SXSW killer gets life

A jury has found Rashad Owens guilty of capital murder.

Owens drove his car into crowds at last year's SXSW, killing four and injuring dozens. His defence team argued that he hadn't intended to kill, but had merely panicked after being chased by police, but jurors were convinced by prosecution arguments that, had this been true, he would have stopped when he started hitting people. Owens had actually sped up once he hit the crowd.

He will spend life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Taylor Swift hasn't done a murder but fears you'll be told she has

In an interview with Ellen, Taylor Swift has said her biggest fear is of being framed for a crime, like murder.

Of course, it's possible she's ALREADY DONE A MURDER and trying to plant the idea that she's been framed in the mind of a jury yet to be selected.

IT IS VITAL WE KNOW HOW OFTEN TAYLOR SWIFT HAS KILLED AND ACT BEFORE SHE KILLS AGAIN.

(Sidenote: Taylor Swift is excellent at being a pop star, isn't she?)

Yoghurt advert pulled after, but not because, Duran complained

So Yoplait were running an advert (presumably only in the US) which put Hungry Like The Wolf on the soundtrack.

Because, you see, if you were hungry like a wolf, a tiny little pot of fermented milk would fill you right up. Apparently.

Duran Duran were unhappy:

Many of you have written to us, voicing your dismay about the recent license of our song Hungry Like the Wolf, to a yoghurt commercial. Please know, Duran Duran do not support this usage of their music and unfortunately, this particular license was granted without any prior notification to any of us. Had we known, under no circumstances would we have backed it.

Thankfully, the ad has now been taken off the air and moving forward we hope to avoid any further situations like this.

Well, yes. The advert has been taken off the air, but not because of LeBon et al's objections. Slicing Up Eyeballs explains:

On the yogurt maker’s Facebook page, a number of people posted complaints in recent days about the use of “Hungry Like the Wolf” because of its connection to the Diane Downs murder case 30 years ago. In May 1983, Downs shot her three children in the back of her car in Springfield, Ore., killing one of them. “Hungry Like the Wolf” was playing on the car’s radio at the time.

Initially, Yoplait reps responded by defending the song’s use, writing:

“We chose the music because it’s a popular song that felt right for this ad. The Yoplait team has discussed this quite a bit and found that the large majority of people have only positive connections to this song, given that the Diane Downs incident was more than 30 years ago.”

By late this past week, though, Yoplait had changed its tune, saying the ad was being removed from the air:

“When we chose the song, we had no idea of its connection to this terrible event. We take your feedback seriously, and yes, we have decided to remove this ad from the air while we consider other versions. Please know that it may take a couple of days until the ad is fully removed. We’re again sorry that it’s upset you and promise there was no intention to cause such disappointment.”

Given the ad was pulled because someone killed their family while listening to the song, I'm not sure I'd have gone with the word "thankfully" if I'd been in Duran Duran. Mind you, if I'd worked for Yoplait I'm not entirely sure I'd have described the shooting of three children by their mother as an "incident", like it was the theft of a traffic cone.

Much of New York tries to help out Yellow Dogs

After the murder of two members of Yellow Dogs and others earlier in the week, New York is rallying round. Brooklyn Vegan reports:

Monday (11/18) at Brooklyn Bowl there will be a "Special Memorial Evening / Fundraiser" featuring performances from Nada Surf, James Chance, Luke Temple, Dirty Fences, Kyp Malone (of TVotR), Helado Negro, Hamish Kilgour (The Clean), Iranian visual artist and activist Shirin Neshat and more; plus DJ sets from Paul Banks (Interpol), Jonathan Toubin, Sinkane, Vito & Druzzi (The Rapture), The Men and more.

Tickets ($15.00 - $30.00) for the benefit go on sale Saturday (11/16) at noon. 100% of the door will be going to the families of the deceased, the hospital bills of Sasan Sadeghpourosko who was wounded in the shooting, and then as well as the two surviving members of Yellow Dogs.

There doesn't seem to be a non-tickety way of donating if you want to help out but can't be in Brooklyn, but if we come across something we'll pass it on.

Manson drops Manson a brief note

It's right larks taking the name of a murderous loon for your stage name, right? So edgy. So daring. Why, it's cocking a snook at polite society, and no mistake.

Although what happens if the owner of the blood-spattered name decides to get in touch?

Charlie Manson has sent a postcard to Marilyn Manson:

"To Marilyn Manson, It’s taken me a long time to get there from where I could touch M. Manson. Now I got a card to play – you may look into my non-profit, ATWA, and give Manson what you think he’s got coming for Air, Trees, Water, and you. Or I will pay Manson what you think Manson got coming – the music has make Manson into Abraxas Devil, and I’m SURE you would want some of what I got from what I got. It’s a far out balance."

"Beyond good and bad, right, wrong. What you don’t do is what I will do – what you did a sing-along, and let it roll and said how you saved me a lot of steps – I don’t need, it’s not a need or a want. Couped – coup. Ghost dancers slay together and you’re just in my grave Sunstroker Corona-coronas-coronae – you seen me from under with it all standing on me. That’s 2 dump trucks – doing the same as CMF 000007. Charles Manson."

I think that's demanding money (for good works) with menaces. Lots and lots of menaces.

How thrilling it must be for young Brian to get a letter from the man who he has spent so much time trading off the back off. Exciting for him; lucrative for locksmiths and alarm manufacturers in his home town.

In other news, members of Spector are nervously checking their mailboxes and muttering about how they'd have been called something else if the Jing Jang Jong hadn't already been taken.

Gordon in the morning: Dappy is the Lord Longford of our age

Tucked into the showbiz section today is news of Dappy issuing calls for justice:

The Sun revealed that a message in his new video out on YouTube declared: “Free Leo Chindamo".

Learco Chindamo was the killer of Phillip Lawrence, the head stabbed to death outside his school back in 1995. He had been released on parole; arrested for an alleged mugging, he was acquitted of the crime but still returned to prison for violating the terms of his release.

There's a nuanced debate as to if it's entirely fair for someone to effectively be sent to prison for a crime of which he wasn't convicted, or if it's fair that having promised to avoid trouble, and having failed, Chindamo was correctly taken back inside for his original murder.

It also calls for a steady hand to be able to object to the parole recall without being seen to be somehow downplaying the horror of Lawrence's murder, especially given how the death was a tabloid cause célèbre.

Nuance and a steady hand. Dappy's not really the man for the job, is he?

[T]he N-Dubz nincompoop, 25, claimed he never even realised what the convict’s crime was. He said sorry via Twitter to the family of the teacher, 48, who was killed in 1995 breaking up a fight at his West London school.

In fact, Dappy's understanding of the case seems to go no further than having known Learco's brother some years ago. (It seems as if one of his old neighbours asked him, Dappy would quite happily have stuck a message 'Fridge Freezer for sale £15 - some damage to door, working order - must collect' on screen, to be honest.)

Still, having had someone explain to him what he'd done, Dappy took to Twitter to try and stop the shitstorm he'd stirred up. That won't go wrong, will it?:

[E]ven his apology was hamfisted — misspelling their name. His message said: “My heart goes out to Mr Laurence’s family and I know the pain of losing a loved one, sincerely Daps.”

Someone so well-meaning, but so inept. Shouldn't he be in the cabinet?

A-Ha play for Utøya

Oslo is hosting a major national event today as a memorial for those killed in the Utøya and Oslo attacks last month. As part of the memorial, A-Ha will be performing, and their official statement as to why they got involved is worth sharing:

On 22 July, we, like everyone else in Norway and the rest of the world, were shaken to the soul by these actions of cruelty and violent provocation against everything we stand for.

We are also very proud to belong to a small country where people, politicians and the royal family worked together and showed solidarity in the face of such tragedy, and we are grateful to be asked to participate in the memorial ceremony.

We do this to honor those who have been torn away, to show appreciation to everyone who made an effort to help on July 22, and to express our sympathy to the survivors who now are left in sorrow."

Phil Spector appeal rejected, again

For the second time this year, Phil Spector has had attempts to appeal his murder conviction rejected.

Rumours the California Supreme Court are building a Wall Of Nope could not be confirmed.

Schooly D pulled in to Norwegian slaughter

What's the difference between Schooly D and Melanie Phillips?

Where Mel was approvingly included in Anders Breivik's moronfesto, Schooly D's lyrics turn up as an example of what is bad about hip-hop. Phawker explains:

Breivik includes a slightly bastardized version of John P McWhorter’s 2003 anti-rap diatribe How Hip-Hop Holds Blacks Back, which singles out a few of the most sensational lines from Schooly D’s proto-gangsta rap classic “PSK What Does It Mean?” to illustrate the toxicity of hip-hop.

Breivik, naturally, is bending his evidence to fit his worldview, and doesn't include the lines where D realises guns are bad, and turns to rapping instead.

Schooly D is going to make an official statement next week, but Phawker sums it all up rather nicely:

If we were in his shoes we would say this: I am not interested in lectures about the negative effect of rap lyrics on society from mass murderers. Period. End of story.

Should have gone to Spect-haters (sorry)

It can't be often that TMZ reacts to a story in the Financial Times, but it's all over David Mamet's interview with the pink 'un.

Mamet is working on a biopic about Phil Spector, and he told the paper he doesn't think Spector is a killer:

"I don't think [Spector] is guilty. I definitely think there is reasonable doubt ... they should never have sent him away ... If he'd just been a regular citizen, they never would have indicted him."

I'm not sure that Mamet really understands the way "regular citizens" with shot people in their hallways are treated by police - generally they get less room for doubt than Spector did.

Anyway, TMZ reports that friends of Lana Clarkson, the woman he shot in the face, are unhappy:

Clarkson's friends have banded together -- and have fired off a letter to the director, claiming his comments were "mind-boggling and wrong in so many ways."

According to the letter, obtained by TMZ, the group's main concern is that "the loathsome, lying, gun-abusing convicted murderer of our friend Lana Clarkson will be portrayed with some kind of sympathy."

Lana's friends want to remind Mamet -- whose upcoming film stars Al Pacino and Bette Midler -- that Spector was CONVICTED by a jury of his peers ... and plead, "Please refrain from rewriting history for 'creative license.'"

"Jury of his peers" isn't quite right - they had trouble barking up a dozen hair-addled crazy music geniuses, especially as Arthur Brown was already busy that week.

You can understand Clarkson's friends being upset, but there's a slightly alarming suggestion in their letter than once a jury has handed down its verdict, then you can no longer discuss the facts of the case. There's a lot of people who should never have been in prison who have been sent there by a jury of their peers. If Mamet believes he has a case, he should at least be allowed to explore it.

Daily Mail has extraordinary new theory about the death of John Lennon

Tony Rennell's bit in this morning's Mail poses a big question:

Was John Lennon's murderer Mark Chapman a CIA hitman?

No. Of course he wasn't.

Rennell's article is effectively a long advert for a book by Phil Strongman that drags up the old "of course, it was the CIA what did it" barroom theory and attempts to construct some sort of proof.

And somewhere along the line his mind was infiltrated. With Chapman, the CIA could have drawn on its long experience of using mind-controlling drugs and techniques such as hypnosis to produce assassins who would eliminate trouble-makers, and ‘patsies’, the fall guys on whom such killings could be blamed.

Strongman claims: ‘Catcher In The Rye was part of Chapman’s hypnotic programming, a trigger that could be “fired” at him by a few simple keywords [via] a
cassette tape message, telex or telegram or even a mere telephone call.

’It’s certainly true that conspiracy theorists have long suspected both the Americans and their communist foes of using such techniques to activate ‘sleeper’ assassins — as fictionalised in the film The Manchurian Candidate.

Well, let's go with this theory for a while. The CIA - and the FBI, too, of course - have gone to all the trouble of turning Mark Chapman into a cross between Cuddles The Monkey and Oddjob.

And they use him to assassinate John Lennon?

Why on earth would the CIA want Lennon dead? Double Fantasy wasn't so bad it called for extrajudicial execution.

Strongman can explain the motive:

He had, it seems, rattled the cages of America’s powerful Right wing, first with his opposition to the Vietnam War and then with his campaign of pacifism.

Even the Mail's Rennell, who is regurgitating the book more-or-less verbatim, is unable to stop himself from squirting milk out his nose at that one:

It is here that those of us who lived through the period must pause for breath. Lennon was a mad and maddening genius, a showman and a show-off. But he was a dreamer, not a doer.

He wrote songs, he played the guitar, he had some funny ideas. He made us laugh. He was irreverent.

But he wasn’t about to bring down capitalism. He was doing much too well out of it himself for that.

Irreverent? By the time the CIA was supposedly having no choice but to have Lennon killed, Lennon was pretty much irrelevant.

You know that last big interview Lennon did with Andy Peebles that gets rolled out every anniversary? It was with Andy Peebles. And if the decision to send the bloke with the all-important Friday evening sports-preview show to interview Lennon isn't enough to remind you that Lennon was gently, but clearly, heading towards silhouetted-appearance-on-Denis-Norden-panel-game oblivion, let's look at this week's Creamguide:

One thing that Lennon page did point out was a moment on Nationwide when Frank Bough looked at a picture of a bearded, bed-in era Lennon and asked his guest Hunter Davies whether he still looked like that in his last days, emphasising that before he died people didn’t really know what Lennon looked like anymore, as he had been very much a recluse, enjoying life as a house husband in New York, and being well out of the public eye, especially on this side at the Atlantic.

Yes, that would have had the CIA worried, wouldn't it? "Imagine if all American men stayed at home and grew beards. It would throw the economy into chaos, and destroy the chances of Project Kiam from being a success."

It's perhaps surprising that - given he's just making stuff up, including the inevitable 'second actual gunman' - Strongman hasn't just decided to construct an equally pointless motive. Hey, how about if Lennon was actually a KGB sleeper? Programmed to go wild and slaughter Walter Cronkite - or the actual true heir to the Romanov throne, of course - at a signal from Olivia Newton John. Hey, the CIA are keeping their Lennon files sealed, so who's to say that just because I've made this up off the top of my head, it isn't in there?

Natalie Maines wins costs from dead man's stepfather

The never-ending churn of misery started by the death of three children in West Memphis back in 1993 continues to spin.

Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks had taken part in a rally protesting the imprisonment of the "West Memphis Three", the not-entirely-securely convicted of the killings a while back, during the course of which she made some comments about one of the dead children's families.

Terry Hobbs sued for defamation - an action which was thrown out last year - and now finds he's going to have to pay the costs of Maine's defence, which runs to $17,500.

None of this legal action has got anyone closer to truth; none has got anyone closer to the release of the West Memphis Three.

Phil Spector pins hopes on judical error

Phil Spector hopes that he can use judicial error as a way of getting out of prison:

[His legal team] are claiming that the testimonies of five women were improperly used during Spector's trial. The five acquaintances of the producer said during the trial that he had threatened them with a gun in the past. The lawyers are claiming that the incidents were not comparable to the circumstances of Clarkson's death.

Yes, because you can't compare waving a gun in a person's face in a threatening way and waving a gun in a person's face in a threatening way and then blowing their face off. Two totally different things.

If I were Spector, I wouldn't bother buying seats at next year's Superbowl.

LaToya: Murder was the case. Or maybe stress.

It was quite clear that LaToya believed that Michael Jackson was murdered, right?

Oh... maybe not. Now she seems to have been persuaded by Paris Jackson's claims that he was worked to death:

La Toya, 53, reveals: “She said, ‘No, you don’t understand. They kept working him and Daddy didn’t want that, but they worked him constantly’. I felt so bad.”

No... hang on, it was murder:

She says: “I thought that from day one. You must understand something Michael always told me.

“He said, ‘If anything happens to me, if I die, it’s because someone murdered me. They’re trying to kill me’. It wasn’t that he was being delusional, they did this over the catalogue.

“He owned the Beatles catalogue. Most entertainers out there, he owned their music. He would say, ‘They’re going to kill me over that catalogue. It’s dangerous.’ Look what happened.”

He owned "most entertainers" music? Really? Do you want to nip off and check that before you want to decide which claim you'd like to believe?

Spector gets a letter

If we're to believe any of it, Charles Manson has been sending Phil Spector letters suggesting that - since they're both being held in the same prison, they should make some music together:

Spector's wife Rachelle Spector told a US newspaper: 'A guard brought Philip a note from Manson, who said he wanted him to come over to his [lockup]. He said he considers Philip the greatest producer who ever lived. 'It was creepy. Philip didn't respond.'

Creepy? God, I'll say. 'One of the best producers' maybe, but to claim he's the greatest whoever lived? That's some serious creeping.

I'm tempted to see if we can get Pete Waterman thrown into the same jail on some trumped up charge to test if Manson approaches him, too. For something other than "do you have Mike Stock's phone number?"

AEG miss the point a little while LaToya cries moider

The city of LA has suggested that AEG might like to pay some of the costs associated with the Michael Jackson farewell promotional event.

AEG aren't rushing forward to help:

But AEG president Tim Leiweke said that AEG did pay for the memorial itself.

Leiweke seems to have been breathing too deeply from the fumes of Jackson overstatement, as he seems to feel that putting on an event is, somehow, an act of public generosity in its own right. In summary, AEG's position seems to be 'why should we pay for the crowd control? We already paid out to bring the crowds there in the first place'.

Meanwhile, LaToya Jacksons talks to the News Of The World (or possibly has a private conversation which the News Of The World paid money to get transcribed):

I will nail Michael Jackson's killers

Blimey. That's got to be up there with the death penalty as a cruel and unusual punishment, hasn't it?

Oh. As in "capture". I see.

Yes, "killers" - for LaToya believes that someone went out their way to kill Jackson. Presumably someone who couldn't wait another ten minutes or so for natural causes to do the work.

Jackson says she knows who did it - and yet, surprisingly, doesn't seem quick to share that vital piece of information:

"Michael WAS murdered," declared La Toya, 53. "And we don't think just one person was involved. Rather, it was a conspiracy of people. I feel it was all about money. Michael was worth well over a billion in music publishing assets and somebody killed him for that. He was worth more dead than alive."

Yes. Somebody - or bodies - who couldn't wait to get their hand on all that lovely, lovely debt that outweighed the value of his assets.

The Hooded Claw, speaking to the Sunday Mirror on condition of anonymity, explained that there wasn't a criminal mastermind alive who wouldn't kill to seize control of a complex of networks of companies that owned rights that had been used as collateral against unsustainable debts. "I mean, who wouldn't, right? And personally, I'd have made sure I killed him right before he did all those gigs to clear large chunks of the debt, rather than wait a few months, see the debt mountain reduced, and kill him when it would seem even more plausible that he just conked out from a year's worth of efforts in Greenwich."

Still, LaToya knows the names of people who were happy enough to conduct what would have been one of the most high-profile murders in history, despite the financial trail making them obvious suspects. And yet, rather than name them, she's just let them know she knows who they are, but isn't going to tell people yet. Has LaToya ever seen an episode of Columbo? Does she not realise that that sort of behaviour usually gets you wrapped in a carpet and dumped over the side of a boat bobbing about on Lake Michigan?

But to be fair, Columbo is a made-up story about murders. Which is totally different from this one. Because it doesn't have Peter Falk in it.

Gary Glitter no longer his own worse enemy

Simon Heffer, earlier this week, writing in the Daily Telegraph:

Most rational people would find it quite acceptable if he were to be taken out and shot in the back of the head, and will be regretting that he came through his three years in a Vietnamese jail in quite such good shape.

Really? Heffer believes that "most rational people" would applaud vigilante justice and summary executions?

You can almost hear the memo flying through the air from the Telegraph lawyers, worrying about a possible charge of incitement, in the next paragraph:

I am not for a moment suggesting that anyone outraged by the existence of Gadd, or who fears for their own children when this man is loose on British soil, should take the law into his own hands.

Because that would be unacceptable. Oh, but hang on, though: Heffer has said that "rational people" wouldn't think it unacceptable. So is Heffer saying that he doesn't consider himself to be rational? That would make sense, as a lack of rational thought would explain two such contradictory paragraphs.

[via Greenslade]

Slip-knot our fault

It's grimly amusing the way that bands who base their image on murder and death and fear and misery suddenly start backtracking when they suddenly get linked to actual murder and death. It happened with Marilyn Manson over Columbine; now, Slipknot are desperately trying to disassociate themselves from a murder in South Africa where the lad who stabbed four people with a sword while wearing a "Slipknot" mask:

Yesterday, a representative of the label representing Slipknot told The Times the band had no comment.

Declining to provide her name, the woman at Roadrunner Records said: “We’ve had no confirmation that it was, in fact, a Slipknot mask. The band is not going to respond.”

It's odd that they have so much to say about mayhem normally, but come over queasy when it's suddenly all real.

It's too simplistic to 'blame' music for people's behaviour, but if you don't want to find yourself being asked awkward questions about stabbings, perhaps you shouldn't dress up a serial killers and throw entrails about in the first place? If you're serious about shining a light into the darkest areas of the human psyche, why do you squeal and go into hiding when it gets reflected back?

Bring me the head of Bill O'Reilly (but not with the face looking at me)

Fox News chief honker Bill O'Reilly has a habit of upsetting people - a side effect of having a mouth designed to spout out barely-considered cant. Last year, he got into a battle of wits with Nas - imagine two rhinos charging at each other, but without the political sophistication.

Now, the East Coast Avengers have released a record calling for O'Reilly to be murdered.

However, you don't perhaps need to be a Fox News contributor to feel a little uneasy at the call to Kill Bill O'Reilly. Isn't that rather playing into his hands?

Jam Master Jay: Turning the pager

We're at a loss to understand exactly how it is that Jam Master Jay's two-way pager - which he lost a couple of days before he was shot - has only just emerged. Jay had left it behind at a Milwaukee club, and Eric Shake James had picked it up to give to him. But, of course, Jay was shot before he could be reunited with the device.

After three years, Shake has apparently realised that, you know, what with the death being a mystery, it could contain some crucial information. Having wasted three years, Shake knew exactly what to do - and put the pager into the hands of the proper authorities.

Or, at least, MTV. Tim Kash, to be precise, whose forensic skills have previously only been on display in the Top of the Pops Star Bar.

Shake's explanation for sitting on the pager (not literally, not with the vibrate function switched on) was vague:

"The pager's like a part of Jay," Shake says when asked why he's kept it all these years. "I keep it for memory's sake."

The main bulk of the messages, it turns out, are of the 'I just heard you've been shot' type that came through after news of Jay's death broke - and, somewhat oddly, people who had discovered he was dead asking Jay questions about the shooting, as if heaven got really good Cingular coverage. It's probably a lot less crucial to the case than MTV might be playing it.

And it's not entirely Shake's fault that he hasn't passed the pager over to cops - despite having hung out with Jay during his last days, he's never been spoken to by the investigation at all. The police, presumably, are ex-directory round his way.