Latest news with #paranoia
Daily Mail
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Chilling mystery of the missing teenage Scarface actress whose final months were consumed by paranoia someone was 'coming to get her' after witnessing something 'distressing' at a Hollywood wrap party
As the 1980s got into full swing and Tammy Lynn Leppert turned 18, the model and actress who starred alongside Al Pacino had the world at her feet. But the Florida-born starlet's rise to fame was abruptly stopped in 1983 when she vanished from Cocoa Beach. More than four decades on, no sign has ever been recovered of Tammy Lynn, while her loved ones remain haunted by chilling details of her final months before her disappearance which were marred by paranoia. In the years since she vanished, Tammy Lynn's friends have revealed the actress had become 'fearful' and was a 'different person' after witnessing something distressing at a cast party on the set of Spring Break, a sex comedy film directed by Sean S. Cunningham. So intense was her paranoia that when Tammy's big break came with a small role in gangster movie Scarface, in which she played a bikini-clad girl who distracted a lookout car, she hysterically ran off set in tears after watching the cast act out a murder scene. After the incident, she quit the film altogether and moved back home with her mother. While film fans may not remember Tammy Lynn's fledgling career, they will likely recognise the bikini body used to promote Spring Break, which is thought to be her torso and legs. Tammy Lynn Leppert began modeling in beauty pageants at the age of four, taking home 280 crowns from the 300 pageants she entered. Throughout her teenage years she worked primarily as a model before dipping her toes into acting shortly before she went missing. And her star was rising fast after landing the role of a boxer in the 1983 comedy Spring Break - before a fateful cast party after filming had wrapped changed the course of her life forever. Tammy Lynn attended the party unaccompanied but, according to her friend Wing Flannagan, she came home 'a different person'. She refused to divulge exactly what she saw on the night of the party, but kept insisting 'they' would come after her. She also refused to eat or drink out of fear that she would be poisoned. In the weeks following her departure from Scarface, Tammy Lynn's mental health began to decline even further. She reportedly smashed all the windows of her house with a baseball bat when she was locked out, in a frantic panic to get back in. Her mother, Linda Curtis, who was a theatrical and modeling agent and guided Tammy's career, saw the change in her daughter and has since revealed she expressed fears that someone was trying to kill her. Linda recalled: 'Then she said Mom, what would you say if I told you somebody was trying to kill me. I just took a deep breath, and I said, 'do you think somebody's trying to kill you, Tammy?' She said, 'yes.' Linda checked her daughter into a mental health facility, where an evaluation revealed that Tammy was not abusing drugs or alcohol. It was also determined Tammy did not suffer from any significant mental illness and she was released after a 72-hour observation. She insisted that Tammy should report her safety concerns to the police, however even though she did go to the police she did not mention that she felt her life was in danger. For two weeks Tammy went into isolation at home, staying in her room and getting people to test her food to see if it had been poisoned. A frightened Linda was unsure if her daughter's fears were paranoid delusions or real concerns. She was adamantly insisting that she had 'seen something awful, that she was not supposed to see' at the Spring Break cast party. However things took an even more bizarre turn when Tammy left her house without brushing her hair, which her mother found to be out of character, to meet a male friend, Keith Roberts. Tammy and Keith drove to the local beach where, according to Detective Jim Skragg of the Cocoa Beach, Florida Police Department, they started to argue. Keith told authorities he left Tammy in the car park at the Glass Bank building in Cocoa Beach, near an Exxon gas station on State Road A1A, which was about five miles from her house. According to Detective Skragg, it was the last time she would be seen alive. When her daughter never returned home, Linda made a missing person report to police on July 11, 1983. According to the police report, she was wearing a blue shirt with floral appliques, a blue denim skirt, carrying a gray purse and wearing flip-flops. In the days after her disappearance, local newspaper Florida Today ran a front page article with the headline Have You Seen Tammy-Lynn? Keith gave an interview in which he said Tammy Lynn had called him and asked him to pick her up on the day she went missing. She asked to borrow $300 and they fought because he would not drive her to a friend's home in Fort Lauderdale. He said: 'At that point, she said, 'Let me out! Let me out!' So I just said 'OK, whatever you want' and that's the last time I saw her.' After getting out of the car Tammy Lynn walked a short distance to a local petrol station where she made three frantic telephone calls to her aunt Ginger Kolsch, who never answered the phone. Tammy Lynn's sister Suzanne previously said she thought Tammy might have been three months pregnant at the time of her disappearance but this was never confirmed. Meanwhile her friends told police that they thought she had run away because she was unhappy with her home life. Linda claimed she didn't believe her daughter 'ran away,' as she had made plans to go to Hollywood for three months to shoot films. This theory strengthened when shortly after Tammy's disappeared, the Cocoa Beach police received a call from an anonymous woman claiming to know Tammy, who said she was 'alive and well'. She insisted that the actress had chosen to abandon her life and was attending school to become a nurse. Some other rumours that circulated suggested that Tammy might have been a victim of a serial killer. Vampire rapist John Crutchley, suspected of killing 30 women, moved to Brevard County in 1983. However in 2002, Crutchley committed suicide while in prison. A second suspect was Christopher Bernard Wilder, a roaming serial killer who had killed at least 12 women between California and Florida in early 1984. Wilder lured his victims by telling them that he was a photographer for a magazine. He was killed by police when he resisted arrest. Linda passed away on October 4, 1995 at the age of 54, never knowing what had happened to her daughter. To this day, 42 years on, Tammy Lynn remains missing and police have no new leads over her disappearance.
Arab News
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab News
Review: ‘The Eternaut' — compelling post-apocalyptic sci-fi from Argentina
DUBAI: At first, it seems like 'The Eternaut' is going to be a climate-crisis-focused piece. It's summer and Buenos Aires is boiling in more ways than one — demonstrations against government incompetence rage on the streets while power cuts only increase the oppressive heat felt by residents. Then a sudden fall of deadly radioactive snow kills hundreds of thousands instantly. The snow continues to fall as survivors quickly work out that to venture outside without full body cover and masks is to guarantee death. A small group of middle-aged friends were enjoying their regular poker night when the snow began to fall, and it is on them that the series centers — particularly Juan Salvo, a veteran of the war between Argentina and the UK over the Falkland Islands (or the Malvinas, as they're called in Argentina). There are many other survivors, including people in the neighborhood they've known for years, and the show does a fine job of exploring the escalating paranoia as people accustom themselves to their new reality and realize that their acquaintances are potentially as deadly as the snow. There are echoes of the source material's political edge too, as the line between neighbor and enemy blurs. Juan (a convincingly grizzled Ricardo Darin) manages to find his ex-wife, but their daughter, Clara, is missing — she was at a friend's house when the snowstorm started. Much of the first two episodes is taken up with Juan's unsuccessful search for her. The starkly beautiful cinematography is often breathtaking, and the claustrophobia is palpable, both in the houses of the survivors and in the suits they must wear to go anywhere. Halfway through the six episodes, though, there's a grinding shift of gears. The apocalypse, it tuns out, was actually the result of an alien invasion, the first wave of which involves giant bugs. Juan's super-smart friend Tano correctly predicts that the bugs are controlled by something more sinister. That sudden shift means the enjoyable slow-burn grittiness of the opening episodes is lost, as the show becomes more CGI-action-based. It's still gripping, but what had promised to be a unique standout fades into something far more generic.
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Embattled NY AG Letitia James claims she's being followed on Trump's orders: ‘Revenge tour!'
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. New York Attorney General Letitia James ranted to a crowd that she's being followed on the orders of President Trump – days before reports surfaced that Trump's Department of Justice had actually launched a criminal probe into mortgage fraud claims against her. 'They got individuals coming to my house, standing outside my house. Last Sunday – church Sunday while I was in church – these individuals were in front of my house, taking pictures and then streaming it, putting it on social media,' she said during a May 3 rally at Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network headquarters in Harlem. 'This isn't nothing more than a revenge tour! This is nothing more than vindictiveness! This is nothing more than an individual who is upset at me because we secured a $454 million judgment against him and his family and his company!' added James, who attended the rally to promote City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams' longshot mayoral campaign. James — who has been the subject of Trump's ire after she marshaled a civil fraud trial against him and his Trump Organization that ended with the massive judgment that he is appealing — didn't say whether she believes she's being tailed at her Brooklyn home or the shadowy property she owns in Norfolk, Va. The DOJ and the White House declined to comment on James' remarks. She declined through a spokesperson to say which social media posts she was referring to or expand on her remarks. The investigation is being done at the request of Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte, a Trump appointee who alleges James falsified records to meet certain lending requirements to receive favorable loan terms. James misrepresented the number of units in her Brooklyn home and falsely stated that the Norfolk home is her principal residence, the feds allege. James' lawyer Abbe David Lowell called the allegations 'baseless and long-discredited.' 'This appears to be the political retribution President Trump threatened to exact that [U.S. Attorney General Pam] Bondi assured the Senate would not occur on her watch' he said. 'If prosecutors are genuinely interested in the truth, we are prepared to meet false claims with facts.' Of her remarks last week, longtime Democratic political consultant Hank Shienkop'It also shows she is prepared to mount a political defense as well as probably a legal defense,' said. 'She's doing whatever she can to alert people who support her . . . which gins up that audience and gets them excited. It makes them ready to fight.' The Department of Justice opened a criminal probe into mortgage fraud claims against James, reports on Thursday said.
Irish Times
06-05-2025
- Irish Times
‘You're getting a chance': Man given suspended sentence for ramming gates at Leinster House and Áras an Uachtaráin with van
A man who was suffering from a paranoid delusion when he rammed gates at Leinster House and Áras an Uachtaráin last year has been warned that he will end up in prison if he repeats his offending. David O'Callaghan (41), of the Fairways, Woodbrook Glen, Bray, Co Wicklow, caused more than €60,000 of damage after he drove at the gates of Leinster House, the Custom House and Áras an Uachtaráin, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard. O'Callaghan pleaded guilty to driving into the rear gates of Leinster House and two counts of criminal damage, all on August 2nd last. He told gardaí that a person he believed to be his father was 'spiking' and spraying poison in his food and bedroom. He claimed he had been communicating with the President about this and decided to crash into the gates of the Áras to stop it. He said he did not want to get inside, only to cause damage. READ MORE O'Callaghan has since been diagnosed with schizophrenia and is receiving treatment. He has 11 previous convictions, including for drug offences. After hearing the facts of the case last month, Judge Martin Nolan directed the Probation Service to compile conditions for supervising O'Callaghan. He on Tuesday imposed a four-year prison sentence, which he suspended on strict conditions including that O'Callaghan place himself under the supervision of the Probation Service for 21 months. 'You're getting a chance, principally by reason of your underlying problems, but any repeat and you will end up in prison,' the judge said. He said O'Callaghan would be brought back before the court if he offended during the term of the suspended sentence. Garda Niamh McCarthy previously told Oisín Clarke BL, prosecuting, that O'Callaghan drove a white Ford Transit van to Chesterfield Avenue, did a U-turn in front of the entrance gates of Áras an Uachtaráin and reversed into and breached them before driving away. The gates were inoperable for a period afterwards, with repairs costing €4,795. O'Callaghan then went to the Custom House, where he drove into gates and reversed out and then turned and reversed into them a second time. Some €2,000 worth of damage was caused. A few minutes later, a garda on duty at the rear of Leinster House heard a loud crash, then metal hitting the ground. He saw a vehicle reversing from the gates towards Merrion Street Upper. A short time later, the garda heard two further crashes and then noticed a van stopped near the Department of the Taoiseach and that a set of gates at the Ministers' Entrance were off their hinges. The court heard O'Callaghan struck the perimeter gate at the Department of the Taoiseach with such force that the airbags deployed and the van was inoperable afterwards. O'Callaghan then got out of the van and appeared he had his phone and was recording. More than €52,000 damage was caused to the three sets of gates at Leinster House. He told gardaí at the scene that he had been driving the van and he admitted crashing into the gates at Leinster House, Customs House and Áras an Uachtaráin. He also said he had consumed alcohol and cocaine earlier that evening. After his arrest, O'Callaghan told gardaí he had reversed into a vehicle parked in the forecourt of Windsor Motors, Bray, before he drove to Áras an Uachtaráin. The court was told that extensive damage was caused to the vehicle. In total, some €60,000 worth of damage was caused, not including that to the vehicle in the Bray forecourt. Garda McCarthy told the court that O'Callaghan was co-operative and entered an early guilty plea. She agreed with John Berry SC, defending, that emails were found on O'Callaghan's phone which indicated he had a paranoid delusion that his food had been spiked and he had been poisoned for three years.
