L.A. County approves $4-billion sex abuse settlement, largest in U.S. history
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history on Tuesday, agreeing to pay $4 billion to victims abused as children in county-run juvenile facilities and foster homes.
The vote is the culmination of years of fighting by victims, who argued that no one had paid the price for the rampant sexual abuse they said they suffered in county custody. The settlement includes nearly 7,000 claims, most of which involve alleged abuse from the 1980s through the 2000s.
'I never would have imagined persons hired to be the safety net and care for the most vulnerable could or would abuse their position and power in this way,' said Supervisor Kathryn Barger. 'It angers and sickens me.'
The thousands of claims tell the story of a county government that did little to screen for abusers, allowing a sprawling network of facilities for young people to become hunting grounds for predators. Victims said staffers were seldom disciplined for preying on vulnerable kids.
'We have to remember the people who are being compensated were victims of horrific abuse and rapes,' said Adam Slater, a lead plaintiffs' attorney in the settlement. 'This will hopefully give them some measure of closure and the ability to move on with their lives.'
The settlement dwarfs the most infamous sex abuse settlements. The Boy Scouts settlement was for $2.46 billion. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has paid out about $1.5 billion to victims of abuse by Catholic priests. Victims of USC gynecologist George Tyndall got $1.1 billion, and Michigan State University paid $500 million to victims of team doctor Larry Nassar.d
L.A. County, which has a roughly $48-billion budget, has said it will pay for the mammoth settlement by taking out bonds and draining its rainy day fund. All the money will be made available to victims in the next five years, while the county expects to be paying for the bonds for the next 25 years.
'We are going to be paying hundreds of millions of dollars that could be invested into the communities, into parks, libraries, beaches, public social services, until 2050,' said L.A. County Chief Executive Officer Fesia Davenport.
The county has taken several steps to try and prevent abuse, Davenport has said, including bolstering the vetting of foster parents and probation staffers and winding down the use of group homes.
The supervisors approved the settlement 4-0, with Lindsey Horvath absent.
Supervisor Holly Mitchell said Tuesday that she wants to make it easier to fire workers credibly accused of sexual abuse, while Supervisor Janice Hahn floated the idea of tying department heads' salary, in part, to their work cracking down on alleged abuse.
'They've got to feel like this rests with them,' said Hahn.
The historic vote came as roughly 55,000 county workers entered the first full day of a two-day strike, accusing the county of slow-rolling contract negotiations and bringing paltry offers to the bargaining table. Davenport has said it would be reckless to offer big raises, considering the sex abuse settlement, an estimated $2 billion in wildfire costs and threats from the Trump administration to slash millions in federal funding.
Slater, whose firm represents about 3,500 victims in the settlement, said former L.A. County Superior Court Judge Louis Meisinger will be leading the allocation process to decide how much of the $4 billion pie each victim receives. Slater said the money will be doled out starting in January.
The historic settlement arose from Assembly Bill 218, a 2020 state law that gave victims of childhood sexual abuse more time to sue, even though the statute of limitations had expired. For L.A. County, which ran dozens of facilities that confined and cared for juveniles, the law kickstarted a deluge of litigation that still hasn't stopped.
Thousands came forward to describe sexual abuse at the now-closed MacLaren Children's Center, a county-run home for foster youth now infamous for staffers who drugged and molested kids in their care. A report found that the facility had gone decades without conducting criminal background checks on its staff.
'The system has been too lax,' said Supervisor Hilda Solis, who called MacLaren a 'stain' on the county.
Jimmy Vigil, a 45-year-old mental health case manager, said he was repeatedly abused by a physician at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, where he was imprisoned as a teenager. Vigil, who sued the county and is expected to receive money from the settlement, was later sent to a camp in Lancaster, where another staff member forced all the boys to masturbate in a control room. The boy who ejaculated first was supposed to yell 'Bingo,' Vigil said.
When he complained, Vigil said, he landed in solitary confinement.
'These people should be in jail,' said Vigil. 'There's no amount of money in the world that is going to undo what they did, that is going to wipe that away from a human being's memory.'
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More than a quarter of a century after its release, Kevin Smith's Dogma remains one of the most ambitious and inventive films about spirituality Hollywood ever made. Smith's fourth film, it took the signature, wisecracking verbosity of Clerks, Mallrats, and Chasing Amy and combined it with the filmmaker's interpretation of the Catholic beliefs by which he'd been raised. 'Woke' before the term existed, Dogma featured a female God, a Black Jesus (at least, according to a Black Apostle), and a series of increasingly unconventional portrayals of other divine figures. Yet armed with a killer cast that includes Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Linda Fiorentino, Alan Rickman, Chris Rock, Salma Hayek, and Alanis Morrissette (as God, naturally), today the film has endured as a surprisingly reverent — and to many viewers, relatable — portrait of religious faith, interrogated and restored in a journey that culminates in the filmmaker's hometown of Red Bank, N.J. More from GoldDerby 'Raw nerve fear': 'The Boys' team open up about filming the final season while ice skating Gary Oldman on 'Slow Horses' being 'an extraordinary show to work on' and 'one of the highlights of my career' Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate on playing best friends in 'Dying for Sex': 'It was love at first sight' For better or worse, it was also the third of Smith's films distributed by Miramax Pictures, who retained ownership even after cofounder Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years' incarceration for rape. After several failed negotiations, event cinema and distribution company Iconic Events acquired the rights to Dogma and announced a limited theatrical rerelease for this month. Ahead of the repertory screenings across the U.S. and Canada, which began June 5, Smith spoke to Gold Derby about the experience of reclaiming one of the biggest films of his career. 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But ultimately, we defaulted on the side of "let's show them the movie they remember." When we go to home video and we do a steelbook and stuff, that's when we can absolutely integrate the scenes again — if folks want that. I'm personally always of the mind that, whatever went out, that was the director's cut, and I didn't want people to be sitting in the theater going, "I don't remember this." Quentin Tarantino called your previous film, , a great leap forward for you as a director. Did that reaction embolden you as you started making this film? Dogma was always more ambitious than the talent behind the film, i.e., myself. I started writing it before Clerks, and it was called God — very ambitious. It was the movie that I always knew we were going to have to do a bunch of stuff before this ever happens. You needed some money to tell that story. I remember when I shared it with Affleck, he came down here to Red Bank to hang out and then he was like, "Can you drive me home to Boston?" I was like, "No, you can take a train." He goes, "But I don't have nothing to do on the train." And I was like, "You got 60 pages of that Chasing Amy script you could read — that I wrote for you." And he's like, "Yeah, but that ain't gonna last me to Connecticut. What else you got?" So I said, "Well, I got this old script called Dogma that I wrote and it's 250 pages." When he got home, he called me up. I was like, "How was Chasing Amy?" He goes, "Guy falls in love with a lesbian? Great. But this Dogma movie, man, that's pimp. Can I be Bartleby? And I said, "The only way that movie gets made is if we cast a major movie star. There's no way they let you play Bartleby." So we went and made Chasing Amy and then we also co-executive produced Good Will Hunting, me and Scott Mosier, and that worked out like crazy. And since Ben and Matt wanted to do Dogma next, that was the only time I had enough juice and influence and cast to pull the trigger on that movie and have somebody finance it. And I'll never forget the first day we were shooting with Ben — right before we roll, he looks over at me and goes, "I guess I'm a major movie star now." It sounds like producing opened a lot of the doors that didn't. It was always going to be an uphill battle getting it made — never mind the content — just in terms of it was beyond my directorial abilities. We were supposed to do it for $4 million, but because Good Will Hunting had done so well, we were able to talk Miramax into upping it to $10 million. So, by that point, even though people like Quentin said nice things about Chasing Amy, having been to both sides of the spectrum, I never even believed the good stuff on Clerks. Thank God, otherwise, I would have been suicidal after the bad stuff on Mallrats. So, it was just me going, "We've got to go for it now, whether I'm ready for it or not." You had made your debut at a similar time as Quentin and other indie upstarts. Were you comparing notes at all? 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It turned out to be, but I thought it was a pretty reverent flick. But going into it, Pulp Fiction was a massive model because we had just seen it in Cannes. In fact, that's when it went from God to Dogma, after I saw Pulp Fiction and I was like, "You can switch tones on a dime like that." I remember being like, "I can't wait to go home and redraft Dogma." So it went from being God to Dogma, it became more violent and also [had more] tonal shifts. So, it owes a lot to Pulp Fiction — the bravado, the bravery of what Quentin did with his storytelling in that movie. I'm trying to think what other movies ... A Man for All Seasons, the Fred Zimmerman movie. Honestly, I never knew this but Linda Fiorentino pointed it out when we were making the movie, she was like, "Kevin, structurally, it's absolutely The Wizard of Oz." And I'm not an Oz kid and I have nothing but appreciation for it, but it was undeniable when she said it, whether I knew it or not. Iconic Events The film offers a sort of 'legalese' version of scripture and religious beliefs. Roger Ebert had said, 'You don't need a catechism to see the movie, but it really helps.' It's crazy, this is a movie that unveiled a lot of Catholic school kids across my life. Roger Ebert was definitely one. Years later when I was on The Colbert Show, [Stephen] Colbert came in and started quoting the movie and knew it fairly well. But the weirdest person that ever reached out to me was a guy who was like, "I know your buddy Affleck and he gave me your email address and I saw your movie Dogma because of him. I thought it was absolutely wonderful, but I need to know what Jesuits you studied under because, clearly, this is the work of Jesuit teaching. Please get back in touch with me. Signed, Tom Clancy." How much of that approach was born of your own growing skepticism about religion? Interestingly enough, I've been watching it every night because I'm on tour with the movie, and what I love about the movie is it plays like a prayer, like a child's prayer — or a stoner child's prayer, to say the least. And I tell the kids every night, "This was the young me's version of expressing his faith." I'd sat in church my whole life and nobody seemed to celebrate their faith, they all seemed to be mourning it. This is my idea of what church could be: church with butt-f--king jokes in it. So, when I watch it, I see what the kid who made it, who wrote it and directed it was after, this was his prayer. And I remember making the movie and [George] Carlin, we're the third act and it's outside the church when all hell's about to break loose. So, right before we go, Carlin, a good old lapsed Catholic himself was like, "Hey, man, what is the plot here?" And I'm explaining the whole thing to him and he's looking at me the way an adult looks at a kid when a kid overexplains Star Wars. And finally he goes, "You really believe in all this shit, don't you?" And I was like, "Yeah, I was raised Catholic. You were raised Catholic, you don't?" And he goes, "No, I'm smarter than that." And so, that was the beginning of the end. I'm certainly not laying my lack of faith at Carlin's feet but, when the smartest person you ever met starts asking you questions like that, it was tough to hold up in the face of that scrutiny. You mentioned the inspiration of Tarantino and the bravado of . But so much of the violence takes place off camera. Not enough talent to pull off good violence. John Woo, once you see a John Woo scene, once you see even a Robert Rodriguez action scene, I'm like, "I can't do that." So, most of the movie, all the violence happens off camera because, well, I can't make it look cool. But it is a movie that purports to contain dialogue but, really, it's just a bunch of characters monologuing at one another, constantly expository. Everyone is explaining this movie to everyone else in the movie. As I watch it every night, I'm like, "My God, they're talking a lot," and that's because somebody always has to be explaining what's going on. I think, if I were to do it now, I wouldn't feel the need to overexplain things, particularly because we live in the age of information. But we were in a pre-internet age. I was like, "I'm really going to have to explain all this Catholicism stuff for people that don't know about it." But the audience largely wound up being people who are like, "Been there." You mentioned Robert Rodriguez's advice going into this. How have you felt your own visual style has evolved, and was this film an important exercise in that trajectory for you? Yeah. The camera moved more than it ever had previously in a Kevin Smith movie and so, because of that, today I can recognize like, "Oh, that's when I started taking seriously the craft of filmmaking." Prior to that, I was very Hal Hartley influenced, Jim Jarmusch — one shot, mise-en-scène, let's let all the acting happen in front of the camera to show off how good the actors are. And then you grow up and you realize, "It's more cinematic if I cut to somebody else and then cut back." Clerks or Mallrats, even Chasing Amy, they're more hangout movies. But Dogma is, from the jump, we're all rushing to get to a place and there there's going to be a third act and stuff. So, based on that alone, it also changed my storytelling. And even somebody who's the world's biggest Kevin Smith critic — and that would be me — can see I grew as a filmmaker. It's not like between that movie and now, I have become Chris Nolan. But I certainly started paying more attention and treating it more seriously. Once again, I wasn't prepared for the ride to go on that long so didn't know I'd have to learn my lenses or anything like that. Iconic Events You have a murderer's row cast in this, including Damon, Affleck, Carlin, Linda Fiorentino, Salma Hayek, Jason Lee, Alan Rickman, and Chris Rock. At the time or in retrospect, who was the linchpin you knew the rest of the movie could congeal around? Rickman was a huge get for us — and we didn't reach out for Alan. I never would have been so presumptuous as to think that Rickman would ever work with me. But I got a call from John Gordon who worked at Miramax and he goes, "You'll never believe who came in today: Alan Rickman." I said, "Hans f--king Gruber was in the building, man? Did he blow it up and shit?" And he goes, "No, we were trying to talk him into being in this new Merchant Ivory movie, but all he wanted to do was talk about whoever made Chasing Amy." And I was like, "Bro, he would be amazing as the voice of God. Could you imagine, Alan Rickman?" And so, we sent it to him, fastest yes I ever got from an actor outside of Jason Mewes. And when we had that guy, we were like, "What else is possible?" So, emboldened, I reached out for George Carlin. It sounds like he didn't sign on as quickly. We called his manager Jerry, I said, "Hey, man, I'm Kevin Smith. This is Scott Mosier. We made Chasing Amy." He goes, "I don't know what that is." I said, "We co-executive produced a movie called Good Will Hunting. We're making the new Ben and Matt movie, man, and we want George to be in it." And he goes, "You want George to be a comedian in a Ben and Matt movie?" I said, "No, we want him to be an actor, he would be playing a Catholic cardinal." He goes, "F--k, George will love that sh-t." So, I was supposed to meet George that night on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, we were both going to be on the show. So, Jerry was like, "Bring the script. I'll introduce you." But between the time I hung up and the night we were going to do the gig, [George's] wife passed away. So I told Jerry, "Here's the script. Give it to him when you can, no rush whatsoever. Please pass on my condolences." And the next day Jerry called up and he was like, "Can you meet with him Friday at the Four Seasons for lunch at noon?" I was like, "God, yes." And when he came in, I said, "I'm a massive fan." He goes, "I can tell, because I read your script." I was like, "What'd you think?" and he goes, "I kind of feel responsible for it." I was like, "Well, yes, you're a very big influence." He goes, "Influence? Kevin, there are some scenes I think I deserve co-screenwriting credit." Iconic Events However serious Carlin may have been, was it smooth sailing from there? I was like, "If you come do the movie with us, I'd be happy to talk about [screenwriting credit]." And he goes, "Well, we got a bit of a problem. … I'd love to do a movie that fucks with the church, but, as you know, my wife passed away recently." I was like, "I know, I'm so sorry." He goes, "Me too. She was a cool lady, I'm going to miss her. For that reason, I'm not ready to take off my wedding band. And I know I'd be playing a Catholic cardinal so I can't be wearing a wedding band in your movie. So we're at an impasse." He's going, "Then I thought, if I put a band-aid around my wedding band, then I could be in the movie. What do you think?" I was like, "This is the most beautiful shit I ever heard. You could wear as many band-aids as you want." And he came in and joined us, man, and gave us a killer performance. He was such a method actor, it was crazy, he treated it so seriously. When I mentioned I was doing this interview, my wife immediately said, "The greatest choice that he ever made was casting Alanis Morissette as God." Originally, it was going to be Emma Thompson. When we first got Alan Rickman, he goes, "Oh, my friend would have a blast doing this. Can I ask her?" I said, "Who's your friend?" He goes, "Emma Thompson." I was like, "Oh, my God, yes. Do you have other friends? Bring them all." So, for a red-hot minute, Emma Thompson was our God, so much so that there's a ShoWest Reel that has a cast list before we shot a single frame of film made up of footage from other movies and stuff — and at the end it says '…and Emma Thompson as God.' Emma Thompson eventually pulled out, and then I had reached out to Alanis because Alanis, early on, after I made Chasing Amy, I had asked her if she wanted to be in the movie and she went off to India. When she came back, she called me up and said, "I'm back from India. I'm writing an album, and I remember you asking me to be in your movie. So if there's anything left in the movie, I would love to come play with you." And I said, "Well, there's one small but crucial role that's left wide open: You play God." And she goes, "Why?" And I was like, "I always believed that God would be Canadian." So, she was absolute bliss, man. There's a photo I have of me and Alanis Morissette standing in front of Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash, I'm smoking a cigarette, and it's the most '90s photo I have. Iconic Events The characters all can't seem to agree on how to describe God as male or female. How strategic was that? Well, we always knew that God was going to be a female. If God starts the movie in the form of a male [played by Bud Cort], having the characters play fast and loose with the pronouns was by design because we knew, eventually, we were going to introduce God and it is going to be a woman. And it's so weird because people come out after me on what used to be Twitter, calling me woke and stuff. It's like, "Have you seen Dogma, made in 1999, or Chasing Amy made in '97?" A movie with God as a woman and talking about Jesus being Black could easily be accused of being woke. We made it in '98, but I started writing it in '92. Can you be woke in 1992? I don't know. What epiphanies about faith happened to you as a result of making the film? Or as a result of its endurance as one of your most beloved films? The endurance is the thing that is surprising and wonderful. I thought this movie was so inside baseball — and then you realize a lot of us play baseball, so it can be inside. Just like when I made Clerks, I couldn't understand for years, "I get that it's funny, but why are people liking it?" And it took me decades and I realized everybody has had a shitty job that they hate, so, that movie, you can identify with even if you've never lived a New Jersey life. And it's the same with Dogma. There's a universality to those of us who are members of the Catholic Church and, beyond that, even members of any faith whatsoever. And as my career has gone on, it's diminishing returns, according to some, so it's nice that Dogma is still beloved so much so that we could take it out and tour it. It is a beautiful little victory lap I wouldn't count on by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not one I deserve. The other Kevin Smith, the one who believed in all this, he's the one who should be taking this victory lap. But since he's not here, I get to take it for him. In your language and in your self-portraiture, there's so much self-deprecation. But you have had a successful career. Has it been tough to find a healthy balance in being able to go, "Well, not everybody likes everything I did, but I'm content with what I've accomplished over my 31-year career?" Yeah, absolutely. You get a lot of perspective along the journey and 31 years in, I've met so many people who tell me what my dippy movies mean to them. So, you realize that, as much as you diminish it, honestly how I feel is I got myself in on one of the greatest scams in human history, which is I get to stay an eternal adolescent and make pretend and that's my job. My father, if he was still alive, would be like, "Oh, my God, you beat the system." So, there's an element to it that keeps one absolutely young but, once you start this, you dance as fast as you can because, for the rest of your life, you will chase relevancy. I'm not a drug person, I used to smoke a lot of weed back in the day, but, in terms of things that can make one high in this life, having total strangers be like, "I'm invested in your life and your work and your opinion," well, you don't want to let it go. So, I understand that what I do has value. I diminish it a lot because it is frivolous, and I'm not a serious person. Forgive me for making a goofy pivot, but one person to whom the movie definitely seems to mean something is Kanye West. What a pivot that was, but go ahead. He samples Jay's speech about beautiful women in 'Back to Me.' I'm curious what you thought of the song as a meditation on the actual dialogue that you wrote? I didn't go that deep with it, I'll be honest with you. It came to my attention thanks to the internet, and the first thought I had was, nobody asked for permission. I guess you could just do that. Eventually, I think they wound up paying the people that own Dogma now, but look, it's always nice when the culture notices your work. The timing of this probably could have been better, but I never heard the song. I know Jason Mewes got a few bucks off of it, and that made me happy for him. Dogma was a scale plus 10 movie, so I bet you Jason probably made more of Kanye West using his clip of dialogue than he ever did on anything Dogma related. Iconic Events Notwithstanding Kanye, you have spoken about the Harvey Weinstein of it all several times in the past. How have you been able to reach a sense of peace or separation between what you've created and some of the people who you worked with who history has borne out in less positive ways? Back when the New York Times article happened and the world was introduced to the real Harvey Weinstein, instantly, I put out a tweet about it. All my dreams came true with Clerks, and so, suddenly, I had to know that as much as I benefited, so many people did not. I remember when it happened going, "I guess I have to give up all my movies that had his name on it." And I was prepared to do that in terms of, they're things of the past. But the movie don't belong to the filmmaker. Movie don't belong to even the studio that finances it. Ultimately, the movie belongs to the audience and the audience decides how they feel. So there has been no people being like, "I can't watch this anymore because that dude was involved at one point or something like that," mercifully. But as we head into Dogma, which was a movie that took a long time to wrest from his control, you try not to change anything, but we took his name off. That felt justified. I never thought I'd be the person that stripped somebody's credits from them, but I think he stripped them from himself. Iconic Events You've done a lot of four-walling for your movies over the last 20 or so years. What are your thoughts are about exhibition these days when theaters are struggling and there's so many things competing for audience attention? I play the hand I'm dealt, and I don't make very popular movies because I make Kevin Smith movies — so that means you've got to help. So I accompany my movies out in the world. Now, for that, I get to upcharge ridiculously. They're paying 50 bucks to go watch Dogma and me afterwards too. But you're getting a two-hour movie and a two-hour Q&A so I guess pound for pound, you're getting some money's worth and stuff. But it became a joy because you're in a room with the audience who are overly, vocally, loudly appreciating your work. Now, can every filmmaker do that? Absolutely not. Can most? Yes. Because at the end of the day, people are always curious about who's behind stuff. You just have to be willing to put in the time. Now, I'm an exhibitor as well. So as somebody with skin in the game, we went nonprofit because it's tough out there, really tough. The theatrical model from my point of view is still broke. I was doing some box-office updates last month and the week that The Minecraft Movie came out, we did 435 tickets in the five days ... we're open five days a week. Mondays and Tuesdays we're closed. So that included our opening weekend and stuff; 435 in an AMC in New York City is one movie theater. That was our entire week. So I can upcharge, I can fill a theater and stuff, but I can't do that for normal ass movies, so then I'm at the mercy of what the studios are putting out there, just like everybody else. So when it comes to showing actual movies that I have nothing to do with, it's hard out here for an exhibitor. This interview has been edited and condensed. 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Man mourns death of brother killed in 1977 double homicide; case went unsolved
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) — Time can do some funny things, especially after a loved one is murdered. In 1977, Duane Thomas was 17, and he thought his brother, Amber Thomas, was a man. Amber was just two years older than Duane at 19, but, you know how little brothers are. 'Even to this day, I think of him as a grown man,' Duane said of his brother. Amber was murdered Dec. 7, 1977, at an arcade at 1107 Hillman St. His murder has never been solved. Now 64, Duane realizes his big brother was not really a man — he was only two years older, after all. Yet, it took the passage of time to realize they were probably a lot alike and going through the same things people go through at that age. 'My brother was a very charismatic young man,' said Duane on the phone from Cincinnati, where he is now a substance abuse counselor. He moved to the Queen City after losing his job in Youngstown, but before that, he had lived in the city his whole life, graduating from Hillman Junior High and South High School. He has four children of his own. 'He was very smooth with the ladies, a very well-dressed man,' Duane said of his brother. 'He liked the quick money. He was a really nice guy.' It was a fractured family; Amber was raised by an aunt in Cleveland, and even though he also attended South briefly, he graduated from East Tech High School in Cleveland. After a brief stint in the military didn't work out, Amber was back in Youngstown, living with Duane and their mother in a house on Overland Avenue. Duane also has another brother and a sister. He said he reached out to a reporter after he read a story on another cold case, that of Annie Griffin, whose remains were found in October 2002 on the Sharon Line on the East Side. The story stirred up memories for Duane because it mentioned the cafe Annie's mother ran, Willie Mae's Soul Kitchen, also on Hillman Street, and the scene of a shooting in 1990 that left a man dead. Neither the Soul Kitchen nor the Money Arcade, where Amber was killed, exists. They have been torn down long ago. Duane said his brother worked at the Money Arcade for the man who ran the place, who was killed in the shooting with him. In December 1977, the city was reeling from Black Monday and the loss of almost 5,000 steel jobs in September. There were efforts by steelworkers to buy back some of those mills and run them. The nation was in the midst of a coal strike, and food prices were rising. The city's population was well over 100,000. There were six public high schools and two Catholic high schools. Today, the city's population is just less than 60,000. Locally, the city was bracing for six inches of snow and bitter cold the night Amber's boss picked him up for work. Duane said he wanted to go with them, but his mother said no. Duane was only 17, but his brother was 19 and considered an adult, so he got to go, Duane said. 'I just wish he hadn't gone that night. I wish he had stayed home,' Duane said. 'My brother wanted me to come, too, but my mother wouldn't let me go.' 'The next thing I knew, someone was knocking on my door, waking my mom to come with them.' According to the Dec. 8, 1977, edition of the Vindicator, Amber and his boss were found shot to death about 11:30 p.m. the night before by two customers who walked through the front door. Both victims were shot in the head. The newspaper said police found six .25-shell casings on the floor. Amber's boss was well known to city police and had at least 30 prior arrests for gambling and running 'cheap joints,' the newspaper said. About $20,000 worth of stolen merchandise was also found inside — so much that it took police four pages of paper to inventory it all. Called out to investigate the case was Lt. Eugene Sabatino and Detective Clarence Greene. Sgt. Jerry Tekac, along with Patrolmen Tim Maloney and Phil Rogers, were the responding officers, with Tekac being the shift supervisor. Peter Novosel was called out to process the crime scene, but there is no mention of whether he was called out or was already on duty. At the time, the Crime Lab was staffed in the evening hours. The coroner's investigator who responded and declared both men dead was William Melage. The people who discovered the bodies told police they walked inside and called out for the owner, but no one answered. One of them went to the restroom, and when he came back, he discovered both bodies. He then called the operator, who informed police, which is how things worked in the days before 911. The newspaper said a source theorized that someone had a problem with Amber's boss and that Amber just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the shooter — or shooters — did not want to leave a witness. In a report by Greene, he wrote that the cash register was open and change had been scattered on the floor. Greene also wrote that Duane's boss was known to have a roll of money and a handgun on him at all times. Neither was with him when his body was found. It also appeared that no one had forced their way inside. Police also took two tips in the week preceding the murders, according to reports, but how or if they were followed up on is not known. Also, about a week later, Patrolman Donald Ruse was called to an abandoned 2007 Hillman St. apartment building, where a crew from East Ohio Gas was taking out a meter when they found a wallet and other items that were on the floor. Inside the wallet was a driver's license. Also found was an AAA card, papers, and two pocket phone books. A report said the items were linked to the murder of Amber's boss. Duane said his mother was never the same after Amber died. She died about eight years ago, Duane said. 'My mother never recovered,' Duane said. 'She very rarely left the house. She died with a lot of guilt.' Duane also had a hard time dealing with Amber's death, turning to alcohol to dull the pain. 'I did a lot of drinking,' he said. 'That's how I dealt with my grief.' No matter how long ago it was, Duane has never forgotten his brother. 'My brother meant something to me,' Duane said. 'He's been gone a long time, but I still think of my brother. I have his picture on my desk.' This story is part of a series of cold cases that WKBN is examining. Do you have a cold case that you'd like us to look into further? Anyone with information on the Dec. 7, 1977, deaths of Amber Thomas and Shed Bell, Jr., can call the city police department Detective Bureau at 330-742-8911 or 330-746-CLUE. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
