Dead Pool 20th February 2022

As  we all prepare for WWIII, or just amuse ourselves at how windy the wind is, there have been a few celebrity deaths. None are war related, nor were they squished by a flying trampoline, but the wind is still rather windy around here, so there is still hope… 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Ivan Reitman, 75, Czechoslovak-born Canadian film director (Ghostbusters, Meatballs, Kindergarten Cop) and producer.  
• Beryl Vertue, 90, English television producer (Men Behaving Badly, Sherlock, Jekyll), founder of Hartswood Films.  
• Jack Smethurst, 89, English actor (Love Thy Neighbour, Man About the House, King Ralph) and comedian.  
• Lindsey Pearlman, 43, American actress (Chicago Justice)
• David Brenner, 59, American film editor (Born on the Fourth of July, Man of Steel, Independence Day), Oscar winner (1990). 
• Jean-Luc Brunel, 75, French model scout, suicide by hanging.

In Other News

The Queen has spoken of feeling frail but remained in good spirits at her first appearance since a Covid scare in the family, and amid another turbulent week for the royals. Standing while using a walking stick, she pointed to her left leg or foot and remarked: “Well, as you can see, I can’t move,” during an official engagement at Windsor Castle. The Queen, 95, appears to have avoided catching Covid, having met the Prince of Wales last week shortly before he was confirmed as having tested positive for the virus. She was pictured greeting the Estonian ambassador who spoke to the monarch via video-link from Buckingham Palace. Also, her majesty received the Spanish ambassador over video-link. It comes after Prince Charles tested positive for Covid last week for the second time, having met the Queen earlier in the week. On Monday, the Duchess of Cornwall Camilla tested positive. Prince Charles, 73, and Camilla, 74, have both had two doses of a vaccine plus a booster dose.  

Adele Roberts has spoken out about her ‘shock’ cancer diagnosis and detailed the effects of her surgery to remove the tumour. The Radio 1 DJ, 42, revealed that she had been diagnosed with bowel cancer in an emotional post on October 24th, sharing the news a month after learning she had the disease. In her first live interview since the announcement, the I’m A Celebrity star appeared on Good Morning Britain to discuss her diagnosis. She explained: ‘It was a shock. I didn’t realise I could get cancer which I know sounds silly because I know now it can happen to anyone at any age. ‘I’m vegetarian. I’m healthy. I exercise.’ Describing the first warning signs, she said: ‘My digestion started to get a bit funny – after what we ate in the jungle I wasn’t surprised. I noticed when I went to the toilet things like mucus and then blood. I didn’t know whether to call the doctor because of Covid I didn’t want to bother anyone. But it got so consistent that I thought I’d better call up just in case.’ Despite all she’s been through, Adele remains positive and hopeful she’ll be back to her ‘normal self’ by the summer. She said: ‘I feel like I’ve not really taken it on board. I’m just trying to get through each day. The NHS have been awesome.  I’ve been able to get back on Radio One and I’m on chemotherapy. Hopefully by the middle of this year I’ll be back to my normal self.’   

Progress concerning Princess Charlene of Monaco’s ongoing recovery continues to be encouraging. Speaking to the local flying monkeys on Thursday, Prince Albert provided a brief update on his wife, saying, “Princess Charlene is doing much better, and I hope she will be back in the Principality very soon.” The prince’s remark comes three weeks after the most recent palace update, which described her recovery as “continuing in a satisfying and very encouraging way.” That statement, however, also stated her stay in a clinic would “still take several weeks.” Princess Charlene, who celebrated her 44th birthday in January, is currently receiving treatment outside of Monaco after suffering profound “exhaustion, both emotional and physical,” Prince Albert told the flying monkeys in November. After landing in South Africa last May for what was planned as a brief 10-day visit in her home country, complications from a previous ENT procedure grounded her for six months. A series of painful corrective surgeries and a subsequent relapse postponed her return to Monaco until early November to reunite with her husband and their children, Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella. Upon her return, however, the princess exhibited signs of both emotional and physical exhaustion and in consultation with her doctors and family members, she decided to seek medical assistance. It was clear “she was unwell and felt uncomfortable” a palace source explains. For numerous reasons, it was determined a facility outside Monaco was preferential. Seeking treatment “elsewhere in Europe” was a solution that the princess already favoured, Albert said. Reports speculate the clinic she chose is located in Switzerland. Albert described Charlene’s decision as a voluntary choice. “She had already made her decision, and we only wanted her to confirm it in front of us. She wanted this. She already knew the best thing to do was to go and have a rest and have a real medically framed treatment,” he told the flying monkeys in November. In December, the palace shared that “it may take a few more months before her health has reached a full recovery.”

On This Day

• 1935 – Caroline Mikkelsen becomes the first woman to set foot in Antarctica.
• 1962 – Mercury program: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, making three orbits in four hours, 55 minutes.
• 2003 – During a Great White concert in West Warwick, Rhode Island, a pyrotechnics display sets the Station nightclub ablaze, killing 100 and injuring over 200 others.

Deaths

• 1936 – Max Schreck, German actor (b. 1879).
• 1992 – Dick York, American actor (b. 1928).
• 1993 – Ferruccio Lamborghini, Italian businessman, founded Lamborghini (b. 1916).
• 2005 – Hunter S. Thompson, American journalist and author (b. 1937).

Most Murderous Murderer of Pakistan

Javed Iqbal Umayr  was a Pakistani serial killer and pederast who confessed to the sexual abuse and murder of 100 young boys, ranging in age from 6 to 16. Iqbal strangled the victims, dismembered the corpses and dissolved them in acid as a way to conceal the evidence. 

Iqbal was the sixth of eight children of his businessman father. He attended Government Islamia College, Railway Road Lahore as an intermediate student. In 1978, while still a student, he started a steel recasting business. Iqbal lived, along with boys, in a villa in Shadbagh which his father had purchased for him. 

In December 1999, Iqbal sent a letter to police and a Lahore newspaper chief news editor Khawar Naeem Hashmi confessing to the rape and murder of 100 runaway boys, all aged between 6 and 16. In the letter, he claimed to have strangled and dismembered the victims, mostly runaways and orphans living on the streets of Lahore, and disposed of their bodies using vats of hydrochloric acid. He then dumped the remains in a local river. 

Inside Iqbal’s house, police and reporters found bloodstains on the walls and floor, along with the chain with which Iqbal claimed to have strangled his victims and photographs of many of his victims in plastic bags. These items were neatly labelled with handwritten pamphlets. Two vats of acid with partially dissolved human remains were also left in the open for police to find, with a note claiming the bodies in the house have deliberately not been disposed of so that authorities will find them.

Iqbal confessed in his letter that he planned to drown himself in the Ravi River following his crimes but after unsuccessfully dragging the river with nets, police launched the largest manhunt in Pakistan history. Four accomplices, teenage boys who had shared Iqbal’s three-bedroom flat, were arrested in Sohawa. Within days, one of them died in police custody, with a post-mortem suggesting that force had been used against him; allegedly, he jumped from a window.

Iqbal’s motive for committing his murders was his infuriation at a perceived injustice at the hands of Lahore police who had arrested him on charges relating to an act of sodomy against a young runaway boy in the 1990s. No charges were brought in relation to this offence. His mother had “been forced to watch his decline” before suffering a fatal heart attack. He had therefore resolved to make 100 mothers cry for their sons as his mother had been forced to do for him before her death. 

It was a month before Iqbal turned himself in at the offices of the Daily Jang on 30th December 1999. He was subsequently arrested. He stated that he had surrendered to the newspaper because he feared for his life and was concerned that the police would kill him.

Iqbal was sentenced to death; the judge passed sentence saying “You will be strangled to death in front of the parents whose children you killed, your body will then be cut into 100 pieces and put in acid, the same way you killed the children.” The Interior Minister, Moinuddin Haider, contradicted the sentence by stating that Pakistan is a signatory of the Human Rights Commission, so “such punishments are not allowed.”

Iqbal hanged himself in his cell before the execution could be carried out, with another “accomplice” hanged in a nearby cell the same night.

Last Week’s Birthdays

Chelsea Peretti (44), Brenda Blethyn (76), Benedict Wong (52), Anthony Head (68), Rihanna (34), Cindy Crawford (56), Imogen Stubbs (61), Millie Bobby Brown (18), Benicio Del Toro (55), Jeff Daniels (67), Ophelia Lovibond (36), Ray Winstone (65), Leslie Ash (62), John Travolta (68), Molly Ringwald (54), Matt Dillon (58), Cybill Shepherd (72), Greta Scacchi (62), Dr. Dre (57), Yoko Ono (89), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (41), Lou Diamond Phillips (60), Michael Bay (57), Bonnie Wright (31), Dominic Purcell (52), Rory Kinnear (46), Paris Hilton (41), Brenda Fricker (77), Patricia Routledge (93), Ed Sheeran (31), Barry Humphries (88), Alejandro Jodorowsky (93), Michael Jordan (59), Elizabeth Olsen (33), Christopher Eccleston (58), LeVar Burton (65), Ice-T (64), Faran Tahir (59), Agyness Deyn (39), Amanda Holden (51), The Weeknd (32), John McEnroe (63), Alex Borstein (51), Jane Seymour (71), Matt Groening (68), Simon Pegg (52), Andrew Robinson (80), and Teller (74).