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In the news
Compiled from Times wires Famous Lennon picture soldA photograph of John Lennon's spectacles, bloodstained from when he was fatally shot outside his New York apartment building, sold at auction Wednesday in London for about $13,000. The image was taken by his wife, Yoko Ono, and is one of six such prints. It shows Lennon's trademark round spectacles beside a glass of water on a table set against the window of the couple's apartment in the Dakota building near Central Park, revealing a blurred view of the Manhattan skyline in the background. Lennon was shot to death outside the apartment in December 1980. Ono used the photo as the cover illustration for her album Season of Glass, which she released eight months after Lennon's death. The buyer was anonymous. The seller was Johnnie Walker, a fundraiser for Artist Residencies of Tokyo, a nonprofit organization that helps support Japanese artists. Walker bought the photo from Ono in a private sale and agreed to abide by her wish that he would sell it only to raise money for the group.
Rapper's killing back in spotlightMore than five years have passed since the shooting death of superstar rapper Christopher Wallace, known as Biggie Smalls, on a busy Los Angeles street in front of dozens of witnesses, and there have been no arrests, no suspects named. Now, a lawsuit filed last week and a book published this month make a similar allegation concerning the apparent lack of progress in the case: The Los Angeles Police Department has deliberately ignored leads that implicate its officers. Those leads, both documents argue, would take detectives into the scandal-plagued department and link rogue cops with Death Row Records and its founder, convicted felon Suge Knight, who was engaged in a grudge match with Wallace's record company. The police captain who is supervising the case denied the allegations and said his detectives were continuing to pursue an investigation. Such allegations have appeared in published reports in the past few years. What's new is the degree of detail offered by the book and lawsuit in support of their claims. In the civil lawsuit, filed April 9 against the city of Los Angeles, Police Chief Bernard Parks and two former chiefs, lawyers for Wallace's family claim "deliberate indifference" to the rap star's death. The book, LAbyrinth, by journalist Randall Sullivan, alleges that the department was unwilling to take a hard look at the case because the officers who would have been implicated were black.
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From the wire |
