Dead Pool 16th February 2025

Bit of a sporting theme to last week’s deaths, sadly no points to award though. I best unleash the Flying Monkeys! 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• John Cooney, 28, Irish boxer, intracranial haemorrhage. 
• Ronnie Boyce, 82, English footballer (West Ham United). 
• Patrick Barclay, 77, British sportswriter (The Times, The Sunday Telegraph) and television personality (Sunday Supplement).

In Other News

Pope Francis has been hospitalised as he continues to battle with bronchitis, the Vatican said on Friday. “This morning, at the end of his audiences, Pope Francis, 88, was admitted to the Policlinico Agostino Gemelli for some necessary diagnostic tests and to continue his treatment for bronchitis, which is still ongoing, in a hospital environment,” it said. Last Wednesday, the Pope said he was suffering from a “strong cold”, and asked an aide to read his prepared message for his weekly general audience at the Vatican. “I want to ask forgiveness but with this strong cold, it is difficult for me to speak,” he told pilgrims at the audience. He was then diagnosed with bronchitis last Thursday and has continued his activities and audiences indoors at Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican residence where he lives, with a public appearance on Sunday. Before going to hospital on Friday, he had an official meeting with Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico. Francis also held meetings on Friday morning with Cardinal Luis Tagle, a senior Vatican official, with a Catholic philanthropy group based in Puerto Rico and with Mark Thompson, the chairman and CEO of the CNN news channel. A person who attended one of the meetings, who asked not to be named to discuss a sensitive matter, said the pope appeared to be struggling to talk during their encounter. Francis has long battled health problems, including long bouts of bronchitis. He uses a walker or cane when moving around his apartment and recently fell twice, hurting his arm and chin. Rome’s Gemelli hospital, the largest in the city, has a special suite for treating popes. Francis spent nine days there in June 2023, when he had surgery to repair an abdominal hernia. 

Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor is “fighting as hard as he can” as he continues treatment for cancer, his bandmates have said, as they addressed his absence at the Sanremo Music Festival in Italy. The musician, 63, revealed in 2022 that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2018. The following year he said his cancer was “asymptomatic”, having previously been told he needed “palliative, end-of-life care”. Speaking at a press conference at Sanremo, frontman Simon Le Bon told attendees that Taylor’s cancer was “very late, fourth-stage metastasised cancer”. “He’s fighting as hard as he can,” he said of his bandmate, “and we are with him in that fight”. Andy Taylor joined Duran Duran in April 1980 and left after six years to pursue a solo career. He rejoined the band in 2001 for a series of successful concerts – as well as their 2004 album, Astronaut – before leaving again in 2006. In 2023, he hit back at reports that there was bad blood between him and his former bandmates, pointing to a moving letter read out by Le Bon as the band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022. Taylor did not attend the ceremony due to ill health. In the same interview, he discussed how he had approached a doctor who told him about a treatment involving radioactive chemicals given intravenously, which would target only cancer cells. He said he was declared “asymptomatic” after the treatment and called the scientist, Christopher Evans, the “Elon Music of cancer”. Taylor said two symptoms alerted him that something was wrong: bone pain while jogging, which he almost mistook for arthritis after his years of live performances, and erectile dysfunction, which was masked by his use of Viagra. Asked about the prospect of returning to Duran Duran, he also said: “No, I’m not going to rejoin the band … I would not say no to the opportunity, particularly for the fans, but as I keep reminding people, you have to be asked.” 

New York Dolls co-founder and punk icon David Johansen has shocked fans with the revelation that he has a brain tumour and stage four cancer. The news first broke via a Sweet Relief Fund in the 75-year-old’s name seeking to raise money for his treatment and ongoing care. Leah Hennessey, the singer’s daughter, revealed the extent of her 75-year-old father’s health issues on the site. She wrote: ‘Five years ago at the beginning of the pandemic we discovered that David’s cancer had progressed and he had a brain tumour. ‘There have been complications ever since. He’s never made his diagnosis public, as he and my mother Mara are generally very private people, but we feel compelled to share this now, due to the increasingly severe financial burden our family is facing.’ She continued, sharing that her father incurred additional medical fees after falling down the stairs in November and breaking his back in two places. The incident forced the punk icon to stay in the hospital for an extended period of time and caused his previous condition to worsen quickly, meaning his wife has become his full-time carer. Leah wrote: ‘As hilarious and wise as David continues to be, he is physically debilitated and his care exceeds what we are capable of providing without specialised professional help.’ She added: ‘David has worked continuously as a singer and actor for the better part of six decades, to the delight of his fans all over the world.  However, for the past five years, David has been unable to work as a performer.’ Johansen himself also released a statement that reads: ‘We’ve been living with my illness for a long time, still having fun, seeing friends & family, carrying on, but this tumble the day after Thanksgiving really brought us to a whole new level of debilitation. This is the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. I’ve never been one to ask for help but this is an emergency. Thank you.’ 

On This Day

• 1923 – Howard Carter unseals the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.
• 1978 – The first computer bulletin board system is created (CBBS in Chicago).
• 2006 – The last mobile army surgical hospital (M.A.S.H.) is decommissioned by the United States Army.

Deaths

• 1992 – Angela Carter, English novelist, short story writer (b. 1940).
• 2016 – Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Egyptian politician and diplomat, 6th Secretary-General of the United Nations (b. 1922).
• 2024 – Alexei Navalny, Russian activist (b. 1976).

My Bloody Valentine

Valentine’s Day. What does it mean to you? Is it 24 hours to devote to the celebration of the pure, unconditional and unbearably soul-shattering love that you feel for your soulmate? A wondrous day of passion and hugs and kisses, to be enjoyed on a rose petal-covered bed with flutes of Champagne and heart-shaped chocolates…

It is? Oh, how lovely for you!

For the rest of us, here’s something much more interesting – a rundown of some of the most infamous and shocking Valentine’s Day murders ever… 

The infamous St. Valentine’s Day massacre

True crime buffs don’t think of candlelit dinners when they hear the words ‘Valentine’s Day’. They think of seven Chicago mobsters being riddled with hundreds of bullets.

It’s never been officially confirmed, but there’s very little doubt that history’s most famous gangster was behind this audacious slaughter. Al Capone had finally had it with competing for the bootlegging racket of The Windy City and decided to eliminate his main rival, the Irish gang boss George ‘Bugs’ Moran.

Capone’s gang lured seven of Moran’s North Side Mob to a warehouse on the morning of the 14th, 1929. Dressed as police officers, the South Side Italians made the men line up against the wall and unloaded two Thompson machine guns and two shotguns into them.

The Columbine Subway shooting

The two high school sweethearts were shot to death by an unknown assailant who police have since failed to track down. Theories behind the tragic killing range from Nick interfering in a drug deal at the sandwich shop to the idea that the shooting could somehow have been related to the school massacre the previous year. All that’s known for certain is that both kids in love were cut down before they got a chance to really begin living their lives.

Oscar Pistorius shoots his girlfriend through a door

It was one of the most genuinely jaw-dropping and gob-smacking news stories ever. Arguably sport’s most inspirational character, South African runner Oscar Pistorius won over the world with his athletic exploits, despite being a double amputee since he was a toddler. ‘Blade Runner’ was a hero – literally – to millions. And then, on Valentine’s Day 2013, he became a killer.

It was the early morning of the 14th when Pistorius woke at his home in Pretoria, to find that his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp was no longer in bed with him. She was, instead, in the couple’s en-suite bathroom. The sprinter heard noise coming from the bathroom and – for whatever reason – didn’t assume it was Reeva. He, apparently, thought it was an intruder. He shot through the door four times, killing her.

A lengthy and public trial ensued, with Pistorius receiving a five-year sentence for culpable homicide in 2014. Two years later the state appealed and the verdict was overturned. He was resentenced to 13 years in prison for Ms Steenkamp’s murder.

Pistorius is due to be released from prison on parole on 5th January 2024, almost 11 years after he murdered Reeva Steenkamp. 

Wife hires hitman called ‘Mr Results’ to kill unlucky husband

Snellville, Georgia. Richard Schoeck was looking forward to Valentine’s Day, 2010. He was due to meet his wife Stacey at a local park so that they could ‘exchange cards and gifts’. It was The Schoecks’ third wedding anniversary and Richard was excited. He loved his wife dearly, gladly adopting her three children after becoming her fifth husband. But she never showed up to the park.

Richard was instead met by one Reginald Coleman, a personal trainer and part-time hitman who went by the rather immodest moniker of ‘Mr Results’. Coleman gunned Richard down, killing him. Stacey waited for her $500,000 life insurance payout. She never received it. Instead, she rightly received jail time.

To make matters worse, Stacey was not only cheating on Richard, she even posthumously accused him of molesting one of her sons. The child spoke out in Richard’s defence at the trial and the notion was quashed. Stacey Schoeck is now serving life in prison. 

Christian missionary gives wife bullet as Valentine’s gift

When 39-year-old Baptist minister Nathan Leuthold called 911 on February 14th 2013, he told police that his family had been the victims of a home invasion. When officers arrived at the scene, they found Denise Leuthold – Nathan’s wife – dead. She’d received a single but deadly gunshot wound to the head. 

Things didn’t look good for Nathan’s defence. And that was before Illinois Police found Google searches on Nathan’s computer like ‘how to hit someone over the head to knock them out’ and ‘how to muffle a gun’.

He got 80 years in jail for the murder. That’s a lot of Valentine’s Days that Nathan Leuthold’ll be missing. 

A bubble and squeak murder

On the eve of Valentine’s Day 2021, a private birthday celebration in a sleepy seaside resort ended in bloody murder. 66-year-old, Penny Jackson stabbed her 78-year-old husband, David three times. The motivation for the killing was supposedly nothing more than an argument over her choice to serve ‘bubble and squeak’ with the gourmet evening meal their daughter had sent them in lockdown. During the trial later that year, recordings of the aftermath of the crime were beamed around the world, with the recording of Penny Jackson’s 999 call and police body-cam footage of her arrest going viral. 

Young couple in love tied to a tree, tortured and killed

Students Jesse McBane, 19, and Patricia Mann, 20, were a young couple out for a walk on Valentine’s Day back in 1971. It was to be the final walk either of them would ever take. Thirteen days after they entered the wooded area in Durham, Orange County, North Carolina, their lifeless bodies were found.

Fully clothed but covered crudely by leaves, the couple were tied up and had both been strangled to death. Evidence pointed to their killer or killers repeatedly tightening and loosening the ropes around their necks as a form of torture and way of prolonging the killings.

No one was ever caught for the heinous, heinous crime. So, er, yeah… Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

Last Week’s Birthdays

Elizabeth Olsen (36), The Weeknd (35), Christopher Eccleston (61), LeVar Burton (68), Amanda Holden (54), Megan Thee Stallion (30), Matt Groening (71), Simon Pegg (55), Freddie Highmore (33), Danai Gurira (47), Andrew Robinson (73), Neal McDonough (59), Mena Suvari (46), Stockard Channing (81), Robbie Williams (51), Kim Novak (92), Hugh Dennis 63), Christina Ricci (45), Josh Brolin (57), Michael Ironside (75), Natalie Dormer (43), Jennifer Aniston (56), Sheryl Crow (63), Elizabeth Banks (51), Chloë Grace Moretz (28), Keeley Hawes (49), Laura Dern (58), Robert Wagner (95), Holly Willoughby (44), and Philip Glenister (62).