A new NASA photo shows a small blue dot in the middle of a bumpy, rocky brown landscape. That landscape, the space agency says, is Mars, and the small blue dot? That’s the Mars Curiosity rover as seen by NASA’s own Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The photo was taken last month by the space agency’s super powerful Mars telescope, which only … Continue reading
WASHINGTON ― The Obama administration’s top homeland security official warned on Wednesday that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was far more advanced than previously reported.
Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson lamented that there was not enough public awareness and urgency on the issue, while defending the former administration’s reticence to publicly discuss the information in the months leading up to the election.
“In 2016, the Russian government, at the direction of Vladimir Putin himself, orchestrated cyberattacks on our nation for the purpose of influencing our election. That is a fact, plain and simple,” Johnson said, testifying before the House Intelligence committee, which is conducting one of several investigations into Russian meddling in last year’s election.
Echoing the testimonies of other government officials, Johnson warned that Russian interference would continue, urging congressional leaders and members of President Donald Trump’s administration to prioritize cybersecurity and take steps to prevent further intrusions into U.S. elections.
Yet Trump, whose campaign is under investigation for potentially colluding with Russian officials, has maintained that reports of Russian interference were “fake news.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the nation’s top law enforcement official, testified before the Senate last week that he had never received or asked for a briefing on the issue.
Johnson also said during his testimony that the Democratic National Committee refused the Department of Homeland Security’s attempts to help them with security precautions, after hackers obtained and released DNC emails last July.
“I recall very clearly that I was not pleased that we were not in there helping them patch this vulnerability,” he said.
Members of the House panel repeatedly pressed Johnson on why the Obama administration was slow to go public with their reports on Russia’s role in the cyberattacks.
Johnson defended the former administration’s cautious approach, for fear of “injecting ourselves into a very heated campaign,” he said.
Without referring to Trump directly, Johnson noted that in particular, “one of the candidates, as you recall, was predicting that the election was going to be ‘rigged’ in some way.”
But Johnson said that he had raised the issue with other intelligence officials and with state election officials over several months. And when he and James Clapper, then the director of national intelligence, released a public statement about the matter on Oct. 7, Johnson said that the public and the media largely ignored it. “It did not get the attention it should have” because it came on the same day as the bombshell tape of Trump bragging about sexual assault, he said.
Much of the problem in the administration’s inadequate response was that the sophistication of the Russian interference was “unprecedented,” he said, particularly their ability to “dump information into the public space to influence the election.”
“No one knew how far the Russians were going to go,” Johnson said, adding that “in retrospect, I should have bought a sleeping bag and camped out in front of the DNC.”
While Johnson testified that he had no evidence suggesting the Russians directly altered votes, he was still deeply concerned and had made the issue “a top priority” during his time at the DHS.
“We were pushing information out the door to everybody,” he said.
Johnson testified that throughout the early fall, he had offered cybersecurity support to state election officials, but some ignored the DHS’ warnings.
When asked for his recommendations, Johnson said that the onus was on state election officials to adopt greater cybersecurity protections and suggested grants to fund them.
Johnson’s warnings of future Russian interference echoed those of fired FBI director James Comey, who told the Senate intelligence committee earlier this month that the issue was “about as unfake as you can possibly get” — a clear reference to Trump’s claim that it was “fake news.”
Johnson on Wednesday shed light on his working relationship with Comey, describing Comey as “the cop, and I am the fireman,” referring to the FBI’s role in identifying threats and the DHS’s role in “patching vulnerabilities, detecting bad actors in the system.”
But he did criticize the delay in communication about the DNC hack between the FBI and DHS, noting that “there were glitches, instances where we did not communicate as effectively as we could have.”
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By Ali P. Gordon, UCF Forum columnist
I love college sports. I’ve got the Knights, Yellow Jackets, Tar Heels, Hoyas, Maroon Tigers – you name it. If I can catch a game, I will.
My brother-in-law, who’s from New England, recently schooled me about lacrosse, so now on top of college football, basketball, baseball and volleyball, I’m hooked on that, too. And if it’s any indication of my level of fanaticism, I got married on a Sunday in the fall so I could still watch college football on the Saturday before.
But it seems like the playing field is a little unfair when it comes to student-athletes who can’t profit from what they do in college, unlike other students who can use their engineering skills to get jobs, their marketing abilities to work at companies promoting products, their management skills to set up their own companies.
This issue has been around for years. The latest case involves a football player, a marketing major, who was told by the association that oversees college athletics that he risks his amateur status by receiving advertisement payments for a YouTube channel that uses his name and image.
There’s something amazing about seeing people competing for not only the win, but perhaps also a chance to participate at the next level. Experiences learned through competition – such as leadership, effective communication and the capacity to work in team-oriented environments – are also key. Intense preparation, strategy, focus, and random luck are all things with which we can relate.
It’s easy to see that student-athletes pour a lot of effort into their craft. They love their sports and their fans. I often wonder, however, do these students get full value for sharing their talents? Is limiting their financial support to tuition, room, board and a stipend fair?
I’ve never participated in college sports, and before I provide a stream of consciousness about something of which I am admittedly not an expert, consider the other students.
College students come in all manner of shapes, sizes and colors. When the next incoming class hits campus this fall, they will do so with varied levels of academic preparation, degree-seeking goals and financial needs. They’ve successfully been admitted to their respective universities with the goal of improving their own lives.
Some students will finance or pay their way through school, while some of the bright ones will get full academic scholarships. The very brightest have earned supplemental scholarships that will come to them as stipends.
Once in school, the fully funded students typically need only keep a B average and make satisfactory progress toward graduation to retain their support in place. These requirements are generally attainable given their skill set.
These top-end students usually have intellectual appetites that cannot be satiated by classwork alone. They participate in club activities, volunteer for community service, travel abroad, undertake creative efforts, and so on. If they wanted, they could even further develop their skills by starting a successful company, becoming a research assistant in a lab, hosting a blog or YouTube channel, or have some other side gig. All of these could lead to extra money. As long as the GPA is minimally a B average, they can fully capitalize on their current market value.
It is rewarding to see students with newly developed skill sets preparing themselves for the next level. Experiences learned through extracurricular activities help to develop leadership skills, effective communication and the capacity to work in team-oriented environments. Intense preparation, strategy and focus are what make students successful.
It’s easy to see that top-end academic students pour a lot of effort into building their bodies of work. They love their craft. I expect these students will reap the benefits of the value for their talents, but I have yet to see one of my engineering students sell his or her autograph for money, which they can do without being penalized.
Imagine that you, your relative or friend were a student highly regarded in art, architecture, marketing or cybersecurity. What level of vitriol would you have toward a system that placed restrictions on you or their ability to apply those skills for profit while still in school? So although they may occupy the identical campus setting, exceptionally gifted student-athletes and academic students are seemingly subject to starkly different systems facilitating distinct fiscal outcomes.
Arguments against why student-athletes are not allowed to reap the full monetary benefits during or after the application of their skill set seem circular and duplicitous compared to the free markets that exists for the skills of academic students. Universities need to be given more freedom to devise systems that are more equitable for all of their students.
There are a lot of sides on this issue that have been debated for years, and any satisfactory solution will probably be complex. But just consider: As your favorite college team takes the field or court, are the players getting reasonable market value for their time and energy?
Ali P. Gordon is an associate professor in UCF’s Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. He can be reached at ali@ucf.edu.
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Donald Trump Jr. wants you to know that newly-elected Republican Rep. Karen Handel is a woman.
It’s unclear exactly what Trump was trying to say with this tweet, given that “Rep” generally refers to representative in American politics, and the first woman to represent Georgia in the House of Representatives was Democrat Florence Reville Gibbs, who served from 1939 to 1941. Perhaps he meant Republican? Perhaps we’ll never know.
What is clear is that Trump Jr. is frustrated that Handel is not being celebrated as a feminist glass-ceiling breaker simply for being a woman.
Handel herself made a point to note that she is the first Republican woman Georgia is sending to Congress. At the end of her acceptance speech, she said, to large cheers: “Tomorrow the real work will begin, the hard work of governing and doing that in a civil responsible way that is in the best interest of every Georgian, every sixth district citizen, and every citizen of the United States of America as we prepare to send Georgia’s first Republican woman to Congress.”
It’s certainly admirable to see the Republican party sending more women to Congress, given that the party has an even more dismal gender gap than the Democrats do. But as Jennifer Wright argued for Harper’s Bazaar in May: “Feminism doesn’t mean liking every stupid woman you meet.”
“Now, in general, if the woman you dislike is not actively making your life worse, it’s probably best to reserve judgment,” Wright wrote. “But if women are opposed to women’s rights? If they’re cheerfully complacent with sexual harassment or scaling back women’s opportunities? If they’re actively going to make life hard work for you and others like you? Speak the fuck out. Don’t worry about seeming polite. Just worry about speaking out.”
In that same vein, being a woman does not automatically make you good for womankind ― especially if your woman-y career has been dedicated to making life harder and worse for lots of women.
Handel supports the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, calling the ACA the “single biggest intrusion into the lives of Americans in decades.”
She is staunchly anti-abortion.
She has a history of supporting strict Voter-ID laws that disproportionately target people of color.
She said that she does not support a “livable wage.” (Women are more likely to be employed in low-wage jobs. A 2016 Oxfam report found that of the 23.5 million people working low-wage jobs in the United States, 19 million are women.)
When Handel was Senior VP for Policy at the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure, she was a key figure pushing the organization to cut off $700,000 in grant funding for mammograms and other breast cancer-related services at Planned Parenthood clinics.
Yes, Handel is a woman (hooray!), but her track record and stated policy priorities do not inspire much confidence that she’ll do anything to advance rights and opportunities for other women. A glass ceiling broken is only worth celebrating if it means something for more than the individual smashing it.
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Delena stans, assemble!
It’s no secret that Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato haven’t had the smoothest of relationships. The two were close as can be as child stars on “Barney and Friends,” and remained besties throughout their Disney Channel days. But after a series of rifts caused the pair to grow apart, we didn’t know if we would ever get our Delena back. Now, Demi is giving fans a reason to hope.
The 24-year-old singer shared a photo on Instagram Tuesday, and the caption is decidedly Selena-esque.
“Kill em with kindnes… or choke em with a smile on your face,” Lovato wrote.
Could it be that Demi was referencing her frenemy’s 2015 song “Kill Em With Kindness?” Or was she simply utilizing an age-old turn of phrase? The world may never know, but Delena shippers are choosing to interpret the caption as a Selena shoutout.
“Delena is back,” one fan wrote. “We missed you so much guys. Girl power.”
“You know you’re still friends with a certain someone when you use one of their songs as an Instagram caption,” another added.
For what it’s worth, Selena and Demi have used each other’s song lyrics as photo captions in the past. In September 2015, the pair posed for a silly selfie that Demi captioned, “Look how #coolforthesummer we are… Friends for years, #sameoldlove.”
The heart wants what it wants and, in this case, the heart wants a Demi-Selena reunion.
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Henry “Hank” Deutschendorf, one of two twins who played baby Oscar in 1989′s “Ghostbusters II,” has died. He was 28.
Henry’s brother William Deutschendorf announced the tragic news via a website dedicated to raising funds to fight schizoaffective disorder, which Henry suffered from.
Henry reportedly took his own life at his home in Escondido, California, last Wednesday, according to TMZ. In 2008, he was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a chronic mental health condition characterized by a combination of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and depression.
“He experienced hallucinations, delusions, depression, and mania. It is a very severe mental illness that usually requires a lifetime of treatment,” William wrote in statement. “It is not well studied, so the treatment is largely an estimation based on schizophrenia and bipolar treatments.”
After starring in the “Ghostbusters” sequel together, the two brothers went on to open the West Coast Martial Arts Academy in California. Henry also appeared in “Cleanin’ Up the Town: Remembering Ghostbusters,” a documentary about the making of the first two films in the franchise. The brothers are also nephews of the singer John Denver.
“Our parents will always remember him as a loving son. His family will remember him as someone who was always there when they needed him,” William continued. “His nieces and nephews will remember him as the funnest uncle who was always ready to play. His close friends will remember how he always helped them look for the silver lining. His students will remember him as a mentor, in martial arts and in life. His girlfriend will remember him as someone who made her feel like the most important person in the world. I will remember him as my best friend, my partner, my brother, and the bravest man I have ever known.”
To honor his brother, William and his family are raising funds for the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation.
Read his full post here.
If you or someone you know needs help, call 1-800-273-8255 for the
National
Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
You can also text HELLO to 741-741 for free, 24-hour support from the
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Outside of the U.S., please visit the International Association for
Suicide Prevention for a database of resources.
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Crime stories usually serve as cautionary tales that warn the general population to stay on the right side of the law. Some of the best crime stories are not just tales of illegal activity, but also profound love stories ― stores that usually end in some form of tragedy.
Such is the case in the Starz original series Power, where a drug kingpin and the U.S. district attorney make for deliciously tumultuous, modern-day star-crossed lovers. As the new season of Power approaches, we’ve partnered with Starz to highlight stories of real-life crime bosses whose motivations were tangled up in love. The crazy twists and turns that ended their criminal reigns are as fascinating as they are addictive.
For Love Or Money
The Boss Lady carefully calculated each move. After all, she was transporting massive quantities of cocaine and heroin from coast-to-coast. Philadelphia in the ‘80s and ‘90s was headquarters to a narcotics empire that stretched west across the United States to Los Angeles. Thelma Wright’s ascension within an industry dominated by men earned her the title of gangster queen in the City of Brotherly Love.
Love Across The Tracks
But the story of how Thelma Wright became the Queen of Philly begins about a decade earlier. One April evening in 1976, as Thelma walked along Broad Street in south Philadelphia, she spotted a dashing man driving a red convertible. As he slowed to turn, their gaze met and he fixed on her pale green eyes. She recognized the driver by reputation: Jackie Wright was a top heroin wholesaler connected to the street gang, the Black Mafia. He was also the man she would later marry, who would become the love of her life and the father of her son.
“I was familiar that he was involved in the drug trade. A lot of guys in the area at that time were,” Wright told HuffPost. “He was very polite. It helped, you know, that he was a well dressed, really nice and handsome guy.”
Wright continued to see Jackie around the neighborhood and eventually agreed to go on a date. It was November 1977. In her memoir, With Eyes From Both Sides, Thelma describes how she didn’t just fall in love with Jackie, she “leapt.”
“I found him very easy to talk to,” Wright says. “We basically were from the same area of south Philly but different sides—like we had what you’d call the tracks. I was from one side and he was from the other.”
“Thelma Wright was very unlike most drug traffickers—very religious, very athletic. She did not come from a disadvantaged background, one of poverty, one of abuse,” says former DEA Agent Mike Vigil in the documentary Philly Gangster Queen Thelma Wright.
Wright herself agrees: “I came from a two-parent household and could have done anything,” she says. “I ended up falling in love with someone who was in the drug trade and it became my life.”
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Destroyed By A Dark Side
Jackie exposed Thelma to the exhilarating drug game and all of the luxuries that came with it. From trips to Los Angeles to meet with his main supplier, “Auntie,” to narrow escapes from narcotics detectives. Avid sports fans, they traveled to prize fights in Vegas. “We laughed a lot,” Wright recalls. Yet one violent summer night changed everything: Jackie got shot.
While he survived the gun wound, Jackie’s hospital recovery kickstarted a pill addiction to pain medication that caused a dramatic shift in his personality. “When he was getting high, he could be abusive at times,” Wright says. “The slightest little thing that maybe normally would not have bothered him would be very upsetting.”
In With Eyes From Both Sides, Thelma describes that during this period of their life together, around 1979, Jackie once shot her in the leg, but―similar to many accounts of domestic abuse―her “crazy love” for him made her stay. In what she describes as times of deep love and deep despair, their relationship got even more serious. In 1982, the couple had a son named Jackiem and were married the following year.
But during Christmas of 1985, an unexpected threat changed everything. Jackie discovered that one of his rivals had hatched a plot to kidnap Thelma and little Jackiem. For their safety, Jackie moved his family to Los Angeles, but stayed in Philadelphia to oversee the business, asking Auntie to watch after them. Thelma arrived in California and she realized that, for the first time in a long time, she suddenly felt safe. Auntie took her task to heart and habitually looked after the young mother. The two developed a very close friendship. When Jackie called Thelma to tell her it was safe to come home, Thelma said, “What do you mean? I am home.”
But Jackie stayed in Philly to mind the business. He had people working for him, so he had to be there to collect. A week before her thirtieth birthday, Thelma came back east to visit Jackie. “I remember he was upset,” Wright recalls, because one of Jackie’s clients owed him $25,000 for cocaine. Thelma tried to convince him to forget the debt and to start a new life in Los Angeles with his family.
“As time went on…I understand more so now why he couldn’t [let it go],” Wright says. “If word got out that this guy beat him out of this money then other people would try and take advantage of him.” Jackie was in too deep.
When she didn’t hear from him that Friday—her birthday—she started making calls. No one had seen him. Then someone told Thelma that a stranger was spotted driving her husband’s car.
Wright reported Jackie missing at the police station near where he was last seen. She arrived in Philadelphia and later joined the police as they drove to the house near Germantown where Jackie had previously been spotted. Parked outside, the police instructed her to stay in the car. “Later on I found out that they could actually smell the decomposing body,” she says.
Inside the house, police discovered Jackie rolled up in a carpet. He had died from a gunshot wound to the head. Police asked Wright for the picture of Jackie that she carried in her wallet. Then they confirmed her worst fear.
“I just remember screaming, or at least I thought it was screaming,” Wright says. “I don’t know if anything was coming out because I couldn’t hear anything . . .how do you tell your three-year-old child they’re not going to see their father anymore?”
Looking back, Wright doesn’t think she was in her right mind when she agreed to keep Jackie’s business going after being approached by one of his associates. At the time, she felt compelled to continue the life she had been accustomed to living. She told herself it was an opportunity to take care of her son, to give him the best education money could buy.
“It was for survival,” Wright says. “This is what you’re going to do to take care of your son. That’s what I did.”
At the time of Jackie’s murder in 1986, Thelma had been in the process of buying a house closeby in Willingboro, NJ, a modest suburb about thirty minutes outside of Philadelphia. Wright wanted to shelter her family from her business, and her parents moved into the house in early 1987. In 1989, Wright took up residency at the Jersey house and enrolled Jackiem at a prestigious private school in South Jersey.
Nothing to see here..
A young Thelma was born and raised in Philadelphia and never would have dreamed that she would one day be known as the Queen of Philly. She met her husband, Jackie Wright – a drug kingpin, in the City of Brotherly Love in 1977 and found him dead in the same city in 1986. She took over his drug business and made a name for herself as a woman who rose to the top of a man’s industry.
An avid sports fan, Wright liked to attend NBA All-Star games around the country and fight nights in Vegas. It was at such a fight in 1987 where Wright met “D” – a cocaine supplier who would also become her boyfriend.
In January 1986, Wright fled to Los Angeles at Jackie’s request fearing of threats for her safety from rival traffickers. After Jackie’s death in August of the same year, she continued his supply chain, operating her business cross-country. Jackiem stayed with his mother and started kindergarten in Hancock Park, until moving to the house in New Jersey in 1989. For two years, Thelma was bicoastal until the death of her dear from Auntie in August 1991 when she left the business for good.
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But Wright was cautious. She didn’t solicit, and only did business with people who had previously dealt with her husband—people she knew she could trust. She also maneuvered differently than her husband. She stayed discreetly in Los Angeles where she felt safe, only traveling to Philadelphia when business needed to be taken care of there.
“For women, we have to be careful because people are always coming at you … people are going to try you,” Wright says. “So, you know, being a woman you just have to be careful. It’s not the same as for men. It’s a whole different beast.”
Indeed, Wright’s business was different than Jackie’s business. Unlike her husband, she didn’t have people who worked for her, she just had people that she supplied. She didn’t want to be in the business of collections. If you mailed Wright a large package of money, she would send you a large package of product in return. She expanded the operations that transported cocaine and heroin between Philadelphia and Los Angeles alongside Auntie and a new boyfriend called “D” whom she met at a Las Vegas “Fight Night.” The money was good—very good.
During her most successful five-year run, she enjoyed a lavish lifestyle that included private jets, European excursions and customized Mercedes, according to her documentary. While she enjoyed cruises to the Bahamas and speed boats in Miami, Wright also ran a tight ship within her empire, earning her the respect and fame that surpassed that of her late husband.
To do so, Wright says she stuck to the core tenet of Jackie’s business philosophy: If you brought the violence into the game, you brought heat. She preferred to cut people off from her network rather than embrace the bloodthirsty tactics of her counterparts. Yet she’d soon discover that the violence would soon come to her instead.
When Savage Reality Strikes
By the ’90s things were slowing down in the drug game. Wright wanted out.
In July 1991, she was caught in the middle of a gang shootout at the Studio West nightclub and saw one of her friends murdered right in front of her. That was the moment when she realized that most of the people closest to her were either dead or in jail.
Then about 10 days later, Wright says, police arrested one of her clients while he was picking up a package at a drop site. He had the means to implicate her—the Federal investigation was too close for comfort—so she and Auntie decided to limit their communication for a little while. But two weeks later, Auntie and two other associates were found dead in a house on the Eastside, all shot execution-style.
Thelma’s will to play the dangerous drug game evaporated. “To me, there was no other option,” Wright says. “You know, that’s it. Get away. Stop it. That’s it. It’s over.” She had always wanted to provide the best life for her son. That meant staying alive for him.
Life changed dramatically almost overnight. Wright went from being The Boss Lady to finding a job as a receptionist. Thelma worked hard to make an honest living and to slowly move up the ladder. Almost a decade later, she found a position at a non-profit helping women who were struggling with addiction. “I’ve been distributing the drugs and I’ve been involved in that upper echelon of drug dealing,” Wright says. “And now I’ve had an opportunity to see the destruction that the drugs beget.”
Thelma could empathize with these women. Afterall, while she had profited from trafficking, she had also lost the people closest to her. Not wanting anyone to make the same mistakes, Thelma decided to share her story. She started the Thelma Wright Foundation to empower women and at-risk teens. She regularly tours to speak at high schools and works with juvenile justice services where she stresses “education over incarceration.” If she can help keep other young people from starting a criminal life, she will have achieved her purpose.
While Wright’s story as The Queen of Philly is the stuff of cinema, she was never caught for her criminal activities. She was able to walk-away from drug trafficking and to rebuild her life. Thelma herself says that her own life in the drug game isn’t a tale of glory. Rather, the tragedies she suffered for the high-stakes world of money and love illuminate a complex cautionary tale.
By her own reckoning, “Not all that glitters is gold. People think it’s a glamorous life. It looks that way. But the price you pay—it’s not worth it.”
A life of crime can take many forms. Don’t miss the other articles about Griselda Blanco and Kemba Smith in our special series For Love Or Money, presented by Starz, where we follow three unique women, each of whom had a distinctly different-but true-experience navigating the drug trade.
And speaking of navigating a life of crime, don’t miss the fourth epic season of the Starz Original Series Power, premiering on June 25th. The best part? You still have time to (re)binge seasons 1-3. Get the Starz App and catch up now!
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Let’s face it: a story about the criminal underworld is usually pretty captivating. The adrenaline rush that it provides, the insight into an alternative way of life, the money and luxury, the loss and tragedy. But the best crime stories suck us in, not only because of their dramatic plot twists, but because we begin to care about the characters and people involved.
Over the years, Hollywood has given us numerous examples of criminals who have dynamic personalities and who seem to exude magnetism. Ghost, for example, in the Starz original series Power, is described as “brilliant” and “debonaire;” and we just want to believe that this anti-hero will actually be able to legitimize his business and leave his criminal past behind. Similarly, Kemba Smith, the subject of our story, compared her “smart” and “charming” former boyfriend to Ghost, believing that he also had a special allure, and she hoped that he, too, might just change his trajectory…before her story went terribly wrong.
That’s why we’ve partnered with Starz in anticipation of the upcoming season four premiere of Power to delve into the compelling true stories of drug lords ― and their significant others ― whose charismatic personalities sucked the people who loved them most into a life of crime―a life that ultimately led to devastation.
When the “War on Drugs” intensified across the United States in the 1990s, authorities hunted the little guys on the fringe of narcotic operations just as much as the kingpins themselves. And Kemba Smith, the paramour of drug trafficker Peter Hall, unwittingly risked and almost lost everything for their love—a devotion twisted and fueled by the confusion of violence and passion.
Hall was already moving millions of dollars worth of crack and powder cocaine between New York and Virginia before he met Kemba. She grew up in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, as the only child of attentive parents. The former Girl Scout and school band member did not anticipate love leading her down a path of self-destruction, or how her proximity to the underbelly of Hall’s drug world would force a life on the run and hard time behind bars.
“It came to a point where I was scared of doing the right thing,” Smith told HuffPost.
Nineteen-year-old Smith recognized the tall, thin man around Hampton University before all eyes turned to him entering the coed party—but he wasn’t a student, nor professor. His reputation as a campus womanizer and swaggering drug dealer preceded him in the room abuzz from his presence. While she didn’t speak to him or show him any special attention, Kemba was not immune to Peter Hall’s infectious charisma.
“I was kind of excited that, you know, he even noticed me,” said Smith, who recalled how she admired Hall’s brazen confidence just as much as his cheekbones and smooth Jamaican accent when he flirted with her at the party.
Smith hadn’t dated a drug dealer before and, as she wrote in her memoir Poster Child: The Kemba Smith Story, she kept her heart open—but her eyes and ears shut. In fact, Smith wrote that Hall blindfolded her during their first date so she wouldn’t see exactly where he lived, guarding his base of business operations.
Yet the thrill of becoming the drug dealer’s girlfriend overshadowed the warning signs, Smith said. Peter exposed her to marijuana. He took her on lavish shopping trips, doting on her with expensive jewelry and clothes. Such glamour went way beyond her college student lifestyle, and Hall’s extravagance was intoxicating.
“In my young, naive, little mind, I was thinking, ‘Wow, you know, he must really love me,’” said Smith, who later added: “I felt like people were noticing me and noticing what I was doing, and I felt like I was part of the in-crowd.”
The young Kemba spiraled into a deep devotion to Peter, and she began to lose herself to the man who had a tattoo of a black rose—a symbol, Hall had told her, that meant death.
Smith soon learned that being Hall’s girlfriend came with strict rules and violent consequences. He was prone to jealous and brutal outbursts – citing her protection as his motivation – once even hitting another man over the head with a champagne bottle. Smith herself said she couldn’t shake another man’s hand or look men in the eyes without provoking Hall’s wrath.
In July 1991, Peter’s rage first threatened Kemba’s life. After going to a basketball game in Philadelphia with friends, a man she had just met grabbed Kemba’s hand as she was crossing the street outside of the arena. She looked up to spot Hall on the other side of the street staring at her. When she immediately approached Peter, he didn’t seem to have much of a reaction. But when Kemba and Peter returned to their hotel room, he erupted.
“Peter started going off in a rage, basically saying, ‘I’m going to show you what would have happened to you,’” said Smith, who explained that Peter claimed that the man who had grabbed her hand was planning to lead her into a gang rape. “And he started beating me on my body and straddled my body and strangling me to the point where I thought I was going to die and blood vessels popped all over my face and in my eyeballs.”
Her trauma and shock turned into a numbness that would turn into an abusive pattern. The next morning he cried in her lap and bought her a pearl ring as an apology—manipulation that sent Kemba on an emotional rollercoaster.
“The love that I had for him in the beginning transformed more so to fear” she said.
The manipulative seesaw of fear and loyalty propelled Smith into Hall’s drug game in September of 1991. Hall had been arrested on drug charges in Newport News, Virginia, and an immigration hold kept him from bail. She admits that, during this time, she was deeply under his influence. Hall even drew medicine bottles on the letters that he sent to Kemba, claiming the letter was her “fix.”
He had molded Smith to indirectly help with his drug business during his absence. She had already handled a few secretarial tasks for him, like typing up documents and fake I.D.s, registering utility bills in her name and holding his gun in her purse.
Her only direct involvement in the drug underworld came to fruition two years later in January 1993 when, after being coerced and intimidated, she boarded a plane from North Carolina to New York wearing stacks of money strapped around her waist. She wore a business suit that Hall had selected for her that morning.
“I did say to him, ‘Why, why are you asking me to do this?’” Smith said. “And because of the abuse that had gone on, whenever he would escalate to a certain point, yelling at me…I would freeze because I was scared of past instances of abuse.”
But the beatings did not stop. And when Kemba received a frantic phone call from Hall in the middle of the night a few months later in May 1993, she followed his instructions carefully. Smith wrote that she drove to pick up Hall on the outskirts of Charlotte, North Carolina, where he was waiting in a motel parking lot with a female friend, whom Smith refers to in her memoir as “Katiya.”
Kemba noticed that Peter had blood on his shoes.
Hall and Katiya fled to Atlanta. When Kemba joined them there a few days later at a Hyatt hotel, Hall admitted that the blood that Kemba had seen on his shoes belonged to his friend and business partner. The government’s War on Drugs was turning up the heat on operations, and Hall had suspected that his associate was working with federal agents.
Shocked into submission, Hall let Smith return to her parent’s house in Richmond, Virginia, and coached her on what to say to the authorities. Without snitching, she could clear her own name and also inform Hall about what the agents actually knew. For months, she spoke to Hall only over the phone while she attended Virginia Commonwealth University and worked at the Virginia Housing Development Authority.
Yet, in December of that same year, Hall summoned her again. At Peter’s behest, Kemba failed to show up for work and, instead, skipped town. By that time, Katiya had been arrested in Atlanta and had gone into witness protection. Hall had narrowly escaped capture after a high-speed car chase that had nearly killed an officer and earned Peter Hall a spot on the federal government’s Most Wanted list.
“I was very scared and didn’t know what to expect,” Smith said. “I knew he had taken another person’s life before then and, you know, here I am going off again in another state to go with him and not knowing what’s going to happen, what I’m going to do. And I’m leaving this stable lifestyle that I’ve recreated for myself because I still feel like I’m under his control.”
Smith met up with Hall in Houston, Texas. They had no car, so they walked through the rain to the derelict neighborhood where Peter was staying. When they arrived at the apartment soaking wet, Smith discovered that it had bars on the windows and doors, and a cockroach infestation.
With Katiya arrested, Hall’s fears of her betraying him to the authorities turned obsessive. With a frightened Smith at his side, Hall rented a truck. They searched for Katiya in Arizona and San Diego before settling in Seattle. Hall made them switch apartments every few months and hustled to survive.
Then Kemba discovered she was pregnant. The pregnancy suddenly shifted Kemba’s priorities and she felt empowered to stand up to Hall. When he asked her to steal from a store, she refused. Peter yelled and began to grab her violently, but stopped at the sight of a passing police car. For Kemba, this incident finally served as the wake up call that she needed.
“I knew at that particular point in time that there was no question of whether or not I should leave there for my safety,” she said.
Hall admitted he couldn’t provide for her and the baby. He wanted a better life for his son, Smith said, so he handed her cash and she took the train from Seattle to Richmond where her family was waiting for her…and so were the police.
Four days after her 23rd birthday, Smith turned herself in on September 1, 1994. Smith knew she wouldn’t betray the father of her child. Plus, Hall had convinced her that she was safe since she hadn’t sold drugs or killed anyone.
Yet the War on Drugs didn’t permit leniency, and Smith faced six conspiracy-related charges. The judge ordered her to be remanded for her own safety and she found herself seven months pregnant at the regional jail in Suffolk, Virginia. That’s where one October night two weeks later, Smith said she had a dream that Hall died in her arms.
Her lawyer confirmed the reality: Hall had indeed been shot by a still-unknown person the same weekend that Kemba had her dream.
“I know for a fact that my son saved my life,” Smith said. “I was living in the same place where Peter was found murdered with a bullet in his head. And had I not been pregnant and had he not sent me home and had I not followed through going home, I could have been there with a bullet in my head, too.”
Hall was buried in a pauper’s grave and Smith was still in jail—suffering from labor pains. In December 1994, she gave birth to their son with her ankles shackled to the hospital bed and two U.S. Marshals standing in the room. She spent two days with her newborn son before handing him over to her parents and returning to her jail cell to await her sentencing hearing.
“I was broken,” Smith said.
Through the authorities she had learned a great deal more about the man she had loved, including his aliases, his true age and that he had another child with Katiya. Peter had terrorized her and had physically and emotionally abused her. But, for the sake of her own son, she felt that it was critically important to remember the qualities that had captivated her: his intelligence, his business intuition, and his charisma. It’s crucial to Kemba that her son sees Peter not as a monster, but as a man.
“Some people still, you know, think that he’s like a legend and still out there,” Smith said. “I honestly don’t believe that nowadays. Nothing would surprise me, but I haven’t gone for that conspiracy theory.”
Four months after Peter’s death and the birth of her son, Kemba heard U.S. District Judge Richard Kellam announce her sentence: “294 months.” Her heart dropped. She heard her mother crying. Despite the fact that the prosecuting attorney had stated that Kemba herself had never bought, sold or trafficked any drugs, the judge issued the 24.5-year sentence in a federal prison to set a harsh example.
“I made it a point to have, like, the self-defense mechanism for myself to keep it together,” Smith said. “I refused to believe that I was actually going to spend 24.5 years in prison, longer than I had been living on Earth, and that my son would be a grown man by the time I got out—because had I accepted that, I would have lost it.”
Kemba served her time and kept her hope alive to maintain her sanity. Her parents started a campaign for her release and Kemba Smith’s unfair sentence became a crusade for many who seek criminal justice reform. After 6.5 years, Smith’s prayers were answered—thanks to President Clinton, NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorneys, her parents’ relentless activism and the media frenzy that had risen to support her.
Three days before Christmas, Kemba got word that her sentence was going to be commuted and she would be released. She felt dazed, but the jail was buzzing at the news. “I was scared it wasn’t going to happen,” Smith said. “Eventually I got a call from my case manager to come to the office and, sure enough, there was a document that had been signed by William J. Clinton.”
On December 22, 2000, Smith’s sentence was commuted with five years of supervised release—and she had no qualms. She gave her possessions away to the other inmates and then security locked the prison down to prepare for Smith’s first steps into freedom.
“As I was walking out, all those women were yelling and wishing me well and telling me good luck,” Smith said, her voice thick with emotion. “I knew that some of the women—and I was friends with some of the women yelling at me—deserved to come home, too.”
Smith knew too well that there were many other first-time nonviolent offenders who received excessive sentences just like her own but—unlike her—they were still in prison. Before her indictment, Kemba had never known that conspiracy laws make it possible for individuals who have never handled or sold drugs to be convicted for serious time. Smith wanted to ensure that young people – especially young girls – understand the law and don’t her same mistakes.
Her self-described survivor’s guilt transformed into advocacy for criminal justice reforms, which led her to earning a college degree, testifying before Congress and the United Nations, and even meeting President Obama. She has dedicated her life to lobby for important policy reforms and fights daily against voter suppression laws and unjust drug policies.
Smith hopes her experience, which was fraught with destructive desire, betrayal, tragedy and—ultimately—hope, will chart a course to redemption for others involved in any kind of abusive relationship. She hopes that she can change the story for another young person before they get charmed and intimidated into criminal activity.
“One thing I’ve learned,” Smith said, “is that love shouldn’t lead you to fear or danger.”
A life of crime can take many forms. Don’t miss the other articles about Griselda Blanco and Thelma Wright in our special series For Love Or Money, presented by Starz, where we follow three unique women, each of whom had a distinctly different-but true-experience navigating the drug trade.
And speaking of navigating a life of crime, don’t miss the fourth epic season of the Starz Original Series Power, premiering on June 25th. The best part? You still have time to (re)binge seasons 1-3. Get the Starz App and catch up now!
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
According to NYPD Officer Tim Broadus, criminals — and drug dealers in particular — keep their business practices “in the family — or at least amongst close friends, lovers and significant others.” After all, one would hope that someone you love would be less likely to screw you over, right? But these special business dynamics are fraught with tension. Nothing like a cocktail of illegal activity, money, violence, and emotional baggage to create a stressful situation. Talk about the perfect storm for drama! That’s why we’ve partnered with Starz’ original series Power―in preparation for the upcoming premiere of season 4―to bring you a special written series about women in drug trafficking. We begin with one of history’s most notable drug lords and follow all of the dramatic twists that brought about the end her reign.
Medellín, the second largest city in Colombia, surrounded by the jagged peaks of the Andes Mountains, gained notoriety in the 1980s and 1990s as the largest cocaine producing city in the world. In the grisly underworld of this city, a young girl by the name of Griselda Blanco came of age in the 1950s. Rumors of pickpocketing, prostitution and kidnapping pervade the story of her youth but, indeed, Blanco grew up to become a notorious drug lord so iconic that she was also known by many nicknames, including La Madrina, the Godmother of Cocaine and the Black Widow. A short woman with a round face and cleft chin, Blanco did not look the part of a ruthless crime boss. But the Black Widow earned all of her titles by forging a life that was riddled with narcotics, bloodshed and sex―a story that begins and ends in Medellín.
The South American hotbed of murder and misdeeds set the stage for Blanco’s bloody rise to power alongside her string of paramours. Medellín was where she joined a gang at age 10 and allegedly shot a child of a wealthy local family being held for ransom, according to Oscar Lopez in his Latin Times story. It’s also where fourteen-year-old Blanco first joined the Medellín Cartel, selling marijuana to survive in the slums next to the airport—not coincidentally full of smugglers.
It was sometime in the 1950s when the teenaged Blanco met a handsome street hustler, José Darío Trujillo, whom she would later marry. “Her first husband was a small-time smuggler and trafficker with a long established chain into New York,” Jennie Erin Smith, author of Cocaine Cowgirl: The Outrageous Life and Mysterious Death of Griselda Blanco, the Godmother of Medellín, told HuffPost.
Trujillo, nicknamed Pestañas or “eyelashes,” was a good-looking car washer well known for his charm and his passport forgery business. Blanco had three sons with Pestañas and Smith speculates that he may have been the love of her life. Smith notes in Cocaine Cowgirl that Blanco never spoke badly about Pestañas publicly. She actually lived with Pestañas’s mother until her arrest fifteen years later and kept his surname for the rest of her life.
Yet rumors of murder swirl around each of Blanco’s lovers—Lopez’s Latin Times story suggests that Blanco may have killed lovers and husbands in cold blood over betrayals and business disputes. Smith, however, says Pestañas died of complications related to hepatitis in 1970. The ambiguity surrounding all three of her husbands’ suspicious deaths―and the many myths that each inspired―spawned Blanco’s most provocative nickname: the Black Widow.
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Players In A Dangerous Game
That same year, Blanco joined the big leagues of cocaine trafficking into the U.S. thanks to Pestañas’s friend, Alberto Bravo―a cocaine dealer who converted garment factories into drug labs in Medellín. With Bravo, Blanco birthed a prolific drug ring between New York and Columbia, and he soon became Blanco’s second husband (although Smith claims Blanco later referred to him only as a business partner) a year after her first husband’s death.
Her couriers carried cocaine in suitcases, wigs and lingerie that Blanco had specially designed in a Medellín lingerie shop to hold and conceal the contraband, according to David Ovalle in his Miami Herald story. Ovalle reports that Blanco’s empire at its peak shipped about 3,400 pounds of cocaine per month―worth millions of dollars―via boat and plane between Medellín, Miami and New York.
The couple’s illicit network caught the attention of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency – with agents naming the investigation “Operation Banshee” due to the extraordinary number of female smugglers involved. At the time, it was the largest-ever cocaine-trafficking case, but Blanco escaped indictments in 1975 by fleeing to Medellín.
Back in her hometown, her reputation for violence escalated—as did her influence. She took control of the local airport, Smith writes, bribing police and pilots to monopolize the drug game and forming a gang that would exact her violent demands.
She was known for her nasty temper and, while hosting one of her notoriously debaucherous parties in the mid-‘70s, Blanco allegedly ordered her guards to shoot and kill four men she accused of disloyalty. Ovalle reports that it was during this bloody period when Blanco is credited with devising the first use of motorcycle executions, where one or two riders on motorcycles would drive-by and shower their victim with bullets – a practice that became widely used by drug traffickers. Blanco herself carried a pistol and wielded a reputation for stacking bodies to her advantage.
Another Medellín drug lord who would eclipse Blanco in fame and fortune, narco-terrorist Pablo Escobar, is said to have ordered his men to kill Blanco’s second husband in retaliation for a failed assassination attempt. Bravo was, in fact, killed in a Bogotá shootout, which could have been Escobar― but Richard Luscombe suggests another version of events as reported in The Guardian. Luscombe writes that it was actually Blanco who killed Bravo in a gunfight after suspecting he had been stealing millions of dollars worth of her profits. While Smith argues: “It’s not 100 percent certain that she had Alberto [Bravo] killed. They had a number of enemies by then.” Other myths claim that Bravo had left Blanco to the DEA in New York to save himself and that the Black Widow exacted her revenge.
In the years following Bravo’s death, La Madrina married her third husband, bank robber Darío Sepúlveda, her gunman’s attractive brother. She was likely a few years his senior and Smith describes her love for Sepúlveda as “an infatuation.” She moved to Miami with him under a new name to restart a bigger, deadlier drug ring—an enterprise that would soon bring her tens of millions of dollars per month, Luscombe reports, leaving the bodies of her rivals and debtors in her wake.
“In the Miami years she was using a ton of cocaine herself,” Smith says. “She had this grandiose personality and her acts of violence, and how flagrant they were, made her feel sort of omnipotent.”
Tales of torture, orgies, wars, shootings and even murders by bayonet and bomb consume this period in Blanco’s life. In 1984, Florida officials attributed more than 40 murders to Blanco, although the real number is rumored to be in the hundreds, according to Luscombe. She was also linked to the 1979 submachine gun attack at a Miami mall, Ovalle reports, but was only convicted of three murders: the deaths of two drug dealers and the two-year-old son of the intended target, a former enforcer for Blanco. Yet adhering to her nickname, the Black Widow’s unofficial death toll is widely assumed to include the murder of her third husband―who ended up on her hit list when he kidnapped their son and left her in Miami.
Yet Blanco’s penchant for avoiding the law soon ended when she moved to California. Her sons had expanded the drug game to Orange County, and it was there that police arrested her. But even jail time could not stop the La Madrina and reports from prison whisper of more lovers and failed assassination attempts. “She liked to be a big fish in a little pond and the most glamorous person in the room,” Smith says.
After her sentence, Blanco was deported in 2004 back to Medellín where she would spend the last eight years of her life. By this point, the Black Widow had sworn off men and was living with a woman in a comfortable house in her hometown. Her habitual drug use combined with aging and the death of her sons took a toll, causing her rapid decline into bouts of hypochondria and obsessive vanity.
On September 3, 2012, authorities in Medellín reported that a mysterious assassin on a motorcycle shot 69-year-old Blanco once in the forehead and once in the shoulder while she walked out of a butcher shop. The method of her demise seems to be the last tragic irony: ending the legacy of the Cocaine Godmother of Medellín in the backdrop of the very town that had made her legendary, by her own invention.
A life of crime can take many forms. Don’t miss the other articles about Thelma Wright and Kemba Smith in our special series For Love Or Money, presented by Starz, where we follow three unique women, each of whom had a distinctly different-but true-experience navigating the drug trade.
And speaking of navigating a life of crime, don’t miss the fourth epic season of the Starz Original Series Power, premiering on June 25th. The best part? You still have time to (re)binge seasons 1-3. Get the Starz App and catch up now!
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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