Dead Pool 17th October 2021

A shocking week with the murder of an MP; regardless of which side of the political spectrum you stand. Sadly political discourse and educated debates are no longer a thing. 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Granville Adams, 58, American actor (Oz, Homicide: Life on the Street, Empire), cancer.  
• Bob Herron, 97, American stuntman (Spartacus, Diamonds Are Forever, Rocky) and actor, complications from a fall.  
• Ruthie Tompson, 111, American animator (Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo).  
• Emani 22, 22, American R&B singer, car accident. 
• Sir David Amess, 69, British Conservative politician, MP (since 1983), stabbed.  
• Masten Wanjala, 20, Kenyan suspected serial killer, beaten to death. 
• Alan Hawkshaw, 84, British composer and pianist, (Grange Hill and Countdown), pneumonia.

In Other News

Bournemouth and Wales football star David Brooks has been diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma. The winger, who left international duty with Wales last week following medical examinations, is set to undergo treatment next week. The Cherries confirmed the news via an official club statement on Wednesday, adding that the 24-year-old had received an “initial positive prognosis”. In a statement of his own, the Wales international said: “This is a very difficult message for me to write. I have been diagnosed with Stage II Hodgkin Lymphoma and will begin a course of treatment next week. Although this has come as a shock to myself and my family, the prognosis is a positive one and I am confident that I will make a full recovery and be back playing as soon as possible. I’d like to show my appreciation to the doctors, nurses, consultants and staff who have been treating me for their professionalism, warmth and understanding during this period. I want to thank everyone at the Football Association of Wales because without the swift attention of their medical team we may not have detected the illness. I’d also like to say thank you to AFC Bournemouth for all their support and assistance this past week. Although I appreciate that there will be media attention and interest, I would like to ask that my privacy is respected in the coming months and I will share updates on my progress when I am able to do so. In the meantime, thank you to everyone for their messages of support – it means so much and will continue to do so in the months ahead. I look forward to seeing you all again and playing the sport I love very soon.” Hodgkin lymphoma is an uncommon cancer that develops in the lymphatic system, which is a network of vessels and glands spread throughout your body. Brooks joined the Cherries from Sheffield United for a fee of £11.5m back in the summer of 2018, and has since made 78 appearances for the club, netting four goals. He has also emerged as an important player for Wales, scoring twice in 21  appearances.       

Robert Durst has tested positive for Covid-19 and has been placed on a ventilator, according to his attorney. The 78-year-old real estate heir was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Thursday for the first degree murder of his friend Susan Berman at her Beverly Hills home. He was found guilty last month of shooting Ms Berman, 55, in the back of the head in December 2000. A jury also found him guilty of the special circumstances of lying in wait and killing a witness, which in California carries a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of early release. “All we know he’s tested positive for Covid-19, he’s in hospital and on a ventilator,” his attorney Dick DeGuerin told our Flying Monkey. “He looked awful Thursday, worst I’ve ever seen him. He was having difficulty breathing, he was having difficulty speaking.” Our Flying Monkey reports that Durst has been held in a wing of USC Medical Center under the watch of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department throughout the trial. It is not clear if he is still in that facility or when or where he became infected with the coronavirus. There are concerns about the exposure to the virus for others present at the trial in which dozens of people were packed into the courtroom. A month ago, the day that Durst was convicted by the jury, he was absent from proceedings because he had been exposed to someone who had tested positive for Covid-19. Durst spent much of the trial in a wheelchair but still engaged in tense exchanges when cross-examined regarding the death of Ms Berman more than 20 years ago. Prosecutors told his trial that Durst killed his friend because she knew too much about the 1982 disappearance of his wife, Kathleen McCormack Durst. Ms Durst’s body has never been found after she disappeared in New York in 1982 and he has never been charged in connection with her death. The court was told that Ms Berman had provided a false alibi for Durst in 1982 and that he feared she would reveal that to authorities. Superior Court Judge Mark Windham, who presided over the trial and sentenced Durst in Los Angeles County on Thursday, described the murder as “awful and disturbing.” Durst, who appeared at his sentencing in prison uniform, testified in his own defence for 15 days, with prosecutors telling the jury that he had lied or changed his story multiple times. The trial took place six years after he appeared on the HBO documentary series The Jinx, where he appeared to confess to multiple killings. During the filming of the show, Durst was caught on a live microphone muttering to himself, “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”

On This Day

• 1091 – London tornado of 1091: A tornado thought to be of strength T8/F4 strikes the heart of London. 
• 1814 – Eight people die in the London Beer Flood.  
• 1907 – Marconi begins the first commercial transatlantic wireless service.  
• 1931 – Al Capone is convicted of income tax evasion.  
• 1933 – Albert Einstein flees Nazi Germany and moves to the United States.  
• 1956 – The first commercial nuclear power station is officially opened in Sellafield, England.

Deaths

• 1849 – Frédéric Chopin, Polish pianist and composer (b. 1810). 
• 1998 – Joan Hickson, English actress (b. 1906). 
• 2008 – Levi Stubbs, American singer (b. 1936). 

British MP’s Killed in Office

Sir David Amess, the MP for Southend West, is the ninth parliamentarian to be violently killed in office in British political history. The 69-year-old father-of-five was stabbed to death during a constituency surgery at Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea on Friday. A 25-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder, Essex Police said. 

Tributes to Mr Amess quickly poured in from his parliamentary colleagues, with Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis saying he was “one of life’s truly nice people, a gentleman, who was always ready to give his help to anyone who needed it”.

The killing comes five years after Labour MP and mother-of-two Jo Cox was assassinated at the age of 41 by a far-right terrorist, who shot and stabbed her outside her North Yorkshire surgery. Jo’s widower, Brendan Cox, described Mr Amess’s killing as “an attack on democracy itself. There is no excuse, no justification. It is as cowardly as it gets” he said.

Before the death of Ms Cox, the last MP to be killed in office was Ian Gow, 53, who lost his life after the IRA detonated a car bomb at his Sussex home in 1990. The Eastbourne MP, who had previously served as a private parliamentary secretary to Margaret Thatcher, was not the only British politician to die at the hands of the terrorist group.

Sir Anthony Berry was killed by the organisation’s bombing of Brighton’s Grand Hotel during the 1984 Tory Party conference, three years after the group shot dead the Ulster Unionist Party MP Robert Bradford in Belfast.

In 1979, the Conservative MP and former Northern Ireland secretary Airey Neave was assassinated by the Irish National Liberation Army. His car was blown up as he drove it out of the parliamentary car park.

These are the only sitting MPs to have been murdered since World War II. However, Andrew Pennington, who had previously served as a politician, was killed when he rushed to defend his boss, the Liberal Democrat MP Nigel Jones, from a samurai sword attack in January 2000.

Spencer Perceval, who was shot in the Commons in 1812, is the only prime minister to have been assassinated in office.

Last Week’s Birthdays

Michael McKean (74), Eminem (49), Mark Gatiss (55), George Wendt (73), Angela Lansbury (96), Tim Robbins (63), Suzanne Somers (75), Peter Bowles (85), Dominic West (52), Steve Coogan (56), Cliff Richard (81), Sacha Baron Cohen (50), Christopher Judge (57), Himesh Patel (31), Chris Carter (65), Paul Simon (80), Hugh Jackman (53), Josh Hutcherson (29), Hiroyuki Sanada (61), Robin Askwith (71), Michelle Trachtenberg (36), Claudia Black (49), Joan Cusack (59), Emily Deschanel (45), Jane Krakowski (53), Stephen Moyer (52), Lennie James (56), John Nettles (78), and Dawn French (64).