'Killer Krug' was notorious for defending the bad guy in injury cases, but depicted in a Cedar Rapids Gazette special feature on model families with his daughters and loving wife, despite his conflicted identity,
a stratagem, " the suicide bomber technique: You make a heroic video to forced your own hand, using the specter of shame as a threat to preempt cold feet.
9/11/01 was his Damascus moment. A Bostonian, it could have been him on one of those planes. As s/he transitioned (he eventually took the final step), s/he tried to continue his/her prosecution of a 'victim in a wheelchair, the date of his accident tattooed large on a forearm.' She no longer had the killer instinct, and Krug Law Firm was kaput. One daughter disowned him/her, but 18 years later was living with Ellie. Ellie has had three short romances, one with a man and two with women, and is lonely.
Michael Green should have died in the home fire, but the blackened lump was scooped up and taken out, nursed back to 'life', though with stumps for hands, a horror-movie face, and a body covered in scars. Yet, 28 years later,
He's adroit with a smart phone. Somehow he types 35 words a minute. The only thing he cannot do for himself, he informs you solemnly, is tie shoes with laces.
He plays soccer and teaches it at a a summer camp for burned kids. He came to Weingarten's attention when he sued Six Flags Over Texas amusement park near Dallas, demanding the right to ride on the rollercoaster, a story which went viral in 2012. (He lost but 'is not big on vengeance, but he does figure that he managed to take Six Flags on a scary ride of its own, at least for a little while.'
The enduring anti-black/native racism in America was starkly seen in a battle over a Confederate-era flag of the Jefferson Guard, seized during the Civil War by Illinois, which was returned to Clinton-era Pine Bluff, Arkansas, in a Confederate reenactment,
in full regalia with Civil War-era rifles,' including a drummer boy. There was nothing official about this: Arkansas had not yet seceded, though the rebel sentiments of the citizenry were clear. This flag could have been absolutely anything, and basically it was a little bit of everything. It all meant what it meant, whatever that was.
'Amidst all the hundreds of people crowding the courthouse Sunday afternoon, there was not a single black face,' thought 40% of Pine Bluff was African American. Historian David Perdue told the nostalgia buffs 'We are one nation now, and we are whole and healthy.'
A very sordid Romeo and Juliet was Teana and Dave, who murdered Teana's parents and then dumped the bodies over a retaining wall, leaving lots of evidence. The police used a nifty new chemical Luminol which glowed an electric blue under a black light where there were traces of blood, lighting up much of the tiny house.
The 2,800 page court transcript showed Teana trying to play crazy, but student friends related how she was trying to get help for the murder just a few months before, and was totally in control of Dave. Teana claimed she was molested by her father and leant out to orgies, but her devout parents belied this.
The town of Winslow was traumatized and rumors immediately circulated that the pentacostal pastor Kern Qualkenbush was having an affair with Teana's mother, and he and his wife Velda were involved in Satanic rituals. Their little white house with picket fence was burned and they fled.
Teana was sentenced to only 8 years (she was 16) and Dave got two concurrent 60-year prison terms. Now lesbian, she is happily married to Annette with a step-grandson Malachi, and works at Veterans Affairs, a friend of dog shelters.
A wild, upside-down Romeo and Juliet is Bob Stevenson and a very pregnant Melody Marshall of Cherry Hill, NJ, married in Jamaica 12/28/86. Ten years later, Bob pulverized Melody in a drunken rage, after he eavesdropped to hear she was still an addict, ordering percocet, and at the same, contacting a divorce lawyer. He feared that an increasingly pro-feminist legal system would give her custody of their son Bobby.
They both knew his attack was terrible, and both wanted to stay together, but the court issued a lifetime restraining order. Bob jumped bail, fled and assumed a new identity. Melody followed with Bobby. But their son Bobby was turning into a hockey star, and team members in Redondo Beach CA (Bob moved to the second best center for kids' hockey) soon identified him as Bobby Stevenson. 'No,' Bobby said. 'I'm Bobby Ryan.' No one squealed, but the jig was up in 2000 when Bob foolishly used an old credit card.
American-style justice followed:
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