 years).
In Conclusion
Here’s a spreadsheet I made with every year’s most recent Cup winner or new franchise: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13i4sWXjNwDJsL-pZfduvBwQKB_JlVi8_26Dq03cz8Lc/edit?usp=sharing
This is a pretty historic conference finals. While 25 years might seem a little arbitrary (and if you’ve made it this far, thanks for not pointing out that it’s actually only 23 seasons), it’s the longest ever shared drought between four teams in the league at the same time. Also, it’s five years longer than the previous record, the 20-year droughts shared by the 1995 conference finalists.
One of these five teams will break a 25+ year drought this season. And none of them are the Toronto Maple Leafs.

https://x.com/craigsmorgan/status/1791832361602040130

Fun tidbit via NHL Stats: If Vancouver eliminates Edmonton tonight or Monday, it would mark the 1st time in NHL history that the conference finals featured 4 division winners.
In 2018, there were 3 (Tampa, Washington, Vegas).
The NHL has featured at least 4 divisions since 1974.

After seeing that on a hockey Discord I was in, I thought to go year by year to see exactly at what point since the 1974-75 season did the dream of an all-division leader conference finals come to an end. Here's what I found out, in it's simplest form:
1974-75: Flyers, Canucks, Sabres, Canadiens. Because they were reseeded each round by points, the Canucks were put up against the Canadiens in round 2. Division winners had byes into the 2nd round BTW so a lot of upsets led to this happening.
75-76: Flyers, Hawks, Bruins, Canadiens. Again, because of the reseeding, we had division leader vs. division leader in round 2 with the Canadiens/Hawks series.
76-77: Flyers, Blues, Bruins, Canadiens. Again, reseeding led to Canadiens/Blues.
77-78: Islanders, Hawks, Bruins, Canadiens. Reseeding had Bruins/Hawks, but also Islanders lost to the Leafs.
78-79: Islanders, Hawks, Bruins, Canadiens. Reseeding gave us Islanders/Hawks.
79-80 (the 1st year of the merger): Flyers, Hawks, Sabres, Canadiens. Reseeding gave us Sabres/Hawks, Canadiens lost in round 2 as well.
80-81: Islanders, Blues, Sabres, Canadiens. Canadiens lost in round 1.
81-82: Stars, Oilers, Canadiens, Islanders. All but the Islanders failed to make it to the 2nd round.
82-83: Hawks, Oilers, Bruins, Flyers. Flyers lost in round 1.
83-84: Stars, Oilers, Bruins, Islanders. Bruins lost in round 1.
84-85: Blues, Oilers, Canadiens, Flyers. Blues lost in round 1.
85-86: Hawks, Oilers, Nordiques, Flyers. All but the Oilers failed to make the 2nd round.
86-87: Blues, Oilers, Whalers, Flyers. Blues and Whalers lost in round 1.
87-88: Wings, Flames, Canadiens, Islanders. Islanders lost in round 1.
88-89: Wings, Flames, Canadiens, Capitals. Wings and Capitals lost in round 1.
89-90: Hawks, Flames, Bruins, Rangers. Flames lost in round 1.
90-91: Hawks, Kings, Bruins, Penguins. Hawks lost in round 1.
91-92: Wings, Canucks, Canadiens, Rangers. All of them lost in round 2
92-93: Hawks, Canucks, Bruins, Penguins. Hawks and Bruins lost in round 1.
93-94: Rangers, Penguins, Wings, Flames. All but the Rangers failed to advance to round 2.
94-95: Flyers, Nordiques, Wings, Flames. Nordiques and Flames lost in round 1.
95-96: Flyers, Penguins, Wings, Avs. Flyers lost in round 2.
96-97: Devils, Sabres, Stars, Avs. Stars lost in round 1.
97-98: Devils, Penguins, Stars, Avs. All but the Stars failed to advance to round 2.
98-99 (1st year of 6 divisions): Devils, Senators, Hurricanes, Wings, Avs, Stars. Devils, Senators and Hurricanes lost in round 1.
99-00: Flyers, Leafs, Capitals, Blues, Avs, Stars. Capitals and Blues lost in round 1. Leafs lost in round 2.
00-01: Devils, Senators, Capitals, Wings, Avs, Stars. Sens, Caps, and Wings lost in round 1.
01-02: Flyers, Bruins, Hurricanes, Wings, Avs, Sharks. Flyers and Bruins lost in round 1. Sharks lost in round 2.
02-03: Devils, Senators, Lightning, Wings, Avs, Stars. Wings and Avs lost in round 1. Stars and Lightning lost in round 2.
03-04: Flyers, Bruins, Lightning, Wings, Canucks, Sharks. Bruins and Canucks lost in round 1. Wings lost in 2.
04-05: We all lost.
05-06: Devils, Senators, Hurricanes, Wings, Flames, Stars. All the West leaders failed to make the 2nd round.
06-07: Devils, Sabres, Thrashers (lol), Wings, Canucks, Ducks. Thrashers lost in round 1 (lolx2). Canucks and Devils lost in round 2.
07-08: Penguins, Canadiens, Capitals, Wings, Wild, Sharks. Capitals and Wild lost in round 1. Sharks and Canadiens lost in round 2.
08-09: Devils, Bruins, Capitals, Wings, Canucks, Sharks. Devils and Sharks lost in round 1. Bruins, Capitals and Canucks lost in round 2.
09-10: Devils, Sabres, Capitals, Hawks, Canucks, Sharks. All of the East leaders lost in round 1.
10-11: Flyers, Bruins, Capitals, Wings, Canucks, Sharks. All made it to round 2. Sharks defeated the Wings, Bruins defeated the Flyers, and the Capitals lost to the Lightning.
11-12: Rangers, Bruins, Panthers, Blues, Canucks, Coyotes (lol). Bruins, Panthers, and Canucks lost in round 1. Coyotes lost in the conference finals (wtf?)
12-13: Penguins, Canadiens, Capitals, Hawks, Canucks, Ducks. Only the Penguins and Hawks made it to round 2.
13-14 (return of 4 divisions): Bruins, Penguins, Avs, Ducks. Avs lost in round 1.
14-15: Canadiens, Rangers, Blues, Ducks. Blues lost in round 1.
15-16: Panthers, Capitals, Stars, Ducks. Panthers and Ducks lost in round 1.
16-17: Canadiens, Capitals, Hawks, Ducks. Canadiens and Hawks lost in round 1.
17-18: Lightning, Capitals, Predators, Knights. Predators lost in round 2.
18-19: Lightning, Capitals, Predators, Flames. They all lost in round 1.
19-20 (at the time of the Covid pause): Bruins, Capitals, Blues, Knights. Capitals and Blues lost in round 1.
20-21 (wacky division shit): Hurricanes, Penguins, Leafs, Avs. Leafs and Penguins lost in round 1.
21-22: Panthers, Hurricanes, Avs, Flames. Only the Avs advanced beyond round 2.
22-23: Bruins, Hurricanes, Avs, Knights. Bruins (lmao) and Avs lost in round 1.
23-24: Panthers, Rangers, Stars, Canucks. We wait.
tl;dr: Reseeding at first was the problem, then upsets galore in the following years. There were many times that we came close with 4+ teams making the 2nd round only to fall just short, the worst being 10-11 when all 6 division leaders made the 2nd round and a sweep prevented the first all-division leader conference finals. As I'm typing this it's 3-1 Oilers so we may have to wait a little longer for it to happen. UPDATE: Canucks lost both games 6 and 7 so the streak lives on.

Heartbreak.
That’s what got me, well, out of my funk. In a sense, at least. I was in a rut. Knew it. She did too. Guess we were in a rut, really. Ran its course. Doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt like hell, but, well, sometimes stories end, you know?
So I did my piece. Curled up into the fetal position and fucking bawled. Days went by. Go to work. Go home. A zombie. Drank a lot more. But time wore down the edges eventually. And one day, I said “fuck it.” Packed my car, quit my job, and fucked off across the country. That was the plan anyway. Heading home. Maybe with my tail between my legs. I wasn’t sure.
It was a long drive. From the West Coast to the depths of the Midwest. From the shimmering, golden shores to undulating, aureate waves of grain. Radio stations fading in and out. Long stretches of static. Data dropping fucking everywhere. Sometimes I twisted through the AM band. Hellfire and brimstone. Vast conspiracies that always lacked imagination. What happened the fun stuff? Lizard people. Time travelers. Area 51. Not anymore. Everything’s a fucking angle. Propaganda. Switch it off.
I took a long way. Choosing county routes over the interstate. I had time to kill, so why not? Might as well see some of this country. The back parts. Dark parts. Quiet parts. Flyover parts. The “you don’t see anyone other than the locals and lost” and kinda parts. And I guess I was lost, right? In a sense. Though, I was hoping I wouldn’t become physically so. God knows I didn’t need to slip through the cracks of the Earth somewhere out near Kearney, Nebraska.
But things did get strange–shouldn’t that be expected out in these less-traveled places, though?--somewhere around Sheldon, South Dakota. I was at a rest stop, pulled over for a break, trying to get the last Clif bar to break free of the piece of shit vending machine, when I saw a black semi roll up.
Now, when I saw black, I mean completely. Utterly. Entirely. A pitch black cab with tinted black windows pulling a matching black trailer. Even the rims were black. It stood out like a oozing sludge against the golden, baked landscape. I stood there, by the vending machine, waiting for a while to see who would emerge. Of course I was curious. BUt…no one did. It just sat there–this beast of a vehicle–idling. I figured the driver must have been pulling over to take a nap or to call it quits from his shift–they can only drive so long, right? But you’d think they’d want to step out and stretch their legs.
Eventually, I managed to hit the plastic of the machine just right to free my Clif bar. I tore it open, took a bite, and returned to my car. Back on the road. I had places to be.
It was strange, though. I kept seeing the black truck after that. It passed me–somehow–on the highway a few dozen miles from the rest stop. But I caught up, a few miles outside of Sioux City. I passed right alongside it, my eyes straining to see who was driving. Naturally, the windows were tinted too and I couldn’t see a damn thing. I just couldn’t put it out of my mind. Such an odd sight. This big, beastly, pitch black truck barreling across the dull Midwest. It didn’t even have any markings. No company logo. No indication of what it was delivering, who it belonged to, or where it might be going. Well, it did have plates. Washington. But there was no way to know where it originated from.
After passing by it and getting through Blue Earth, I saw it again at a rundown motel. The Cozy Inn. I had pulled off a few hours earlier, deciding to spend the night. I was exhausted, had pulled a 10 hour day and could barely keep my eyes open. The clerk put me up in some grimy room that looked like the set of more than one true crime series. Stained sheets. Peeling wallpaper. A bathroom sink more inclined to spit out brown gunk than drinkable water.
My window faced the parking lot. I sat up for a while, curtains drawn, vaguely watching the television–playing one of those trashy true crime shows I feared I might end up on–and the parking lot. Cars occasionally came and went. I saw some of my neighbors, who looked mostly like travelers or perhaps vagrants. While a police officer was detailing a particularly gruesome scene on Murder Comes Home, I saw the black semi roll into the parking lot.
Once again, it sat there idling, headlights blazing through my window. I grew irritated. I almost got up to go outside. As I was contemplating the possible dangers of such a decision, a woman approached the monstrous truck. She looked beautiful in a miserable way, with a short fluorescent pink skirt and heels too high for the pock-marked parking lot.
She opened the passenger side door and climbed in, disappearing into the tinted darkness. The headlights went off and for a while I watched, silence save for the exploitative program murmuring in the background:
Her limbs were buried in separate spots along the roadside ditch…
My heart–broken though it was–thumped in my throat.
Her head was never recovered…
I walked outside, suddenly very concerned. I stood on the pavement in my shorts and t-shirt, facing the truck, no idea what I might do.
The door opened.
The woman stepped out.
Blood was running down her neck.
I ran up to her, “Miss, hey, Miss, are you okay?! You’re bleeding. Should I call an ambulance?” I was frantic, my eyes darting between the blood on her neck, trying to ascertain the source and the thumping truck.
“Oh, I’m fine. Just swell. Fucking grand.” Her voice was dreamy. Her eyes were glazed over as though she was in a daze.
I grabbed her arm, “I really don’t think you’re–”
She suddenly became more cogent, grasping my hand, “You don’t wanna get fucking involve in this, kid.”
I thought that was an odd thing to say–she was younger than me.
“I’m just trying to–” The headlights went on, illuminating us like a spotlight on a stage. The woman darted off, swaying as she did.
I stood there–stupid–not moving. All the lights in the parking lot went out and all I could hear was the engine idling. The driver’s side window rolled down. For a while–what seemed like an eternity, really–nothing happened. But then a hand emerged, casually, finger curling backwards, calling me over. And so I walked. What was I going to do? Be rude?
I couldn’t see inside the cab, but a voice emerged. It was deep, bone-shaking. It didn’t feel like it traveled through the air. More like it vibrated my eardrums, bouncing around my skull.
“You’re hurt.”
It took me a moment to gather myself, “Hurt?”
“Deeply. Wounded. Lost. Like a stray dog.”
I squeezed my hands together and could feel tears welling up in my eyes, “I’m just–”
“I can help.” The voice pushed inside me.
“You can?”
“Get in. Come take a little ride. You’ll feel better. Free. Happy. Complete.”
I stood in hesitation, my eyes on the hand, which was a deathly pale. It was almost translucent, but seemed so soft, gentle. I wanted to feel it on my cheek.
“Okay.”
I walked to the other side of the cab, pulled open the heavy metal door, and climbed into the plush, black seat. As soon as I pulled it shut I felt hands all over me. In my hair. On my neck. Roaming along my collarbones. Grasping my shoulders. I couldn’tj tell how many. Four? Six? Eight? Soft and gentle and cold.
I closed my eyes. I sank into the darkness. The headlights went out as the cab rumbled, pulling back onto the deserted county route.
And I felt good. So good.
Now, I don’t feel anything at all. Not scared or sad or hurt or lost. I’m found. Just like you could be found. So if you ever see a pitch black semi rolling along the highway, think about flagging it down.
And then, like me, you’ll never have to die again.

Dear (ELATeachers) Middle and High School Teachers,
I know this can be a busy time of year for teachers! However, I am writing to ask if you would participate in an anonymous survey I developed as part of my doctoral training.
I am currently a doctoral candidate in the Special Education Department at the University of Washington. I am collecting survey data to explore how Middle and High School teachers offer texts or materials to meet students' diverse needs. I would really appreciate your insight and perspective via my survey!
This survey will take 15 or less minutes of your time.
My study has been reviewed and approved by the UW IRB board. All responses will recorded anonymously and no identifying information about you or your school will be recorded.
To Participate: Please click on the survey link and answer the survey questions to the best of your ability.
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me at smender@... Please also feel free to forward my flyer to additional teachers or teacher networks as well!
Thank you very much for your time.
Warm regards,

Suzanne Ender

So will these numbers be good enough to keep Duchene?

https://x.com/capfriendly/status/1791523021913575520?s=46&t=7fabqgtgp69dNA1d51vxFw

Hello everyone, welcome to the third discussion about Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Hope you studied hard this week, I sure did!

Summary

Previously, in Thinking Fast and Slow, we followed Kahneman and Amos’s academic bromance in the wonderful world of decision making and biases. Our two main characters model two kinds of behavior of the brain. System 1, always on, is the intuitive one, that makes continual judgments and assumptions. System 2 is the slower one, only called when necessary, that produces rational thinking, mathematical reasoning, and is awfully lazy. We learned that even specialists are really bad at intuitive statistics and apply the law of small numbers when they shouldn’t.
Chapter 11: Anchors When we are asked to consider a possible solution to an estimation problem (eg, did Gandhi die after 100 years old?), our answer will be close to this number, like it’s anchored to it. Even when the proposition is obviously unrelated, like with a rigged wheel of fortune. It has many consequences, like with real estate prices and every negotiation. If someone starts one with an absurd price, make a big fuss and stop it until a more reasonable offer.
Both systems cause this behavior. System 1 because of priming (unconscious influence of a previous information). System 2 makes us start at the anchor, and then adjust, often not enough.
Btw, here are the answers to the questions, it annoyed me that they weren’t in the book. Washington became president in 1789. Waters boils at around 70°C/160°F on top of the Everest. Gandhi died at 78 years old.
Chapter 12: Availability We learn about the availability bias. When we are asked to estimate the frequency of an event, our answer depends on how easily we can retrieve examples from our memory. The more dramatic and personal the example is, the more it works. Making people list examples increases the perceived frequency, except when you ask too much. Finding 12 examples of something is hard, and your brain will interpret the cognitive fatigue as a less frequent phenomenon.
Chapter 13: Availability, emotion and risk Our perception of risk is biased by availability and the affect heuristic. If you feel strongly about something negative, you will evaluate the risk as stronger. It’s especially true with very small risks such as terrorism, which our brain is really bad at evaluating (it’s either ignored or given too much weight). And a recent disaster in the news will make us renew our insurance policies. There is a very negative correlation between benefit and risk in the mind of people. This means that if a technology is perceived as highly useful, you will perceive it as less risky, and vice versa.
Kahneman then presents two philosophies about risk assessment and how it affects public policy. There can be availability cascades around public panics such as the Love Canal controversy, fed by media frenzy and politics. Slovic thinks that risk being not objective (it depends on what parameter we prioritize, such as lives or money), the perception of the citizens should never be ignored. Sunstein wants risk experts to rule, because public pressure make the biased lawmakers prioritize the use of tax money inefficiently. Kahneman wisely stays in the middle of this merciless academic scuffle.
Chapter 14: Tom W Tom W is a fictional university student invented by Kahnmos. The goal of the exercise is to guess his specialty. The subjects are told the proportion of the students in each specialty (the base rate, humanities being more probable than STEM), and sometimes a (dubious) psychological profile. He’s described as a nerdy asocial guy who likes bad puns, and if you’re judging him, remember you’re on reddit, so don’t throw any stone here. Most people, even specialists, will infer that Tom studies Computer Science, despite the probabilities given by the base rate, that mean it is more probable for him to study Humanities. It’s because this tells a better story (they choose representativeness instead of base rate. Even if the added information is dubious. Once again, if system 2 is activated (eg by frowning), people will get closer to the base rate.
Kahneman then gives us advice to discipline our faulty intuitions. You just have to use Bayes’s rule and multiply probabilities in your head! Easy. If you cannot do that, I’m sorry you’re an embarrassment to your family and country, but just remember to stay close to the base rate and question the quality of the evidence.
Chapter 15: Linda or less is more Linda is another fictional character created to make us feel bad. She’s described as a left-leaning politically engaged woman. What is more probable, that she’s a bank teller or a feminist bank teller? Most people will choose the second. The problem is that feminist bank tellers are a subset of bank tellers, so there’s less of them (all feminist bank tellers are bank tellers, whereas only some bank tellers are feminist). So it’s mathematically less probable. However, it’s more plausible, tells a causal story, so our System 1 likes it. It’s called conjuction fallacy.
Apparently, Linda caused another controversy in the field of psychology, but Kahneman doesn’t go into details, probably to protect his readers from the gruesome imagery.
Chapter 16 Causes trump statistics We go back to a Tom-like experiment, comparing base rate to other information. When the base rate is neutral, people don’t care about it. But when it is causal and tells a story, the brain will take it into account more. The story (here, it is that a company’s cab cause most of the accidents) creates a stereotype in our head. And in this case, stereotyping helps improving the accuracy of our intuitions.
The author then discusses how to teach psychology to students. He describes the help experiment, where people isolated in booths heard a stooge pretending to die. A minority of people went to help, because of the dilution of responsibility (”someone else can do it!”). When faced to this result, most students accept it but it doesn’t really change their views, in particular of themselves. However, when shown some individuals and their choices, their ideas really evolved. Once again, we suck at statistics and love to make stories from anecdotes. But now we can hack it?
Chapter 17 Regression to the mean Every performance has a random element. That means that if someone has an exceptionally good run, in sports for instance, their results will go down in the future. The opposite is also true. This is called regression to the mean and happens all the time when there is randomness involved. But our brains love causality and will invent a story around it. For instance, this air cadet performed better the second time because I yelled at him, not because of randomness catching up with his bad luck. That’s why we need control groups in every experiment, because many sick people will get better because of time and statistics.

Useful Links

• The Love Canal
• Alar Scare
• Bayesian statistics

You’ll find the questions below, feel free to add your own!

This is the list that I wrote for Oklahoma's execution roster since the nationwide reinstatement of capital punishment in the late 1970s. Something that should be mentioned is that given the nature of many death penalty related crimes, many of the descriptions contain very disturbing details. Please read at your own risk.
Florida's list is next, and I'll post my list for Texas once I've completed it. With Texas, I've currently finished 464 entries out of the 587 cases to date. That will probably take 7 or 8 posts for it all to be released, so I'll probably do two posts a day with Texas to avoid spamming the sub. At the end of this year, I'll repost the states that have conducted further executions with the updated information.
As with Missouri and Virginia, Reddit's maximum character count limitations forced me to divide Oklahoma's list into two separate parts. Here is the link to part 2.
The currently 124 executed offenders, cases 1 to 62:
1. Charles Coleman (~1950s-1990, lethal injection): A month after he was released on parole in 1979, Coleman broke into a house. While sacking it for any valuables, the homeowner’s brother and sister in law, 68 year old John and 62 year old Roxie Seward, walked in on him and were both shot dead. Coleman stole Roxie’s purse, several packets of frozen meat, and the homeowner’s watch during the burglary, and was arrested shortly afterwards. However, Coleman managed to escape custody, and went on a rampage that involved several burglaries, auto thefts, slitting the throat of a policeman in a failed murder attempt, the shooting death of 49 year old Russell Lewis Jr. in a carjacking, and the abduction of a deputy. The kidnapped deputy was rescued following an armed standoff with other police officers. Coleman had an extensive history of animal cruelty, armed robberies, assaults, and carrying concealed weapons convictions dating back to when he was 11 years old. He was also heavily suspected in the murder of his teenage girlfriend’s father, but was acquitted by the courts despite the prosecution’s strong belief in his guilt.
2. Robyn Parks (1977-1992, lethal injection): During a gas station robbery, Parks shot and killed Abdullah Ibrahim, a 24 year old Bangladeshi immigrant that worked as the attendant. According to Parks, he murdered Ibrahim for catching him using a stolen credit card.
3. Olan Randle (1980-1992, lethal injection): Randle invaded a home and shot the occupants, 41 year old Robert Swinford, Sinford's fiance 42 year old Averil Bourque, and Bourque's friend 38 year old Julia Lovejoy, dead. He took a pocket knife and several watches from the victims.
4. Thomas Grasso (~1970s(?)-1995, lethal injection): While living in Oklahoma, Grasso strangled 87 year old Hilda Johnson, the best friend of his girlfriend's grandmother, to death with her Christmas lights. He took $8 from her purse, several coins that added up to $4, and a television set that he sold for $125. Grasso then moved to New York, and strangled 81 year old Leslie Holtz for his social security check. The trialing arrangements caused some controversy, as the New York governors at the time were anti death penalty, and tried to prevent Grasso's extradition in favor of giving him a life sentence in their jurisdiction. Grasso had several previous convictions for theft and was fired multiple times for stealing from his jobs.
5. Roger Stafford (~1974(?)-1995, lethal injection): Stafford was condemned for killing at least 9 people in two separate robbery incidents with his brother and ex wife, though his ex wife claimed that he was involved with as many as 34 murders nationwide. The first convicted incident was when he and the ex wife carjacked and fatally shot a couple, 38 year old Melvin and 31 year old Linda Lorenz, and their son, 12 year old Richard. A few weeks after the Lorenz murders, Stafford stormed a restaurant and gunned down 6 employees, 56 year old Isaac Freeman, 43 year old Louis Zacarias, 17 year old Anthony Tew, 17 year old David Lindsey, 16 year old David Salsman, and 15 year old Terri Horst. One of Stafford's additional attributed victims was 20 year old Jimmy Berry, who was killed in the hold up of an Alabaman McDonalds, but he wasn't charged by the state due to his death sentences in Oklahoma.
6. Robert Brecheen (1983-1995, lethal injection): Breechen was involved in a feud over money with 59 year old Mary Stubbs and her husband. In an attempt to take what he perceived was owed to him, Breechen carried out a night time burglary of their home. While rummaging through the house, Breechen stumbled upon old Marie in her living room and shot her to death. The gunshots and screams awoke her husband, and he chased him away with his own gun.
7. Benjamin Brewer (1978-1996, lethal injection): Brewer raped his neighbor, 20 year old Karen Stapleton, in her home and stabbed her to death
8. Steven Hatch (1979-1996, lethal injection): Hatch and another assailant, Glen Ake, forced themselves inside the home that Richard Dougass, a 43 year old reverend, shared with his wife, 36 year old Marilyn, and their two children, 16 year old Brooks and 12 year old Lesile. The pair tied up the family and raped Lesile in front of her parents and brother. All four family members were shot, and Hatch and Ake ran off with $43 and the parents’ wedding rings. Richard and Marilyn were both killed in the shootings, while their children survived the attack. Ake was also initially condemned for the attack, but his sentence was overturned and resentenced to life following mental health concerns, and passed away from undisclosed natural causes in 2011.
9. Scott Carpenter (1994-1997, lethal injection): In a convenience store robbery, Carpenter stabbed the owner, 56 year old A. J. Kelley, in the neck, and hid the body in the minnow room. He filled his truck with $37 worth of gas from the pumps and drove away from the scene. His execution caused some controversy, as it was reported that Carpenter gasped and spasmed for 11 minutes after being injected.
10. Michael Long (1997-1998, lethal injection): Enraged that his coworker, 24 year old Sheryl Graber, refused him sex and started screaming for help, he stabbed her over 31 times. Long also shot and killed her son, 5 year old Andrew, for being a witness.
11. Stephen Wood (1992-1998, lethal injection): While heavily intoxicated, Wood stabbed two other homeless men, 46 year old Charles Stephen and 34 year old Charles Von Johnson, dozens of times each. He was given a life sentence for both of their murders. During his incarceration, Robert Brigden, a 59 year old former minister that was serving a 40 year sentence for molesting several girls between the ages of 4-14 in his congregation, moved into his unit after refusing to go into protective custody. Woods killed Brigden in a stabbing attack, and his sentence was escalated to death by the courts for it.
12. Tuan Anh Nguyen (~1982-1998, lethal injection): By all accounts, Nguyen was jealously possessive over his wife, 21 year old Donna. During one of their arguments over his behavior, he stabbed Donna, her 6 year old nephew Joseph White, and her 3 year old niece Amanda White, in their home and left the bodies to be found by the children’s parents. He fled to Arizona, groomed a 14 year old girl into an illicit “relationship”, and impregnated her. After he convinced her to move in with him, Nguyen physically and sexually abused the girl until she fled and went to the local police for help. Nguyen was then deported back to Oklahoma to face trial for Donna and the White children’s slayings, and was sentenced to death for them.
13. John Duvall (1986-1998, lethal injection): During a fight with his wife, 30 year old Donna, Duvall stabbed and suffocated her to death with a pillow.
14. John Castro Sr. (1983-1999, lethal injection): Castro carjacked Beulah Cox, a 31 year old Oklahoma State University student, after she picked him up hitchhiking and shot her to death. A few months later, Castro held up a restaurant with an empty pistol, and attacked the manger, 29 year old Rhonda Pappan, after forcing her to open the register. During their struggle, Pappan was fatally stabbed, and he took off with her purse. During his mid teens, Castro was allegedly molested by his mother. Castro's attorneys made the argument that his glimpses of Cox's buttocks reminded him of his mother's reported abuse, and he was triggered into attacking her for it.
15. Sean Sellers (1985-1999, lethal injection): In 1985, a then 15 year old Sellers tried to buy beer from a convenience store, but the clerk, 32 year old Robert Bower, denied him due to being underaged at the time. Sellers gunned him down in a fit of rage. A year later, Sellers shot and killed his mother, 32 year old Vonda Bellofatto, and stepfather, 43 year old Paul, in their sleep. Due to being 16 at the time of his conviction, Sellers remains the youngest condemned offender to have his sentence carried out in the post Furman era. He also attracted national media attention for claiming that his crimes were the result of demonic possession.
16. Scotty Moore (1983-1999, lethal injection): Moore was fired from a motel for undisclosed reasons. In retaliation, Moore and a cousin (whom he was dating at the time), assaulted the motel, and gunned down the desk clerk, 42 year old Alex Fernandez. According to court documents, the pair took a total of $97 in the robbery.
17. Norman Newsted (1984-1999, lethal injection): Newsted tricked Lawrence Buckley, a 26 year old cab driver, into picking him up. He shot Buckley dead and took his wallet. In an attempt to cover his tracks, Newsted placed the body inside the cab, and drove it into a creek near a local church. Despite his best efforts, Buckley’s cab and remains were discovered a day later by the church’s pastor.
18. Cornel Cooks (1982-1999, lethal injection): Cooks and his accomplice broke into the home of 87 year old Jennie Ridling. She was gagged, raped, and suffocated to death with gauze wrappings. According to autopsy reports, the pair abused her for over 2 hours. They then sacked the house for any valuables and left with her checkbook.
19. Bobby Ross (1983-1999, lethal injection): While robbing an inn, Ross fatally shot a police officer, 30 year old Steve Mahan, that tried to intervene.
20. Malcolm Johnson (~1970s(?)-2000, lethal injection): Johnson invaded the apartment of 76 year old Ura Thompson and sexually assaulted her. Thompson either died from having her chest compounded during the abuse or was suffocated by Johnson’s hands covering her nose. He seized several possessions such as furs, typewriters, purse, watch, rings, and a hand mirror, which were discovered by police in his residence during an unrelated investigation of a firearms possession charge. Johnson had an extensive criminal history, which included several convictions of rape, armed robberies, and burglaries. The case attracted controversy when it was discovered that the lead chemist in the investigation misconducted several of her other cases, and forged some of the evidence used in the trial. Despite the other overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Johnson’s supporters took the opportunity to push a narrative of his innocence.
21. Gary Walker (~1960s-2000, lethal injection): Walker abducted, raped, and murdered at least 5 women, 36 year old Margaret Lydick, 35 year old Jane Hilburn, 32 year old Janet Jewell, 25 year old Valerie Shaw-Hartzell, and 24 year old DeRonda Roy, and non fatally assaulted several other women and teenage girls. The victims were mostly strangled to death with their bras and panties. Some of them were forced to withdraw hundreds of dollars from ATMs before they were killed. He also strangled a man, 63 year old Eddie Cash, with an electrical cord while robbing his home. Walker had dozens of previous convictions for burglary, carjacking, drug possession, and carrying concealed weapons. Some of his earliest arrests occurred when he was a teenager.
22. Michael Roberts (~1988-2000, lethal injection): A career burglar, Roberts was condemned for murder of 80 year old Lula Brooks. She was raped and her throat was slit by an intruder in her home. Roberts' death sentence and execution has been contested, as he was convicted on his later recounted testimony alone. He claimed that the investigators tricked him into confessing with the promise of a plea deal that was allegedly withheld from him.
23. Kelly Rogers (1990-2000, lethal injection): Rogers’ girlfriend lured 21 year old Karen Lauffenburger into her apartment with a fake pizza order. They accosted her when she arrived with the delivery. After the couple forced Lauffenburger to hand to over the $40 she earned from the night's pizza deliveries and withdraw $175 from an ATM, Rogers raped and stabbed her to death. The body was left in Lauffenburger’s apartment and was found by her boyfriend.
24. Ronald Boyd (1986-2000, lethal injection): During a robbery spree of several gas stations and supermarkets, Boyd engaged in a shootout with the responding officers. A Master Patrolman, 32 year old Richard Riggs, was killed in the exchange.
25. Charles Foster (~1980s(?)-2000, lethal injection): Foster suspected a grocery store owner, 74 year old Claude Wiley, of making sexual advances at his wife. He arranged for her to entice Wiley to their home with an order. When he arrived with the delivery, Foster stabbed and bludgeoned him to death with a baseball bat. He a history of convictions involving threats and violence, though my sources didn’t disclose any specific details.
26. James Robedeaux (1978-2000, lethal injection): In 1978, Robedeaux strangled his first wife, 30 year old Linda, and plead guilty to a second degree murder charges. He was released after serving 6 out of a 25 year sentence despite an escape attempt. In the following year, he began a relationship with 37 year old Nancy McKinney while he married a different woman. During an argument, Robedeaux beat McKinney to death, dismembered her body with a saw and machete, and scattered the remains across the state. While being investigated for McKinney's murder, he was arrested for choking and beating his estranged second wife. The cases were incidental and kept separate by the courts.
27. Roger Berget (~1985-2000, lethal injection): Berget carjacked and abducted 33 year old Rick Patterson with an accomplice, and shot him dead. He also admitted to the beating death of a roommate, 40 year old James Meadows, on the behalf of the man's wife. As a trivial side note, Berget's brother Rodney was executed in 2018 by the state of South Dakota for killing a prison guard [for more information, please see Rodney Berget's entry under the South Dakota section of my states with less then 10 executions post].
28. William Bryson (1988-2000, lethal injection): To collect a $300,000 life insurance policy, Marilyn Plantz recruited her boyfriend Byrson and his friend to kill her husband, 33 year old James. Byrson and his friend ambushed Plantz in his house as he was coming home from work and beat him to death with a baseball bat. With the intentions of staging an accident, Marilyn ordered the pair to burn the body in the couple's pickup truck.
29. Gregg Braun (1989-2000, lethal injection): Across several states, Braun shot and killed 4 women, 48 year old Geraldine Valdez, 31 year old Gwendolyn Miller, 28 year old Mary Rains, 27 year old Barbara Kochendorfer, and one man, 54 year old Pete Spurrier, while robbing stores.
30. George Wallace (~1970s-2000, lethal injection): Known as "the Mad Paddler" due to his habit of spanking abducted preteen and teenage boys with a wooden paddle, Wallace kidnapped his victims by posing as a police officer. After duping his targets into thinking that they were being arrested, Wallace restrained them with handcuffs and leg chains. The captives were then sexually abused and shot or stabbed to death. His crimes were exposed when an 18 year old man he abducted escaped from him despite being shot and stabbed numerous times. By his own admission, Wallace murdered 18 year old Thomas Reed, 15 year old William Domer, 14 year old Mark McLaughlin, 14 year old Jeffrey Foster, and 12 year old Alonzo Cade.
31. Eddie Trice (1987-2001, lethal injection): Trice snuck into the home of 84 year old Ernestine Jones and raped her. After he beat Jones to death with numbchucks, he terrorized and extorted her cognitively disabled son of $500 with threats of killing him if he told anyone of the murder. The son was also assaulted with a hammer, and he received injuries to his right eye, right cheekbone, and his right forearm.
32. Wanda Allen (~1981-2001, lethal injection): In 1981, Allen got into a fight with her live in girlfriend, 21 year old Dedra Pettus, and shot her dead. Despite giving a bungled story about her being accidentally killed in a shootout with Pettus’ ex boyfriend to the investigators, Allen managed to secure a 4 year sentence for manslaughter after pleading guilty to a plea deal, and was released after serving two years. While incarcerated, she started dating a fellow inmate, 29 year old Gloria Leathers, and continued their relationship outside of prison. The couple’s relationship was marred with extreme domestic violence on Allen’s end. In one incident, Allen struck Leathers with a rake. In 1989, while they were arguing in front of a shopping center, Allen shot and killed Leathers. Leathers herself also had history of violence, and had a conviction for stabbing a woman to death. Allen and her defense team tried to use Leathers’ previous convictions to make a self defense argument, but that was shot down by the courts.
33. Floyd Medlock (1990-2001, lethal injection): 7 year old Katherine Busch went to visit her family's old apartment, which Medlock was residing in, by herself. Busch knocked on the door and Medlock let her inside after she begged for food. He then choked and sexually assaulted the girl, dunked her head in a toilet bowl, and stabbed her to death. The body was hidden in a nearby dumpster. Busch's grandmothers were staunch pro capital punishment and anti death penalty activists respectively, and their public feud over Medlock's sentence and execution attracted some media attention. Medlock also had an extensive criminal history despite being only 19 at the time of Busch's murder, and was previously arrested several times for indecent exposure, arson, armed robbery, and marijuana possession.
34. Dion Smallwood (1992-2001, lethal injection): Smallwood walked into the home of his ex girlfriend's adoptive stepmother, 68 year old Lois Frederick, without invitation. He had a tumultuous and often violent relationship with her adopted stepdaughter that she strongly opposed, and they broke up under her pressure. After an argument, Smallwood knocked Frederick unconscious with a croquet mallet, locked her in a car, and burned her alive in it.
35. Mark Fowler (1985-2001, lethal injection): To get back at his ex employers for firing him, Fowler and his partner, Billy Fox, stormed a supermarket that he used to work out. The pair rounded up 3 employees, Chumpon Chaowasin, a 44 year old Thai immigrant, 33 year old Rick Cast, and 27 year old John Barrier, at gun point. Their hostages were shot, clubbed, and stabbed to death, and they took over $2,7000 in cash and checks.
36. Billy Fox (1985-2001, lethal injection): Fox assisted the above mentioned Mark Fowler in robbing a supermarket and murdering 3 of its employees
37. Loyd Lafevers (1985-2001, lethal injection): Lafevers and his accomplice, Randall Cannon, kidnapped 84 year old Addie Hawley from her home. She was raped, trapped in the trunk of a car, and burned alive in it. Although she was rescued, Hawley died from her injuries 6 hours later. The pair stole Hawley's wedding ring and Lafevers gifted it to a stripper. As Hawley's nephew was a Colorado state senator, her murder gained some attention from media outlets.
38. Dorsie Jones Jr. (1979-2001, lethal injection): While drinking at a bar, a barmaid chastised Jones for carrying an unconcealed gun. He shot at her in a fit of rage, but missed and injured his female companion instead. Jones then turned his attention to the other patrons and fired on them. 48 year old Stanley Buck Sr. was killed in front of his 19 year old son, who was also wounded in the shooting.
39. Robert Clayton (~1980s-2001, lethal injection): Clayton attacked 19 year old Rhonda Timmons while she was sunbathing near her apartment. She was raped, stabbed, kicked in the head, and strangled to death with her swimming suit. Her husband found Timmons' body laying next to their infant daughter, who was left unharmed. Clayton had a previous rape conviction in Tennessee and a robbery conviction in Texas.
40. Ronald Fluke (1997-2001, lethal injection): Out of despair that his gambling addiction drove his family to near poverty, Fluke shot and killed his wife, 44 year old Ginger, and their daughters, 13 year old Kathryn and 11 year old Susanne, while they were sleeping in their bedrooms. He initially attacked Ginger with a hatchet, but turned to shooting when she fought back.
41. Marilyn Plantz (1988-2001, lethal injection): The married girlfriend of William Bryson. As mentioned under Bryson's entry, Plantz arranged for him and his friend to kill her husband James to collect his life insurance policy.
42. Terrance James (1983-2001, lethal injection): While awaiting trial for a theft of government property charge, James and two accomplices strangled a fellow inmate, 25 year old Mark Berry, with wire out of their suspicions of him being a snitch. They then hung the body in an attempt to make it look like a suicide. Berry was another party in the theft of government property case, and James and his accomplices believed that it was his testimony that got them arrested.
43. Vincent Johnson (1991-2001, lethal injection): Johnson gunned down 44 year old Shirley Mooneyham in her home. The prosecution believed that Mooneyham's boyfriend arranged the killing to collect a life insurance policy, but he was acquitted at trial.
44. Jerald Harjo (~1980s-2001, lethal injection): Harjo snuck into the bedroom of 64 year old Ruth Porter, raped her, and suffocated her with a pillowcase. He then snatched Porter's car keys and drove off with her van. His past criminal history was extensive, and was in prison numerous times for burglary and autotheft.
45. Jack Walker (1988-2001, lethal injection): Disgruntled with the custody dispute over their then 3 month old son, Walker stabbed his ex girlfriend, 17 year old Shelly Ellison, and her uncle, 30 year old Donald, 32 and 11 times with an ice pick during a confrontation at their home.
46. Alvie Hale Jr. (1983-2001, lethal injection): Hale kidnapped 24 year old William Perry to extort a $350,000 ransom from his banking family. When the negotiations failed, Perry was shot dead, and Hale buried the body on his father's property.
47. Lois Smith (1982-2001, lethal injection): Smith, her son, and a female accomplice abducted her son's ex girlfriend, 21 year old Cindy Baillee, from an airport out of fear her testifying of his involvement in the drug trade. Baillee was taken to Smith's ex husband's house, and stabbed in the throat by her ex boyfriend while driving to their destination. Inside the home, she was taunted by Smith with a gun, and was shot 7 times in the chest and 2 times in the back of the head. While her son was reloading the gun, Smith jumped on and crushed Bailee's throat.
48. Sahib Lateef Al-Mosawi (1992-2001, lethal injection): Following a dispute over their newborn son's name, Al-Mosawi's estranged wife, 26 year old Inaam Al-Nashi, fled to the apartment of her uncle, 45 year old Mohammed. Al-Mosaw attacked the pair in the apartment and stabbed them to death. Inaam's sister was also stabbed, but she managed to escape with her life. The couple and their families were refugees from Iraq that were displaced by the First Persian Gulf War, and they fled into the United States.
49. John Romano (1985-2002, lethal injection): Romano and his accomplice David Woodruff robbed and murdered two of their acquaintances. One of the victims, 63 year old Lloyd Thompson, was attacked in his apartment. Thompson was held down by the pair while they stabbed him 22 times and served his spinal cord. The other victim, 52 year old Roger Sarfaty, was tied up, beaten, stabbed 5 times, and strangled to death in a jewelry store he owned. In the robberies, Romano and Woodruff stole several pieces of jewelry from Sarfaty, and took most of Thompson’s quarter collection.
50. David Woodruff (1985-2002, lethal injection): As mentioned under John Romano's entry, Woodruff took part in the robbery murders of Lloyd Thompson and Roger Sarfaty.
51. Randall Cannon (1985-2002, lethal injection): Cannon assisted Loyd Lafevers in abducting, sexually assaulting, and burning Addie Hawley alive in her car. Although he was acquitted of molesting Hawley, Cannon was still condemned for his part in the kidnapping and murder.
52. Earl Frederick Sr. (~1989-2002, lethal injection): Frederick beat Bradford Beck, a 41 year old veteran that was crippled during his service in the Vietnam war, to death in his home after befriending him. He ransacked the house and dumped Beck's body in a field. A second murder, the robbery and shooting death of a Texan man, 77 year old Shirley Fox, was also tied to him. However, authorities in Texas withheld from prosecuting Fredrick due to his death penalty trial and conviction in Oklahoma. Both Fox and Beck had physical disabilities, which led prosecutors to the conclusion that Frederick intentionally selected and depredated on disabled men.
53. Jerry McCracken (~1980s(?)-2002, lethal injection): McCracken and his accomplice shot up a bar, killed 3 patrons and the bartender, and made off with $350. The victims that lost their lives were 41 year old Carol McDaniels, 37 year old Timothy Sheets, 34 year old Steven Sheets, and 27 year old Tyrrell Boyd. Months before the mass shooting, McCracken was paroled after serving time for stabbing 3 people in a bar fight.
54. Jay Neill (1984-2002, lethal injection): During a bank robbery, Neill disemboweled and nearly decapitated 3 tellers, 42 year old Kay Bruno, 25 year old Joyce Mullenix, and 19 year old Jerri Bowles. A group of 4 customers, consisting of 33 year old Ralph Zeller, a married couple, and their 14 month old daughter, unwittingly walked in on him, and he herded them into a backroom to be shot. Zeller was killed, the couple were wounded, and Neill left the daughter unharmed due to running out of bullets. Neill's boyfriend was given a life sentence for the robbery and murders, despite not being directly involved.
55. Ernest Carter Jr. (~1989-2002, lethal injection): After being fired from an autoshop, Carter robbed it with an accomplice, and fatally shot a security guard, 35 year old Eugene Manowski. The pair stole the shop's tow truck, and later tried to burn it with Carter's girlfriend to destroy any traces of the crime. Carter was also previously accused of burning a friend to death in the previous year, but the charges were dismissed.
56. Daniel Revilla (1987-2003, lethal injection): While babysitting his girlfriend's son, 13 month old Mark Gomez, in their home, Revilla broke the boy’s ribs in a beating and scalded him with boiling water. When he brought the boy to a hospital, Revilla gave a story that he accidentally hit Gomez’s head with a door handle, which was quickly seen through by the staff. According to the accounts of his girlfriend and her family, Revilla was violently abusive to Gomez, and they recounted incidents of him trapping the boy in a kitchen drawer, dunking him in cold water, folding him into a pull up bed, and hanging him by his ankles with duct tape.
57. Bobby Fields (~1990s-2003, lethal injection): Fields shot and killed 77 year old Louise Schem while burglarizing her home. She had tried to shot him with her .25 calibre pistol, but he wrestled the gun away from her, and gunned her down with it. His intentions was to steal Schem's television set to sell for cocaine, but left empty handed after losing his nerves with the struggle and murder. According to court documents, Fields had a previous robbery and assault conviction, and several arrests for drug possession.
58. Walanzo Robinson (1989-2003, lethal injection): A member of the Gangster Bloods street gang, Robinson shot and killed 26 year old Dennis Hill, an affiliate of a rival gang, in a turf war over drug sales.
59. John Hooker (~1971-2003, lethal injection): As a teenager in 1971, Hooker attended a party at a friend's house, and got into an argument. In a fit of anger, he fatally shot 18 year old Alta Lang, and wounded two other partygoers. Due to the witnesses refusing to cooperate with the investigation and being unable to prove any calculated intentions, Hooker was given a manslaughter conviction, and released a few years later. After he was paroled, Hooker started dating Sylvia Stokes, and fathered several children with her. Their troubled relationship lasted for 8 years, and ended when Stokes filed a protection order against him. In retaliation, Hooker lured Stokes and her mother, 53 year old Durcilla Morgan, into his apartment and stabbed them both to death.
60. Scot Hain (~1980s-2003, lethal injection): Hain carjacked and abducted a couple, 27 year old Michael Houghton and 22 year old Laura Sanders. After taking $565 and some bags of clothing, he forced them into the trunk of their car at gunpoint, and burned them alive in it. He had several previous arrests for robbery, and was involved with a number of rapes and attempted kidnappings months before the Houghton and Sanders' murders.
61. Don Hawkins Jr. (1985-2003, lethal injection): Hawkins kidnapped 29 year old Linda Ann Thompson and her two daughters, aged 4 years old and 18 months old, from a mall. Although his original intentions were to ransom off Thompson and her children, Hawkins gang raped the captive woman with his cousin and his girlfriend's teenage nephew, and drowned her in a lake. Thompson's children were spared and simply left with a babysitter. Hawkins and his accomplice then went on a nation wide rampage with his accomplice that involved the abductions and rapes of several grown women and teenage girls, hanging 31 year old David Coupez of Colorado in his home while robbing him, and countless other robberies.
62. Larry Jackson (~1984-2003, lethal injection): In 1984, Jackson shot and killed his girlfriend, 19 year old Freda Washington. He accepted a plea deal that dumbed down the charges to second degree murder, and was given a 30 year sentence for it. During his incarceration, Jackson started a relationship with 29 year old Wendy Cade. Despite her promises of marriage after his release, Cade left him for another man, and they got engaged. When Jackson was assigned to a prison work crew, he snuck out and went to confront Cade. Reportedly, the two had bought alchool, cocaine, and cigerates together and had sex in Cade's apartment. However, they got into an argument, and he slashed Cade's throat and stabbed her 31 times with box cutters. Jackson then left with her jewelry, watch, and the keys to her jeep.

I write a lot about how the Biden-Harris administration is working to restore the principles of the period between 1933 and 1981, when members of both political parties widely shared the belief that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. And I write about how that so-called liberal consensus broke down as extremists used the Reconstruction-era image of the American cowboy—who, according to myth, wanted nothing from the government but to be left alone—to stand against what they insisted was creeping socialism that stole tax dollars from hardworking white men in order to give handouts to lazy minorities and women.
But five major stories over the past several days made me realize that I’ve never written about how Trump and his loyalists have distorted the cowboy image until it has become a poisonous caricature of the values its recent defenders have claimed to champion.
The cowboy myth originated during the Reconstruction era as a response to the idea that a government that defended Black rights was “socialist” and that the tax dollars required to pay bureaucrats and army officers would break hardworking white men.
This weekend, on Saturday, May 11, Paul Kiel of ProPublica and Russ Buettner of the New York Times teamed up to deliver a deep investigation into what Trump was talking about when he insisted that he must break tradition and refuse to release his tax returns when he ran for office in 2016 and 2020, citing an audit.
The New York Times had already reported that one of the reasons the Internal Revenue Service was auditing Trump’s taxes was that, beginning in 2010, he began to claim a $72.9 million tax refund because of huge losses from his failing casinos.
Kiel and Buettner followed the convoluted web of Trump’s finances to find another issue with his tax history. They concluded that Trump’s Chicago skyscraper, his last major construction project, was “a vast money loser.” He claimed losses as high as $651 million on it in 2008. But then he appears to have moved ownership of the building in 2010 from one entity to a new one—the authors describe it as “like moving coins from one pocket to another”—and used that move to claim another $168 million in losses, thereby double-dipping.
The experts the authors consulted said that if he loses the audit battle, Trump could owe the IRS more than $100 million. University of Baltimore law professor Walter Schwidetzky, who is an expert on partnership taxation, told the authors: “I think he ripped off the tax system.”
The cowboy myth emphasized dominance over the Indigenous Americans and Mexicans allegedly attacking white settlers from the East. On Friday an impressive piece of reporting from Jude Joffe-Block at NPR untangled the origins of a story pushed by Republicans that Democrats were encouraging asylum seekers to vote illegally for President Joe Biden in 2024, revealing that the story was entirely made up.
The story broke on X, formerly Twitter, on April 15, when the investigative arm of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which promises to provide “aggressive oversight” of the Biden administration, posted photos of what it claimed were flyers from inside portable toilets at a migrant camp in Matamoros, Mexico, that said in broken Spanish: “Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open.” The tweet thread got more than 9 million views and was boosted by Elon Musk, X’s owner.
But the story was fabricated. The flyer used the name of a small organization that helps asylum seekers, along with the name of the woman who runs the organization. She is a U.S. citizen and told Joffe-Block that her organization has “never encouraged people to vote for anyone.” Indeed, it has never come up because everyone knows noncitizens are not eligible to vote. The flyer had outdated phone numbers and addresses, and its Spanish was full of errors. Migrants who are staying at the encampment as they wait for their appointments to enter the U.S. say they have never seen such flyers, and no one has urged them to vote for Biden.
Digging showed that the flyer was “discovered” by the right-wing video site Muckraker, which specializes in “undercover” escapades. The founder of Muckraker, Anthony Rubin, and his brother, Joshua Rubin, had shown up at the organization’s headquarters in Matamoros asking to become volunteers for the organization; they and their conversation were captured on video, and signs point to the conclusion that they planted the flyers.
Nonetheless, Republicans ran with the story. Within 12 hours after the fake flyer appeared on X, Republican representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Dan Bishop (R-NC) brought posters of it to Congress, and Republicans made it a centerpiece of their insistence that Congress must pass a new law against noncitizen voting. Rather than being protected by modern-day cowboys, the woman who ran the organization that helps asylum seekers got death threats.
The cowboy image emphasized the masculinity of the independent men it championed, but the testimony of Stephanie Clifford, the adult film actress also known as Stormy Daniels, in Trump’s criminal trial for falsifying business records to cover up his payments to Clifford to keep her story of their sexual encounter secret before the 2016 election, turns Trump’s aggressive dominance into sad weakness. Covering Clifford’s testimony, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times yesterday wrote that “Trump came across as a loser in her account—a narcissist, cheater, sad Hugh Hefner wannabe, trading his satin pajamas for a dress shirt and trousers (and, later, boxers) as soon as Stormy mocked him.”
In the literature of the cowboy myth, the young champion of the underdog is eventually supposed to settle down and take care of his family, who adore him. But the news of the past week has caricatured that shift, too. On Wednesday, May 8, the Republican Party of Florida announced that it had picked Trump’s youngest son, 18-year-old Barron, as one of the state’s at-large delegates to the Republican National Convention, along with Trump’s other sons, Eric and Donald Jr.; Don Jr.’s fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle; and Trump’s second daughter, Tiffany, and her husband.
On Friday, May 10, Trump’s current wife and Barron’s mother, former first lady Melania Trump, issued a statement saying: “While Barron is honored to have been chosen as a delegate by the Florida Republican Party, he regretfully declines to participate due to prior commitments.” It is hard not to interpret this extraordinary snub from his own wife and son as a chilly response to the past month of testimony about his extramarital escapades while Barron was an infant.
Finally, there was the eye-popping story broken by Josh Dawsey and Maxine Joselow in the Washington Post on Thursday, revealing that last month, at a private meeting with about two dozen top oil executives at Mar-a-Lago, Trump offered to reverse President Joe Biden’s environmental rules designed to combat climate change and to stop any new ones from being enacted in exchange for a $1 billion donation.
Trump has promised his supporters that he would be an outsider, using his knowledge of business to defend ordinary Americans against those elites who don’t care about them. Now he has been revealed as being willing to sell us out—to sell humanity out—for the bargain basement price of $1 billion (with about 8 billion people in the world, this would make us each worth about 12 and a half cents).
Chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration Richard Painter wrote: “This is called bribery. It’s a felony.” He followed up with “Even a candidate who loses can be prosecuted for bribery. That includes the former guy asking for a billion dollars in campaign cash from oil companies in exchange for rolling back environmental laws.”
The cowboy myth was always a political image, designed to undermine the idea of a government that worked for ordinary Americans. It was powerful after the Civil War but faded into the past in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s as Americans realized that their lives depended on government regulation and a basic social safety net. The American cowboy burst back into prominence with the advent of the Marlboro Man in 1954, the year of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, and the idea of an individual white man who worked hard, wanted nothing from the government but to be left alone, was a sex symbol, and protected his women became a central myth in the rise of politicians determined to overturn the liberal consensus.
Now it seems the myth has come full circle, with the party led by a man whose wife rejects him and whose lovers ridicule him, who makes up stories about dangerous “others,” cheats on his taxes, solicits bribes, and tries to sell out his followers for cash—the very caricature the mythological cowboy was invented to fight.
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Notes:
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-irs-audit-chicago-hotel-taxes
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/10
/1248599505/migrants-vote-biden-conspiracy-theory-social-media
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/10/1250585392/takeaways-migration-biden-flyer-matamoros
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/11/opinion/trump-stormy-daniels-trial.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/09/trump-oil-industry-campaign-money/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/barron-trump-florida-delegate-republican-national-convention-rcna151388
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/barron-trump-declines-invitation-delegate-republican-convention-rcna151761
Twitter (X):
rwpusa/status/1789632040054165516
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-12-2024

I grew up in a Chinese family that practiced Falun Gong (AKA Falun Dafa) because my dad was a staunch believer and active member. I’m currently grown up and am in my mid-20s. I go to school (in a STEM-related advanced degree program) and live away from family. I identify as agnostic. I am also a queer woman.
As a kid, I went to a lot of the events that Falun Dafa sponsored, such as public protests in Washington DC against the supposed organ-harvesting by the CCP, day-long “Fa” conferences where practitioners would speak of the way that “God” (read: cult founder Li Hongzhi) and practicing Falun Gong changed their lives and cured them of terminal illnesses, etc. My dad spends a lot of his free time volunteering for them. Their entire labor force (the ones who advertise flyers for Shen Yun and do door-to-door flier deliveries) are volunteers, a testament to how deeply some of the members truly believe in it.
The cult itself has a mostly peaceful belief system that draws from a lot of Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu teachings. However, there are aspects that are bigoted and sometimes actively harmful. The most notable of these are the belief that homosexuality or queerness is a sin, and that mixed-race people don’t belong to any heaven since “humans were created in the image of god” and all “original gods” are discrete races with their own respective race-segregated heavens. They also think that modern medicine is harmful and that you shouldn’t need it if you truly practice Falun Dafa, since sickness is caused by having sin, and you can shed these sins by being a “good” (subjective) person.
There is a lot of emphasis on dharma and reaching enlightenment in the cult/religion/belief system, with the 3 core tenets of the belief system being truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance (and there is a lot of hypocrisy here on the tolerance part.) There is also an element of Scientology. They believe that aliens gave technology to mankind. They also believe in the existence of “other dimensions” that you can’t see, and that all human beings were originally divine beings who fell from grace, and thus can only return to heaven/enlightenment by practicing Falun Dafa, which they deem as the One True Religion. Based on this, they spend a lot of time and resources trying to convert people to Falun Dafa through dance showcases like Shen Yun. Like other religions, there is a duty to spread it to “save humanity from its own destruction.” They believe that modern society has become so corrupt that some point soon, Earth will be wiped out, biblical plague style.
In recent years, they have become very far-right, and for the most part, they love Trump. I attribute this to many of their core beliefs aligning very heavily with Christian conservatism, such as a lack of tolerance for diverse identities, a lack of trust in modern medicine and technology, and a deep vitriol for communism, specifically the Chinese Communist Party. Most members are Chinese immigrants who left communist China and have extremely negative views of the country and the government.
I see a lot of misinformation on the internet about Falun Dafa. People think it’s a violent and psychotic cult that you can’t leave, which isn’t the case. They do have a pretty heavily-protected/secluded compound in NY, which my dad helped with the construction years ago. But you can leave Falun Dafa if you want to. Like I said, people are peaceful on the surface (if you ignore their problematic views) and non-violent for the most part, except with a very strong “holier than thou” attitude. I still struggle with reconciling my queer identity with my desire to have a good relationship with my dad, and I have not come out to him. He was a good dad to me growing up and gave me a lot of love, but he’s expressed his clear disapproval for gay and trans people, and is sometimes actively racist (although this is quite common within conservative Chinese households, which makes me quite sad.)
Anyways. I’m rambling at this point. AMA.
TLDR; I grew up in Falun Dafa. It’s a messy situation but there’s a lot of misinformation about it on the internet. AMA.

Good evening Reddit,
We had an unusually warm day today up in western Washington and our new house (less than 2 months old), has carpenter ants flying and crawling around outside of it, all over the exterior walls etc. I have put down poison, sprayed for insects along the perimiter etc however I’m not sure how to deal with the flyers. We live next to a 5 acre homestead and I have a feeling they may be coming from there or another new house down the way (this builder puts tons of “bark dust” everywhere and I’m wondering too if a queen may have been caught in one of the massive piles of wood chips and brought here. As this is our first spring here, not sure if it’s normal but looking for advice. Seems like they may be going up under the siding (think there’s a slight gap for water that gets trapped between it and vapor barrier.