Tag: unanswered questions

Mysterious Company Pays Nearly $1 Billion for Land Near US Air Force Base, Power Grid

A mystery company’s purchase of large swaths of land near a United States Air Force base and key locations along the West Coast’s electrical grid has raised red flags about national security.

U.S. Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee readiness panel, wants to find out more about the buyer, Flannery Associates LLC.

The LLC is registered in Delaware but based in Folsom, California, where it lists a P.O. Box as its address at a mailbox rental center. Its employees are listed as based in the Southern California city of Glendale.

“They have surrounded one of the most important air bases on the West Coast,” Mr. Garamendi told NewsNation in an interview. “If anything happened in the Pacific with China, this base would be the way in which the U.S. Air Force and military would transit across the Pacific.”

Flannery has invested about $800 million in about 55,000 acres of land surrounding the Travis Air Force Base since 2018, according to public records.

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Tafari Campbell paddle boarding death riddle: Cops left call log reporting Obama private chef’s drowning BLANK and said it came from 2 miles away – as they refuse to reveal who he was with on the water

Martha’s Vineyard police left the reason for the 911 call reporting Obama private chef Tafari Campbell’s drowning blank in official logs from the night of the accident, DailyMail.com can reveal.

Tafari, 45, fell into the water on Sunday night while paddle boarding on Great Edgartown Pond. He was not on the water alone, but police refuse to name the person he was with. 

At 7.46pm, a 911 call was made to report that he had fallen in and could not make it back to the surface. 

That call is noted in Edgartown Police Department’s logs, but the reason behind it is left noticeably blank. The reason for every other call for that night is given. 

The origin of the call is also listed as Wilson’s Landing – a paddle board launch site, some two miles from the Obamas’ house on Turkeyland Cove, where Massachusetts State Police say the first call came from. 

Edgartown police chief Bruce McNamee told DailyMail.com that the call log is generated by the Dukes County Sheriff’s Office. 

He could only speculate on why the reason for the call is left blank, saying it may be because the caller from Obama’s property didn’t dial 911, which automatically generates location data, and instead made a direct call to a business line.

He also said the address was listed as Wilson’s Landing because that was the public launch used as the command post. 

At the time the call came in, authorities didn’t know where the drowning occurred so used the staging site for the incident location, he chief said.

The property boasts a private beach from which a paddle board can be easily launched. At the time of the drowning, Barack and Michelle were out of the house. 

It’s unclear if Sasha and Malia – who were also in town – were at home, or out with friends or their parents. 

At 11.40pm, another 911 call was made from a neighbors’ house to report an elderly woman falling down the stairs. 

Chief McNamee said it was entirely unrelated to the accident on the water.  

The Obamas’ office did not respond to requests to clarify who was in the house when Campbell’s accident occurred. 

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3 US Marines found dead inside car at North Carolina gas station near Camp Lejeune

Three U.S. Marines were found dead inside a parked car at a gas station in a coastal North Carolina community over the weekend, authorities said.

The Pender County Sheriff’s Office said deputies were responding to a report of a missing person when they found the three Marines at about 9 a.m. Sunday at a Speedway convenience store on U.S. 17 in Hampstead, about 30 miles south of Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune.

Their causes of death weren’t immediately clear. The Pender County Sheriff’s Office said it was investigating further.

“There does not appear to have ever been any threat to members of the community,” the sheriff’s office said.

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Medical examiner to perform toxicology test on Tafari Campbell, Obamas’ private chef, after Martha’s Vineyard drowning

Medical examiners are expected to undertake a toxicology report on the body of a former White House sous chef who drowned while paddle boarding at the former Presidents $12million Martha’s Vineyard property.

An autopsy is expected to take place today after Tafari Campbell, 45, was found dead on Monday by divers after going missing in Edgartown Great Pond, Massachusetts, that backs on to the Obama’s sprawling estate.

DailyMail.com understands that a toxicology analysis will take place as part of the investigation, which sources say is usual in a drowning.

Martha’s Vineyard residents have been quick to reflect on the dangers of the pond, with one paddle boarder telling DailyMail.com that you often think the beach is closer than it is in the private area close to the Obama’s property.

Campbell had been paddle boarding with another person at around 7.40pm on Sunday, with witnesses saying he was dressed in all black and not wearing a life preserver.

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Body found in search for black male paddleboarder, 43, who drowned in pond on Obama’s Martha’s Vineyard estate: 911 call was made from ex-President’s $12M property last night

Divers have found the body of a paddleboarder who went missing in the water off Martha’s Vineyard – that backs on to Barack Obama’s sprawling $12million estate.

The 43-year-old vanished on Sunday evening while he was out with another paddleboarder on Edgartown Great Pond, Massachusetts, and emergency crews were dispatched to Obama’s residence. 

Witnesses told cops the man went underwater and then briefly reappeared as he struggled to stay afloat, before submerging again around 7.46pm. 

A massive joint-agency search resumed Monday morning for the African American male who was last seen wearing all black without a lifejacket, MV Times reported.

His paddle board and hat were recovered Sunday – and his body was found in the eight-foot-deep waters approximately 100 feet away from shore at 10am Monday. 

The dispatch address for the incident came from Obama’s Martha’s waterfront Vineyard home. It is unclear if the former president, 61, is currently staying at the estate. 

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No evidence of toddler on highway when Carlee Russell disappeared: Police

New details were released by police Tuesday night about the mysterious disappearance and return of Carlee Russell in Alabama.

The Hoover Police Department said the night she went missing she went to Target after leaving her job and purchased some snacks and food items.

Police added these items were not located inside her abandoned vehicle or with her cell phone and wig at the scene of her disappearance on I-459.

Russell disappeared shortly after reporting she’d seen a toddler walking along the interstate to 911.

However, police said they have not located any evidence of a toddler walking down the interstate, nor received any additional calls about a toddler walking down the interstate, despite numerous vehicles passing through that area as depicted by the traffic camera surveillance video.

The police department said it has also obtained surveillance footage from the night Russell returned to her parent’s home.

The footage is from Russell’s neighborhood and shows her walking down the sidewalk alone before she arrived at her residence, according to police. Fire department radio traffic obtained by several media outlets shows that medics were dispatched to her residence on an “unresponsive but breathing” person.

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‘Accidental’ death of Rolling Stones guitarist called into question by witness statement

After Brian Jones was found dead in his swimming pool in 1969, the authorities quickly decided that the Rolling Stones star had drowned accidentally.

But questions have lingered over the case in the years since, and now a previously unseen witness statement has cast renewed doubt on the police investigation.

Jones was found dead at his home in Hartfield, East Sussex on July 2 1969, just a few weeks after it was announced he was leaving the Rolling Stones. He was 27 years old.

Five days later, the coroner recorded a verdict of death by misadventure, saying Jones drowned “whilst under the influence of alcohol and drugs”.

Two weeks after Jones died, Joan Fitzsimons, 29, was brutally attacked. A local cab driver, she had been at Jones’s house on the night he died and was a girlfriend of Frank Thorogood, a builder-cum-minder for Jones who was allegedly a suspect in the fatal drowning.

Before the attack, she had told friends in a pub that she was planning on telling the true story of Jones’s death to the national newspapers.

In the witness statement, given to officers investigating the assault on Fitzsimons, her brother, John Russell, described how she was “frightened” of Thorogood and that she believed there was more to Jones’s death than the official verdict.

Sussex Police denied there was any link between the attack on Fitzsimons and Jones’s death.

Just before 10pm on July 26 1969, Fitzsimons was found unconscious in the back of her lime-green Ford Zephyr, four miles outside Chichester, blinded in both eyes, with a fractured skull and three of her front teeth missing.

The statement that Russell gave to Sussex Police on July 30 1969 was placed inside the National Archives, with an order that it remain closed until 2041, but has now been released under a Freedom of Information request.

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Woman returns home after she mysteriously disappeared calling 911 about wandering toddler

A missing woman came back home in a return just as puzzling as her disturbing disappearance. The Hoover Police Department in Alabama announced that their 911 center received a call at 10:45 p.m. on Saturday about Carlethia “Carlee” Nichole Russell, 25, reappearing.

“She walked up, banged on the door, and that was her,” Hoover Police Chief Nicholas Derzis told WBRC.

He said he was unsure how she got there. Police still had to determine what happened after she went missing while reporting that she saw a toddler wandering alongside a local interstate. Investigators will sit down with her, but not yet.

“The first thing is to give Carlee and family a little time to get themselves back together,” the chief reportedly said. “I know it’s been a tough experience for them. When we think it’s time to sit down and have a conversation with Carlee and try to get some facts, we’ll do that.”

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The strange death of Josh Maddux, the Boy in the Chimney

On May 8, 2008, Joshua “Josh” Maddux, 18, left his house to take a walk. He was a nature lover, so this was nothing unusual. He was never seen alive again.

Seven years later, in August 2015, less than a mile away from Josh’s home, property developer, Chuck Murphy, was demolishing an old wood cabin to make way for 32 new family homes. The cabin hadn’t been used in years and the inside was damp and rotten. Work to demolish the chimney inside the cabin started and to the surprise of the demolition team, crammed inside the brickwork was a mummified body, which later was confirmed as Josh. His body was naked apart from a thin shirt and his clothes were neatly stacked inside the cabin.

What happened to Josh? Did he climb in, was he forced in? The story of Josh Maddux continues to stir debate amongst armchair detectives.

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The Mysterious Case of the Fake Gay Marriage Website, the Real Straight Man, and the Supreme Court

Long before the Supreme Court took up one of the last remaining cases it will decide this session—the 303 Creative v. Elenis case, concerning a Colorado web designer named Lorie Smith who refuses to make websites for same-sex weddings and seeks an exemption from anti-discrimination laws—there was a couple named Stewart and Mike. According to court filings from the plaintiff, Stewart contacted Smith in September 2016 about his wedding to Mike “early next year.” He wrote that they “would love some design work done for our invites, placenames etc. We might also stretch to a website.” Stewart included his phone number, email address, and the URL of his own website—he was a designer too, the site showed.

This week, I decided to call Stewart and ask him about his inquiry.

The Supreme Court is expected to deliver its opinion in a case in which Stewart plays a minor role, a case that could be, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor stated by way of a question at oral argument in December, “the first time in the Court’s history … [that] a commercial business open to the public, serving the public, that it could refuse to serve a customer based on race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation.” (Update: On Friday, the court ruled 6-3 in the web designer’s favor.) It took just a few minutes to reach him. I assumed at least some reporters over the years had contacted him about his website inquiry to 303 Creative—his contact information wasn’t redacted in the filing. But my call, he said, was “the very first time I’ve heard of it.”

Yes, that was his name, phone number, email address, and website on the inquiry form. But he never sent this form, he said, and at the time it was sent, he was married to a woman. “If somebody’s pulled my information, as some kind of supporting information or documentation, somebody’s falsified that,” Stewart explained. (Stewart’s last name is not included in the filing, so we will be referring to him by his first name throughout this story.)

“I wouldn’t want anybody to … make me a wedding website?” he continued, sounding a bit puzzled but good-natured about the whole thing. “I’m married, I have a child—I’m not really sure where that came from? But somebody’s using false information in a Supreme Court filing document.”

Here is what we know—though, to be frank, I do not know what we have learned from this yearslong mystery, other than it looks like Smith and her attorneys have, perhaps unwittingly, invented a gay couple in need of a wedding website in a case in which they argue that same-sex marriages are “false.”

When Smith and her attorneys, the Christian right group Alliance Defending Freedom, or ADF, brought this case for the first time, it was to the United States District Court in Colorado in 2016, and they lost. Smith and ADF filed the case on September 20 of that year, asking the court to enjoin the state anti-discrimination law so that Smith could begin offering her wedding website design services to straight couples only. Up to this point, Smith had never designed any wedding website. (In fact, her website six months prior to the lawsuit being filed in 2016 does not include any of the Christian messaging that it did shortly afterward and today, archived versions of the site show.) The initial lawsuit did not mention the “Stewart” inquiry, which was submitted to Smith’s website on September 21, according to the date-stamp shown in later court filings, indicating that she received it the day after the suit was originally filed.

It is unclear exactly when—or if—the inquiry from “Stewart” was examined and verified in the course of this legal battle. (His phone number was, after all, right there.) In a motion filed by the defense on October 19, 2016, arguing that the case should be dismissed, they state that Smith has received no actual inquiries for services and therefore has suffered no injury. The following month, in its response, ADF did not mention the September 2016 “Stewart” inquiry to refute the defense’s claims. Rather, ADF merely stated that it was not necessary for Smith to have received an inquiry in order to challenge the law over her feared consequences of denying services to a same-sex couple.

Not until February 2017 did ADF include the text of the “Stewart” inquiry and argue its relevance to the case. “Notably, any claim that Lorie will never receive a request to create a custom website celebrating a same-sex ceremony is no longer legitimate because Lorie has received such a request,” the group wrote. “Even though she is not currently in the wedding industry, Lorie received an email inquiry on September 21, 2016.” Smith elaborated in a sworn statement that she “received a request through the ‘contact’ webpage on my website from a person named, ‘Stewart,’ reference number 9741406, to create graphic designs for invitations and other materials for a same-sex wedding (‘same-sex wedding request’).” She added that a “true and accurate copy” of the “same-sex wedding request” would be submitted with the statement. Why it took until possibly February 2017 to introduce the inquiry is not clear.

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