Dead Pool 10th October 2021

Another strange week, but I’m glad I’m not Chris Peckham, quietly going about his life until  a bunch of nutters blow up a Land Rover in front of his house! Might be a good contender for next year? Also a couple of supercentenarian’s we all missed!!!!

Look Who You Could Have Had:

In Other News

Kim Kardashian’s ex Ray J has been hospitalised with pneumonia and placed in a Covid ward. The rapper, who previously dated the Kardashian, is currently receiving treatment in hospital after having breathing difficulties, his manager David Weintraub has revealed. Ray J is frustrated as he has been sent to a Covid ward for treatment, despite testing negative for the virus five times. He was sent to the Covid ward initially as doctors feared he had the virus as he was struggling with his breathing. However, he was moved out of the wing two days later and is currently receiving oxygen. Ray is asking for his fans to pray for him as he recovers from his illness and his sole focus has been getting better for the sake of his kids. There are times where he thinks he is improving as he feels fine at six in the morning, but by 6.30am, he is struggling with his breathing again and is starting to fear the worst. “I thought it was over. I started praying and knew God is good so I just kept praying,” he explained to the website of his first few hours in hospital, where he is being kept a close eye on by doctors. The British public will best know Ray J for his short-lived stint on Celebrity Big Brother. The rapper exited the show in 2017, just over a week after he first entered the famous house as he claims he was suffering from terrible pain from his teeth.    

Fans of Fuller Goldsmith were sad to learn that the young chef had died days before his 18th birthday this Saturday. The TV star had been battling cancer, after his leukaemia returned five times. He is best known for Winning Chopped Junior 2017 when he was just 13-years-old. He was first diagnosed with the relentless illness when he was three. In August 2020, Fuller announced he was cancer-free but in February received the bad news that the leukaemia had returned for the fifth time. It came after he reported having nausea and dizziness symptoms a doctor, who ran some tests and found a brain tumour. In the run up to his death, Fuller’s father Scott Goldsmith, said that his son had taken a turn for the worse earlier this week. Scott told us: “He got tired and was ready to go. We damn sure didn’t wake up yesterday thinking this would be the day.” He continued: “We knew what the outcome was going to be, but we definitely didn’t think it was going to be yesterday. Monday he was up and moving about, building Legos, and watching all the football games. Yesterday morning he was running a fever, and struggling to breathe.” Scott added: “He was ready to go. He went peacefully in his sleep, no pain, no struggle, laying in his bed, and went to Heaven.” After finding out that his cancer had returned for a firth round, Fuller announced the sad news on Instagram at the time, revealing he would be starting 12 sessions of radiation therapy. When he was 13, Fuller pretended to be his mum and signed himself up to Chopped Junior. He ended up winning the show with his delicious beer-battered catfish with okra and landed a $10,000 prize, which he donated to the Division of Haematology and Paediatric Oncology at Birmingham Children’s Hospital.                 

A world-famous gorilla who starred in a hilarious selfie has died in the arms of the man who rescued her. Ndakasi became a celebrity in 2019 after appearing in a selfie taken by animal rescuer Andre Bauma. The 12-year-old gorilla puffed her chest out in the funny photo alongside buddy Ndeze. Mr Bauma rescued Ndakasi after her mother was killed by an armed militia in Virunga National Park, Congo. For more than a decade, Andre and his colleagues cared for Ndakasi and helped her recover from the trauma of losing her mother. Because of that, she could never be released back into the wild. But Ndakasi did enjoy a happy life with Ndeze and other orphaned mountain gorillas at the parks Senkwekwe Center. In a moving statement Virunga National Park wrote: “It is with heartfelt sadness that Virunga announces the death of beloved orphaned mountain gorilla, Ndakasi. On the evening of 26th September, following a prolonged illness in which her condition rapidly deteriorated, Ndakasi took her final breath in the loving arms of her caretaker and lifelong friend, Andre Bauma.” The national park also remembered the viral World Earth Day selfie which made Ndakasi go viral. They wrote: “The photo features Ndakasi and her partner-in-crime, Ndeze, both standing relaxed on two feet, bellies out with cheeky grins. Their playful nature was a reminder to the world of how much we see ourselves in these animals and it’s one of the reasons Andre Bauma will miss her so dearly.” Andre added to the heightened feelings with his own beautiful message posted on the park website to remember Ndakasi. He wrote: “It was a privilege to support and care for such a loving creature, especially knowing the trauma Ndakasi suffered at a very young age. One could say that she took after her mother, Nyiransekuye, whose name means “someone happy to welcome others. I am proud to have called Ndakasi my friend.”

On This Day

  • 1957 – The Windscale fire results in Britain’s worst nuclear accident.
  • 2015 – Twin bomb blasts in the Turkish capital Ankara kill 109 and injure 500+.
  • 2018 – Hurricane Michael makes landfall in the Florida Panhandle as a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane. It kills 57 people in the United States, 45 in Florida, and causes an estimated $25.1 billion in damage.

Deaths

  • 1913 – Adolphus Busch, German-American brewer, founded Anheuser-Busch (b. 1839).
  • 1963 – Édith Piaf, French singer-songwriter and actress (b. 1915).
  • 1983 – Ralph Richardson, English actor (b. 1902).
  • 1985 – Yul Brynner, Russian actor (b. 1920).
  • 1985 – Orson Welles, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1915).
  • 2004 – Christopher Reeve, American actor, producer, and activist (b. 1952).
  • 2009 – Stephen Gately, Irish singer-songwriter, dancer, and actor (b. 1976).

Serial Killer Archives

Sebastian Shaw was a Vietnam-born American serial killer and rapist responsible for at least three murders in Portland, Oregon between 1991 and 1992. When interviewed by detectives in prison, Shaw confessed to killing ten more people. He is the prime suspect for the 1994 murder of 14-year-old Jenny Lin in Castro Valley, California. At the time of his death he was serving three life sentences in the Oregon State Penitentiary. 

Born Chau Quong Ho in the Phước Tuy Province of South Vietnam on November 28th 1967, he moved to Oregon with his father Van at a young age. As a young boy, Chau became an Altar Server at the local Saint Mary Catholic Church, but was reported to have problematic behaviour at school. Between August and November 1975, he lived at the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, before a group from Port Arthur, Texas sponsored the father and son to move to the state. At age 14, the two moved to Woodburn, Oregon and attended the local high school, where Chau was reportedly enjoying himself. However, at one point, in a supposed suicide attempt, he overdosed on aspirin, but survived. 

In 1985, Chau and Van got into a fight that resulted in the young man being beaten with a piece of wood. He then moved to live with his aunt and cousin in California, where he briefly worked for a company before joining the Marine Corps, serving in Okinawa, Japan. In 1990, Ho applied for an honorable discharge, and was sent back to Oregon, where he applied for a job as a security dispatcher for the Paragon Cable company. During this time, he legally changed his name to Sebastian Alexander Shaw.  

Murders

Jay Rickbeil: On July 1st 1991, the body of 40-year-old Jay Rickbeil, a quadraplegic suffering from cerebral palsy, was found in his Portland home by his roommate and apartment manager Mac MacCartney. He had bled to death as a result of an injury to the neck, likely inflicted with a knife. According to his neighbours, Rickbeil was a New Age believer who would often invite strangers into his apartment to have discussions, and often attempted to convert the visitor to his religion. A trusting man, he would often give them a business card with his name and address, and occasionally even money, which often resulted in his personal possessions being stolen. At that time, Shaw had just been fired from his job at Paragon Cable, following complaints of sexual assault by his colleague Shirley Phillips. In order to vent out his anger, he picked Rickbeil at random, slashing his throat while the man lay in bed.

Donna Ferguson and Todd Rudiger: On July 20th 1992, a couple were found murdered in their trailer home by their fathers in Portland. Todd A. Rudiger, 29, and his live-in girlfriend Donna G. Ferguson, 18, were both stabbed in the necks and bled to death, with Donna having been bound and raped beforehand.

Jenny Lin: On May 27th 1994, after returning home from work, John Lin found the partially naked body of his 14-year-old daughter Jenny in the bathroom of the family’s home in the Palomares Hills neighbourhood, in Castro Valley. She had been stabbed multiple times, but, peculiarly, there were no signs of a struggle, any apparent sexual assault or any items missing from the house, which puzzled the investigators. She had no known enemies, was a straight A-student and gifted violinist who was about to graduate the following month. According to her friends, when they last spoke to her via phone around 5:15 p.m., Jenny said that she was fine and that she was currently at home. Authorities believed that Jenny’s killer was a man, as she had been easily overpowered, and that they did not know each other. They announced that they were looking for a young man on a motorcycle who was seen handing out leaflets in the area, as they wanted to question him as a potential witness.

John Lin later recalled that two weeks before his daughter’s death, he had been stopped at a parking lot by a disheveled man who claimed to have “got his daughter”, but, knowing that Jenny was on her violin lessons, he brushed the man off and left. Although this bizarre individual was not considered a suspect, a sketch of him was released to the press in an attempt to identify and then interrogate him. In the meantime, the Lin family created “Friends of Jenny Lin”, a volunteer organisation aimed at spreading awareness about their daughter’s case. In October, a neighbour came forward to police, claiming that they had seen a stocky man in a dark jacket and cap outside the Lin residence near the time of the murder, claiming that they had been afraid to come forward out of fear that the killer might return to exact revenge on the informants.   

Arrest, trial, imprisonment

On August 31st 1994, Sebastian Shaw was arrested for burglary, after he was found asleep in a stolen 1978 Pontiac Bonneville in San Ramon. Among the items confiscated were a so-called “murder kit”, consisting of ski mask, surgical gloves, duct tape, knives, binoculars, and plastic handcuffs. As there was no evidence linking him to any murders at the time, he was let go. On February 20th 1998, he was arrested again and charged with the Rudiger/Ferguson murders and the 1995 rape of 18-year-old Amanda Carpova in Portland. His DNA was matched to the crime scenes after police obtained a discarded cigarette he had thrown out at a supermarket.

He plead guilty to the double murder and sexual assault of Carpova, but, in a rare decision, the judge acquitted Shaw of the Rickbeil murder before the trial on behest of the prosecutors. Sebastian was sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment instead. While in jail, he told a fellow inmate that he had killed a total of 13 people, information which was relayed to investigators. When two detectives came to interview him, Shaw said that his confession was truthful, and that he would name the victims if he was transferred to a federal prison where he could smoke, as smoking was prohibited in Oregon prisons. Two years later, he was convicted of Rickbeil’s murder and received another term of life imprisonment. That same year, he was officially announced as the prime suspect in the murder of Jenny Lin, but was not charged, as there was no physical evidence linking him to the murder. Prosecutors attempted to put him on trial the following year, but the charges were dropped. Lin’s murder officially remains unsolved. 

Shaw died in prison on October 4th, 2021, having served 21 years of his sentence. Cause of death is currently unknown but is unlikely to have been Covid related as the state refuses to name inmates who have died of the virus. He was 53.

Last Week’s Birthdays

Dan Stevens (39), Rose McIver (33), Charles Dance (75), Manu Bennett (52), Martin Kemp (60), Chris O’Dowd (42), Tony Shalhoub (68), Brandon Routh (42), Scott Bakula (67), Brian Blessed (85), Sharon Osbourne (69), Matt Damon (51), Sigourney Weaver (72), Chevy Chase (78), Kristanna Loken (42), Paul Hogan (82), Karyn Parsons (55), Ardal O’Hanlon (56), R.L. Stine (78), Shawn Ashmore (42), Aaron Ashmore (42), Tim Minchin (46), Thom Yorke (53), Simon Cowell (62), Elisabeth Shue (58), Emily Mortimer (50), Ioan Gruffudd (48), Britt Ekland (79), Kate Winslet (46), Guy Pearce (54), Karen Allen (70), Jesse Eisenberg (38), Stephanie Cole (80), Glynis Johns (98), Clive Barker (69), Diane Morgan (46), Neil deGrasse Tyson (63), Bob Geldof (70), Christoph Waltz (65), Dakota Johnson (32), Alicia Silverstone (45), Melissa Benoist (33), Nick Mohammed (41), Susan Sarandon (75), Liev Schreiber (54), and Sarah Lancashire (57).

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