By Joshua Benton and Michael D. Sallah Blade Staff Writers Page A1 It’s likely the Adams County, Ill., courthouse had never housed a scene more surreal than it did on Aug. 23, 1985. Everything seemed inverted: a doctor accused of poisoning people, and his boss saying he didn’t mind. On that day, Dr. Michael Swango, […]
Read More… from Trail of death follows doctor; Did our medical institutions go mum?
By Michael D. Sallah and Joshua Benton Blade Staff Writers Page A6 ORLANDO, FLA. — Johnny Cochran thinks that one of his colleagues on the O.J. Simpson “Dream Team” deserves a break. “I’m betting on him,” Mr. Cochran said yesterday this week about F. Lee Bailey, thea famed lawyer whose disbarment has been recommended in […]
Read More… from Bailey certain to weather storm, ex-colleague Cochran believes
By Michael D. Sallah and Joshua Benton Blade Staff Writers Page A1 In 1981, F. Lee Bailey was still at the top of his game. The defense attorney to the stars – with clients like Dr. Sam Sheppard and Patricia Hearst behind him, and O.J. Simpson still to come – was visiting a friend, wealthy […]
Read More… from Once-stellar F. Lee Bailey now broke, beleaguered
By Joshua Benton Blade Staff Writer Page A1 WASHINGTON — As the motorcycles rolled slowly by in the afternoon sun, a blinding sea of chrome and leather and noise, Jim Ballinger was smiling. Three decades ago, he was an infantry grunt in Vietnam. He has two Purple Hearts, a few scars, and a host of […]
Read More… from Toledo group joins 13th annual parade; Amid the road, Vietnam vets discover peace
By Joshua Benton Blade Staff Writer Page A1 HOLIDAY CITY, O. — Pat Buchanan says he is running a grass-roots campaign for president. It’s difficult to get closer to the roots than he did last night. Here in the Williams County village of Holiday City – population 50 – a small but vocal crowd attended […]
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By Joshua Benton Blade Staff Writer Page A1 The early morning sun was burning over Saigon. The streets were rumbling under the weight of North Vietnamese tanks, triumphantly rolling into the old city unchallenged. In little more than an hour, one of them would smash through the gates of the presidential palace, and the war […]
By Michael D. Sallah and Joshua Benton Blade Staff Writers Page A1 MIAMI — Just before dawn, the ritual begins. A crowd gathers around a modest bungalow, locks arms, and chants the name of the small boy inside. The cameras capture the image, and the rest of the world watches as another day begins in […]
By Joshua Benton Blade Staff Writer Page A1 The next time you head out to South Bass Island and your boat approaches Put-in-Bay Harbor, look a little to the right. If you look closely, you might be able to see the beginnings of a controversy. That little body of water on the right is named […]
By Joshua Benton Blade Staff Writer Page A1 Madalyn Murray O’Hair, America’s most famous atheist, was ready to retire. Back in 1964, Life magazine had called the former Rossford resident “The Most Hated Woman In America” after she had won a Supreme Court case stopping prayer in public schools. For two decades, her brash, abrasive […]
By Joshua Benton Blade Staff Writer Page A10 It was the ultimate betrayal for Madalyn Murray O’Hair. On Mother’s Day, 1980, her oldest son, William Murray, made an announcement: he had found God, and was abandoning his mother’s atheism for fundamentalist Christianity. It was made in a letter to the editor in the Baltimore Sun […]