Did a true-crime celebrity frame a man for murder?
From The Intercept: "Only a few bones remained and there was no clear cause of death. In the realm of murder cases gone cold, this was a challenging one — even for Kelly Siegler, a veteran prosecutor from Texas, with a nearly perfect conviction record and an evangelical fervor for solving cold cases. Twenty-nine-year-old Margie Pointer had disappeared in 1987. What was left of her was found in a ravine near Alamogordo, New Mexico, 17 years later. The Alamogordo Police Department needed help, and Siegler, star of the true-crime reality show “Cold Justice,” was there to answer the call."
The Smithsonian targeted the vulnerable in D.C. to build its collection of brains
From The Washington Post: "A 59-year-old Black woman died of epilepsy in October 1903 at the Washington Asylum Hospital, an institution that housed the District’s indigent. Almost five months later, tuberculosis killed a 21-month-old Black toddler at Children’s Hospital in D.C. The next month, an 11-year-old White boy died of a lung condition at Children’s. Upon their deaths, one of the Smithsonian Institution’s top anthropologists, Ales Hrdlicka, enlisted the local institutions and doctors to help him remove their brains to build a “racial brain collection.”
In Central Park, pets are remembered with a secret Christmas tree
From Aimee Ortiz for the NYT: "Hidden in a corner of Central Park there lives a tree that if you walk by at just the right time of the year will share with you its secret identity as the Pet Memorial Christmas Tree. The tree glitters with hundreds of laminated photos, notes, ornaments and memorials to deceased pets. There’s Milo, commemorated as “A Good Boy,” and the “Al Dente Brothers,” who are “forever loved.” There’s Sherman, the Eastern box turtle, Geo the fish and Miss Parker, the “fearless, independent, and amusing” Central Park squirrel."
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