Laura M. Holson

And in 2014, a cause celebre about a criminal ring of women who drugged men and stole their money dominated tabloid headlines for months.

“Hustlers,” a movie about that scandal starring Jennifer Lopez and Cardi B, opened in theaters Friday. It is based on a 2015 New York magazine story about the women and their exploits. But long before that, the case was a subject of fascination among New York’s news media, largely because it seemed so improbable.

It started when a strip club sued a cardiologist.

“‘I was drugged’: Doctor refuses to pay $135K strip club bill,” blared a headline in The New York Post on April 22, 2014. That doctor, Zyad Younan, a cardiologist who lived in New Jersey, was sued by Scores, a strip club in Chelsea, which accused him of not paying $135,000 charged to his American Express card. The lawsuit said that the doctor spent tens of thousands of dollars in late 2013 on tips for dancers and room rentals during several visits to the club.

Younan claimed that he was either drugged or not there. Scores said it had videotape of him with several women. “This happens every once in awhile,” a representative for Scores told The Post. “People get out of control with their credit cards.”

Even by tabloid standards, the story seemed fantastical. The next day, The New York Daily News followed, with more salacious details from more unnamed sources.

But the tabloids were onto something. Two months later, The New York Times reported about an indictment unsealed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan detailing the episode and more. It recounted accusations of a criminal ring of women who, according to the indictment, drugged men, brought them to strip clubs and racked up bills on their credit cards.

Investigators from the Drug Enforcement Administration and the New York Police Department arrested four women — Samantha Barbash, Roselyn Keo, Karina Pascucci and Marsi Rosen — in the scheme. The women were accused of taking $200,000 from the men, which included Younan, as well as a banker, a hedge fund executive and a real estate lawyer.

According to the indictment, the women would flirt with men in upscale bars, exchange telephone numbers and arrange to meet a few days later at a restaurant or bar, where they would slip tranquilizers and narcotics into the men’s drinks. Once the men were woozy, the women would bring them to Scores or Roadhouse Gentlemen’s Club in Queens, and rack up tens of thousands of dollars in tips and dance money, it said.

Prosecutors said the women also received cash from the clubs to bring the men in. But the men could not recall having been there. In October 2014, The Daily News reported that two of the women had been offered plea deals.

Nothing was decided then, though. Instead, it would take more than a year, or longer in some cases, for the women to reach agreements with prosecutors. In October 2015, Rosen and Pascucci, who helped bring men to Scores, pleaded guilty to grand larceny and conspiracy. The syndicated show “Crime Watch Daily” aired an interview with Pascucci, who said she was given five years’ probation and 16 weekends in Rikers Island.

In December 2015, all four women were interviewed by Jessica Pressler for New York magazine in what most consider the definitive account of the crimes.

“Here’s a modern Robin Hood story for you,” read the story’s headline. “A few strippers who stole from the (mostly) rich, (usually) disgusting, (in their minds) pathetic men and gave to, well, themselves.” In the story, Pressler explored the ambition and hardscrabble lives of the four women.

She explained, too, how they got caught.

One man taped a conversation with one of the women, who confessed to drugging him. The man gave the tape to police. Pressler described, too, the impact of the scheme on the victims. One of them, Fred, was fired from his job because the women charged his corporate credit card. He got a new job but was fired again, she wrote, after his name was reported to an agency that tracked white-collar crime.

Rosen and Pascucci were sentenced in 2016. (Rosen was given the same sentence as Pascucci.) Barbash would later be given five years’ probation, according to news reports.

Keo was given no jail time and is touting a memoir, “The Sophisticated Hustler,” on her website. Barbash is writing one, too, according to her Instagram account. An excerpt was recently published in The New York Post.

This article originally appeared in

'Hustlers': The Story Behind the Headlines

NEW YORK — New Yorkers love a scandal.

On Saturday, visitors to the Los Angeles office of Bonhams, an international auction house, will be able to view a 1979 costume of Darth Vader to be sold at auction May 14. It is owned by Kermit Bryce Eller, a computer storage engineer from Thousand Oaks, California, who was hired from 1977 to 1982 on behalf of the movie’s makers to attend conventions, book parties and marketing events and even perform at the Academy Awards dressed as the dark lord.

Bonhams estimates it will fetch a minimum of $1 million, an optimistic sum given auctioneers cannot confirm the costume was worn in any of the franchise’s films. “Sometimes it’s go big or go home,” said Catherine Williamson, Bonhams’ director of entertainment memorabilia, of the eye-popping price.

The costume is made up of a number of pieces and garments, including a fiberglass face mask, stitched leather pants, vest and gloves, shin guards, two wool capes and a black leather codpiece.

Over the years, some props and costumes from “Star Wars” — or pieces of them — have sold well, while others failed to pique interest. In 2017, an R2-D2 unit from “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope,” sold for $2.75 million. Last year, though, a light saber said to have been used by Mark Hamill in the first film was pulled from an auction after fans questioned its authenticity and the $200,000 price tag.

And in 2010, a Darth Vader costume made for “The Empire Strikes Back” — including helmet, mask and armor — was offered at auction and expected to sell for $250,000. No bidder emerged.

Sure, the early 2010s were a tough time for sellers of any kind. America was in the midst of a punishing recession, for one, and buyers fled the art and collectibles market. At the same time, interest in “Star Wars” wavered as it had been at least five years since the release of “Revenge of the Sith,” the last movie in the “Star Wars” franchise to be directed by George Lucas.

Since then, the franchise has expanded under the Walt Disney Co., which bought Lucasfilm, the production company founded by Lucas, in 2012. (Lucasfilm declined to comment Wednesday.) What makes Eller’s costume notable, Williamson said, is that it was created by John Mollo, a British military illustrator and wardrobe consultant who designed the costumes for “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Star Wars,” the first in the series and for which he won an Oscar in 1978.

Born in London in 1931, Mollo had a particular interest in military outfits and also designed costumes for movies like “Alien,” “Barry Lyndon” and “Chaplin.” (He won a second Oscar in 1983 for the movie “Gandhi.”) Mollo died in 2017 and, last December, Bonhams auctioned off some of his artwork, including original sketchbooks for “Star Wars,” which sold for $162,583.

The Darth Vader costume is the second of two costumes Eller wore to promote “Star Wars” and “The Empire Strikes Back.” Darth Vader’s outfit was modeled on clerical robes, a military helmet, a gas mask and even a motorcycle suit. “The costumes of Star Wars are, really, not so much costumes, as a bit of plumbing and general automobile engineering,” Mollo said when he accepted the Academy Award in 1978.

Eller was onstage that night, dressed in the first costume he was given in 1977, before the release of “Star Wars.” He said he had met executives at Twentieth Century Fox, the distributor at the time of “Star Wars,” who were looking for someone to appear at a three-day meeting of the American Booksellers Association in San Francisco.

“They asked me to come over, and the costume fit,” said Eller, who is 6 feet, 5 inches tall. Eller was then working in a lab that made costume masks. “I spent nights working on the voice,” he said. “I’d stand like a mannequin and recite lines of dialogue.”

In 1977, he said, he appeared at Mann’s Chinese Theater when Darth Vader’s footprints were captured in cement. A year later, he said, Lawrence Kasdan, the Oscar-nominated writer of “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Raiders of The Lost Ark,” asked Eller to perform at his young son’s birthday party.

Eller said he also appeared at a Halloween party at the New York City apartment of John DeLorean, the famed automaker who was accused of trafficking cocaine in 1982, but was found not guilty. “George was considering investing in his car company,” Eller said.

Within a few years, though, the costume was worn out from his many appearances, and he gave it back to Fox executives. In 1979, Eller said, he was given a second costume — the one to be auctioned off at Bonhams — based on Darth Vader’s outfit in “The Empire Strikes Back.” Within two years, his appearances became less frequent until they stopped altogether. He said he put the suit in its carrying case and stowed it in the garage.

Eller said he is selling the costume because he has left the character behind. “It’s not doing me any good,” he said. “I think somebody who really wants it should have it.”

Besides, he added, “I have a different life now. I don’t need it anymore.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/arts/darth-vader-costume-star-wars.html" id="bec58672-f844-3c5c-a6e6-a5ce6fbab0d1">The New York Times</a>.

The “Star Wars” franchise has more than its share of iconic imagery. There is Luke Skywalker’s light saber. There, too, is the Millennium Falcon with Han Solo blasting into hyperspace. And no one will forget Darth Vader breathing heavily through a black mask, his cape snapping behind him as he walked.

Vintage Clothing Sale: Dark Lord's Duds

Cink, a self-described comic book geek and red carpet host, did not ask Larson about her gown as others did that day. Nor did she discuss the movie’s internet trolls or Larson’s call for more diversity in Hollywood. Instead, she focused solely on Captain Marvel and her alter ego Carol Danvers, a U.S. Air Force pilot, played by Larson.

“Carol changed my life, and this movie hasn’t even come out yet,” Larson said as she held back tears.

Red carpet interviews from the premiere were streamed live for fans who could not attend. And the show was as slickly produced as any pre-awards festivities, albeit one that edged toward camp at times. (For starters, Cink’s co-host interviewed a cat, one of several that played Goose in the movie.)

Cink is an employee of Marvel Studios, which produced Captain Marvel. And if there is any question why the studio would air the red carpet live, consider this: The livestream has been watched more than 485,000 times on YouTube alone.

Fans today clamor for anything related to their favorite movies and television franchises. As a result, livestreaming from the red carpet is not just for the Oscars anymore. More studios are producing their own red carpet extravaganzas, hiring battalions of brand-friendly hosts to market the studio’s offerings and control social media messaging. And with technology that makes livestreaming easy, new players have joined the fray to take advantage of the summer blockbuster season and its worldwide audience.

“Movie premieres have become global moments,” said Doug Neil, Universal Pictures executive vice president for digital marketing. “Fans like to feel like they are part of the experience.”

Neil would know. Last year, the studio held only one premiere in London for “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.” With an army of Academy Award winners on the red carpet — including Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Tom Hanks and Cher — the event would be difficult for Universal to reproduce elsewhere, he said. Premieres are expensive, too, sometimes costing $100,000 or more. So the festivities in London were livestreamed on Facebook, where they were viewed more than 451,000 times around the world.

“The talent bench was so deep,” Neil said of the celebrities who attended. “And Facebook has our largest community of fans.” With streaming technology, he added, “It’s very easy to flip a switch.”

The quality, though, can depend on whose hand is on the switch. “When we started doing this, it was iPhones on tripods,” said Alison Hoffman, chief marketing officer for the cable channel Starz. Now, she said, the company teams up with media outlets, like Entertainment Weekly, People and Entertainment Tonight, to host livestream red carpet events. That was the case last June at the premiere of “Power” at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan. The channel broadcast a livestream with three video cameras.

“For the right show, it’s a critical part of the mix,” Hoffman said.

That is not always the case, though. Last week, the cast of “Game of Thrones” gathered at Radio City Music Hall for the final red carpet premiere for the beloved HBO show. The spectacle was broadcast live by NowThis, a social media content company, which streamed unscripted, raw footage from the “Game of Thrones” press line. An HBO executive said the company was neither involved in nor aware of the livestream, which explains why it had none of the polish of a typical HBO affair.

Photographers could be heard booing when Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark, invited Joe Jonas, her pop star fiancé, to join her on the red carpet. “How about a kiss?” a man shouted at Lisa Bonet, the wife of Jason Momoa, who delighted as the he-man Khal Drogo in Season 1. Bonet shook her head no; her husband was visibly annoyed.

The video itself was sketchy, too. The camera shook and the Wi-Fi was unreliable. Gwendoline Christie looked fetching in a flowing yellow gown until she waved her silken sleeves and the screen disappeared into a haze of pixelated squares. Still, the livestream has been watched more than 188,000 times on YouTube.

“It’s not always the best quality that gets the most eyeballs,” said Tina Exarhos, the chief content officer of NowThis. “When you are on a red carpet, these are the moments you look for.”

Despite the video’s raw quality, she added, “We are looking to do more and more of these with studios.”

The Walt Disney Studios, which oversees Lucasfilm, Marvel Studios, Pixar and its own slate of movies, has the most sophisticated livestreaming operation in Hollywood. Lylle Breier, who oversees premieres and special events for the studio, said there were often multiple hosts — some on stages, others on the red carpet — and several cameras used for interviews.

The movies that attract the most attention are the “Star Wars” and Marvel franchises. Last April’s red carpet premiere for “Avengers: Infinity War,” for example, has been watched 7.28 million times. There, Gwyneth Paltrow plugged her company, Goop. (“She did a Goop detox and she’s fine,” she said of her stressed-out character, Pepper Potts.) Paltrow also admitted to never having watched an “Avengers” movie.

As many as 30 people are hired to produce a livestreamed red carpet show for a Disney company premiere. And hosts, like Cink, have jobs mostly because they are fans. “They do not ask reporter-type questions,” Breier said.

Cink has hosted at least six streaming red carpet premieres and writes all her own questions. She copped to being flustered by only one celebrity: Stan Lee, the force behind Marvel Comics. (Lee died in November, and “Captain Marvel” carries a dedication to him, as well as a montage of his movie cameos in the Marvel logo.)

Her background in improvisational theater is helpful, she said. Once her earpiece quit working during a live shot, which made it impossible to hear.

“I looked like a deer in the headlights,” she said. “I screamed my intro. I know I looked, like, cuckoo bananas. And it was completely live. I was kicking off the whole show.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/arts/red-carpet-premiere-live-stream.html" id="bba4e75b-1055-3ca9-a226-1f40dc9bac84">The New York Times</a>.

From 'Game of Thrones' to 'Captain Marvel,' Red Carpet Live Streams Are Everywhere

At the “Captain Marvel” premiere in Los Angeles last month, Brie Larson roamed the red carpet in a sequined Rodarte slip dress, a galaxy of diamonds cradling her ears. A squadron of F-16 fighter jets flew overhead as fans cheered the movie’s star as she climbed steps to a stage where she was interviewed by Lorraine Cink.

The photograph, on view at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, is significant because it shows a young Tubman casually seated in a chair wearing an elegant dress with an elaborate bodice and full skirt. Other surviving photographs of Tubman show her looking stern or pensive and, in her later years, frail and wan.

“What this photograph does is humanize Harriet Tubman,” said Lonnie G. Bunch III, the founding director of the museum. “The photograph shows her stylish and in the vibrancy of her youth.”

Tubman, whose original name was Araminta Ross, was born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland, in the early 1820s. She would later come to be known for her work guiding enslaved people to freedom via the Underground Railroad, a loosely connected network of abolitionists who monitored safe houses where fugitives were sheltered on their journey north to free states.

In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia. (An offer of a $100 reward for her capture was published in the Cambridge Democrat.) Soon after, she began to make trips back to the South to help others on their trek to freedom. She also became friends with Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist leader.

During the Civil War she worked as a scout and spy for the Union Army, providing intelligence and continuing her work liberating enslaved people. After the war ended in 1865, she settled in Auburn, New York, where she remained prominent as a women’s rights activist and died in 1913.

In 2016, then-Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew proposed that Tubman replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. The proposal has stalled under the Trump administration.

The photograph of Tubman, which is believed to have been taken in the late 1860s, was acquired by the museum two years ago, part of a leather-bound album owned by Emily Howland, a Quaker schoolteacher who worked in Arlington, Virginia.

The album was originally compiled as a gift for Howland and contained 49 images from the 1860s. It included portraits of Lydia Maria Child, an abolitionist and women’s rights activist, and John Willis Menard, the first black man elected to the House of Representatives. Conservators for the Library of Congress cleaned the photographs and repaired the album so it could be displayed.

Bunch said he and his colleagues had been hearing about the portfolio for years and, when it came up for auction, they joined forces with the Library of Congress to buy it.

“We thought we knew everything we were going to know about Harriet Tubman,” Bunch said. “This inspires us to keep looking.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/arts/harriet-tubman-photo-smithsonian.html" id="77239a9f-4b57-3ca9-a5ec-4c79e392d3f9">The New York Times</a>.

A previously unknown photograph of Harriet Tubman, the abolitionist leader known as the “Moses of her people,” is on display for the first time in Washington.

Newly Discovered Photograph of Harriet Tubman Goes on Display

A Tyrannosaurus rex found in central Canada in the 1990s is the heaviest and oldest of its kind, paleontologists recently announced. The dinosaur, nicknamed Scotty, probably weighed about 9.8 tons and lived for more than three decades, they said. The results were published in a study last week in The Anatomical Record, a scientific journal, and posted online.

“This is the rarest of rare dinosaurs,” Gregory Erickson, a paleobiologist from Florida State University who was one of the study’s authors, said Wednesday. “We have a full, grown adult.”

Researchers estimated Scotty’s weight by measuring its hip, leg and shoulder bones, and comparing them to the skeletons of other T. rex specimens. The size and width of the femur bone suggest Scotty weighed 19,555 pounds, much larger than a male African elephant, which can grow to 14,000 pounds. In May, a new, updated cast of Scotty, which will reflect the scientists’ findings, will go on display at Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan.

Scotty was discovered in 1991 when an expedition of paleontologists to the Frenchman River Valley in Saskatchewan found a heavy worn tooth and vertebra from the tail of a T. rex, according to the museum. In 1994, they began excavating the site and found the bones and tooth fragments were dated to the Cretaceous Period and about 65 million years old.

It took nearly a decade to excavate the skeleton; analysis of the bones and teeth continued for several years. Scotty, the researchers learned, had a particularly rough life.

W. Scott Persons, a paleontologist from the University of Alberta in Canada who led the study, said Wednesday that the T. rex had broken bones, impacted teeth and bite marks, suggesting it had battled with other animals. Some of its wounds were infected. Persons said Scotty was probably in its early 30s when it died, outliving Sue, a T. rex discovered in South Dakota in 1990 that scientists estimate died at about 28. Sue has long been considered the largest skeleton found.

“It gives us a rare view of an elder T. rex,” Persons said. Scotty had cranial abnormalities, including bumps and ridges down its snout, which suggests it had armored skin. “It had flare to its face,” he said.

Despite its name, paleontologists are not sure of the T. rex’s gender. Erickson said Scotty was named after the Scotch researchers drank to celebrate their great find.

On Wednesday, the researchers could barely contain their delight. “There is so much negativity in the world,” Erickson said. “But this is neutral. It’s just fun.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/science/scotty-t-rex-fossil.html" id="f3a94b8b-761a-3488-a64f-b1f5b328ef4e">The New York Times</a>.

There are big dinosaurs. There are old ones. And then there is Scotty, a giant among them all.

Scientists Say a Canadian T. Rex 'Scotty' Is Heaviest Found

Dathan said a shift in her children’s mood was palpable. They found it difficult to focus on homework. They were restless and sometimes cranky after school, which she attributed to pent-up energy. With so little time for schoolyard play, she worried they were losing the ability to navigate personal relationships. “It was hard for them to adjust to only one recess,” she said in an interview.

So Dathan, who was elected to the Connecticut legislature in November, agreed to support a state bill that would require schools to provide at least 50 minutes of daily undirected play for students enrolled in preschool through fifth grade. “I haven’t had one person ask, ‘Why are you doing this?'” she said of parents, students and teachers who have contacted her. “I think playtime fosters the creativity that we need to solve crazy world problems, like global warming, or other issues we need to face as a planet.”

Dathan is not alone in her observation. Last April, Arizona legislators passed a law that provided two daily recesses for the state’s elementary school students. Teachers have already seen encouraging results, reporting fewer disciplinary actions, enhanced test scores and improvement in children’s overall health. And just last week, youngsters from Arkansas, where a similar move is also being considered, sent letters to state legislators asking they be given a longer recess break.

The current discussion around playtime reflects an emerging body of thought about creativity and childhood. Neuroscientists and others say creative problem solving will be essential for the future as computers become more powerful and artificial intelligence commonplace. “Creativity in children involves the ability to make things up and generate ideas on their own,” said Sandra Russ, a professor in the department of psychological sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

That includes group play, storytelling and building with blocks and other toys that stimulate, not inhibit, wonder and curiosity. Robert Bilder is a clinical neuropsychologist and a director of the Tennenbaum Center for the Biology of Creativity in Los Angeles who studies creativity and the brain. “What is valuable for children is freedom where they are solving problems with no predictable answer,” he said. “When it is open-ended, they retain the curiosity to learn more things. And that is going to be essential for their futures.”

Bilder headed the “Big C Project” at the University of California, Los Angeles, where researchers studied the brains of accomplished artists, scientists and others to understand how creative genius worked. “They showed a pattern of functional connectivity that was more random,” he said. “It’s not clear what promotes it. But it is established at an early age.”

One might surmise that highly creative people explore relationships that other people miss. Children who are given an open-ended problem are more apt to explore a variety of relationships and patterns, unlike when they are given a toy with preset instructions or uses. “The ‘thing’ should not be dictating the activity,” Bilder said of toys. “The person dictates the activity.”

Take, for instance, a cardboard fort made out of an old appliance box. Cardboard boxes were once so ubiquitous as play toys that in 2005 they were named to the National Toy Hall of Fame. Now, parents can buy a prefabricated cardboard kit on Amazon. Or their children can simulate building a fort in an online game.

“It is a shame that kids aren’t playing with cardboard boxes as much as they used to,” said Mark Runco, a researcher who studies creativity at Southern Oregon University and who is the founding editor of Creativity Research Journal. “Our whole world is changing now. There are people who think you can have digital or remote playtime. You experience it in different ways.”

There are trade-offs, of course, to replacing an outdoor playground with a digital one. “There is good and bad,” he said. “We now have a community all over the world. But there is a loss of face-to-face interactions.”

Runco, like Bilder, warned that more undirected free time at school does not guarantee that children will become more creative thinkers. What’s important is how they use the time they have. And home life and community play a part, too.

“People are intrinsically creative,” Runco said. “But they need the environment. Creativity is most important when people are making choices. Getting dressed. Choosing alternative routes to work or school. Too often people align creative thinking with painting, writing or drawing.”

For Dathan, though, having Connecticut’s children spend 50 minutes on the playground every day is a good place to start. “It will be interesting to hear what people have to say in our upcoming public hearings,” she said. “Creativity does get stifled. You need to give kids an opportunity to learn social skills. It’s good for overall happiness. And playtime builds relationships.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/nyregion/longer-school-recess-connecticut.html" id="0e16c699-9670-3e33-af61-6baea5cc3d40">The New York Times</a>.

Four years ago, Lucy Dathan moved to New Canaan, Connecticut, where she enrolled her three children in public elementary school. They met new classmates. Their teachers were attentive. But something was amiss: Recess was limited to a 20-minute break after lunch, or about half the time as at their previous school, in California.

States Consider Longer School Recess, and the Adults Aren't Complaining

In 1980, a jury found the man, Craig Coley, guilty in the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Rhonda Wicht, 24, and her 4-year-old son, Donald, a crime he said he did not commit. In 2017, Coley, 71, was pardoned by Jerry Brown, the governor at the time, and released from prison after investigators found new DNA evidence that proved he was not the killer.

A statement from the city Saturday said that the settlement was reached to avert litigation, a long and costly process. “While no amount of money can make up for what happened to Mr. Coley, settling this case is the right thing to do for Mr. Coley and our community,” Simi Valley’s city manager, Eric Levitt, said in the statement. “The monetary cost of going to trial would be astronomical, and it would be irresponsible for us to move forward in that direction.”

In an interview Monday, Levitt said that Coley and his representatives informed the city last year of their intent to sue Simi Valley for wrongful imprisonment. Levitt said the city’s legal representatives warned it could be forced to pay as much as $80 million if the city lost at trial. “It was better for him, and for us, to put it behind us,” he said.

Attempts to reach Coley on Monday were not successful. Representatives for the Simi Valley Police Department and the district attorney’s office did not immediately return a request for comment Monday.

Coley’s prison term was the longest one overturned in California, according to the statement, which cited the Police Department’s initiative to reopen the case that led to the discovery of DNA evidence that proved Coley innocent. The city said it would pay about $4.9 million of the $21 million settlement, with the remainder coming from insurance and other sources.

Coley was arrested Nov. 11, 1978, after Wicht was found beaten and strangled at her home in Simi Valley, apparently with a macramé rope. Her son had been smothered. Coley’s first trial ended in a hung jury in 1979, but he was found guilty the next year and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

In 2017, though, District Attorney Gregory D. Totten of Ventura County and Chief David M. Livingstone of the Simi Valley police said they would support a clemency appeal Coley made two years earlier, citing new DNA tests that proved his innocence. The DNA testing was part of a yearlong investigation opened in October 2016 at the behest of police officers who had doubts about Coley’s guilt.

Coley, who had no criminal record at the time of his arrest, was a “model” inmate during his decades in prison, Brown said in the pardon at the time.

Investigators found in a private laboratory biological samples that had been believed to be discarded or missing. New tests showed that the DNA found on a key piece of evidence did not match Coley’s. “We no longer have confidence in the weight of the evidence used to convict Mr. Coley,” Totten and Livingstone said in a statement at the time. The two called the case “tragic,” adding, “Craig Coley has spent 39 years in custody for a crime he likely did not commit.”

On Monday, Levitt said that the Police Department was still pursuing leads in the deaths of Wicht and her son.

Last year, California authorities awarded Coley $1.95 million — $140 for each day he spent in prison.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/25/us/craig-coley-false-murder-charge.html" id="9616d249-d711-3048-a552-a4b07c1a1f41">The New York Times</a>.

A man wrongfully imprisoned for four decades in California for murder and later pardoned has reached a $21 million settlement with the city of Simi Valley, California, city officials said.

Man Wrongfully Imprisoned for Four Decades Gets $21 Million Settlement

But for the state’s ski resorts, it’s looking a lot like a boom time. At the Squaw Valley resort near Lake Tahoe, attendance is up 25 percent compared with last year, according to executives there. In Central California, Mammoth Mountain Ski Area said it had record attendance at its lodges in December and January, and was on pace to outperform again this month.

To be fair, last year wasn’t the best for California skiers. But after a long period of drought, the waves of storms that have swept across the state in recent weeks are a welcome respite. Some resorts have reported more than 7 feet of new snow over the past several days, with more storms forecast for the weekend.

“This is what we live for,” said Craig Albright, the senior director of skier services at Mammoth Mountain. “It kind of is our Super Bowl. It’s intense. It’s a little scary outside. You can feel the intensity of the weather.”

Snowpack from Oct. 1 to Feb. 5 is up about 134 percent from normal levels in the Tahoe area and throughout the Sierra Nevada, according to officials at the National Weather Service office in Reno, Nevada. While that’s less than the record set two years ago, when winter storms ravaged the West Coast, it is still welcome news for ski resorts.

Tim Bardsley, a hydrologist with the Weather Service, said increased snow and rain would boost the state’s water supply. A cross-country skier, he said the conditions had been great so far.

“The back country has been more variable,” he said. “But there has been a lot of powder, which is pretty fabulous.”

Of course, getting there can be a challenge. Mike Goar, the vice president and chief operating officer at Heavenly Mountain Resort, near Lake Tahoe, recommended that skiers check road updates before driving into the mountains. This week, 100 miles of Interstate 80, the main artery through the Sierra Nevada, was closed because of whiteout conditions.

And with the new fallen snow — especially if it is heavy and wet — comes the risk of avalanches. On Tuesday, Squaw Valley posted a warning on its website: “Our 4-day storm total is now over 6 feet! Avalanche conditions exist, please check lift status.” Squaw Valley has reported 341 inches of snow this season, while its sister resort, Alpine Meadows, has reported 277 inches.

Ron Cohen, the president of Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows resorts, said his company had recently installed additional Gazex avalanche-control systems, which set off controlled slides while a slope is closed so that larger, more destructive avalanches are less likely when skiers are navigating the terrain. (An explosion using Gazex is triggered using a mixture of oxygen and propane.) He said they were safer than other explosive devices used to control avalanches. Some residents have complained about the noise.

“You can never eliminate the risk entirely,” he said.

While the ski industry has long nervously watched global warming, Cohen said he could not attribute the swings in California’s snowy weather to climate change. Still, he added, “Climate change has a role in broad weather changes.”

This week’s gale-force winds forced many California resorts to close temporarily in the early part of the week. “You can’t operate the chairlifts,” Albright said.

Still, he said Mammoth had been fortunate that the storms had mostly arrived during the middle of the week, making way for weekend skiers. “They hear the hype on the Weather Channel, see it on the news,” he said.

“People have dreams of powder,” Albright added, laughing. “But when they get stuck, it’s not so pleasant.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/us/california-storms-ski-season.html" id="196c743e-d453-3829-a913-3e969c7f9233">The New York Times</a>.

In the past week, California has been pummeled by fierce winter storms wreaking havoc from Sacramento to San Diego. Flash floods have damaged an already fragile landscape, as near hurricane-force winds downed power lines along the coast. On Tuesday, mountain highways were closed because of blizzard conditions and the National Weather Service warned about avalanches in the eastern Sierra Nevada.

For California's Ski Resorts, Fierce Storms Are 'What We Live For'

The site, which was described as a family burial chamber, was discovered a year ago hollowed out of rock at Tuna el-Gebel, an ancient burial ground not far from the city of Minya in central Egypt. The area is known for its archaeological finds, including the tomb of Petosiris, an ancient Egyptian priest, and a catacomb filled with mummified falcons, ibises and baboons.

Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities posted information about the site on Facebook and Twitter, and invited foreign dignitaries and journalists to tour the tomb Saturday.

The tomb consisted of numerous chambers that dated from 323 B.C. to 30 B.C. and that were accessible through a corridor and sloping set of stairs. Khaled El-Enany, the minister of antiquities, said in the presentation that the tomb belonged to a family, most likely from the elite middle class, and contained the bodies of more than 40 men, women and children.

Some of the adult mummies still had painted fragments of cartonnage at the base of their feet that were used for decoration and, in the Ptolemaic era, were made of old papyrus scrolls. Some of the children were wrapped in linen decorated with ancient Egyptian script.

The ministry also displayed bowls and other items and found family artifacts from the Roman and Byzantine eras.

The site was excavated by the ministry and archaeologists from nearby Minya University. Wagdi Ramadan, who the ministry said headed the mission, said Saturday that some of the sarcophagi were tucked into niches in one large chamber, a burial style common at Tuna el-Gebel. Bodies were encased in wooden or stone sarcophagi, while others were tucked in sand or laid on the floor, wrapped in linen.

The tomb was first discovered in February 2018 and, according to El-Enany, the first announced discovery this year. He said he expected to announce more finds in the coming months.

Egypt’s cultural and political underpinnings have long been associated with its archaeological past.

“Egypt always announces when it has a big find,” said Sharon Waxman, author of “Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World.” “Ancient Egypt is an integral part of modern Egypt’s identity.” (Waxman is a former reporter for The New York Times.)

One reason is that archaeological treasures drive tourism, a major industry that keeps Egypt’s economy afloat. After the Arab Spring revolution swept across parts of the Middle East in 2011, Americans stayed away and have only begun to tiptoe back into the country.

In a report published by the World Tourism Organization last summer, Egypt led tourism growth in the Middle East in 2017, with many tourists coming from Western and Central Europe. If tourists stay away, the economy suffers.

“Tourism, in part, is what fuels the country,” Waxman said. “The big problem in Egypt is that they have such a massive amount of antiquities, they are hard to maintain.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/arts/mummies-discovered-egypt.html" id="160335fb-651c-3d61-a7df-59fa1b550602">The New York Times</a>.

Dozens of newly discovered mummies from the Ptolemaic era were unveiled at an Egyptian burial site this weekend, one of a number of sites the country plans to disclose this year, according to Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities.

Egypt Unveils Dozens of Newly Discovered Mummies

That $25,000 was donated by Hormel Foods, the Minnesota-based company that owns Jennie-O Turkey Store, where Jayme’s parents had worked in Barron, Wisconsin, for 27 years.

“First and foremost, Jennie-O Turkey Store is a family,” Steve Lykken, a senior vice president of Hormel and president of Jennie-O, said Wednesday. “Here in Barron, our Jennie-O family is dealing with a very tragic situation.” The goal, he added, is to set up a trust fund for Jayme.

The girl’s parents, James Closs, 56, and Denise Closs, 46, were killed Oct. 15 when an intruder entered their home, shot them and kidnapped their daughter. Jayme was held for 88 days in a cabin 70 miles from her home by a man, identified as Jake T. Patterson, who forced her to hide under a bed whenever he left, trapping her in with heavy items, authorities said.

She managed to escape Jan. 10, clawing her way out from under the bed, putting on a pair of men’s shoes and running to a nearby road where she asked a woman for help.

“I’m Jayme Closs,” the woman recalled the girl saying. “I don’t know where I am.”

Jayme has been staying with relatives since she was found.

The kidnapping upended the rural community where the Closses lived. Authorities received thousands of tips. Last month, Jennie-O organized a “Tree of Hope” lighting ceremony for Jayme’s safe return.

“While we are still mourning the loss of longtime family members Jim and Denise, we are so thankful for Jayme’s brave escape and that she is back in Barron,” Lykken said this week.

The other $25,000 in reward money had been put forward by the FBI. Leonard Peace, a public information officer for the agency in Wisconsin, declined to comment on whether it would pay Jayme the money, given that she saved herself.

“Our general practice is to refrain from disclosing details on the final decisions in these matters due to privacy considerations,” he said in a statement. “The FBI evaluates the information provided along with the unique circumstances of the case and its resolution, and determines whether it is appropriate to award reward money.”

But others have chipped in to help Jayme. A representative for GoFundMe confirmed that a campaign started Jan. 11 to help the girl was verified. So far, the organizer, who is a family member of Jayme’s, has raised more than $34,000.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/us/jayme-closs-reward-money.html" id="e23ec54a-ae9c-35d5-a844-f2a88218c4a6">The New York Times</a>.

Soon after Jayme Closs, 13, disappeared in Wisconsin in October, officials offered a $50,000 reward for information that would lead to her safe return. Now Jayme, who escaped from a kidnapper after she was abducted and her parents were killed, will receive at least half of it.

Jayme Closs, Who Saved Herself From a Kidnapper, Will Get $25,000 in Reward Money

There was muted praise for Jack Nicholson’s performance as a caretaker gone mad at a wintry resort, while Variety wrote that director Stanley Kubrick destroyed “all that was so terrifying about Stephen King’s best-seller.” The movie was not nominated for an Academy Award that year. Instead, Kubrick earned the first Golden Raspberry for worst director.

Despite that, the film’s blood-drenched imagery and taut editing inspired future generations of directors, including Joel and Ethan Coen and Tim Burton. It is why, too, the movie is one of the films added this month to the National Film Registry for having cultural, historical and aesthetic significance in American film history.

Oscar season is around the corner. But while the Oscars reflect what the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences believes is important to culture now, the registry celebrates movies that make a lasting impression. Films have to be 10 years old to be nominated by the public or recommended by members of the National Film Preservation Board. Only 25 films are added each year. Some date back to the 1800s, are experimental or only seconds long.

“I don’t think the box office or the Oscars can tell what films will survive the test of time,” said Dave Kehr, curator of the film department at the Museum of Modern Art and a former writer for The New York Times. Award ceremonies, he added, “are not infallible.”

A case in point: 1998 romantic movie “Shakespeare in Love” is not in the registry. It won the Oscar for best motion picture after now-disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein campaigned heavily for Academy votes. Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” had been widely expected to win. The movie about the sacrifice soldiers made during World War II was nominated for 11 Oscars and hailed by The Washington Post as “the greatest war movie ever made.” It was added to the registry in 2014.

The registry was formed in 1988 as part of the Library of Congress to preserve cultural artifacts and protect black-and-white masterpieces from wanton colorization. (The registry does not own the films and has no effect on distribution.) The list is very male dominated: Only 52 of the 725 films inducted are directed by women. And there is little representation of films made by people of color.

At its start, a board of film historians and experts suggested the films to be included. “It’s a subjective decision,” said Steve Leggett, program coordinator for the board who oversees the submission process. The Preservation Board now has 44 members, including Kehr, who not only make yearly recommendations, but also review public requests.

This year, film enthusiasts submitted 6,300 online recommendations — three times more than usual — which were winnowed down to about 350 movies that were reviewed by board members. The list was further cut, Leggett said, and given to Carla Hayden, the librarian of Congress, who made the final picks.

Among those chosen this year were “Jurassic Park,” the 1993 dinosaur blockbuster directed by Spielberg, which has earned more than $1 billion, according to Box Office Mojo. Another pick, Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain,” the 2005 tale of two cowboys who have a love affair, earned $178 million worldwide. Lee’s portrayal of longing and love between two men was groundbreaking at the time.

Kehr, a longtime member of the board, said of Hayden’s choices: “The new librarian is listening more to populist voices.”

This year, he said he sponsored 1917 film “Girl Without a Soul” by John H. Collins, a little-known director who died during the flu epidemic in 1918. The Museum of Modern Art has preserved a number of the director’s films. “He showed great promise,” Kehr said, mostly because of his cinematic style.

The choice of movies is designed to illuminate America’s cultural history, even its most unsavory and odious past. The 1915 silent film “The Birth of a Nation,” which was directed by D.W. Griffith and glamorized the Ku Klux Klan, was added to the registry in 1992. The movie was a blockbuster in its day, a racist ode that was screened at the White House for President Woodrow Wilson and his Cabinet and which spurred a resurgence of the KKK.

Leggett said the movie was included because its cinematic technique influenced later generations of filmmakers. At the time, the movie was a cinematic marvel, with its use of close-ups, dramatic fight sequences and a score written for an orchestra.

Another one of the board members, Jacqueline Stewart, is heading up a diversity initiative to ensure that the registry includes a wider swath of filmmakers. She and other film historians and board members attribute the dominance of white, male filmmakers to bias in the film industry. They have a point. The Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California released a study this year that looked at 1,100 top films from 2007 to 2017. Of those, only 43 were directed by women.

This year, the board included 1984’s “Hair Piece: A Film for Nappy Headed People,” the animated satire directed by an independent filmmaker, Ayoka Chenzira. The movie unpacks stereotypes about black women’s hair. Stewart said it is significant because Chenzira is considered to be one of the first black female animators. “I don’t think people think about black women as artists,” said Stewart, who is also a professor of cinema and media studies at the University of Chicago.

One seminal film that Kehr said has been discussed among board members but has not been inducted is 1971’s “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song,” one of the first Blaxploitation films made. The film, directed by auteur writer and director Melvin Van Peebles, is credited with starting the Blaxploitation genre, controversial at the time because some viewers thought it embraced African-American stereotypes. It was rated X.

Film reviewers noted its political theme. It also popularized funk and soul music. But its explicit sexuality — a teenager is sexually assaulted by a prostitute and grows up to become a gigolo — caused an uproar. The boy was played by Peebles’ teenage son, Mario.

Kehr said the movie is important to the genre, but takes on a different meaning in the modern era.

Some films on the list are barely seconds long, including “Something Good Negro Kiss,” a snippet of a black man and woman kissing on-screen from 1898. The short was based on “The Kiss,” an 18-second short filmed in 1896 that depicted the re-enactment of the final scene of the musical “The Widow Jones” with actors May Irwin and John Rice.

“That film is incredibly important because of age,” Stewart said. It is rare, too, to see two black actors in an intimate embrace from that era, she said, especially given the brutal racism in the decades after the Civil War’s end.

“This deviates from that,” she said. “It’s a demonstration of love and closeness at a time of violence and pervasive racism. It is good it is preserved.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/movies/national-film-registry-movies-library-congress.html" id="07602b58-5667-3463-a4c5-cb9b45c1b8b8">The New York Times</a>.

When “The Shining” debuted in theaters in 1980, critics sniffed with indifference.

Which Movies Are the Best? The Library of Congress Has a List

The man, Jake Siebenlist, 18, was charged with criminal mischief Sunday. The vandalism began when Siebenlist shoved patrons aside and, as he was being pursued, grabbed sculptures that he threw across the gallery and smashed to the floor, police said. He also tried to damage two paintings enclosed in protective plastic before museum officials tackled him to the ground, according to police.

At a news conference Monday, museum officials could not explain Siebenlist’s actions. “If you destroy artwork in a gallery, that is, to begin with, pretty weird,” said Christoph Heinrich, director of the museum. “And he was very aggravated and, obviously, not in a state of mind that was reasonable.”

In all, 10 works were damaged, including the Chinese vase with phoenixes, a Mayan vessel shaped like a fish, and a wolf mask and headdress. The value of the objects was not disclosed. They were part of a new exhibition, “Stampede: Animals in Art,” a more than 300-piece show on display until May that highlights artwork from the museum’s collection.

The incident was captured on surveillance video, which has not been released. Heinrich said Siebenlist, who had bought a ticket to the show, did not explain his motivation but used “a lot of force,” suggesting that his actions were not accidental. The artwork in the exhibition was not controversial, Heinrich said.

Conservators are assessing the damage, and Heinrich said he hoped all of the objects would be repaired. In addition to the damaged pieces, the exhibition includes artwork from well-known artists including photographers Elliott Erwitt and Eadweard Muybridge and from sculptors Deborah Butterfield and Frederic Remington. There is also a centuries-old guardian lion from northern Thailand.

“This is a totally unreasonable, weird thing and it happened the very first time in my museum career,” Heinrich said. He added that it was also a first for the museum.

People have been known to purposely damage art in museums, although such incidents are rare. In 1972, a man struck Michelangelo’s “Pietà” statue with a hammer several times, damaging the nose and arm of the Virgin Mary, who holds a crucified Jesus in her lap. (The sculpture is housed at the Vatican.) Two years later, Tony Shafrazi, who would later become a gallery owner, spray-painted the words “Kill Lies All” over Pablo Picasso’s painting “Guernica” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

More recent cases have been accidental, particularly among the selfie-taking crowd. This year, a wall was knocked over at an exhibition in Russia, damaging artwork by Francisco Goya and Salvador Dalí. In 2017, a visitor taking a selfie at the 14th Factory, a temporary arts space in Los Angeles, knocked down a row of crown sculptures in a domino effect, causing about $200,000 in damage.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/arts/denver-art-museum-mayan-chinese.html" id="69898355-1a70-38a1-ac0c-d34c07b09528">The New York Times</a>.

Man Smashes Rare Mayan and Chinese Works at Denver Art Museum, Police Say

A man was arrested at the Denver Art Museum over the weekend after he pushed over an exhibition case and hurled works of art to the floor, damaging rare Mayan artifacts and a Qing dynasty Chinese vase, according to Denver police.

There, too, is the Millennium Falcon with Han Solo blasting into hyperspace. And no one will forget Darth Vader breathing heavily through a black mask, his cape snapping behind him as he walked.

Laura M. Holson

Articles written by the author

'Hustlers': The Story Behind the Headlines

Vintage Clothing Sale: Dark Lord's Duds

From 'Game of Thrones' to 'Captain Marvel,' Red Carpet Live Streams Are Everywhere

Newly Discovered Photograph of Harriet Tubman Goes on Display

Scientists Say a Canadian T. Rex 'Scotty' Is Heaviest Found

States Consider Longer School Recess, and the Adults Aren't Complaining

Man Wrongfully Imprisoned for Four Decades Gets $21 Million Settlement

For California's Ski Resorts, Fierce Storms Are 'What We Live For'

Egypt Unveils Dozens of Newly Discovered Mummies

Jayme Closs, Who Saved Herself From a Kidnapper, Will Get $25,000 in Reward Money

Which Movies Are the Best? The Library of Congress Has a List

Man Smashes Rare Mayan and Chinese Works at Denver Art Museum, Police Say

Vintage clothing sale: Dark lord's duds

He listed a T. Rex fossil on eBay for $2.95 million, scientists weren't thrilled

Devin Nunes sued a parody cow, and it conquered Twitter

Daily low-dose aspirin no longer recommended by doctors, if you're healthy

In bid to change culture, burning man boots camp catering to wealthy and adjusts pricing

Girl who escaped abductor will collect half of reward

Fyre Festival's organizers didn't pay a restaurant owner, so GoFundMe donors stepped in

With 86% drop, California's monarch butterfly population hits record low