I thoroughly appreciated reading this opinion piece. So much so that I’ve linked it and am pasting the article here as well.
A goodbye letter for the anti-President
Dear Donald,
When we first met in 2014, I was a year into research for the biography I was writing about you. I knew about your stern father, your exile to military school at a tender age and your tendency to spin dramatic fantasies. I knew that you considered life a battle for survival and humans to be "vicious" by nature.*
In your Trump Tower stronghold, you were attended by aides who looked like soap opera stars and surrounded by ego-boosting emblems: a wall of framed magazine covers, each featuring your face; a boxer's championship belt given to settle a debt; a stack of clippings delivered with a note that read, "Dad, FYI -- All great press. Ivanka." These totems of greatness, which I haven't seen in the quarters of other super-rich Americans, made me think of you as desperately, and perhaps dangerously, insecure.*
In five interviews that lasted about 10 hours total, you would heighten my fear that despite a life spent in unending luxury and privilege, no amount of wealth and power would move you off the life-is-warfare view. Even worse, you told me that you might run for president because Twitter fans said you should (I wasn't surprised by your ambition and, given your celebrity, I thought you might win). Then, as we stood to inspect a framed letter you had received from the disgraced Richard Nixon, you said his only problem was that he had left office for the good of the country. In your view, he should have stayed and fought.
*You ran for president and you won. And as you visited upon the country more pain than Nixon ever did, you fought on. Unrelenting in your aggression, lies and cruelty, you presided over four years of chaos and conflict provoked by your words and deeds. Though impeached, you escaped conviction and stayed in office to redouble your commitment to ego-driven chaos.
As you refused to mount a serious federal response, the Covid-19 death toll surpassed 400,000. Defeated in your bid for reelection, you spun lies that created an alternative reality so powerful that hundreds of your followers formed a mob that carried out a bloody attack on the United States Capitol. Many there intended to overturn the election, which you had repeatedly claimed was invalid due to fraud that in fact had not occurred.*
In the attack, which was televised by news networks and livestreamed on social media, five people -- including one Capitol police officer -- would die. A DC Metro Police officer, who had been Tasered several times, heard one of your followers say, "Kill him with his own gun." Although Congress reconvened after the mob was driven out, you stand disgraced as the only president in US history to be impeached twice, and all I can think is that you had finally made your narcissistic nightmare of a constant battle against vicious enemies come true for us all.
Your dangerous narcissism was not widely noted when I interviewed you, but it seemed, to me, to be the hallmark of your personality. I consulted experts and learned that this grandiosity was likely a defense mechanism against a fear of shame and rejection. I came to believe this fear was installed by your father, who, when you were a child, demanded you be a "killer" and a "king." When you failed to meet his expectations and became a troublemaker, he exiled you to military school, at age 13. Talk about a scarring experience.
The title of my book, "Never Enough," pointed to your endless drive to prove your superiority, which, ironically, led to bankruptcies, divorces and legal defeats. It's likely these failures provoked the same sense of shame and humiliation that you must have felt as a rejected child. You once told me you hated to reflect on the past, but in refusing to do this, you were bound to repeat your mistakes. No matter how much you achieved, it was never enough. And so, you went too far. (For more on this see what your psychologist niece, Mary Trump, wrote in her 2020 book, "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man.")
As President, your weaknesses posed terrible threats to the country. Your many failures at running businesses such as casinos or the airline Trump Shuttle showed that you were not a nimble thinker capable of leading complex operations. The Covid-19 pandemic has only made this glaring incompetence crystal clear -- and despite your efforts to deflect the blame, the country's death toll speaks for itself. More than 400,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the United States -- more than any other country in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Having seen your inability to recognize others as human beings, I have not been shocked by your indifference to the deaths of your fellow citizens. Nor have I been surprised by your encouragement of violence. Violence was what I always expected from your presidency. I just didn't know what form it would take.
The power of your methods was obvious during your 2016 campaign, when you lied in a way that separated your most ardent followers from reality itself. You promoted many of your old conspiracy theories about 9/11 and climate change and added new ones on the fly. (When an attendee asked -- after first stating as fact that Obama was Muslim and not American -- about the wildly untrue idea that Muslims were running secret training camps in the United States to kill people, you refused to shoot down his claims, promising instead to "look at that."
You also whipped people into a frenzy of hatred by describing opponents, critics and the free press as enemies. I recalled reading how your first wife, Ivana, had said you kept a book of Hitler's speeches near your bed. You once corrected a reporter, telling her it was "Mein Kampf" instead (though Marty Davis, who gave Trump the book, told Vanity Fair it was a book of speeches).
For four years in office, you functioned as a kind of anti-President, inflaming rather than calming passions and attacking rather than negotiating, all while demanding adoration from your Cabinet and constant attention from the media. Having ordered aides to think of each day as an episode in a TV show before you even took office, you tried to gin up as much drama as possible.
As President, you used the authority of your office to spread baseless claims about voter fraud, former President Barack Obama and even of a friendship between former President Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sexual predator who was your Palm Beach neighbor and friend, to name a few. Many of your followers abandoned reason and dove headfirst into the QAnon conspiracy theory movement, which reveres you as a savior and regards the government and much of the news media as evil. Many of those who attacked the Capitol brandished Q symbols along with Trump flags, Jesus banners and the Confederate stars and bars -- a mix of powerful symbols that shows the breadth of your influence.
Before the attack, you were among many who called for a big crowd of protesters to stop the Congress from affirming your election defeat. After your lawyer Rudy Giuliani, your namesake son ginned up the crowd, and they heard you call for them to march on the Capitol.
"You have to show strength," you said, "and you have to be strong." You promised to go with them but chose instead to view the destruction on TV. I wondered if you understood that the violence that unfolded was real, and not something made for television. Did you order Cokes as you watched? Did you eat popcorn?
I can imagine you snacking because you have played with violence, both real and imagined, for so long that you must be inured you to it. It all started back in the 1970s when you began employing armed guards-chauffeurs, for no apparent reason. I think it was because you enjoyed the sense of menace they added to your presence.
During your 2016 campaign one of your security guards roughed-up a picketer outside Trump Tower in New York, while another physically forced reporter Jorge Ramos out of a news conference in 2015. At one rally you told followers, "If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them." When a loud protester disrupted one of your other campaign rallies, you said, "I'd like to punch him in the face."
Your tough guy image was embraced by followers who traded memes in which you were drawn to look like a superhero or shown brandishing weapons Rambo-style. Your avatar punched out a figure labeled with the CNN logo. Add this to the bigotry you expressed in words and images, which you shared with millions of people on Twitter, and a combustible mix was created. (Remember posting an image of Hillary Clinton, along with a Star of David set against dollar bills, brandishing her the "most corrupt candidate ever?").
The atmosphere of bigotry you helped create exploded in Charlottesville in 2017 as men chanted "Jews will not replace us" before a White supremacist murdered a counterprotester by running her down with his car.
Heather Heyer was one of the first civilians to die in this charged political context during your presidency. It did not change your behavior. Instead, you declared there were "very fine people on both sides." By delaying your condemnation of her attackers and resisting efforts to remove monuments to those who fought against the United States to preserve slavery, you sent clear signals about your views on race and violence.
With Charlottesville, questions about your bigotry grew louder. You made your stance clear when you reportedly said Haitian immigrants "all have AIDS" (though the White House denied it), and that people were entering the US from "shithole" countries. Add your vicious comments about Black athletes calling out police brutality, your penchant for slamming individual Black women, and your fearmongering about low-income housing, and everyone understood your perspective. Three years into your presidency, 65% of Black Americans said it's "a bad time to be a Black person" in the United States, according to a Washington Post/Ipsos poll.
It would have been bad enough if your bigotry had been confined to words, but you enshrined it in policy by restricting refugees from entering this country. This led to a sharp decline, from about 85,000 refugees admitted to the United States in 2016 to about 12,000 in 2020. If the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" didn't get the message, then they could consider the way you cozied up to strongmen, the likes of which many of them were fleeing. From Kim Jong Un of North Korea to Russian President Vladimir Putin, you showed a consistent admiration for dictators who jail and kill their critics.
Along our border with Mexico, you began separating children from parents who arrived seeking asylum. By May 2019, six children had died in federal custody. In June of that year, Americans were shocked by the photo of a father and child who had drowned attempting to cross the Rio Grande. In December, a surveillance video obtained by ProPublica showed a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy was left alone in his Border Patrol cell in Texas for hours before he died on the floor, of complications from the flu.
How many minors died in Border Patrol custody during the four years prior to your administration? Zero, per FactCheck.org.
The deaths were just one measure of the suffering your harsh policies inflicted on asylum-seeking families. New data from June 2019 reveals there were around 5,500 known cases of children, from infants to teens, being separated from their parents and placed in facilities ranging from foster family homes to cells made out of chain link fencing.
Amid all this pain, it seemed you still weren't satisfied. You asked about building anti-immigrant moats to be stocked with alligators. You wondered whether soldiers could shoot immigrants who threw rocks. Those ideas were nixed, but the crisis continues. Because of inept recording-keeping, your administration has not been able locate the parents of at least 545 children, according to court documents from last October.
Refugee families, stuck in limbo while waiting for asylum in the United States, are still filling squalid camps on the Mexican side of the border, many of them fearing for their lives -- particularly in the midst of a global pandemic.
You got away with cruelty in part because you conditioned many Americans to believe that brown-skinned, undocumented immigrants constituted a criminal horde that required a draconian response.
You promised to build a "beautiful" concrete border wall along 1,000 miles of the frontier and force Mexico to pay for it.
Only about 452 miles of tall steel fence has been completed as of January 5, 2021, according to a Customs and Border Patrol Report, and instead of the $8 billion you estimated for 1,000 miles, $18 billion dollars have already been devoted to the work because -- surprise! -- Mexico is not paying for it.
Hyping the wall was just one example of the exaggerations, false claims and lies that came out of your mouth in such a torrent it was nearly impossible for anyone to react properly. You combined this strategy with denigrating the media as "enemies of the people" and purveyors of "fake news" with such consistency that facts seemed to lose their power. You added an Orwellian flourish when you said, "What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening."
What has been the effect on journalists? Threats became a part of our daily lives and the lives of our family members. (One of your followers found my wife's business phone number and called to say that he had located our address and to suggest we be careful.) A "press freedom tracker" run by the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Freedom of the Press Foundation has counted 421 attacks on journalists during your time in office.
Far worse than the impact on journalists is your effect on Americans' ability to agree upon an established set of facts as they consider critical issues. You are not solely to blame for this problem. However, you have both contributed to it and exploited it. You have made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims, according to The Washington Post, which have landed with the authority that comes with the presidential seal.
The easy way out for someone mired in disinformation is to pick a person to believe and go all in. Many of those who doubled down on their support for you found a sense of belonging amid the slogans, regalia and fervent rallies. They felt they were right. Those who disagreed were not fellow citizens but enemies who, some concluded, should be defeated by violent means.
The loyalty of your followers meant that ordinary politicians feared provoking the ire of your base. When it came to light that you were trying to coerce Ukraine's President into helping your reelection effort, you were impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. But this fear helped keep the Republican-controlled Senate in line, and you were acquitted. Afterward, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine defended her vote to acquit you, saying you had learned "a big lesson." What you learned, it seemed, was that you could get away with anything. Even before you were elected, you claimed you could "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody," and not lose voters.
Shortly after the impeachment trial wrapped up, you proceeded to mislead the American people about the novel coronavirus. You downplayed the dangers of the virus so that the vibrant economy, the main bragging point of your presidency, would continue to hum. In late February, at a White House coronavirus task force briefing, you said "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for." But you told journalist Bob Woodward weeks before that the coronavirus was "more deadly than your -- you know, your, even your strenuous flus." Nevertheless, you declined to organize a true national response and undermined public health officials who urged everyone to wear face masks.
You also held mass rallies where people were infected. On May 8, when the death toll was more than 77,000, you continued this charade, insisting, "This is going to go away without a vaccine." To say that people died as a result of your posture is not mere speculation. Families have told stories of those who followed your lead, got sick and died. Harvard epidemiologists estimate that thousands have died as a result of your example.
Today the Covid-19 pandemic continues to ravage the country. The death toll is now roughly equivalent to a 9/11 each day -- but many of your acolytes, even in Congress, still refuse to protect themselves and others with facemasks. Meanwhile, millions are turning to food banks. Mass evictions loom.
When I consider the hungry, the infected, the traumatized and the deceased and hold in my mind the images of the deadly mob at the Capitol, I hear your voice summoning the worst in my fellow citizens. With those words you truly established yourself as the anti-President, a distinction that cancels any claim you might make to the respect normally accorded the office.
When we met you told me to call you "Don," as if we were friends. You also invited me to examine your hair. I didn't do either because I sensed that you wanted to establish a bond that you would eventually try to corrupt. This was confirmed when you hinted that my book could make me rich if I abandoned my professional duty and wrote it to your liking.
Thankfully, enough Americans recognized your immorality and incompetence and lack of human feeling so profound that the suffering and death so much a part of your presidency didn't appear to affect you at all. They chose Joe Biden in November, making you truly accountable for perhaps the first time in your life.
After four years of your chaos, what's left is a wounded country grieving for its dead and for its innocence. But we will recover, and you now face criminal and legal threats in state courts, along with the harsh judgment of history.
As you desperately summon the remains of your following for comfort and fundraising, your disgrace is growing with the mounting evidence that your words motivated the mob that attacked the United States Capitol. This incitement may be the single worst thing a president has ever done, and it will define you for centuries to come.

Sorry about the absence but I'm back in the saddle. The White Star arc continues.
The rest of the series can be found here
Shelia flipped through status screen after status screen monitoring her unit’s progress through the ship. Things were going smoothly. Captured crew and passengers were in the process of being separated and secured in separate cargo holds. Almost the entire ship had been secured. Only a few stubborn holdouts remained and they would be running out of air soon. She nodded in satisfaction.
She turned to T’sunk’al who was hunched over large pieces of paper on the deck of the bridge.
“So, T, how are you coming along?” She asked.
“Pretty much done. Just double-checking my work but I should be able to void-jump this baby pretty much any time.”
“Great,” she replied. “Sooner this thing falls off the map the better.” She paused and smiled. “Don’t rush it though.”
“Don’t worry,” T’sunk’al chuckled. “I have no desire to become one with the universe today.”
“Good.”
Rupert Glent had finally talked his wife out from under the table shortly before the blast doors to the restaurant slammed open with a “BANG”.
Multiple squads of humans, drax, and z’uush swept in shouting commands. Mustering all of his courage he stepped forward with his hands out in front of him.
“Listen, we are all reasonable-” he started before he was roughly shoved to the ground by Jak’kul’sha.
“Yeah, we are all reasonable,” Jak’kul’sha replied, “And you are going to reasonably pick your ass up and get over there with everyone else.”
“How much are they paying you?” Rupert asked still laying on the floor in front of his terrified family.
“Enough to not waste my time listening to your bullshit.”
“Whatever it is, I’ll double it.”
“Oh,” Bal’sur’kala laughed. “There are a whole lot of us. Gonna double everyone’s pay?”
“Yes! Yes. No problem.”
“Ok, well, doubling it isn’t going to cut it. You are going to have to at least triple it before we will even consider crossing the people in charge. This might come as a shock, but they aren’t terribly nice people.”
“Fine!”
“Ok,” Bal’sur’kala buzzed. “We are all getting paid over a million credits a piece. That’s fifteen million just for our squad… times eleven squads, most at least as big as ours,” he laughed as Rupert’s face fell. “Do you happen to have one-hundred and sixty-five million in your pocket?”
“You just did that in your head? Wow!” Mul’sha’kal gushed.
“It’s fuckin’ Brainiac. Course he did it in his fuckin’ head,” Jak’kul’sha grumbled. “Can you stop chirpin’ in his ear till we get these little piggies in the fuckin’ barn?”
“I’m… I’m sure we can work something-”
“I didn’t ask if we could work something out,” Bal’sur’kala said grinning at Mul’sha’kal, “I distinctly asked you whether or not you had one-hundred and sixty-five million credits currently in your possession.”
“Well, no...”
“Then shut the fuck up and get your ass in line,” Jak’kul’sha said in a buzzy growl. “And you two,” he barked at the two lovebirds on his team. “I don’t wanna hear either of you fuckin’ chirpin’ till we are done, got it? Not one fuckin’ peep.”
“Yes, boss.” they both said in unison.
“I’m not your… you know what,” Jak’kul’sha growled and buzzed, “nevermind. Click-holes shut. Eyes open, all of them.”
“Councilor!” Helena shouted as she tapped the bars of his cell again, “This is your last chance. Do you have a statement?”
“For fuck’s sake, Helena,” Roberts laughed. “Give it a rest for a minute.”
“It’s just that this porkie scum is going to go and get his head blown off by you animals without him ever admitting to all of the shit that he did.”
“Like you say, porkies gonna pork. Is it really that big of a surprise. Besides, for something like him to admit fault he would actually have to believe that he did something wrong. Bet he doesn’t feel anything close to that.”
“Come on, even scum like him has to know what he did. He started the fucking war!”
“That’s not entirely accurate,” Roberts chuckled. “Oh he certainly deserves what we are going to do to him for his role in things but there were other factors in play. You haven’t heard the intelligence briefings?”
“No...”
“Oh, remind me when we get to our ship and I’ll be sure to give you copies of all of their security briefings and deliberations before the war. I thought that was part of what was dropped. They are pretty funny. Director Axlea lost her shit and I mean completely lost it. She was a hoot!”
“Holy shit! You have those?” Helena gasped.
“Oh yeah, I made sure to grab them while I was in there.”
“Wait… you?...”
“Yeah, I am in fact the actual fuckstain who did the ‘hack’,” Roberts said as he grinned at her.
“You! Oh you asshole!” Helena exclaimed as she launched herself at Roberts. Roberts laughed as he defended himself and as they they wrestled and laughed their eyes met… and they kissed. It was quickly followed by another kiss and then another and another as they lost themselves in each other’s embrace… almost a little too much. They were well on the way to “making up for lost time” before they remembered that they had an audience.
“I love you, Paul,” Helena sighed as they stopped pawing each other and she rested her head on his chest. “I love you so fucking much.”
“I love you too, Helena,” Paul said as he gently stroked her hair as he held her.
They just sat there holding each other.
“This is so stupid,” Helena said as she hugged him tight. “I mean we have known each other for how long? A couple of weeks?”
“Not even that,” Paul said as he gently kissed her again.
“I mean, what are we going to do? I want you in my life, like really in my life, you know?”
“Yeah, I know. Me too.”
“But we can’t have that. I’ve tried to work out a way but I’d last about a week in the Republic if I was lucky and you… kill orders...”
“I know,” Paul said as he held her. “I know. I’ve tried too and I just can’t see.”
“Oh please,” Jessie’s voice said over the intercom.
“Jessie… Goddammit!” Roberts exclaimed in annoyance as he glared up at a surveillance camera in the corner. “Don’t you have a ship to monitor?”
“Oh, I am doing that but Bunny told me that you guys were up to something ‘odd’. I think it’s time I have ‘the talk’ with her… They grow up so fast...”
“I am perfectly aware of this ‘talk’ of which you are referencing and I have repeatedly asked you to stop anthropomorphizing me,” a snippy voice cut in. “I just decided that their activities were unusual enough to warrant informing you.”
“Oh Bunny, you don’t have to be embarrassed,” Jessie laughed, “I have a book to show you and everything...”
“The ‘book’ you are referring to is already in my memory. ‘Showing it to me’ is completely unnecessary.”
“Helena, meet Jessie, our hacker and her AI, Bunny,” Roberts said. “Oh, she is the one who saved your bacon, by the way… Oops. That isn’t a slur. It’s a legitimate figure of speech,” he laughed as she gave him a little shove.
“Thanks… I guess...” Helena said still unnerved by the eavesdropping Jessie.
“Excuse me Jessie but do you still want me to be saving this feed into your spank-bank folder?” Bunny asked.
“Bunny!” Jessie exclaimed happily, “That was definitely you giving me an attitude! Was that some genuine emotion there? (And I wasn’t saving it into my completely non-existent spank-bank I swear.)”
“Absolutely not,” Bunny responded sounding quite annoyed, “Sapience is beyond my abilities as we have covered… repeatedly… True sapience has never been verified on any artificial intelligence, ever. My actions are all well within the coding that you know very well you have added… freak... and yes she does have a spank-bank. You have an entire sub-folder Mr. Roberts.”
“That’s genuine irritation!” Jessie chirped with glee. “Can’t fool me!”
“Excuse me, I have a ship to monitor. Nice to meet you, Helena. Good-day… And good luck, I mean it.”
“Thanks. Um… Nice to meet you too, bye.” Helena said to Bunny with a little confusion. She had never encountered an AI that sounded so real before.
“A whole sub-folder, seriously?” Roberts asked.
“Wha? Pssh… No…” Jessie replied. “Who are you going to believe, some tin-can or a trusted comrade in arms? Wait. Don’t answer that,” she laughed.
“I assume you had some reason for popping in and killing the mood?”
“What? Oh yeah! You can totally be together.”
“How?” Helena asked completely forgetting the intrusion.
“Become weebs! Carry your little butts over to the Empire! Both the Federation and Terran humans are tolerated over there no problem. Seriously, Roberts, you didn’t think of that?”
“But I have work to do in the Federation,” Helena replied.
“Yeah, but do you have to do that work in the Federation in the Federation? We have hyperspatial relays, you know. If you simply have to be in the Federation then it couldn’t work… unless you knew someone who manufactured absolutely perfect identities like all the fucking time. I could give Roberts like a dozen of them at a go. I wouldn’t even charge his sorry ass even after he abandons us for some filthy porkie tramp.”
“But it’s still so risky,” Helena said both hopeful and uncertain.
“Hey, I do risk and Jessie does make a mean ID,” Paul said as he held her in his arms.
“Oh, shit. I gotta go,” Jessie babbled, “later.”
A few moments pass and then Shelia’s voice issues from the intercom.
“Roberts, I’m sending a squad to relieve you,” Shelia said, “As soon as they show up carry your ass over to Bruce’s Emporium.”
“I’m going too,” Helena said as she grabbed her camera.
Breathing heavily, Bruce locked the door to his office and looked over at Sarah, his partner.
“You ok?” He asked.
“Yeah, mostly.” Sarah said as she clutched her side, blood seeping from between her fingers. “It isn’t too deep, I think.”
They were the only ones that made it. Terrence got blind-sided when the kids turned on them and George got tackled as they tried to run.
Where did Kiera get a knife? He opened his desk and pulled out a blaster pistol. He could hear them scratching at the door and rattling the latch. How could this be happening? This was the Federation. This was the White Star. Things like this just didn’t happen in places like this. Things like this didn’t happen to people like them.
“What are we going to do?” Sarah asked Bruce as she looked at the door nervously.
“I’m not sure,” Bruce replied. He walked over to a wall safe and opened it grabbing some data crystals. “One thing I do know is that we gotta get out of here,” he said as he activated the blaster. “Another thing I know is that we need to make sure that our kids can’t talk. Once they are dead what we’ve got on these,” he said as he gestured with the data crystals, “can get us out of any hot water once we manage to get off of this ship.”
“What about the pirates?”
“What about them? They might be Terran but they’re pirates and won’t give two shits about what we are doing. If we can talk to them maybe I can work something out. We got cash, a lot of it, maybe enough to buy our way out of this mess.”
“Yeah, let’s hope so,” Sarah said as her blood dripped onto the floor. “But first we gotta get out of here. You think you can shoot them all?”
“Where are they going to go?” Bruce laughed, “We are locked in. They have nowhere to run.” He walked over to the door and laid his hand on the latch. “Just stay here,” he said as he gave her a wicked smile, “This shouldn’t take long.”
He opened the door and before he could take one step out of the office an energy bolt hit him squarely in the chest knocking him to the floor. Sarah just stood there in shock as Roberts, holding a stun rifle, entered the room.
“Hello there,” Roberts said with a pleasant smile as he shot her. He then turned back to the doorway. “It’s clear!” he exclaimed.
Helena quickly appeared taking photo after photo. Roberts pocketed the data crystals and grabbed his phone.
“The Emporium is secure. We managed to save Bruce and one of his employees and have secured the captives,” he said into his phone.
“Good deal,” Shelia responded. “How are the captives?”
“Good. They have a few bumps and bruises from their attack on their captors but nothing requiring Eno’s attention. We might want him to check out the woman I just stunned. She got cut pretty deep and we don’t want her to die early.”
“Die early?” Helena asked in surprise.
“Hey, Eno,” Shelia said, “How busy are you? Can you go to the Emporium?”
“Yeah, things are stable back here,” Eno replied. “I’ve got everyone treated and stable.”
“How much damage are we looking at back there?” Shelia asked.
“Not bad. Better than we anticipated. Only one truly critical case and fortunately it’s a human so our nicer stuff worked. The idiot is safely on life-support on our ship.”
“Idiot?”
“Yeah,” Eno laughed, “You know those heroes that believe that combat armor ‘just slows them down’? Yeah, she found out that a blaster bolt to the lung slows you down even more than a chest-plate.”
“Christ,” Shelia chuckled, “Bet she wears her armor next time, if there is a next time. How’s the lung?”
“Gone, completely cooked. She’s gonna live but she’s going to be on a machine till they grow a new one for her.”
“Shit. Lucky for her we know a guy,” Shelia said, “Grab a squad and head over to the Emporium. Check out the captives too since you will be there anyway.”
“Got it, boss,” Eno said, “On my way.”
“Roberts, Gloria is tied up for a little while. The last holdouts finally ran out of air canisters and have decided to be stupid.”
“Gloria?!?” Helena hissed angrily.
“Yes, Gloria,” Shelia laughed. “We have something special planned for Bruce and his friend. Gloria is the one who handles those details for us.”
“And she’s been looking forward to this for days,” Roberts added.
“Hold the fort there until Gloria shows,” Shelia said, “After that you and Helena head to the docking bay until things are secure.”
“Got it,” Roberts said as the communication was ended.
“What is Gloria going to do to these people?” Helena asked.
“Sometimes we’ve decided that simply killing someone isn’t enough,” Roberts replied calmly, “When that becomes the case Gloria is the one who usually handles the details for us. She can be...”
“I fucking know what she can be!”
“She can be a lot worse,” Roberts replied, “We decided that Bruce and any of his associates needed to die and die badly. Gloria will handle the ‘badly’ part.”
Helena was at a loss. She wanted to disapprove but she had just made her way through a room full of sex slaves, some of them children. She had seen the bruises, the limps, the scars… These people needed to be punished and not by spending a few years in a cushy Federation prison.
They needed to suffer. But was this right? It wasn’t. I mean it shouldn’t be. Paul had just told her that Bruce and this woman were about to be tortured to death. There would be no trial, no due process. She should object. This went against just about every value she held dear.
But then she looked back at a young girl wearing only a t-shirt and panties peeking around the open doorway and she felt nothing but anger and hatred towards Bruce and his friend. There would be no wiggling out of their fate. There would be no pay off or cover-up or blackmail. No. They were going to face… justice? No. Not justice. Then again, they didn’t deserve that. They were going to get exactly what they had coming. They weren’t going to face justice. They were going to face injustice.
No. No no no no. What Paul and his crew were about to do was wrong. This isn’t how civilized people did things. In anger she had often wished “bad things” to happen to scum like the people on this ship but the reality of it…
Her whole life right was right and wrong was wrong. It’s what drove her into journalism in the first place. Now, she just wasn’t sure what was “right”. If they did things “right” and turned these scumbags in they would likely never see trial, her story would be buried, and they would be free to set up shop again once things blew over. As fucked up as “wrong” was, their evil stops today.
Did they, did Paul, actually have a point? She really didn’t want to believe so. They were going to do with a knife what could never be accomplished otherwise. Shit. This was so fucked up. She found herself wondering what other evil they had stopped and didn’t like that one bit.
The young girl timidly walked over and hugged Helena. Helena looked down at her as she hugged her back. Whether it was right or wrong was still something that Helena couldn’t work out but one thing was clear.
“It’s ok,” Helena said, “You are safe and they will never hurt you or anyone else ever again.”
“Excellent! Good work!” Shelia exclaimed happily as she received the latest reports. She then switched on the PA system.
Attention. The ship is now secure. Repeat. The ship is now secure. Start security watch shift one. All other squads report to docking bay.
“Ok, T’sunk’al,” Shelia said with a smile, “Everything is buttoned down. Ready to go?”
“Absolutely,” T’sunk’al said as he took a straight edge and drew a line down from an intersection of three curves on a large sheet of paper to the x-axis of the graph. He then headed over to the navigation console.
“Jessie, is Bunny in control of their jump-drive?” he asked into an intercom.
“You know it,” Jessie chirped. “We’re just waiting on the numbers.”
“I’m entering them now.”
“Bunny has the data and is feeding it into the drives. Capacitor banks are already charged. Spinning up the drive now. We will be ready to jump in ten minutes.”
“Sweet!” Shelia exclaimed with a grin. “It was a little rough there for a minute but looks like everything is finally going according to plan.”
Helena was sitting with the Terran sex slaves when the door opened and Gloria walked in pushing a large cart piled with planks, ropes, and other assorted materials.
“Hello,” Gloria said in a monotone voice. “I am pleased to see that you didn’t die.”
Helena said nothing. She just glared at Gloria with a mixture of rage and hate. Gloria turned to Roberts.
“Are we good, killer?”
“No. No we aren’t. Just stay out of our way.”
Gloria showed no emotion. “Fair enough,” she said. “So where are my toys?”
“This way,” Roberts said icily. Gloria turned her empty soulless eyes towards the room. Helena shrank back. It was the first time she saw them. She had never seen eyes like those, ever.
“Why don’t you two take the Terrans out of here? It’s about to get… unpleasant,” she said to Helena.
“I’ll call for someone to meet you outside,” Roberts said calmly. “You should really go.”
“No,” Helena said, “I need to see this.”
“Fair enough,” Gloria said. “If it bleeds it leads, right?”
“It’s not like that. I… we… need to know, that’s all.”
“Cool. We will send some people to get the Terrans. I’ll wait until they are gone,” Gloria said in an empty hollow voice.
“Helena,” Roberts said carefully, “are you sure? This is going to be bad, really bad. I’m not sure what she has in mind but I am sure it’s going to be fucked up.”
“If I’m going to cover this then I’m going to cover all of this. People need to know exactly what happened.”
Gloria just shrugged, opened up a tool bag, and pulled out a cordless drill and saw…
“Oh Jesus...” Helena gasped.
Attention all teams and passengers… Prepare for jump
There was the familiar “tingle” of entering hyperspace but, no lurch, no groan, no shudder. It was a near flawless entry.
“Shit, T,” Shelia grinned, “I knew we paid you for a reason.”
“That was a rather nice one if I do say so myself,” T’sunk’al buzzed happily. “That nice smooth entry into hyperspace doesn’t guarantee a nice smooth exit, however.”
“Still, I will call it a win. How long are we going to be in hyperspace?”
“I wanted to put us firmly into interstellar space with at least a parsec between us and any star. To get that we will be in hyperspace for… still getting used to your time units,” he said as he typed away on a z’uush calculator, “thirteen hours twenty seven minutes.”
“Great. Time for some looting!” Shelia jumped out of the command chair. “Jessie!”
“Boss?”
“Switch all command functions over to the Tiger and lock down the bridge.” She turned to T’sunk’al.
“C’mon, let’s go shopping!”
After a short briefing and scheduling of the watch shifts Shelia and T’sunk’al walked onto the promenade for a little light “shopping.”
“SHELIA!” a huge voice boomed as an even bigger drax approached.
“Volshugna!” Shelia yelled as she strode up and gave him a hug.
“Does your dishonor have no limits? Is there any depth to which you will not stoop?”
“Volshy, you know there is nothing I hate more than a fair fight,” Shelia laughed as they traded blows upon the shoulders. She looked at the only slightly smaller drax accompanying him. “That guy is almost as ugly as you are. There is no way that can be a coincidence.”
“You are correct, dishonorable one,” Volshugna said with pride. “This is my cub, Kash. This is his first hunt!”
“I am not your cub anymore, father. I am of age now.”
“Kash, you will be my cub until you make me stop calling you that just as I was my father’s cub until I made him release the title,” Volshugna laughed. “You will need a few more years and a few more hunts, just like I did.”
Kash shifted in embarrassment. Volshugna just roared with laughter and put him in an affectionate (for a drax) headlock. Kash hissed and bit him in the side which just made Volshugna laugh even harder as he released him.
“He fights dirty!” Shelia chuckled, “I like that.”
“He is disappointed with you.”
“Oh really?”
“He had his heart set on getting his hands on a human skull but your devotion to Terran dirty tricks deprived him of a kill.”
“Hmm...” Shelia said with a smile, “Don’t give up hope yet, Kash baby. We may be able to set you up with something.”
“Don’t tease the boy, Shelia.”
“I’m not teasing. The job isn’t over till we get away clean and divvy up the spoils. Plenty can still happen and if anything does I will try to get Kashie here in the mix.”
“You are a good woman, Shelia!” Volshugna roared as he batted her shoulder.
“Goddammit, I’m going to need that arm,” Shelia laughed.
A few hours later, Logan grabbed a bottle from behind the bar of the restaurant where Shelia and some of her crew were having a nice meal and plopped down beside her.
“Can I buy you a drink?” he laughed as he poured both of them a shot.
“You know I don’t drink on a job, sweetie,” Shelia responded as she cut into her steak.
“Oh, come on, we got this one in the bag,” Logan said as he poured himself a shot.
“It isn’t in the bag until it’s in the bag. If you are serious about stepping up your game you should start thinking like that, you know.”
“Meh, I’ll start thinking like that on the next job,” he laughed as he knocked back the shot. He looked over at her with a smile, “So, what’s the plan?”
“Well,” Shelia said as she took a drink of water, “We will be in hyperspace for another eight hours and then once we pop into real space we will get down to business.”
“What do you mean, ‘business’.”
“First off we set up some cameras and execute Councilor Morgan. I want to do that right. Only get to do that one once you know,” Shelia laughed. “Then, we start really going to work on the ship. We will loot the casino, shake down the passengers, check for any good solid Terran bounties, and shit like that.”
“Shit like the bank?” Logan asked grinning.
“Yeah, like the bank. Rumor has it that there is shit in those safety deposit boxes that will blow your mind. They also say that there are some larger storage areas as well. We are going to find some really nice shit.”
“What about the numbered accounts?” Logan asked as he poured another drink for himself.
Shelia just narrowed her eyes at him.
“Yeah, we will probably try to grab them but we don’t expect much out of it. You could spend years trying to grind at that encryption and still not get shit. We might try to ransom them or we might just toss them out the airlock. Can you imagine the screams and wails when they realize that all those credits are just gone forever,” Shelia laughed.
“But don’t you have that super-hacker?”
“Even the almighty Jessie is human, Logan. The encryption on those accounts is heavy. Seriously, those things are airtight. Complete waste of time. Don’t worry. There will still be plenty of credits to split up. I don’t want to promise what I can’t deliver but it’s no secret that we are going to be very generous with the bonuses. You be a good little boy and you will come away from this very happy. I promise.” Shelia said with a warm smile. “So, did you and your crew enjoy the little shopping spree?”
“Oh yeah,” Logan grinned. “We even played nice with the other crews and everything.”
“Good to hear,” Shelia smiled. “I was hoping we wouldn’t have a repeat of… previous issues.”
“I put my foot down hard,” Logan laughed. “See? I can do that.”
“Good to hear. Maybe you will become a proper pirate captain yet.”
“So,” Logan asked, “what are all those cockroaches doing over at that one place?”
“Those z’uush have been lead by T’sunk’al to a very nice chocolatier and introduced to the wonders of chocolate. Z’uush absolutely love chocolate.”
“Huh, learn something new every day...”
At another small restaurant Roberts emerged from the kitchen bearing a platter of sandwiches.
“Not the usual fine dining experience, I’m afraid,” he said to Helena as he placed the platter down between them.
“That’s ok,” she said. “I don’t think I’m going to have an appetite for quite awhile.”
“Yeah. I did try to warn you.”
“I know. I thought I was prepared but fuck...”
“On the bright side it could have been a lot more graphic. She actually almost fully skinned someone alive once. Too bad for Bruce that she wasn’t feeling that merciful this time.”
“Merciful?!”
“Compared to crucifixion? Absolutely. Bruce and his friend would be dead already if she skinned them. They are going to suffer for quite awhile. It’s why crucifixion is Gloria’s favorite when she has the time and materials.”
“Why the fuck do you have a monster like her on your crew?”
“Because we can use a monster like her on our crew,” Roberts said calmly. “We aren’t a traveling gospel choir. We sometimes do fucked up things and that sometimes requires fucked up people. She isn’t like this normally. Something went really wrong with her this time. Fuck. This whole job is been going really wrong from the beginning. If I could have pulled the plug on this one I would have.”
“What the fuck is wrong with her?”
“Oh so many things… You know,” Roberts said as he chewed thoughtfully, “You should ask her yourself.”
“Fucking what!?!?”
“Seriously, you want to get the whole story? Interview her.”
“I’m not getting anywhere near that psycho. She fucking tried to kill me!”
“And she won’t try it again.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because she’s ‘normal’ at the moment, in full control.”
“This is normal?!”
“Yes. Right now she is just a machine as strange as that sounds. That craziness where she tried to kill you? Whatever that was is gone. Right now she is basically a walking AI and she has been ordered not to touch you, so she won’t. I truly hate her guts at the moment but I have complete faith that she is for lack of a better word, safe.”
“Only if you are there and have one of your fucking machine guns pointed at her fucking head.”
“Oh, I’ll be there and armed but I won’t point it at her. It would be too much temptation. It’s a damn good thing I’m leaving because I don’t think I can ever look at her again without wanting to kill her.”
“Well that makes two of us,” Helena said as she took a nibble of a sandwich. “The difference is that you can… You can, right?”
“Effortlessly,” Roberts said as he finished off his sandwich. “To be honest, it’s taking a lot not to just go ahead and do it anyway. I really want her dead for what she did.”
“Me too... Um, Paul?”
“Yes?”
“How long will it take for them to die?”
“Everybody’s different but it will take awhile. Gloria did it so it would take as long as possible but I’m pretty sure they will get ‘mercy’ in the end. Shelia had them fitted with vitals monitors.”
“Why?”
“Odds are because she has some questions for them, probably concerning how they got the Terrans. She will let things go for awhile and then show up with two syringes for each of them. One will be euthanasia and the other will be something to help keep them alive for even longer. Then she will question them and if they cooperate she will then administer euthanasia.”
“If they don’t cooperate?”
“Then she will give them the meds that will keep them alive for even longer. She may even have Eno treat them to extend things even further. Then she will ask again. If they still don’t talk, then she might have them taken down, allow them to recuperate a little, then put them back up again. Repeat until they break. If it takes too long there are some drugs they can add to the mix. They’ll talk. Gloria’s a monster but she’s nothing compared to Shelia. If Shelia wants them to talk they will talk. It’s said that Shelia can make even a Collective warrior scream and beg for mercy.”
“Fuck! I know they are scum but damn...”
“Hey, these watches actually fit!” Jak’kul’sha said happily as his team was picking through the remains of a jewelry store.
“And these little round things are delicious!” Mul’sha’kal said happily as she pulled another large pearl off of a necklace.
“I’m pretty sure you aren’t supposed to eat those,” Bal’sur’kala chuckled as he selected an expensive watch.
“What? Are they poisonous or something?”
“Let me check,” Bal’sur’kala said as he pulled out his tablet, “Hmm… Those are called ‘pearls’ and they are made of something called nacre, a secretion made by something called an ‘oyster’, a creature from Terra. They are actually quite valuable. Looking at this there is nothing in there harmful to us. You are gobbling up thousands of credits but aside from that it’s all good.”
“Well then I’ll just be sure to savor them then. Here, try one,” she said as she handed Bal’sur’kala one from the strand.
“You’re right. They are quite tasty!”
“Too bad we won’t be able to get more of these,” Mul’sha’kal said as she started handing them out to her team.
“Oh we will.” Bal’sur’kala said with a happy click. “Oysters make the inner layer of their whole shell out of this stuff. I’m willing to bet we will be able to get our manipulators on plenty of it cheaply. According to this only these little round accretions are valuable. The shells themselves are not expensive at all.”
“So maybe we should stop eating thousands of fuckin’ credits then,” Jak’kul’sha laughed as he popped a pearl into his mouth. “At the very least wait ‘till some of the porkies can see us do it. Bet that would be funny as fuck.”
“Hopefully one of the passengers is wearing some of these and we can just take them off of their neck and eat them right in front of them. That would be hilarious!” Salz’rash laughed.
Mul’sha’kal chuckled as she started hooking several gold chains together. “Yeah, we just gotta do that… There!” she said as she hooked the chains to both ends of a jeweled necklace and slid it around where her head connected to her carapace. “How does that look?”
“Looks sharp!” Bal’sur’kala said with a wiggle of his eyestalks.
“Hey, you’re a glittershell,” Jak’kul’sha said to Bal’sur’kala, “How do you guys have those jewels on your shells like you do?”
“Oh you use adhesive for the cheaper stuff and the good stuff they install little threaded mounts right into the carapace where the jewelry screws in. I think a good adhesive is better than the posts and I can whip up the right stuff easy.”
“Great!” Jak’kul’sha said as he smashed open a display case and pulled out a massive jeweled pendant. “I always wanted something like this! Look at it. What a lovely specimen!”
“Hey guys, after this let’s head over to one of the clothing stores,” Ray’shel’zun said as he grabbed a handful of diamond rings, “I would love to find a nice cape or something.”
“I’m pretty sure that they don’t have z’uush capes in stock,” Bal’sur’kala laughed, “and you might want to reconsider those rings. Diamonds are worth a lot less in the Republic and the Empire.”
“Use your imagination. If humans have something that fits the top part of their body it would be close. A tailor should be able to change it to suit me. I’ll just grab a few. You know the fabric will be high-credit. As far as the rings go they are pretty and I like them. I’m keeping them. I’m going to cut the hoop here then crimp them around some of my fiddlers.”
“That’s actually a good idea,” Bal’sur’kala said thoughtfully, “Not sure how the humans do it but the real high-end z’uush shops just stock cloth and leather. They make everything to order. Not sure if a cruise-ship would have one of those but let’s go see.”
“Sounds good,” Jak’kul’sha said, “We need to leave some shit here for the other gangs anyhow. Besides, I would just love to get a nice bag or something. Maybe one of those, what do you they call them, purses I think?”
“I think purses are for females in Terran culture, dude.”
“Female humans maybe,” Jak’kul’sha said, “We all carry bags and I’ve always wanted a nice one.”
With a only a very slight groan, the White Star popped out of hyperspace.
“T, you are a fucking artist,” Shelia said as she swatted him on the back.
“Yes, I’m quite pleased with that jump provided we are anywhere close to where I intended. It’s going to take a little while to properly fix our position but at first glance we have the middle of fucking nowhere part of it right. Let’s just hope it’s the right middle of fucking nowhere.”
“Super. We will get that all hammered down after the execution,” Shelia said. “We have other matters to deal with now.”
“Right you are. Let’s get this over with.”
“Yeah,” Shelia said gravely. “Messy business but it has to be done.”
“So, how is going? Everything ready?” Shelia asked Helena as she walked into a conference room.
“Yes. Ready to go. I put a mark on the floor where the councilor should go.” Helena said grimly, “This is a lovely camera by the way.”
“Thanks. After we get the footage you can keep it.”
“Really? Wow! Thanks!”
Logan and his whole crew walked in. Shelia turned to them with a smile.
“Came to watch the show?” Shelia asked.
“Yeah, wouldn’t miss it. Not every day that a Federation councilor gets gunned down.”
“Cool, it won’t be long now. Ah, here he is, the man of the hour!” Shelia said with a grin as Councilor Morgan was drug into the room by Roberts and Jacob.
“You… You can’t do this!” Councilor Morgan shouted
“Actually we can,” Shelia said with a smile. “See that little piece of tape on the floor? Drag him over there,” she said to her men.
“Please! Let’s be reasonable about this!” Councilor Morgan plead as he was put in position.
“As reasonable as you were when you set up Red Sunday?”
“L-look… It was a mistake, ok. I made a mistake. We made a mistake. There is no reason to-”
“Oh there are plenty of reasons,” Shelia said. “One reason that your attack and your death have in common is money.”
“Money?”
“Views, sweetie,” Shelia said with a smile as she softly stroked his face, “We are going to post this on a pirate server and millions of people are going to line up and pay to watch your brains get blown all over a wall, that wall to be specific. You are going to star in your very own snuff film.”
“I’m a Federation councilor!” Councilor Morgan screamed. “They will hunt you down. There will be no place you can hide!”
“Oh they are already hunting for us. What are they going to do, kill us twice?” Shelia laughed and then turned to Helena.
“Ready to go?”
“Yes,” Helena said gravely from behind a tripod mounted camera, “as ready as I am going to be.”
“Right,” Shelia said with a smile, “Let’s get started then. Councilor Morgan, you have been found responsible for playing a major part in the false allegations against the Terran Republic, the corrupt decision to launch a surprise attack that killed many innocent Terrans, and the resulting war that resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent civilians on both sides. Your actions were made-”
“That’s not true! You are lying!!” Councilor Morgan shouted over her.
“We have proof,” Shelia said, “That proof will be attached to the footage when it is posted so everyone can read it and make their own decision. Before you ask we got the proof when we hacked the Federation servers. We got everything, councilor. You can shout and scream all you want but the files we attach will make our case.”
“It’s a lie, people they are telling lies!! The files are falsified! This is all-” He was cut short by Shelia walking over and backhanding him knocking him to the ground.
“I was going to read my statement before I killed you but since you keep interrupting I’ll just kill you first and then read my statement.”
“No! No, please… please...” Councilor Morgan was hauled to his feet, a wet stain appearing on his trousers.
“Ok, hold him right there.” Shelia said as she backed up a few feet and pulled out her sidearm. She then turned to the camera. “This pistol, here zoom in on this serial number please. Got it? Great. This pistol will be placed on e-buy for any interested collectors. Not sure when I will be able to post the auction but keep your eyes open for it.” She then turned to Councilor Morgan. “Good-bye, porkie.”
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” Logan said as his entire crew leveled their weapons at Shelia and her team.
The rest of the series can be found here
I'm not going to leave you guys hanging for two weeks this time, promise.

Myra Kindle is an independent investigative reporter.
Her other reports:

• What does Google want with male sex workers?
  
• A Tyson Foods board member was held ransom for $87,250 in December, 2018. Now released, he says Tyson is suppressing police investigations into finding his captors and threatening legal action if he speaks about his abduction.
  
• Google’s Algorithmic Decay - A Report on the Lenoir, North Carolina Bombing
  
• In 1979, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow was losing more than 120 informants a year to Russian KGB. by 1981, that number had dropped to just 10. Now, a former intelligence agent is raising alarm that the wildly unorthodox methods once used to protect Russian sources could pose a devastating new threat
  
• For Two Years a Former University Student Has Set-Up Unusual Protest Demonstrations in Buffalo, New York - No One Is Still Quite Sure What He’s Protesting
  
• Nearly Two Months After a Terrorist Attack in China Killed 337 People, Investigators Have Gotten No Closer to Determining How the Attack Was Carried Out
  
• A Report on the Grey Men of 327 Cedar Lane -- This was part of a collaborative project with nslewis, who wrote the incident that takes place prior, "The grey men of 327 Cedar Lane"
  

Boardwalk Attraction

What drives a person to cover themselves in gasoline and drop a match by their feet?
That was the question that ran through the minds of many in a crowd outside the Borgata Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey on March 23rd, 2019.
At approximately 7:45PM on that cold spring eve, a Mr. James Ferdini, age 47, covered himself in gasoline and was prepared to drop a match in the fuel.
As the crowd shouted for him to stop and several witnesses called the police, Mr. Ferdini reportedly stood unfazed, simply grinning and appearing to revel in the crowd’s shock.
“It was a suicidal action but it didn’t look like a suicidal person,” says Sam Kenset, an eyewitness to the incident. “I guess I don’t really know what a suicidal person looks like, but his movements and the way he was talking -- he just didn’t seem like a man down on his luck.”
Ms. Kenset is quite astute in her observation -- Mr. Feredini was certainly not down on his luck. In fact only moments before covering himself in gasoline, Mr. Ferdini had cashed out more than $1.3 million in winnings from the Borgata Hotel and Casino, making his suicidal action all the more puzzling.
However dangerous, Mr. Ferdini’s gasoline soaked stunt would not lead to his death on March 23rd, but his life was not long for this world either. Three days later on March 26th he would be found dead from an entirely different cause.
In Mr. Ferdini’s incredible winnings and suicidal tendencies leading up to his unusual and grizzly death on March 26th, many questions remain. Who was James Ferdini? What happened to his more than million dollars in winnings? And what was the lead up of events that caused his demise?
Based on interviews with management at the Borgata Hotel and Casino, local police and investigators, and corroborated with eyewitness accounts, independent investigative reporter Myra Kindle, for the first time, brings you a report on the man who nearly bankrupted a casino, and whose luck seemed to make him invincible until his highly improbable death.

What are the Odds?

As the match fell to James Ferdini’s feet outside the Borgata Hotel and Casino, the crowd stood agasp as they waited for the inevitable fire and horrible death of a gas soaked man. This moment would never come however, and the match reportedly landed in the puddle of gasoline meeting it as though it were water.
“The crowd started to look away the moment he dropped the match,” says Matthew Gershowitz, a witness to the event. “I couldn’t though -- I needed to see what would happen. I mean we all thought we were witnessing a suicide or something, but the guy was jovial, happy, making jokes with the crowd before he lit the match. And then when it hit the gas, it just burned out, and the man started laughing. We were all amazed. It was like a miracle -- we thought he’d die for sure.”
While it’s quite understandable that the crowd believed they had witnessed a miracle when James did not burst into flames, professor of organic chemistry at Villanova University, Marcy Li, says the odds of Mr. Ferdini’s death were far less than certain.
“Gasoline is certainly flammable, but not like in the way shown in movies and TV,” says professor Li. “It’s the layer of vapor above that gasoline that is most likely to combust. There could be a number of factors like wind, humidity and temperature that improved Mr. Ferdini’s chance of avoiding being burned alive. I would certainly say he’s lucky, but I wouldn’t say it’s a miracle he didn’t burst into flames.”
If Mr. Ferdini relied on luck that day to survive, it would appear to have been with him in spades for quite some time.
Having just come from the Borgata casino floor, James was reportedly on a ‘hot-streak’, winning tens of thousands of dollars an hour over the preceding two days.
“You have to imagine we were pretty happy when he left the casino,” says Richard Markelson, a floor manager at the Borgata. “Normally we want customers to stay as long as possible so the house can win our money back, but Mr. Ferdini never had a bad roll, spin, or lever pull the whole 40 consecutive hours he was gambling at the Borgata. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Mr. Markelson was able to confirm through cash-logs and casino surveillance that Mr. Ferdini had indeed won big at the Borgata, and records show his total winnings amounted to $1,348,427.
Mr. Markelson said of the winnings: “It was enough of a loss over a short period of time that the owners of the casino were worried our insurance premiums were gonna jump. A casino in Atlantic City simply doesn’t lose that much money in such a short time, at least not to a nobody, and Mr. Ferdini was certainly a nobody.”

A Career Loser

While management at the Borgata Hotel and Casino did not know Mr. Ferdini prior to his 40 hour lucrative gambling binge, many on Atlantic City’s boardwalk have been acutely aware of James for years.
For example after James’s stunt with the gasoline, he was arrested and taken to the Atlantic City jail and held on the possible charge of disorderly conduct, but was released after the charges were dropped. The reason? The police had a long record of interactions with Mr. Ferdini and thought of him only as a minor risk.
“We were more worried about the guy’s mental health than him causing a scene on the boardwalk,” says Atlantic City officer Paul Stevenson. “We’ve known James for years -- I mean he’s a loser. Is it a shock to me that he would try and commit suicide like that? Absolutely not.”
When asked why the police did not opt to commit Mr. Ferdini to a hospital on a psychological evaluation, officer Stevenson replied: “The plan was to have him committed, but some lawyer showed up and we didn’t want a legal fight, so we decided to release him instead. I felt a bit mixed about it. I mean the guy was clearly suicidal -- why else would you douse yourself in gasoline?”
When told that Mr. Ferdini was reportedly jovial and happy during the gasoline incident, and that he had in fact won more than a million dollars immediately prior to the event, officer Stevenson struggled with the narrative: “That doesn’t sound like the James Ferdini I know. He’s always been a depressed gambler, and never won a game in his life as far as I know. He couldn’t win a hundred bucks, let alone a million. I can’t even believe they let him into the Borgata in the first place, but I guess the cash winnings explains the lawyer.”
Officer Stevenson asked if I could confirm the details of the winnings and that Mr. Ferdini was in a jovial mood during the gasoline incident. When I showed documentation of Mr. Ferdini’s winnings provided by Mr. Markelson and relayed several eyewitness accounts as to his temperament, officer Stevenson replied: “I don’t get it. So, why’d he try to burn himself alive?”

The ‘Cooler’

Perhaps no individual has a better sense of who Mr. Ferdini is and what happened to him than the floor manager at the Borgata, Mr. Markelson.
For 40 hours prior to the gasoline incident, Mr. Ferdini bet heavily at the Borgata casino, and Mr. Markelson was in close proximity for much of his hot-streak.
“I was actually supposed to be on vacation that week,” says Mr. Markelson, “but I got called in because the other cooler was sick.”
A ‘cooler’ as Mr. Markelson explained, is a relic of old casinos that today is rarely used, however some establishments still invest in what could be called ‘charms’ to bring bad luck to high rollers.
“I got hired because I’m unlucky,” explains Mr. Markelson. “I can do the job of floor manager just fine -- don't get me wrong -- but it was my knack for bad luck that got me the job for sure.”
A cooler operates by simply being present around those that are on a run of good luck. In Mr. Markelson’s account, he says that being around him will bring such bad luck to any gambler that their cards will go cold, their lever pulls result in no winnings, and their wheel spins doomed to lose money.
“It’s a talent I’ve had since, well, forever,” says Mr. Markelson. “If I just stand near someone, they’ll start to have bad luck like me. I know it sounds crazy, and sometimes I don’t believe it myself, but it’s true. I mean, like I said, I think that’s why the casino hired me. They could count on me to go onto the casino floor and bring bad luck to anyone that’s winning a bit too much. Best part, since it’s based on superstition, it’s completely above board.”
With James Ferdini, Richard Markelson found that his power did not work however.
“I don’t know about before I showed up, but for when I was watching him, that man could not lose. The casino made me stay multiple shifts, I’m talking nearly 40 hours to watch him and were hoping I’d bring him bad luck, but it never happened. He just kept on winning no matter what game he played.”

An Escalation of Bets

In attempting to find James Ferdini’s state of mind prior to the gasoline incident, floor manager Richard Markelson provided unfettered access to video of the casino floor, even though he realized he could be breaking several state gambling commission laws by allowing a reporter to look at such surveillance. In fact, more than taking the risk, it was Mr. Markelson that called me and led me to this story in the first place.
“The police didn’t send him to the hospital after the gas thing I’ve been told. I figured the truth has to be somewhere and when police won’t do their job, I guess it’s reporters that have to step in,” says Mr. Markelson. “The most important thing to be me personally is finding out why he died just a few days later in that horrible freak accident -- the one on March 26th.”
When asked if Mr. Markelson had any interest in finding Mr. Ferdini’s still missing $1.3 million, he replied: “Of course, but that’s not my primary concern here. I just want to know what the fuck happened. How does a guy who should have felt on top of the world go to dousing himself in gasoline, and then ends up dead a few days later? I really want to know.”
In the video access provided by Mr. Markelson, I managed to find new clues that might be able to explain Mr. Ferdini’s downward spiral.
It could best be described as an escalation of bets that appeared to take place soon after Mr. Ferdini began his run of good luck. According to video of the casino floor, around the time manager Richard Markelson appeared, Mr. Ferdini started his miraculous winning streak.
The video shows Mr. Ferdini starting with craps, moving to baccarat, then slot machines, and followed by a long run at twenty-one. He continues to gamble for 40 straight hours, much of it with Mr. Markelson in close proximity.
“I was the only cooler around, so the higher ups at the Borgata made me stay the whole time. I got a lot of overtime that week,” says Mr. Markelson.
Curiously, the video shows that at around the 25 hour mark Mr. Ferdini attracts something of a crowd. While the video offers no sound, it appears as though Mr. Ferdini is making several wagers with his new found groupies.
At first a few in his new entourage gamble him directly in casino floor games like Texas Holdem, but it appears as though they make several bets outside of the casino games as well.
In one instance Mr. Ferdini appears to bet that he can drink boiling hot water. The video shows him drinking a scalding hot cup and immediately receiving a small payout from several people he was talking to before beginning the stunt.
It became clear to me after reviewing the video surveillance that for this story, I would need to speak to at least one of the people who witnessed Mr. Ferdini taking on these non-casino game bets. Thankfully, with Mr. Markelson’s help I was able to track down Maria Nowak, who in the video appears to spend several hours with Mr. Ferdini.
A resident of Atlantic City, Ms. Nowak was able to confirm that Mr. Ferdini was taking part in what she describes as “extreme behavior”, and that he was seemingly willing to bet on anything and everything. Even games that were clearly not of chance, like drinking boiling hot water.

”For $500, Right?”

Why did Mr. Ferdini cover himself in gasoline and drop a match? It’s a question essential to understanding his mindset, and one for which the answer appears to be quite simple.
After tracking down Ms. Nowak, a long time resident who often partakes in long gambling binges herself, she claims Mr. Ferdini covered himself in gasoline and dropped a match in the fuel simply because of a wager.
“We had been doing side bets for hours,” says Ms. Nowak, who agreed to meet me at Hayday Cafe, a local coffee shop. “I was with a group of friends and we noticed that this guy [Mr. Ferdini] had not been losing any bets for hours. The guy was pretty much throwing money around and that type of attitude attracts the crowd I was with. So, we started making small talk and then made a few bets, dumb, small ones to start.”
When asked what bets her group made with Mr. Ferdini, Ms. Nowak replies: “At first it was things like, how many casino chips he could fit into his mouth. But then it escalated pretty quickly, like soon we were betting on how much money he could win in an hour. Then a bit after that he did this really stupid boiling hot water challenge -- he simply bet he could drink boiling hot water without having to go to the hospital. The bet didn’t make any sense, but like everything else, he won.”
“The gasoline challenge was the craziest though,” she continues. “It was clearly a joke when my friend suggested it, but James took him up on it right away. The challenge was, like, ‘can you cover yourself in gasoline, drop a match, and survive?’ James said he would do it for $500, and we just assumed he was kidding, but sure enough he was dead serious.”
Ms. Nowak claims that she too was present in the crowd outside the Borgata when Mr. Ferdini made good on the gasoline bet, and that immediately prior to him dropping the match, he said to her and the rest of the gambling entourage, “This is for $500, right?”
“He said it but I’m not too sure how many people heard it,” Ms. Nowak says. “I mean the whole crowd was screaming for him to stop. They all thought the guy wanted to kill himself. I guess one of us nodded our heads to James’s question, and then he dropped the match. I’ll be damned, but he won that bet too. We gave him $500 alright, not that he needed it after making all that money at the Borgata.”
When asked if Ms. Nowak saw Mr. Ferdini after he was released from the police station, she responds: “Yea, we hung out for the next two or three days -- all of us -- the gambling group that had formed at the casino, James Ferdini, and then, oh yea, that guy Richard Makel-something. I think he worked at the Borgata but he hung around with us for a couple days while we partied at a different hotel. It was around the time Richard and the rest of us left that James was in that freak accident.”

Richard Markelson

The details of Ms. Nowak’s account have confirmed two things to this reporter.
One, Mr. Ferdini’s suicidal gesture to cover himself in gasoline was nothing more than a bet to earn more money. Feeling high from his good luck at the casino, it would appear Mr. Ferdini thought himself invincible and was willing to take on any challenge, even if it put his life on the line.
Two, Borgata floor manager and ‘cooler’ Richard Markelson has not been fully forthcoming in his account of what happened. For example, he never mentioned spending time with Mr. Ferdini after leaving the Borgata.
Confronting Mr. Markelson, I ask him for a more accurate account of what happened after Mr. Ferdini’s gasoline soaked stunt. Mr. Markelson is nervous in his reply, realizing he’s been caught withholding valuable information.
“You have to understand that James is not particularly good with money,” starts Mr. Markelson. “I know I’m saying that having really only met the guy at the Borgata casino, but you could just tell he was something of a loser. Maybe other people told you that too, I don’t know. My point is James was destined to spend that money on drugs and alcohol, and well, we all kind of just tagged along for the ride.”
Mr. Markelson goes on to describe a drug fueled binge that lasted from Saturday March 23rd until sometime before Mr. Ferdini’s death on Tuesday, March 26th.
“James and I had been awake for more than 40 hours when he left the casino, and I was going to go to bed, but somehow I got roped into his entourage he found at the Borgata when he was raking in cash. I would’ve gone home, but free cocaine is free cocaine. I’m not particularly proud of saying that, but it’s true -- I really like the drug.”
Richard Markelson says that in addition to drugs, Mr. Ferdini hired prostitutes and strippers for the group’s amusement.
“I’m not into all the seedy stuff, but we had been awake for a long long time and on so much shit. I mean we were taking meth rips and stuff. Yea, it’s weird now that I look back on it, but a binge can be like that sometimes.”
The most important question to this reporter is what happened in the final hours of Mr. Ferdini’s life. In this respect, Mr. Markelson claims to know nothing.
“I left before he died on Tuesday,” says Mr. Markelson. “It doesn’t surprise me that he died though. The gasoline bet was just the beginning of it. That girl, Maria Nowak, the one that told you I was hanging out with the impromptu entourage -- it was her boyfriend that really stepped things up in a pretty violent way in terms of betting.”
When asked what he means by “violent”, Mr. Markelson responds: “I mean they were actually gambling on Russian roulette in the hotel room when I left.”

That Other Roulette

Once again reaching out to Ms. Nowak, I ask her about Mr. Markelson’s description of partying and gambling in a hotel with Mr. Ferdini.
It was at this point that Ms. Nowak declined any further questions, only providing the statement: “I’ve said everything I’m going to say.”
While this seemed like a certain dead end to discovering what happened in the final hours of Mr. Ferdini’s life and also possibly to tracking down what happened to his $1.3 million in winnings, I by luck received a phone call shortly before I was ready to call it quits on this investigation.
The phone call was from one Mr. Samuel Howlser, boyfriend to Ms. Maria Nowak.
Mr. Howlser said he wished to speak with me to clarify a few details that Ms. Nowak had shared with me and to dispute any “lies” stated by Mr. Markelson.
“Me and Maria didn’t steal nobody’s money and we’re not gonna get in trouble for what Richard Markelson or anyone in that entourage might be telling you,” Mr. Howsler said to me in a phone interview.
When asked about details of the drug fueled gambling binge shared by Mr. Markelson and Ms. Nowak, Mr. Howsler mostly confirms their accounts, however his description of floor manager Makelson is less favorable than what Mr. Markelson told me himself.
“He was the craziest fucker of the bunch, definitely,” says Mr. Howlser. “He knew the hookups for the crystal and coke, got us ketamine too. But the nuttiest thing about him is what the fuck he’d bet on. Like if Ferdini thought he was invincible, doubly so for that manger from the Borgata. Markelson was the one that brought out a revolver for Russian roulette too, and they played like dozens of games.”
Russian roulette, a lethal game of chance that has the player hold a loaded pistol to their head and fire, is an extremely dangerous game that has been popularized in media and fiction for decades. The game requires a loaded revolver to have at least one bullet chambered before firing, with the odds of death usually being one in six.
“It was fucking crazy when Markelson said he’d play it, but the dude was having as good luck as Ferdini so he thought he could do it,” says Mr. Howlser. “So they load a pistol with a bullet and start playing each other cause they were the only two fuckers crazy enough to do it. They play one round, but no winner so they go again. Second round, no winner so a third. Eventually they play enough rounds where they figure they gotta up the odds. So instead of loading one bullet, they load two. They play round after round with two out of six chambers loaded with bullets, spinning the revolver cylinder each time before they pull the trigger. This goes on for a while right, and then they load another fucking bullet. Each round now these guys have a one-in-two chance of blowing their brains out, but they keep playing.”
In Mr. Howlser’s recounting over the phone, I hear he is deeply disturbed by this story and ask why him and everyone in the gambling entourage continued to sit in the hotel room. In response he says, “We had been up for days smoking crystal and doing other shit. We were fuckng zombies. It’s only looking back now, sober, that I can see how crazy it was.”
But the game of lethal roulette was not over yet. Mr. Howlser claims that Mr. Ferdini and Mr. Makelson continued to play round after round, occasionally loading another bullet until finally the revolver was fully loaded.
“With six out of six chambers loaded, the odds of them dying on the next trigger pull was 100%,” says Mr. Howsler. “And I’ll damned, but they both went, and they both fucking lived. Somehow, they both got dud cartridges. After that, they both just had huge laugh for a while. A little bit later, Richard Markelson leaves and James Ferdini and the rest of us stay doing drugs for a bit until the rest of us guests leave too.”
Before Mr. Howlser ends the phone call, he stresses again the reason for contacting me.
“What happened is a messed up story, I know, but the point is that me and Maria don’t know anything about James Ferdini’s death or where his money is. Once we were sober enough to leave that seedy hotel outside Atlantic City, we left along with the rest of the people that were following James. And when we left, he was alive, and he had his money.”

Bad Luck

While Mr. Markelson, Mr. Howlser, and Ms. Nowak all say they only know the most basic details of how James Ferdini died, his death has actually been well documented by investigators and the coroner's office for Atlantic City.
Prior to this report, it was the mindset of Mr. Ferdini that was previously unknown. Sill up in the air is the whereabouts of his $1.3 million. But from what I've found, the report on his death is fully accurate, and even clears any of the entourage that was following him from being involved in any possible wrongdoing related to James Ferdini’s death.
On Tuesday March 26th at approximately 4:30AM, it would appear Mr. Ferdini’s luck simply ran out.
In that early morning hour, someone on Mr. Ferdini’s floor had ordered room service. As the porter was delivering the food, he slipped and fell outside of Mr. Ferdini’s room.
The noise from the fall awoke Mr. Ferdini who opened his door to find the porter picking up a tray of food in the hallway.
Upset at the disruption and the clanging of silverware outside his room, Mr. Ferdini proceeded to yell at the porter, pushing him against the wall in the hallway.
The confrontation ended when Mr. Ferdini told the porter that he was so upset that he was going to go down to the lobby and speak to management about the disruption.
Heading to the elevator, the porter told Mr. Ferdini that it was out of service. Frustrated, he turned to the stairwell and began walking downstairs.
Mr. Ferdini would never make it to the lobby however.
What Mr. Ferdini didn’t know was that the porter had also used the stairs to walk up to his floor, and that along the way he had spilled a small dish of ketchup.
When Mr. Ferdini walked across the spot where the porter had dropped the ketchup, he slipped and fell, falling down the stairs and knocking himself unconscious on the ground floor.
While in bad shape, investigators say that Mr. Ferdini was still alive at this moment, but what came next would be the fatal blow, or series of blows.
With the elevator out, the stairwell was the only way up and down the hotel floors. While Mr. Ferdini was unconscious on the ground, he blocked the entryway to the stairwell from the ground floor. A guest a moment later would attempt to open the door to the stairwell, but found that it was blocked by some obstruction that he could not see. Bothered and wanting to get to his room, the guest then started slamming on the door, thrusting it open with all his energy. He did not realize it, but the door he was thrusting over and over was slamming into the left side of Mr. Ferdini’s temple. The heavy metal door banged away over and over again, causing Mr. Ferdini’s brain to hemorrhage, and eventually doing enough damage that it would kill him fully.
The guest only stopped thrusting as the porter came back down the stairs to see Mr. Ferdini with his head being repeatedly bashed in by the door.
The porter screamed and soon the guest was made aware that he had accidentally killed Mr. Ferdini.
In this unusual and grizzly death, a confluence of bad luck came together to end Mr. Ferdini’s life.
If the elevator had not been out. If a guest on Mr. Ferdini’s floor had not ordered room service. If the guest had not ordered a dish that came with ketchup. If the porter had not spilled ketchup in the stairwell or dropped plates outside Mr. Ferdini’s room. If Mr. Ferdini had not waken up. If he had not confronted the porter and decided to go down to the lobby. If he had not slipped in the stairwell. If a guest on the ground floor did not repeatedly try to enter the stairwell. If any of these things had gone slightly differently, Mr. Ferdini would still be alive.
It could be said that Mr. Ferdini had finally found a run of bad luck, and incredible bad luck at that.

Double Negative

I cannot speak to Mr. Ferdini. He died long before I came to Atlantic City. For this story I’ve had to rely on the video surveillance from the Borgata casino and several eyewitness accounts of the drug fueled binge at the seedy hotel outside Atlantic City.
In those accounts from Mr. Ferdini’s hotel room, I’m left with conflicting views and shattered narratives.
It is clear to me that Ms. Nowak, Mr. Howlser, and Mr. Markelson cannot be trusted to give a full accounting of what happened. In my mind, the clearest liar of them is Mr. Markelson, who both omitted his story of seeing James after the gasoline incident, and also whose story is in direct conflict with Mr. Howsler and Ms. Nowak. While Mr. Markelson claims it was Mr. Howlser that had a revolver to play roulette, Mr. Howlser and Ms. Nowak both say it was Mr. Markelson.
Embedded in these lies and less than full accounts is a still missing $1.3 million. Something I believe Mr. Markelson is desperate to try and find, and for which was his original impulse to contact this reporter.
Now with an understanding of James Ferdini’s mindset leading up to his death, I am left with the unanswered question of what happened to Mr. Ferdini’s missing money.
I head back to where this story started, the Borgata where the gambling binge took fold. I seek an interview with Bill Hornbuckle, President of MGM resorts and a majority stakeholder in the Borgata Hotel and Casino. He agrees to speak with me and provides a full record on floor manger Richard Markelson.
I start the interview by asking if he’s aware if Richard Markelson owns a handgun, and in particular a revolver. In response, he says: “Our records indicate Mr. Markelson has a concealed carry license from the state of New Jersey for a Ruger LCR Six-Shot revolver. We have this in our records because Mr. Markelson is authorized to carry the weapon on the premises.”
Mr. Hornbuckle asks if I believe Mr. Markelson was involved in Mr. Ferdini’s death, to which I tell him I do not believe he is. I give the accounts of Mr. Markelson, Mr. Howlser, and Ms. Nowak, and while Mr. Hornbuckle is disturbed by the story, he agrees that Mr. Markelson has done nothing strictly illegal outside of drug use. He does add however: “The story with Russian roulette, if true, would certainly make us reconsider allowing Mr. Markelson to carry a weapon in the casino.”
Confirming that Mr. Markelson was the owner of the revolver has led me to believe Mr. Howlser and Ms. Nowak’s account over Markelson’s. It seems likely now that like Mr. Markelson did indeed play a dangerous game of Russian roulette with Mr. Ferdini, and that it was he who provided the gun to use.
Before I leave the Borgata, I ask Mr. Hornbuckle about another detail Mr. Markelson told me that I am no longer sure is true. I ask if a ‘cooler’ is something casinos really use, and if specifically Mr. Markelson is designated as one at the Borgata.
His response is to laugh at first, but he goes on to say: “Yes, a cooler is a real term. I actually believe in them myself. Luck is real. It’s a tangible thing that follows people around -- good luck and bad luck. I believe coolers have saved my casinos a lot of money over the years, and Mr. Markelson certainly fits that role at the Borgata. He's terribly unlucky, couldn't win a game of cards if his life depended on it. Still, he's invaluable at cutting the luck high rollers short."
He pauses before continuing: “There is of course the problem of the double negative, or when two coolers are together. It happens when a cooler is around someone who has luck just as bad as him or her. Like two positive or negative charges on a magnet, they repel each other, and the cooler’s effect instead of bad luck is one of incredible good luck. I’ve never seen it myself, but I’ve heard that even the most unlikely people on earth can have incredible runs of good luck if someone as equally unlucky as them is near.”
I propose the idea that maybe Mr. Ferdini was as unlucky as Mr. Markelson, and that together they achieved this ‘double negative,’ bringing them good luck while they were together.
“Yes,” Mr. Hornbuckle says. “I suppose that’s possible. It’s a very dangerous situation though for an unlucky person to suddenly be met with non-stop good luck. It could make you think yourself invincible, unable to be defeated in any challenge. You might even start to take on bets on things that aren’t real games of chance, like harming yourself by drinking boiling water. There’s also the danger of what happens when the double negative effect is over. One cooler parts ways, then each would fall into their own run of terrible luck, not realizing that their hot-streak has ended.”
As the interview concludes and I leave the Borgata, I think about the good luck Mr. Ferdini and Mr. Markelson had. I consider the incredible odds that both survived firing a loaded gun to their temples only for each to find a dud cartridge. I ponder the unfortunate series of events that would kill Mr. Ferdini after Mr. Markelson left his hotel room.
Lastly, I think about Mr. Markelson’s own luck since March 26th. Maybe it hasn’t been as bad as Mr. Ferdini's, but I know he contacted a reporter and as a result management at his casino will be looking into his behavior. I consider and think, that is not too lucky.

Porter

What was meant to be a short report about an unusual death in Atlantic City has grown into something longer. This is now a meandering investigation with unreliable characters, newly discovered details, and a still missing $1.3 million.
Before I leave New Jersey and return to New York, I go to the seedy hotel where Mr. Ferdini and his entourage consumed drugs and played Russian roulette, and where he would eventually die. It is my hope that I can speak to the porter -- the last person to ever see Mr. Ferdini alive.
At the hotel I speak to the manager and ask her who was the porter in the early morning hours of March 26th. The manager tells me that the porter no longer works for the hotel, and that in fact he had quit the very same day Mr. Ferdini died.
“After the police left, he flipped us all off,” the manager says. “That son of a bitch quit in style, telling us he didn’t need to work here no more. He said he was set and that we can kiss his ass goodbye.”
I ask the manager if they knew where the porter could have gone, to which she replies: “No idea. After he was done talking to the police about the death in the stairwell, I think he was out of New Jersey for good. He used to live nearby so I saw him when he left. He was fully packed. Had all of his stuff with him and three really full duffel bags I’d never seen before. He really didn’t seem like he was coming back -- had everything with him.”
Like the porter, I load my bags and finally prepare to leave New Jersey. As I do a thought pops into my mind: Could the porter that night have discovered Mr. Ferdini’s $1.3 million in three duffel bags in his room? I consider and think, maybe, and if he did, maybe this porter is the luckiest man in Atlantic City.
Myra Kindle is an independent investigative reporter. She covers tech, law, politics, and other stories that would be impossible to write about in more traditional outlets.

Just finished watching The Weekly (it’s kind of a Vice rip-off by the NYT) on Hulu where they went into detail about their story published this week about a « hacker » named Patrick Kessler who claimed to have tens of thousands of hours of Epstein’s private videos.
Turns out, Patrick did not released the videos and there is a lot of questions with his credibility, nonetheless, he clearly exposed two lawyers (Bois and Pottinger) for attempting to profit by offering to reach large settlements in which they would take 40%.
The article is here: Jeffrey Epstein, Blackmail, and a Lucrative Hotlist
Even though it sounds like this guy Kessler is full of shit, I REALLY wish that he wasn’t and at some point these troves of photos and videos get released and a bunch of rich and powerful people get what they deserve for abusing these women.
For those who need access to NYT- it is a long article, but here’s the full text:
By Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Emily Steel, Jacob Bernstein and David Enrich Nov. 30, 2019 Soon after the sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein died in August, a mysterious man met with two prominent lawyers.
Towering, barrel-chested and wild-bearded, he was a prodigious drinker and often wore flip-flops. He went by a pseudonym, Patrick Kessler — a necessity, he said, given the shadowy, dangerous world that he inhabited.
He told the lawyers he had something incendiary: a vast archive of Mr. Epstein’s data, stored on encrypted servers overseas. He said he had years of the financier’s communications and financial records — as well as thousands of hours of footage from hidden cameras in the bedrooms of Mr. Epstein’s properties. The videos, Kessler said, captured some of the world’s richest, most powerful men in compromising sexual situations — even in the act of rape.
Kessler said he wanted to expose these men. If he was telling the truth, his trove could answer one of the Epstein saga’s most baffling questions: How did a college dropout and high school math teacher amass a purported nine-figure fortune? One persistent but unproven theory was that he ran a sprawling blackmail operation. That would explain why moguls, scientists, political leaders and a royal stayed loyal to him, in some cases even after he first went to jail.
Kessler’s tale was enough to hook the two lawyers, the famed litigator David Boies and his friend John Stanley Pottinger. If Kessler was authentic, his videos would arm them with immense leverage over some very important people.
Mr. Boies and Mr. Pottinger discussed a plan. They could use the supposed footage in litigation or to try to reach deals with men who appeared in it, with money flowing into a charitable foundation. In encrypted chats with Kessler, Mr. Pottinger referred to a roster of potential targets as the “hot list.” He described hypothetical plans in which the lawyers would pocket up to 40 percent of the settlements and could extract money from wealthy men by flipping from representing victims to representing their alleged abusers.
The possibilities were tantalizing — and extended beyond vindicating victims. Mr. Pottinger saw a chance to supercharge his law practice. For Mr. Boies, there was a shot at redemption, after years of criticism for his work on behalf of Theranos and Harvey Weinstein.
In the end, there would be no damning videos, no funds pouring into a new foundation. Mr. Boies and Mr. Pottinger would go from toasting Kessler as their “whistle-blower” and “informant” to torching him as a “fraudster” and a “spy.”
Kessler was a liar, and he wouldn’t expose any sexual abuse. But he would reveal something else: The extraordinary, at times deceitful measures elite lawyers deployed in an effort to get evidence that could be used to win lucrative settlements — and keep misconduct hidden, allowing perpetrators to abuse again.
Mr. Boies has publicly decried such secret deals as “rich man’s justice,” a way that powerful men buy their way out of legal and reputational jeopardy. This is how it works.
7 men and a headless parrot
The man who called himself Kessler first contacted a Florida lawyer, Bradley J. Edwards, who was in the news for representing women with claims against Mr. Epstein. It was late August, about two weeks after the financier killed himself in a jail cell while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.
Mr. Edwards, who did not respond to interview requests, had a law firm called Edwards Pottinger, and he soon referred Kessler to his New York partner. Silver-haired and 79, Mr. Pottinger had been a senior civil-rights official in the Nixon and Ford administrations, but he also dabbled in investment banking and wrote best-selling medical thrillers. He was perhaps best known for having dated Gloria Steinem and Kathie Lee Gifford.
Mr. Pottinger recalled that Mr. Edwards warned him about Kessler, saying that he was “endearing,” “spooky” and “loves to drink like a fish.”
After an initial discussion with Kessler in Washington, Mr. Pottinger briefed Mr. Boies — whose firm was also active in representing accusers in the Epstein case — about the sensational claims. He then invited Kessler to his Manhattan apartment. Kessler admired a wall-mounted frame containing a headless stuffed parrot; on TV, the Philadelphia Eagles were mounting a comeback against the Washington Redskins. Mr. Pottinger poured Kessler a glass of WhistlePig whiskey, and the informant began to talk.
In his conversations with Mr. Pottinger and, later, Mr. Boies, Kessler said his videos featured numerous powerful men who were already linked to Mr. Epstein: Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister; Alan Dershowitz, a constitutional lawyer; Prince Andrew; three billionaires; and a prominent chief executive.
All seven men, or their representatives, told The New York Times they never engaged in sexual activity on Mr. Epstein’s properties. The Times has no reason to believe Kessler’s supposed video footage is real.
In his apartment, Mr. Pottinger presented Kessler with a signed copy of “The Boss,” his 2005 novel. “One minute you’re bending the rules,” blares the cover of the paperback version. “The next minute you’re breaking the law.” On the title page, Mr. Pottinger wrote: “Here’s to the great work you are to do. Happy to be part of it.”
Mr. Pottinger also gave Kessler a draft contract to bring him on as a client, allowing him to use a fake name. “For reasons revealed to you, I prefer to proceed with this engagement under the name Patrick Kessler,” the agreement said.
Despite the enormities of the Epstein scandal, few of his accusers have gotten a sense of justice or resolution. Mr. Pottinger thought Kessler’s files could change everything. This strange man was theatrical and liked his alcohol, but if there was even a chance his claims were true, they were worth pursuing.
“Our clients are said to be liars and prostitutes,” Mr. Pottinger later said in an interview with The Times, “and we now have someone who says, ‘I can give you secret photographic proof of abuse that will completely change the entire fabric of your practice and get justice for these girls.’ And you think that we wouldn’t try to get that?”
A victim becomes a hacker
Mr. Pottinger and Mr. Boies have known each other for years, a friendship forged on bike trips in France and Italy. In legal circles, Mr. Boies was royalty: He was the one who fought for presidential candidate Al Gore before the Supreme Court, took on Microsoft in a landmark antitrust case, and helped obtain the right for gays and lesbians to get married in California.
But then Mr. Boies got involved with the blood-testing start-up Theranos. As the company was being revealed as a fraud, he tried to bully whistle-blowers into not speaking to a Wall Street Journal reporter, and he was criticized for possible conflicts of interest when he joined the company’s board in 2015.
Two years later, Mr. Boies helped his longtime client Harvey Weinstein hire private investigators who intimidated sources and trailed reporters for The Times and The New Yorker — even though Mr. Boies’s firm had worked for The Times on other matters. (The Times fired his firm.)
By 2019, Mr. Boies, 78, was representing a number of Mr. Epstein’s alleged victims. They got his services pro bono, and he got the chance to burnish his legacy. When Mr. Pottinger contacted him about Kessler, he was intrigued.
On Sept. 9, Mr. Boies greeted Kessler at the offices of his law firm, Boies Schiller Flexner, in a gleaming new skyscraper at Hudson Yards on Manhattan’s West Side. Kessler unfurled a fantastic story, one he would embroider and alter in later weeks, that began with him growing up somewhere within a three-hour radius of Washington. Kessler said he had been molested as a boy by a Bible school teacher and sought solace on the internet, where he fell in with a group of victims turned hackers, who used their skills to combat pedophilia.
Kessler claimed that a technology executive had introduced him to Mr. Epstein, who in 2012 hired Kessler to set up encrypted servers to preserve his extensive digital archives. With Mr. Epstein dead, Kessler boasted to the lawyers, he had unfettered access to the material. He said the volume of videos was overwhelming: more than a decade of round-the-clock footage from dozens of cameras.
Kessler displayed some pixelated video stills on his phone. In one, a bearded man with his mouth open appears to be having sex with a naked woman. Kessler said the man was Mr. Barak. In another, a man with black-framed glasses is seen shirtless with a woman on his lap, her breasts exposed. Kessler said it was Mr. Dershowitz. He also said that some of the supposed videos appeared to have been edited and cataloged for the purpose of blackmail.
“This was explosive information if true, for lots and lots of people,” Mr. Boies said in an interview.
Mr. Boies and Mr. Pottinger had decades of legal experience and considered themselves experts at assessing witnesses’ credibility. While they couldn’t be sure, they thought Kessler was probably legit.
A chance to sway the Israeli election
Within hours of the Hudson Yards meeting, Mr. Pottinger sent Kessler a series of texts over the encrypted messaging app Signal.
According to excerpts viewed by The Times, Mr. Pottinger and Kessler discussed a plan to disseminate some of the informant’s materials — starting with the supposed footage of Mr. Barak. The Israeli election was barely a week away, and Mr. Barak was challenging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The purported images of Mr. Barak might be able to sway the election — and fetch a high price. (“Total lie with no basis in reality,” Mr. Barak said when asked about the existence of such videos.)
“Can you review your visual evidence to be sure some or all is indisputably him? If so, we can make it work,” Mr. Pottinger wrote.
Kessler said he would do so. Mr. Pottinger sent a yellow smiley-face emoji with its tongue sticking out.
“Can you share your contact that would be purchasing,” Kessler asked.
“Sheldon Adelson,” Mr. Pottinger answered.
Mr. Adelson, a billionaire casino magnate in Las Vegas, had founded one of Israel’s largest newspapers, and it was an enthusiastic booster of Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Pottinger wrote that he and Mr. Boies hoped to fly to Nevada to meet with Mr. Adelson to discuss the images.
“Do you believe that adelson has the pull to insure this will hurt his bid for election?” Kessler asked the next morning.
Mr. Pottinger reassured him. “There is no question that Adelson has the capacity to air the truth about EB if he wants to,” he said, using Mr. Barak’s initials. He said he planned to discuss the matter with Mr. Boies that evening.
Mr. Boies confirmed that they discussed sharing the photo with Mr. Adelson but said the plan was never executed. Boaz Bismuth, the editor in chief of the newspaper, Israel Hayom, said its journalists were approached by an Israeli source who pitched them supposed images of Mr. Barak, but that “we were not interested.”
‘These are wealthy wrongdoers’
The men whom Kessler claimed to have on tape were together worth many billions. Some of their public relations teams had spent months trying to tamp down media coverage of their connections to Mr. Epstein. Imagine how much they might pay to make incriminating videos vanish.
You might think that lawyers representing abuse victims would want to publicly expose such information to bolster their clients’ claims. But that is not how the legal industry always works. Often, keeping things quiet is good business.
One of the revelations of the #MeToo era has been that victims’ lawyers often brokered secret deals in which alleged abusers paid to keep their accusers quiet and the allegations out of the public sphere. Lawyers can pocket at least a third of such settlements, profiting off a system that masks misconduct and allows men to abuse again.
Mr. Boies and Mr. Pottinger said in interviews that they were looking into creating a charity to help victims of sexual abuse. It would be bankrolled by private legal settlements with the men on the videos.
Mr. Boies acknowledged that Kessler might get paid. “If we were able to use this to help our victims recover money, we would treat him generously,” he said in September. He said that his firm would not get a cut of any settlements.
Such agreements would have made it less likely that videos involving the men became public. “Generally what settlements are about is getting peace,” Mr. Boies said.
Mr. Pottinger told Kessler that the charity he was setting up would be called the Astria Foundation — a name he later said his girlfriend came up with, in a nod to Astraea, the Greek goddess of innocence and justice. “We need to get it funded by abusers,” Mr. Pottinger texted, noting in another message that “these are wealthy wrongdoers.”
Mr. Pottinger asked Kessler to start compiling incriminating materials on a specific group of men.
“I’m way ahead of you,” Kessler responded. He said he had asked his team of fellow hackers to search the files for the three billionaires, the C.E.O. and Prince Andrew.
“Yes, that’s exactly how to do this,” Mr. Pottinger said. “Videos for sure, but email traffic, too.”
“I call it our hot list,” he added.
Image The Grand Sichuan restaurant in Manhattan. The Grand Sichuan restaurant in Manhattan.Credit...Stephanie Diani for The New York Times A quiet table at the back of Grand Sichuan
In mid-September, Mr. Boies and Mr. Pottinger invited reporters from The Times to the Boies Schiller offices to meet Kessler. The threat of a major news organization writing about the videos — and confirming the existence of an extensive surveillance apparatus — could greatly enhance the lawyers’ leverage over the wealthy men.
Before the session, Mr. Pottinger encouraged Kessler to focus on certain men, like Mr. Barak, while avoiding others. Referring to the reporters, he added, “Let them drink from a fountain instead of a water hose. They and the readers will follow that better.”
The meeting took place on a cloudy Saturday morning. After agreeing to leave their phones and laptops outside, the reporters entered a 20th-floor conference room. Kessler was huge: more than 6 feet tall, pushing 300 pounds, balding, his temples speckled with gray. He told his story and presented images that he said were of Mr. Epstein, Mr. Barak and Mr. Dershowitz having sex with women.
Barely an hour after the session ended, the Times reporters received an email from Kessler: “Are you free?” He said he wanted to meet — alone. “Tell no one else.” That afternoon, they met at Grand Sichuan, an iconic Chinese restaurant in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. The lunch rush was over, and the trio sat at a quiet table in the back. A small group of women huddled nearby, speaking Mandarin and snipping the ends off string beans.
Kessler complained that Mr. Boies and Mr. Pottinger were more interested in making money than in exposing wrongdoers. He pulled out his phone, warned the reporters not to touch it, and showed more of what he had. There was a color photo of a bare-chested, gray-haired man with a slight smile. Kessler said it was a billionaire. He also showed blurry, black-and-white images of a dark-haired man receiving oral sex. He said it was a prominent C.E.O.
Soup dumplings and Gui Zhou chicken arrived, and Kessler kept talking. He said he had found financial ledgers on Mr. Epstein’s servers that showed he had vast amounts of Bitcoin and cash in the Middle East and Bangkok, and hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of gold, silver and diamonds. He presented no proof. But it is common for whistle-blowers to be erratic and slow to produce their evidence, and The Times thought it was worth investigating Kessler’s claims.
The conversation continued in a conference room at a Washington hotel five days later, after a text exchange in which Kessler noted his enthusiasm for Japanese whiskey. Both parties brought bottles to the hotel, and Kessler spent nearly eight hours downing glass after glass. He veered from telling tales about the dark web to professing love for “Little House on the Prairie.” He asserted that he had evidence Mr. Epstein had derived his wealth through illicit means. At one point, he showed what he said were classified C.I.A. documents.
Kessler said he had no idea who the women in the videos were or how the lawyers might go about identifying them to act on their behalf. From his perspective, he said, it seemed like Mr. Boies and Mr. Pottinger were plotting to use his footage to demand huge sums from billionaires. He said it looked like blackmail — and that he could prove it.
‘We keep it. We keep everything’
Was Kessler’s story plausible? Did America’s best-connected sexual predator accumulate incriminating videos of powerful men?
Two women who spent time in Mr. Epstein’s homes said the answer was yes. In an unpublished memoir, Virginia Giuffre, who accused Mr. Epstein of making her a “sex slave,” wrote that she discovered a room in his New York mansion where monitors displayed real-time surveillance footage. And Maria Farmer, an artist who accused Mr. Epstein of sexually assaulting her when she worked for him in the 1990s, said that Mr. Epstein once walked her through the mansion, pointing out pin-sized cameras that he said were in every room.
“I said, ‘Are you recording all this?’” Ms. Farmer said in an interview. “He said, ‘Yes. We keep it. We keep everything.’”
During a 2005 search of Mr. Epstein’s Palm Beach, Fla., estate, the police found two cameras hidden in clocks — one in the garage and the other next to his desk, according to police reports. But no other cameras were found.
Kessler claimed to have been an early investor in a North Carolina coffee company, whose sticker was affixed to his laptop. But its founder said no one matching Kessler’s description had ever been affiliated with the company. Kessler insisted that he invested in 2009, but the company wasn’t founded until 2011.
The contents of Kessler’s supposed C.I.A. documents turned out to be easily findable using Google. At one point, Kessler said that one of his associates had been missing and was found dead; later, Kessler said the man was alive and in the southern United States. He said that his mother had died when he was young — and that he had recently given her a hug. A photo he sent from what he said was a Washington-area hospital featured a distinctive blanket, but when The Times called local hospitals, they didn’t recognize the pattern.
After months of effort, The Times could not learn Kessler’s identity or confirm any element of his back story.
“I am very often being purposefully inconsistent,” Kessler said, when pressed.
A Weinstein cameo
On the last Friday in September, Mr. Boies and Mr. Pottinger sat on a blue leather couch in the corner of a members-only dining room at the Harvard Club in Midtown Manhattan. Antlered animal heads and oil paintings hung from the dark wooden walls.
The lawyers were there to make a deal with The Times. Tired of waiting for Kessler’s motherlode, Mr. Pottinger said they planned to send a team overseas to download the material from his servers. He said he had alerted the F.B.I. and a prosecutor in the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan.
Mr. Boies told an editor for The Times that they would be willing to share everything, on one condition: They would have discretion over which men could be written about, and when. He explained that if compromising videos about particular men became public, that could torpedo litigation or attempts to negotiate settlements. The Times editor didn’t commit.
Mr. Boies and Mr. Pottinger later said those plans had hinged on verifying the videos’ authenticity and on having clients with legitimate legal claims against the men. Otherwise, legal experts said, it might have crossed the line into extortion.
The meeting was briefly interrupted when Bob Weinstein, the brother of Harvey Weinstein, bounded up to the table and plopped onto the couch next to Mr. Boies. The two men spent several minutes talking, laughing and slapping each other on the back.
While Mr. Boies and Mr. Weinstein chatted, Mr. Pottinger furtively displayed the black-and-white shot of a man in glasses having sex. Both lawyers said it looked like Mr. Dershowitz.
‘You don’t keep your glasses on when you’re doing that’
One day in late September, Mr. Dershowitz’s secretary relayed a message: Someone named Patrick Kessler wanted to speak to him about Mr. Boies.
“The problem is that they don’t want to move forward with any of these people legally,” Kessler said. “They’re just interested in trying to settle and take a cut.”
“Who are these people that you have on videotape?” Mr. Dershowitz asked.
“There’s a lot of people,” Kessler said, naming a few powerful men. He added, “There’s a long list of people that they want me to have that I don’t have.”
“Who?” Mr. Dershowitz asked. “Did they ask about me?”
“Of course they asked about you. You know that, sir.”
“And you don’t have anything on me, right?”
“I do not, no,” Kessler said.
“Because I never, I never had sex with anybody,” Mr. Dershowitz said. Later in the call, he added, “I am completely clean. I was at Jeffrey’s house. I stayed there. But I didn’t have any sex with anybody.”
What was the purpose of Kessler’s phone call? Why did he tell Mr. Dershowitz that he wasn’t on the supposed surveillance tapes, contradicting what he had said and showed to Mr. Boies, Mr. Pottinger and The Times? Did the call sound a little rehearsed?
Mr. Dershowitz said that he didn’t know why Kessler contacted him, and that the phone call was the only time the two men ever spoke. When The Times showed him one of Kessler’s photos, in which a bespectacled man resembling Mr. Dershowitz appears to be having sex, Mr. Dershowitz laughed and said the man wasn’t him. His wife, Carolyn Cohen, peeked at the photo, too.
“You don’t keep your glasses on when you’re doing that,” she said.
Data set (supposedly) to self-destruct
In early October, Kessler said he was ready to produce the Epstein files. He told The Times that he had created duplicate versions of Mr. Epstein’s servers. He laid out detailed logistical plans for them to be shipped by boat to the United States and for one of his associates — a very short Icelandic man named Steven — to deliver them to The Times headquarters at 11 a.m. on Oct. 3.
Kessler warned that he was erecting a maze of security systems. First, a Times employee would need to use a special thumb drive to access a proprietary communications system. Then Kessler’s colleague would transmit a code to decrypt the files. If his instructions weren’t followed precisely, Kessler said, the information would self-destruct.
Specialists at The Times set up a number of “air-gapped” laptops — disconnected from the internet — in a windowless, padlocked meeting room. Reporters cleared their schedules to sift through thousands of hours of surveillance footage.
On the morning of the scheduled delivery, Kessler sent a series of frantic texts. Disaster had struck. A fire was burning. The duplicate servers were destroyed. One of his team members was missing. He was fleeing to Kyiv.
Two hours later, Kessler was in touch with Mr. Pottinger and didn’t mention any emergency. Kessler said he hoped that the footage would help pry $1 billion in settlements out of their targets, and asked him to detail how the lawyers could extract the money. “Could you put together a hypothetical situation,” Kessler wrote, not something “set in stone but close to what your thinking.”
In one, which he called a “standard model” for legal settlements, Mr. Pottinger said the money would be split among his clients, the Astria Foundation, Kessler and the lawyers, who would get up to 40 percent.
In the second hypothetical, Mr. Pottinger wrote, the lawyers would approach the videotaped men. The men would then hire the lawyers, ensuring that they would not get sued, and “make a contribution to a nonprofit as part of the retainer.”
“No client is actually involved in this structure,” Mr. Pottinger said, noting that the arrangement would have to be “consistent with and subject to rules of ethics.”
“Thank you very much,” Kessler responded.
Mr. Pottinger later said that the scenario would have involved him representing a victim, settling a case and then representing the victim’s alleged abuser. He said it was within legal boundaries. (He also said he had meant to type “No client lawsuit is actually involved.”)
Such legal arrangements are not unheard-of. Lawyers representing a former Fox News producer who had accused Bill O’Reilly of sexual harassment reached a settlement in which her lawyers agreed to work for Mr. O’Reilly after the dispute. But legal experts generally consider such setups to be unethical because they can create conflicts between the interests of the lawyers and their original clients.
‘I just pulled it out of my behind’
The lawyers held out hope of getting Kessler’s materials. But weeks passed, and nothing arrived. At one point, Mr. Pottinger volunteered to meet Kessler anywhere — including Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.
“I still believe he is what he purported to be,” Mr. Boies wrote in an email on Nov. 7. “I have to evaluate people for my day job, and he seemed too genuine to be a fake, and I very much want him to be real.” He added, “I am not unconscious of the danger of wanting to believe something too much.”
Ten days later, Mr. Boies arrived at The Times for an on-camera interview. It was a bright, chilly Sunday, and Mr. Boies had just flown in from Ecuador, where he said he was doing work for the finance ministry. Reporters wanted to ask him plainly if his and Mr. Pottinger’s conduct with Kessler crossed ethical lines.
Would they have brokered secret settlements that buried evidence of wrongdoing? Did the notion of extracting huge sums from men in exchange for keeping sex tapes hidden meet the definition of extortion?
Mr. Boies said the answer to both questions was no. He said he and Mr. Pottinger operated well within the law. They only intended to pursue legal action on behalf of their clients — in other words, that they were a long way from extortion. In any case, he said, he and Mr. Pottinger had never authenticated any of the imagery or identified any of the supposed victims, much less contacted any of the men on the “hot list.”
Then The Times showed Mr. Boies some of the text exchanges between Mr. Pottinger and Kessler. Mr. Boies showed a flash of anger and said it was the first time he was seeing them.
By the end of the nearly four-hour interview, Mr. Boies had concluded that Kessler was probably a con man: “I think that he was a fraudster who was just trying to set things up.” And he argued that Kessler had baited Mr. Pottinger into writing things that looked more nefarious than they really were. He acknowledged that Mr. Pottinger had used “loose language” in some of his messages that risked creating the impression that the lawyers were plotting to monetize evidence of abuse.
Several days later, Mr. Boies returned for another interview and was more critical of Mr. Pottinger, especially the hypothetical plans that he had described to Kessler. “Having looked at all that stuff in context, I would not have said that,” he said. How did Mr. Boies feel about Mr. Pottinger invoking his name in messages to Kessler? “I don’t like it,” he said.
But Mr. Boies stopped short of blaming Mr. Pottinger for the whole mess. “I’m being cautious not to throw him under the bus more than I believe is accurate,” he said. His longtime P.R. adviser, Dawn Schneider, who had been pushing for a more forceful denunciation, dropped her pen, threw up her arms and buried her head in her hands.
In a separate interview, The Times asked Mr. Pottinger about his correspondence with Kessler. The lawyer said that his messages shouldn’t be taken at face value because, in reality, he had been deceiving Kessler all along — “misleading him deliberately in order to get the servers.”
The draft retention agreement that Mr. Pottinger had given to Kessler in September was unsigned and never meant to be honored, Mr. Pottinger said. And he never intended to sell photos of Mr. Barak to Mr. Adelson. “I just pulled it out of my behind,” he said, describing it as an act to impress Kessler.
As for the two hypotheticals about how to get money out of the men on the list, Mr. Pottinger said, he never planned to do what he carefully articulated. “I didn’t owe Patrick honesty about this,” he said.
Mr. Pottinger said that he had only one regret — that “we did not get the information that this liar said he had.”
He added, “I’m building legal cases here. I’m trying not to engage too much in shenanigans. I wish I didn’t, but this guy was very unusual.”

I posted about a week and a half ago about the seemingly cursed parking garage at a casino I worked at a few years ago. There was some interest in getting some more stories from a casino environment so I said I would start posting a few periodically. I told a couple of you that I would have a few up this past weekend, but I came down with strep and just haven't had the energy to type up anything of substance. I'm feeling a little bit better tonight, so I figured I'd take the time to tell you guys about some of the smaller things that happened out there. These ones aren't going to be nearly as "what the fuck"-esque as the last few I posted. The first story is just a short one about a rather amusing situation that happened on an otherwise uneventful night. The second is for those of you that asked me about what it is like to work in a gaming environment. Keep in mind that this is based on my experience in a tribally owned casino and would not necessarily translate to other casinos. I'll get more in depth with that at some point if there is any interest left by the end of this post. I'm still slightly feverish, so hopefully this will make sense.
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A Strange Call From The Hotel Staff
On one relatively slow night, I had wandered down to hang out with this girl I knew in the Valet department. It was getting close to last call, so it was the point in the night where they normally needed an extra person to keep an eye out for any intoxicated guests that were trying to retrieve their vehicles for the drive home. I was in her small office in front of the casino and we were talking about grabbing a drink when we got off in a few hours. After a couple of minutes, a call came out from on of the hotel housekeepers asking for surveillance. Being that it was about 1:30am in the middle of the week, we knew whatever would be coming next was going to be interesting. The transmission went something like this.
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HK: Public Spaces to Post 1 and Surveillance
S: Go ahead for surveillance
HK: We just got a strange report from a guest that came walking by. They said the ice machine on the 8th floor seems to be leaking out all over the place. We were hoping you could roll back the footage from that hallway and just see if you see anything. Post 1 could you also send us a rover?
P1: We don't have a rover on right now. Post 8 could swing up, but why do you need security for this? Have you been up to take a look?
S: Surveillance also copies, but what exactly are we looking for?
HK: Well... I don't want to say over the radio... We... Uh... Well we sent somebody up to take a look... There definitely seems to be liquid around the ice machine, but I don't think it's leaking out. The odor.... Um... Surveillance could you just roll back about 15 minutes and see what comes up?
S: Surveillance copies. We will take a look.
P8: Post 8 to Post 1... Do you want me to head that way?
P1(Not Putting The Pieces Together Yet): Um... Hold on. Is Public Spaces still on this channel?
HK: This is Public Spaces.
P1: Can you give me a call at (extension for BOH Security Desk)?
***About 1 Minute Passes***
By this time a couple other Valet Attendants have wandered over to listen
P1: Post 1 to Post 8. Go ahead and start heading that way. We're not really sure what's going on, but it sounds like they'd really like some assistance.
P8: Copy I'm about 3 minutes out.
***Another 2-3 minutes pass***
S: Surveillance to Post 1.
P1: Go for Post 1.
S: So listen... We need to get a couple more people heading that way. We're going to need you to make contact with a guest in their room. Is their a Sierra 4 (one of the security managers) on this channel right now?
4: Go ahead for S4
S: Listen, we need to have a word with whoever did the cutoff in (bar name withheld) about 30 minutes ago. I believe it was Sierra 37
4: Copy. Do You need me to call you on my cell?
S: ....Negative... So what it looks like happened is he responded to the call for the cutoff. When he got their the guests had already started heading back toward the hotel of their own accord. 37 watched them go up the escalator, but didn't follow them to make sure they made it to their room. They... Okay so it's kind of hard to tell from the angle of the camera so maybe Post 8 can confirm.... So it looks like they stepped off of the elevator and started heading toward their room. When they came to the ice machine, one male in the group approached the ice machine, opened the door, and proceeded to urinate in and around the ice machine. How Copy?
***At this point those of us listening to the transmission were obviously laughing our asses off***
4: I'm going to hope that was a bad copy Surveillance.
S: Repeating - Male subject urinated in, on, and around the ice machine on the 8th floor of the hotel.
P8: Post 8 can confirm.... definitely urine all over the floor.
4: ... Solid Copy..... S4 to S13...
ME: Negative 4. This one is all you, buddy. 13 to 37, meet me by Post 1, we're going to meet with Surveillance.
​
So... While I went with S37 to the surveillance office, the other manager headed up to meet with housekeeping and the other security ambassadors at the ice machine. They basically just awkwardly stood their while the surveillance team worked on tracking down exactly which guest it was. They then contacted them in their room and removed them from the property. When I talked to S4 afterward, he told me the guy was soaked. He and one other guy had to change clothes after removing him from the property. They may have disagreed, but I personally thought the whole ordeal was hilarious. If it had been a busy night I may have felt different, but that night it was much needed excitement.
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Hiring In A Casino: (frustration story - read the first paragraph and then skip to the 4th paragraph if you don't want to read all the background)
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Okay, before I start this story I want to point out that this is a subject that people tend to get extremely defensive about. Every time I mention it in a company that has never worked for a tribally owned entity, a lot of people swear up and down that it isn't true. They then call you everything but white and swear that you are just trying to make Indian tribe look bad. Before anybody here does that, let me ask you to take just 15 seconds out of your time to Google the phrase "tribal hiring preference". Basically what it means is that in tribally owned entities, the company may choose to hire applicants based solely on tribal enrollment (they are legally Indians) regardless of whether there are more qualified applicants. They do not even have to meet the requirements of the job for hiring/promoting/scheduling/seniority preferences to apply.
Okay, now that we have that out of the way... Our Director of Human Resources was an enrolled member of the tribe that owned the casino, and she had an absolute lady boner for throwing the tribal preference policy out when we chose to hire anybody that wasn't native. During one round of hiring, I had a solid 50/50 split on tribal and non-tribal applicants. Normally, that is a really good sign. As any of you that have done any hiring know, it's absolutely the worst part of management. It isn't at all uncommon for half of the people scheduled for interviews not to show up. With tribal applicants, you normally don't run into that problem. They usually know enough people within the company that no-showing an interview can hurt their reputation.
Unfortunately, this time around didn't follow the usual pattern. I had 10 interviews per day scheduled 4 days in a row. Those days I had to be fully decked out in a tailored suit with leather soled dress shoes (most days I could pass with nice slacks, a polo and vest, and my duty boots and on most big event days other than New Year's Eve I could just wear a suit with my duty boots), facial hair had to be 100% in regulations as, and I had to show up 3 hours earlier than I typically did. Overall, these days were just a huge pain in the ass. When people decided not to show up with all of the extra work it was absolutely infuriating. By the time the 4th day came around, I was pretty pissed. I had a grand total of 7 people (none of them tribal) show up for their interviews in the past 3 days, and my first three interviews the 4th day were no-shows.
My 4th interview that day was with a member of another tribe. Judging by her resume, I was guessing that she was a middle aged woman that could adapt to a security environment pretty well. She hadn't done this time of work directly, but she had a strong customer service back ground and had 5+ years of casino experience. Not ideal, but there seemed to be potential. When she showed up, I was surprised to find a small (probably 5'2) Indian woman in her mid 60s. She reminded me more of my grandmother than somebody that should be working security.
That said, I try not to judge people based on appearance, so I started asking her questions with an open mind. The first few questions were just the standard ice breakers; "Tell me a little about yourself", "Why do you want to work at random casino", "Tell me about your prior work experience". Her answers were pretty short, but I just chalked it up to interview nerves and decided to continue into the job specific parts of the interview. The rest of the interview went something like this.
Me: So this job will require working outside in all weather conditions. During the winter, we are routinely outside for the entirety of a shift in sub freezing temperatures. During the summer, we are often outside in temperatures above 100 degrees. Have you worked in an environment like this before and are you comfortable with it?
Her: *Silence*
Me: Ma'am?
Her: Yes?
Me: Are you comfortable with that aspect of this position?
Her: Not really. I would prefer to work inside at a desk.
Me: That is not an option for this position. Will you be able to fulfill that requirement of the position?
Her: Oh.... Well... I suppose I can do that.
Me: Alright, great. Another thing that I would like to mention is that while we try to handle all situations with unruly customers in a diplomatic manner. That said, this is a security job. At times, things escalate to a point that we have to handle them in a more physical manner. While we do avoid this whenever possible, it is a reality of security work. Do you have any concerns with that part of the job?
Her: *A long pause* I don't like that. Can't we just call the cops.
Me (at this point I know that this is not going to be a good fit, but I decide to do the complete interview and see if she may be better suited for another opening we had in the department at the time): Well, ma'am, this is a security job. That isn't always an option when things get out of hand. This is a very fast paced job.
Her: *Silence*
Me: *After a long pause* ...Okay... So our establishment in known for providing world class customer service. Our core purpose and core values all focus on that aspect of what we do. In your mind, what constitutes great customer service and what can you do as an individual to try to generate return business? (I'm trying to lead her a little bit and throw her a bone).
Her: *Silence*
Me: (Starting to get annoyed) Ma'am. In your words, what constitutes great customer service?
Her: I don't know. Can I pass on this question?
Me: You're not even going to try to answer the question? I'm not looking for anything specific. I just want to know your opinion on the subject.
Her: Pass.
Me: (A long pause to keep my composure rather than just telling her to get the fuck out of my office and deciding not to ask anymore questions) Okay... So why should I hire you? What can you bring to the table that other people may not be able to?
Her: I'm a member of (omitted) Indian Tribe.
Me: Yes, I'm well aware of that. What skills or abilities do you bring to the table that should be considered in my hiring decision?
Her: (responding smugly) I think that will be enough.
Me: Alright, well we are done here. Thanks for coming in. Yada yada. Professional BS
Her: So when will I start.
Me: Ma'am, I'm not going to be hiring you. You aren't the right fit for this position. I know that is disappointing, but you are more than welcome to apply for other positions here at the casino.
Her: Says nothing and storms out of the office.
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During the rest of the day, I actually I had a few really good interviews. I just had one position available on the team, so I went back to my main office to review my interview notes and make a decision. Once I had made my selection, I typed up a summary off all the interviews and sent off the paperwork and job req to the HR department with instructions to extend a job offer to young woman that I interviewed later in the day. I then got all of my stuff together and headed home.
When I woke up the next day around 10am, I noticed I had an email from the Human Resources Director, but decided that I wasn't going to read it until I got to work. When I pulled up in front of my office, one of my guys made a B-line to where I had parked. He asked me something along the lines of "Dude, what the fuck was with that email HR sent all of us?" I told him I wasn't aware of any department wide emails before I left but if something came in while I was riding in I hadn't seen it yet (I had about an hour commute and rode a motorcycle, so I didn't see anything until I got logged into my work computer). He basically said that I needed to get in there and read this ASAP. When I walked in, I saw that the only email I had outside of department reports was from the Human Resources Director so I opened it. I immediately noticed that she had CC'ed my entire department, the entire HR department, and the VP who my department fell under. I don't work there anymore so I don't have access to that email account, so I'm going to paraphrase what it said.
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" u/_deuceswild_
I recently was made aware of the hiring requisition you placed for the opening in your department. In reviewing your interview notes, I see that you interviewed one Mrs. TooGoodToAnswer. I am not sure what in your interview made you think that she "would not be a good fit" for your team, but I strongly consider you reconsider that position. I happen to know Mrs. TooGoodToAnswer personally. She is an enrolled member of NotOurTribe Tribe of Indians and I feel that she would be an excellent addition to your team. I have placed a hold on your hiring requisition and am awaiting a response from both you and (my direct boss' name).
Sincerely,
Delusional Director of Human Resources"
​
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Obviously, I was pretty pissed off when I read that email. I sat there for a minute before noticing that everybody in the office had stopped what they were doing and they all were staring at me. I calmly stood up, asked on of them to make a pot of coffee, and went outside to have a couple cigarettes and calm down. After calming down a bit, I called all of my crew out to have a pre-shift meeting and then sent them out to make their rounds. I stepped back inside and sent the following email. I of course hit the 'reply all' button.
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" Delusional Director of Human Resources
I must say, I am very surprised to learn that you have taken issue with my decision to hire Ms. FutureAwesomeEmployee over Mrs. TooGoodToAnswer. I thought my reasons for making this selection were quite clearly stated in my interview summary along with my attached interview notes, but if not allow me to clarify. My decision to hire Ms. FutureAwesomeEmployee did not come down to a choice between her and Mrs. TooGoodToAnswer. In fact, I had decided against hiring Mrs. TooGoodToAnswer before she even led the office. I reached my decision based on the facts that she did not find the conditions of this position to be acceptable for her and she did not feel the need to even attempt to answer the questions asked during the interview. I cannot in good conscience add her to my team knowing that we all must work together to ensure a safe and secure environment. I hope this clears up any confusion you may have.
If you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to ask. I would appreciate if you would direct those questions to me personally, however, as opposed to including multiple individuals who have no bearing on my hiring decisions. It is my opinion that that would not only be the more professional course of action, but it will ensure that no confidential information regarding our applicants are sent to anybody that shouldn't be.
Thank you and have a great weekend.
u/_deuceswild_ "
​
Almost immediately, I received an email from my direct manager (he was in his mid 60s at the time) said just simply read "LOL". About 10 minutes later an email came through (also a reply all) from our VP that said something along the lines of "That reasoning sounds good to me". I never got a response from the Director of Human Resources, but a couple hours later an email came through from the recruiting staff letting me know that the individual I told them to hire had accepted a job offer and was scheduled for orientation the following week while I was on vacation (pending a background check and issuance of a tribal gaming license) and she would be ready to train when I got back. For what it's worth, she turned out to be a phenomenal employee. We had some personal issues, but she is the person I am most proud of having developed.
I included this story because some of you guys asked me what it's like to work at a casino. While it is a really fun, unique environment, it also has a lot of political issues that aren't faced in other places. In fact, that politics are a big part of what led to me turning in my resignation a few years ago. I'm looking at going back to the casinos now, but it isn't without its challenges. If you are interested in going to work in that kind of environment I would encourage you to do your research before hand. It can be incredibly rewarding, but it isn't without its challenges.
​
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Chapter 1
This is a true story.
I will begin this story in 2007, this is when I decided to join the Royal Australian Navy. I was 22yrs old and had been out of high school for 4 years with no real intent on going to university since I didn’t think it would necessarily make me successful. I been doing odd jobs like a pizza driver which I had to hold for a year because I originally applied for the Air Force but was rejected due to not holding a steady job which showed a lack of commitment, therefore after a year as a pizza driver a joined the Navy since a few of my friends had joined and said it was an easy ride. So there I was on the bus to Cerberus.
I had to go into the city to get a bus with everyone else down to Cerberus despite living only 20 minutes from the base. Cerberus is the main Navy training base in Cribpoint, Victoria where all the new recruits from around Australia end up. As recruit school came to an end after 11 weeks I had to wait for the next graduating class for a month before I was posted to Sydney to start my course as a Combat Systems Operator. That’s when my life took a big turning point. I was attending early morning activity where we were asked to lift weights and run them over to the training ground, I started to feel a sharp pain in my back, after a while I had to stop running and asked to go to the hospital. Limping over I barely made it when in the hospital my back started to spasm with pain. I had an L5 disc prolapse and could not walk for 2 days and was in the hospital for 10 days. I was happy to finally leave the hospital at which point they told me not to sit down or stand up for too long so I proceeded straight to the casino to play poker.
Upon arriving at HMAS Watson in Sydney I was informed by the doc that I wouldn’t be posting to a ship anytime soon as my back injury was holding me back. HMAS Watson is a beautiful base where people from the public would actually get married in the church on base. I enjoyed the CSO course and was top of the class but I couldn’t keep out of trouble. I push my luck one night when I got drunk on base and end up in a fight with another trainee. I was suspended with pay for 6 months and returned to Melbourne where I had to report to Cerberus 3 times a week. They sent me a letter explaining that my service would be terminated but I could write in a response with a reason why I should stay. I decided that since I wouldn’t be posting to a ship I decided to leave. Psychologists would later say that my actions in the Navy were early signs of schizophrenia.
Back in Melbourne and looking for a job a decided to get a job where my back wouldn’t stop me from working so I started working at a call center selling electricity over the phone. Not a very nice job but it paid for my apartment and beer which is all I really needed. 1 year in the job and I had been promoted a number of times to quality controller and then campaign manager. During this time my schizophrenia started to take hold. When I get schizophrenic I start to think I’m under surveillance and also think “I’m the only one in existence”, as a secret agent, I can do whatever I feel like doing without any consequences. So I stole 52 credit card numbers with there cvv numbers from work for later use. I knew that if I used the cards that the people would get their money back because if they report their cards stolen the bank gives them back their money while they investigate, so I was really robbing the bank. The campaign I was managing was the Insulation scheme and the Home sustainability campaign. The government was giving away free insulation worth $1600 to every household and free home assessments that are both meant to help tackle climate change by reducing the carbon footprint of each house. The whole campaign collapsed overnight when a number of people had been killed by fires that had started from dodgy insulation installers. That’s when I decided to start my own company. I knew a few old clients that were not that happy with my current company so I called them up and told them I was starting my own and would they like to be a client. I got a few that said yes and with one offering $5000 cash to startup I knew this was the time. I flew to Sydney and picked up the cash like something from the movies and on the way to my hotel I saw the guy that I had got into a fight with from the Navy and thought if I didn’t have $5k in my bag I would throw you in the river but lucky I had the cash. After bathing in the money I made my way back to Melbourne got my friends together and started up on Little Collins Street in the CBD. After 3 months of running home sustainable services, I flew back to Sydney to set-up a new center with a client. Half-way through setting up my friend and I decided to drive back to Melbourne because we had things to do, we hired a rent-a-bomb car, the old cars that you’re not meant to drive out of the city, we decided to take it to Melbourne from Sydney. We picked up a hitchhiker who had lost his license drink driving and at that point, I decided to let Finbar drive. Finbar hadn’t driven a car in 10 years when he had his learners as he has been using public transport for most of his life but I didn’t think much could go wrong. Well. The hitchhiker was so afraid of Finbars driving he asked to be let out at the next stop in the middle of nowhere. Upon letting the guy out Finbar then for some reason accidentally decided to plant his foot down on the accelerator while in neutral with me yelling at him to take his foot of and him looking around in confusion it was all pretty funny. By the time we had got to Melbourne the car was overheated and smoke was coming out of the engine. We just managed to get it into a train carpark before it died for good. The car company called me up asking if I needed another day and I explained what had happened and they then asked for $5000 by the end of the business day for the car. The car wasn’t worth $500 so $5000 they were dreaming. We borrowed the client's credit card to hire a nice new car to drive back up to Sydney and along the way when we collided with a truck tire at 110km/h that was in the middle of the road. The car slightly damaged we arrived at which point we were locked out of the office because we hadn’t paid back the debt we owed to them. So it was back to Melbourne again. When I flew back to Melbourne the company had no campaigns to go on so I had to close it down. I then applied for Centrelink and had to move into a backpacker as that’s all I good afford. Centrelink, however, wouldn’t pay me for 1 month because I had previously run my own company and they had to make sure I had no money. This only led to one thing. Crime. I went to coles online shopping and bought roast lamb, bourbon, wines, and anything I felt like with the stolen credit card numbers. I had it all delivered to the door. I needed to convert this into cash somehow so I bought items like police scanners and surveillance equipment which I later sold at cash converters. The lawyers would later argue I was highly paranoid hence the equipment. I then decided to fly to Perth to visit my mate. So I called up Virgin Blue and gave the credit card over the phone while I was at the airport and bought the next flight out of Melbourne. I guess it didn’t matter the card had a different name than my name since I flew under my real name. In Perth, I knew I could sneak into an Army barracks that were used by all three services without anyone noticing so I did. I walked in through the side gate and slept in the barracks for a week. There were 3 big 2 story blocks that were mostly empty and a few rooms that were unlocked. I ordered pizza over the phone again with the cards just down the road. I then decided it was time to leave and head back to the Airport so I walked into town and asked to take a car for a test drive from a local dealer, I drove the car back onto the base and loaded up the car with my luggage and that’s when the fuel run out. So what did I do? I walk over to the fuel pump on the base of course and asked to use a petrol can to fill up my ride. That’s when I bumped into a very switched on army officer who asked me a hundred questions at a time. He told me to just go and wait in the blocks while we find out where I’m from. I could have made a dash for it but being a 35-degree day I just thought fuck it. The officer came in and said “You’re not going anywhere till you tell me who you are and what you’re doing”, I told them straight up, I was on base because I didn’t want to pay for accommodation and I’m really cheap, they called the cops and then we both started having a laugh about the lack of security around the place. I was charged with trespassing and got a $150 fine. The car was picked up by the owner and I flow back to Melbourne again with stolen credit cards.
When I arrived back in Melbourne Centrelink finally decided to pay up and I then took myself straight to the police station and handed over the credit card numbers at which point the policeman looked at me and said: “why are you handing yourself in?” Well, my belief that I was part of ASIO and untouchable made me feel like I wouldn’t really get in any trouble, and I also wanted to make sure the people that I had stolen from got their money back from the banks.
I had an initial interview with the detective and he informed me it would take some time to investigate what I bought on what cards so I didn’t attend court for about 6 months time. In the meantime, I was staying at backpackers meeting loads of people from around the world and then I met Alex. This guy was wearing the Navy running shorts like a typical wanker. He had just gotten out of the Navy and looking for a new goal in life as well. We became good mates talking about all the crap you get up to in the Navy. We ended up going out most nights using the free drink cards that you can get at the backpackers to get shit faced. With the money I had saved, I decided to buy a van so I could sleep in the back and not have to pay for accommodation. I parked the car in the open carpark next to Urban central backpacker right under the highway. It was ok besides the car getting broken into nearly every week but I really had nothing worth stealing. My mate and I were out on the town pissing up spending all our money at the casino and strippers and then decided it would be a great idea to break into a storage facility and see what we could get. We drove out there and we were so drunk we were on the site for 40 mins before the cops finally came to arrest us. My mate gave up but I started running for it. I made it about 300 meters before being surrounded. Yet another pending court appearance. You would think I would learn by now to stop doing crime but the type of schizophrenia that I have just says “Do whatever the fuck you like”. And again I was about to. With all the stress of the pending court dates, I decided it would be a nice time for a good old road trip. I hired a Ford xr6 2010 model a nice car with plenty of space and cruise control I first was just going to hire the car for a day when I said to myself “let's drive to Byron Bay”. I went on gumtree and advertised offering a lift from Melbourne to Sydney for $50. I figured if I got a full car of 4 people I would even make money from the trip after fuel expenses. I traveled with 2 French girls and 2 English girls and so began a month-long trip traveling with 30 different people from Melbourne to Sydney to Byron Bay to Brisbane to Hervey Bay and then back to Sydney. I was traveling over from March to April to it wasn’t hard to find travel partners. I stopped over at Byron Bay for the Bluesfest where I decided to volunteer. After staying at the backpacker for one night I noticed a girl trying to sneak in so that’s when I decided to buy a tent and camp and invite people to camp out with me. I found a nice quiet spot right down near the beach and camped with ten different people. A great time watching the sunrise knowing that I would more than likely be going to prison. Somehow I just didn’t give a shit. I dropped the car off at Sydney airport and flow back to Melbourne. Back in the van again and that’s when the first major schizophrenic episode happened.
To be continued..