title: Nihonium

text: Significant 6d involvement is expected in the Nh–Au bond, although it is expected to be more unstable than the Tl–Au bond and entirely due to magnetic interactions. This raises the possibility of some transition metal character for nihonium. On the basis of the small energy gap between the 6d and 7s electrons, the higher oxidation states +3 and +5 have been suggested for nihonium. Some simple compounds with nihonium in the +3 oxidation state would be the trihydride (NhH), trifluoride (NhF), and trichloride (NhCl). These molecules are predicted to be T-shaped and not trigonal planar as their boron analogues are: this is due to the influence of the 6d electrons on the bonding. The heavier nihonium tribromide (NhBr) and triiodide (NhI) are trigonal planar due to the increased steric repulsion between the peripheral atoms; accordingly, they do not show significant 6d involvement in their bonding, though the large 7s–7p energy gap means that they show reduced sp hybridisation compared to their boron analogues.


title: Nihonium

text: The bonding in the lighter NhX molecules can be considered as that of a linear species (similar to HgF or ) with an additional Nh–X bond involving the 7p orbital of nihonium perpendicular to the other two ligands. These compounds are all expected to be highly unstable towards the loss of an X molecule and reduction to nihonium(I):


title: Nihonium

text: Nihonium thus continues the trend down group 13 of reduced stability of the +3 oxidation state, as all five of these compounds have lower reaction energies than the unknown thallium(III) iodide. The +3 state is stabilised for thallium in anionic complexes such as , and the presence of a possible vacant coordination site on the lighter T-shaped nihonium trihalides is expected to allow a similar stabilisation of and perhaps .


title: Nihonium

text: The +5 oxidation state is unknown for all lighter group 13 elements: calculations predict that nihonium pentahydride (NhH) and pentafluoride (NhF) should have a square pyramidal molecular geometry, but also that both would be highly thermodynamically unstable to loss of an X molecule and reduction to nihonium(III). Again, some stabilisation is expected for anionic complexes, such as . The structures of the nihonium trifluoride and pentafluoride molecules are the same as those for chlorine trifluoride and pentafluoride.


title: Nihonium

text: The chemical characteristics of nihonium have yet to be determined unambiguously. The isotopes Nh, Nh, and Nh have half-lives long enough for chemical investigation. From 2010 to 2012, some preliminary chemical experiments were performed at the JINR to determine the volatility of nihonium. The isotope Nh was investigated, made as the daughter of Mc produced in the Am+Ca reaction. The nihonium atoms were synthesised in a recoil chamber and then carried along polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) capillaries at 70 °C by a carrier gas to the gold-covered detectors. About ten to twenty atoms of Nh were produced, but none of these atoms were registered by the detectors, suggesting either that nihonium was similar in volatility to the noble gases (and thus diffused away too quickly to be detected) or, more plausibly, that pure nihonium was not very volatile and thus could not efficiently pass through the PTFE capillaries. Formation of the hydroxide NhOH should ease the transport, as nihonium hydroxide is expected to be more volatile than elemental nihonium, and this reaction could be facilitated by adding more water vapour into the carrier gas. It seems likely that this formation is not kinetically favoured, so the longer-lived isotopes Nh and Nh were considered more desirable for future experiments.


title: Nihonium

text: A 2017 experiment at the JINR, producing Nh and Nh via the Am+Ca reaction as the daughters of Mc and Mc, avoided this problem by removing the quartz surface, using only PTFE. No nihonium atoms were observed after chemical separation, implying an unexpectedly large retention of nihonium atoms on PTFE surfaces. This experimental result for the interaction limit of nihonium atoms with a PTFE surface disagrees significantly with previous theory, which expected a lower value of 14.00 kJ/mol. This suggests that the nihonium species involved in the previous experiment was likely not elemental nihonium but rather nihonium hydroxide, and that high-temperature techniques such as vacuum chromatography would be necessary to further probe the behaviour of elemental nihonium. Bromine saturated with boron tribromide has been suggested as a carrier gas for experiments on nihonium chemistry; this oxidises nihonium's lighter congener thallium to thallium(III), providing an avenue to investigate the oxidation states of nihonium, similar to earlier experiments done on the bromides of group 5 elements, including the superheavy dubnium.


title: 20th Television Animation

text: 20th Television Animation (formerly Fox Television Animation) is an American animation studio that creates, develops and produces adult animated television series and specials. It is a unit of Disney Television Studios, a subsidiary of Walt Disney Television, which is part of the Disney General Entertainment Content division of The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment distributes the films produced by 20th Television Animation in home media under the 20th Century Studios Home Entertainment banner.


title: 20th Television Animation

text: The studio was established on May 19, 1999. Its first project was the continued production of "Family Guy" for its third season, which it took over from the series' previous home at Film Roman for seasons one and two. The studio would become the home of future animated series co-created by Seth MacFarlane: "American Dad!" and "The Cleveland Show". In 2016, Fox Television Animation assumed production of Matt Groening's "The Simpsons", once again taking over from Film Roman.


title: 20th Television Animation

text: Most animated projects from 20th Television Animation are subcontracted to third party animation production companies such as Film Roman, Titmouse, Inc., Bento Box Entertainment and Rough Draft Studios, but the company maintains 20th Television Animation as an in-house option. Because the company acts as a production house for hire, it is not treated as a labeled division of 20th Century Studios like Touchstone Television or Searchlight Pictures. The studio specializes in animation pre-production and post-production, while the actual animation production is handled by studios in South Korea. 20th Television Animation's frequent contractors include Digital eMation, Yearim Productions, AKOM Production, and Rough Draft Korea.


title: 20th Television Animation

text: The studio maintains a location in the Miracle Mile neighborhood of Los Angeles Its workers are represented by The Animation Guild, I.A.T.S.E. Local 839.


title: 20th Television Animation

text: In March 2019, 20th Century Fox Television, 20th Television and Fox Television Animation were acquired by the Walt Disney Company and integrated into Walt Disney Television as part of Disney Television Studios. In September 2020, the animation company was renamed as 20th Television Animation starting with newer episodes of shows in production at the company.


title: 20th Television Animation

text: In December 2020, it was announced that 20th Television Animation would be relaunched as a standalone unit from 20th Television. In March 2021, Marci Proietto was tentatively named as president of the company. It eventually went into effect in September with the on-screen logo for the company first appearing after the credits for the season 33 premiere of "The Simpsons", the season 2 premiere of "The Great North", the season 12 premiere of "Bob's Burgers" and the season 20 premiere of "Family Guy". 20th Television Animation focuses on producing and developing animated projects targeted at adults, as opposed to their children-targeted sister studio Disney Television Animation. Under the new incarnation, 20th Television Animation would assume executive supervision of the production of all animated projects that had, up to that point, been overseen by 20th Television. This allowed series that 20th Television Animation was already producing animation for under 20th Television's watch to be brought entirely under one company, while series whose animation was produced by a third party company would retain that relationship, with 20th Television Animation only absorbing the above-the-line production and acting as the new client for the animation contractor.


title: 20th Television Animation

text: On March 16, 2022, it was announced that the studio would collaborate with children-targeted sister studio Disney Television Animation, for the creation of young adult animated series, mini-series and movies for Disney+.


title: Bigbug

text: Bigbug is a French science fiction black comedy film, written and directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, that was released on 11 February 2022 by Netflix. It stars Elsa Zylberstein, Isabelle Nanty, Youssef Hajdi, Alban Lenoir and François Levantal. Set in the world of 2045, where communities have robotic helpers, a group of suburbanites are locked in for their own protection by their household robots, while a rogue, sentient AI android revolt uprising outside.


title: Bigbug

text: In 2045, artificial intelligence is everywhere. So much so that humanity relies on it to satisfy its every need and every desire, even the most secret and wicked. In a quiet suburban residential area, four domestic robots suddenly decide to take their masters hostage in their own home. Locked together, a not-quite-so-blended family, an intrusive neighbour, and her enterprising sex-robot are now forced to put up with each other in an increasingly hysterical atmosphere. While outside, the Yonyx, the latest generation of AI androids, are becoming rogue and attempt to take over the world. As the threat draws closer, the humans look elsewhere, get jealous, and rip into each other under the bewildered eyes of their indoor robots. Maybe it's the robots who've got a soul or not.


title: Bigbug

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 46% of 35 reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.60/10. The website's critics consensus states, "Jeunet fans will find the whimsy they seek within "BigBug", although it isn't enough to make this mishmash more than intermittently engaging." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 46 out of 100 based on 14 critics' reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Anticyclone

text: An anticyclone is a weather phenomenon defined as a large-scale circulation of winds around a central region of high atmospheric pressure, clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere as viewed from above (opposite to a cyclone). Effects of surface-based anticyclones include clearing skies as well as cooler, drier air. Fog can also form overnight within a region of higher pressure.


title: Anticyclone

text: Mid-tropospheric systems, such as the subtropical ridge, deflect tropical cyclones around their periphery and cause a temperature inversion inhibiting free convection near their center, building up surface-based haze under their base. Anticyclones aloft can form within warm-core lows such as tropical cyclones, due to descending cool air from the backside of upper troughs such as polar highs, or from large-scale sinking such as a subtropical ridge.


title: Anticyclone

text: The evolution of an anticyclone depends upon variables such as its size, intensity, and extent of moist convection, as well as the Coriolis force.


title: Anticyclone

text: Sir Francis Galton first discovered anticyclones in the 1860s. Preferred areas within a synoptic flow pattern in higher levels of the dips in the Rossby wave pattern. High-pressure systems are alternatively referred to as anticyclones. Their circulation is sometimes referred to as cum sole. Subtropical high-pressure zones form under the descending portion of the Hadley cell circulation. Upper-level high-pressure areas lie over tropical cyclones due to their warm core nature.


title: Anticyclone

text: Surface anticyclones form due to downward motion through the troposphere, the atmospheric layer where weather occurs. Preferred areas within a synoptic flow pattern in higher levels of the troposphere are beneath the western side of troughs. On weather maps, these areas show converging winds (isotachs), also known as confluence, or converging height lines near or above the level of non-divergence, which is near the 500 hPa pressure surface about midway up the troposphere. Because they weaken with height, these high-pressure systems are cold.


title: Anticyclone

text: Heating of the earth near the equator forces upward motion and convection along the monsoon trough or intertropical convergence zone. The divergence over the near-equatorial trough leads to air rising and moving away from the equator and to the poles aloft. As air moves towards the mid-latitudes, it cools and sinks leading to subsidence near the 30° parallel of both hemispheres. This circulation known as the Hadley cell forms the subtropical ridge. Many of the world's deserts are caused by these climatological high-pressure areas. Because these anticyclones strengthen with height, they are known as warm core ridges.


title: Anticyclone

text: The development of anticyclones aloft occurs in warm core cyclones such as tropical cyclones when latent heat caused by the formation of clouds is released aloft increasing the air temperature; the resultant thickness of the atmospheric layer increases high pressure aloft which evacuates their outflow.


title: Anticyclone

text: In the absence of rotation, the wind tends to blow from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure. The stronger the pressure difference (pressure gradient) between a high-pressure system and a low-pressure system, the stronger the wind. The coriolis force caused by Earth's rotation gives winds within high-pressure systems their clockwise circulation in the northern hemisphere (as the wind moves outward and is deflected right from the center of high pressure) and anticlockwise circulation in the southern hemisphere (as the wind moves outward and is deflected left from the center of high pressure). Friction with land slows down the wind flowing out of high-pressure systems and causes wind to flow more outward (more ageostrophically) from the center.


title: Anticyclone

text: High-pressure systems are frequently associated with light winds at the surface and subsidence of air from higher portions of the troposphere. Subsidence will generally warm an air mass by adiabatic (compressional) heating. Thus, high pressure typically brings clear skies. Because no clouds are present to reflect sunlight during the day, there is more incoming solar radiation and heating so temperatures rise rapidly near the surface. At night, the absence of clouds means that outgoing longwave radiation (i.e. heat energy from the surface) is not blocked, allowing the escape of heat and giving cooler diurnal low temperatures in all seasons. When surface winds become light, the subsidence produced directly under a high-pressure system can lead to a buildup of particulates in urban areas under the high pressure, leading to widespread haze. If the surface level relative humidity rises towards 100 percent overnight, fog can form.


title: Anticyclone

text: The movement of continental arctic air masses to lower latitudes produces strong but vertically shallow high-pressure systems. The surface level, sharp temperature inversion can lead to areas of persistent stratocumulus or stratus cloud, colloquially known as anticyclonic gloom. The type of weather brought about by an anticyclone depends on its origin. For example, extensions of the Azores high pressure may bring about anticyclonic gloom during the winter because they pick up moisture as they move over the warmer oceans. High pressures that build to the north and move southwards often bring clear weather because they are cooled at the base (as opposed to warmed) which helps prevent clouds from forming.


title: Anticyclone

text: Once arctic air moves over an unfrozen ocean, the air mass modifies greatly over the warmer water and takes on the character of a maritime air mass, which reduces the strength of the high-pressure system. When extremely cold air moves over relatively warm oceans, polar lows can develop. However, warm and moist (or maritime tropical) air masses which move poleward from tropical sources are slower to modify than arctic air masses.


title: Anticyclone

text: The circulation around mid-level (altitude) ridges, and the air subsidence at their center, act to steer tropical cyclones around and out their periphery. Due to the subsidence within this type of system, a "cap" can develop which inhibits free convection and hence mixing of the lower with the middle level troposphere. This limits thunderstorms and other low-pressure weather activity near their centers and traps low-level pollutants such as ozone as haze under their base, which is a significant problem in large urban centers during summer months such as Los Angeles, California and Mexico City.


title: Anticyclone

text: The existence of upper-level (altitude) high pressure allows upper level divergence which leads to surface convergence. If a capping mid-level ridge does not exist, this leads to free convection and the development of showers and thunderstorms if the lower atmosphere is humid. Because a positive feedback loop develops between the convective tropical cyclone and the upper level high, the two system are strengthened. This loop stops once ocean temperatures cool to below , reducing the thunderstorm activity, which then weakens the upper-level high-pressure system.


title: Anticyclone

text: When the subtropical ridge in the Northwest Pacific is stronger than in other areas, it leads to a wet monsoon season for Asia. The subtropical ridge position is linked to how far northward monsoon moisture and thunderstorms extend into the United States. Typically, the subtropical ridge across North America migrates far enough northward to begin monsoon conditions across the Desert Southwest from July to September. When the subtropical ridge is farther north than normal towards the Four Corners, thunderstorms of the New Mexican Monsoon can spread northward into Arizona and New Mexico. When suppressed to the south, the atmosphere dries out across the Desert Southwest, causing a break in the monsoon regime.


title: Anticyclone

text: On weather maps, high-pressure centers are associated with the letter H in English, within the isobar with the highest pressure value. On constant-pressure upper-level charts, anticyclones are located within the highest height line contour.


title: Anticyclone

text: On Jupiter, there are two examples of an extraterrestrial anticyclonic storm; the Great Red Spot and the recently formed Oval BA on Jupiter. They are powered by smaller storms merging unlike any typical anticyclonic storm that happens on Earth where water powers them. Another theory is that warmer gases rise in a column of cold air, creating a vortex as is the case of other storms that include Anne's Spot on Saturn and the Great Dark Spot on Neptune. Anticyclones had also been detected near the poles of Venus.


title: Sons of Anarchy (season 7)

text: The seventh and final season of the American television drama series "Sons of Anarchy" premiered on September 9, 2014, and concluded on December 9, 2014, after 13 episodes aired on cable network FX. Created by Kurt Sutter, it is about the lives of a close-knit outlaw motorcycle club operating in Charming, a fictional town in California's Central Valley. The show centers on protagonist Jackson "Jax" Teller (Charlie Hunnam), the President of the club, who begins questioning the club and himself after reading his father’s journal about how Samcro dies, (his father the original founder of SOA) is murdered.


title: Sons of Anarchy (season 7)

text: "Sons of Anarchy" is the story of the Teller-Morrow family of Charming, California, as well as other members of the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original (SAMCRO), their families, various Charming townspeople, allied and rival gangs, associates, and law agencies that undermine or support SAMCRO's legal and illegal enterprises.


title: Sons of Anarchy (season 7)

text: Jax struggles with his recent loss and turns himself into the authorities. While in jail, Jax makes decisions that radically alter the direction of the club and uses it to exact revenge for the death of his wife. Another member's death fuels the hate and lies created by Gemma and Juice, who are on the run and hiding from the club. After Jax learns the truth, he works to make things right with all parties involved. The series ends with Jax making the ultimate sacrifice to complete his part of the story of SAMCRO and fulfill his father's vision.


title: Sons of Anarchy (season 7)

text: "Sons of Anarchy" is the story of the Teller-Morrow family of Charming, California, as well as the other members of Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original (SAMCRO), their families, various Charming townspeople, allied and rival gangs, associates, and law agencies that undermine or support SAMCRO's legal and illegal enterprises.


title: Sons of Anarchy (season 7)

text: Although "Sons of Anarchy" is set in Northern California's Central Valley, it is filmed primarily at Occidental Studios Stage 5A in North Hollywood. Main sets located there include the clubhouse, St. Thomas Hospital and Jax's house. The production rooms at the studio used by the writing staff also double as the Charming police station. External scenes are often filmed nearby in Sun Valley and Tujunga.


title: Sons of Anarchy (season 7)

text: "Sons of Anarchy" was renewed for a seventh and final season that began airing in September 2014. Ron Perlman and Maggie Siff did not return, due to their characters being killed off at the end of season six. Drea de Matteo, David LaBrava and Niko Nicotera were all promoted to the regular cast. Robert Patrick, Emilio Rivera, and Billy Brown returned in their recurring guest roles, as did CCH Pounder, Peter Weller and Kim Dickens but only for limited appearances. Marilyn Manson guest starred as a drug addict who is a high-ranking member of a neo-Nazi prison sect. Malcolm-Jamal Warner joined the cast for a recurring role. "Glee" actress Lea Michele also had a guest role as a truck stop waitress and single mother in the sixth episode of the season. Former "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"/"Angel" actress Charisma Carpenter also had a guest role as an administrative director at a medical facility.


title: Sons of Anarchy (season 7)

text: The last season received generally favorable reviews. At Metacritic, the season received a score of 68% based on reviews from 6 critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it has an approval rating of 83% based on 6 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads: "The final season of "Sons of Anarchy" rides toward the series finale on its grounded characters and clearly defined storylines, without losing any of the show's bone-chilling action."


title: Lady Bunny

text: Lady Bunny, originally known as "Bunny Hickory Dickory Dock" (born Jon Ingle, August 13, 1962), is an American drag queen, nightclub DJ, actor, comedian, and event organizer. She is the founder of the annual Wigstock event, as well as an occasional television and radio personality. She has released disco singles such as "Shame, Shame, Shame!" and "The Pussycat Song", and has hosted two one-woman comedy shows, 'That Ain't No Lady!' and 'Clowns Syndrome'.


title: Lady Bunny

text: Lady Bunny was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, but grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and describes her childhood to have been "wonderful and [she] lucked out in the parents department." Her mother is a retired registered nurse and her father is a history professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.


title: Lady Bunny

text: Growing up, she would try on costumes and outfits, and put on plays with the other kids in the neighborhood. Her family lived next to a florist and she would collect the thrown out ribbons in the garbage and turn them into costumes for the plays.


title: Lady Bunny

text: When Bunny was 11, her family moved to Ghana for a year to accommodate her father, who had received a Fulbright Scholarship. "It was the best year of my life", she said, remembering banana trees in her backyard and a giant snake that slithered on the road. "I still gag West African cab drivers by speaking the remnants of Fante. I can only say a few things, but it tickles them like crazy." She briefly attended Bootham School, a Quaker boarding school in York, England. Based on her experiences, Bunny regards the English education system to be better than the American one. Upon graduating, she enrolled at the University of Tennessee, where her father teaches, but later relocated to Atlanta, where she attended Georgia State University.


title: Lady Bunny

text: Lady Bunny says she has an affinity for trans women and has considered transitioning. She spends her public life in drag and uses she/her pronouns. Lady Bunny is seldom seen out of women's clothing. In a 2022 interview, Lady Bunny said "I guess if I had to label myself, I would say I'm probably nonbinary, but I don't feel the need to stipulate."


title: Lady Bunny

text: Lady Bunny currently lives in New York City. She does not often discuss personal matters, and has no known romantic partner or children.


title: Lady Bunny

text: In Georgia, Lady Bunny met RuPaul. For a time they were go-go dancers for a band called the Now Explosion. Alongside Larry Tee, the two became fixtures on the Atlanta gay scene in the early 1980s. They appeared in a variety of low-budget films, including the "Starbooty" series. In the episode of RuPaul's Drag Race entitled 'Roast in Peace', RuPaul revealed that he was the first person to ever put Lady Bunny in drag, technically making him her drag mother. RuPaul and Lady Bunny later relocated to New York City together.


title: Lady Bunny

text: In 1983, Lady Bunny moved to New York City, where she and RuPaul shared an apartment for a time. They worked at the Pyramid Club. She remembers that one of the first times she performed in New York she lip-synced Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and fell during the performance, losing her wig and a shoe. Bunny's performance style during this period blended lip sync, dance, and comedy. Her performances often included self-deprecating commentary, and short criticism of other performers broken up by short bits of dancing. During this period, she also held several odd jobs such as working in an ice cream parlor and in sales for publisher Ralph Ginzburg.


title: Lady Bunny

text: Soon, Lady Bunny became one of the Club Kids and in 1985, she organized the first Wigstock, an annual drag queen festival that lasted until 2005, and was later revived in 2018. The idea to revive Wigstock came from Neil Patrick Harris' husband, David Burtka. Wigstock became the subject of Chris Moukarbel's 2019 documentary "Wig", which included Debbie Harry, Kevin Aviance, Willam, and Neil Patrick Harris.


title: Lady Bunny

text: Lady Bunny is known for her "big curves, bigger hair" and is one of the legendary and ubiquitous New York City drag queens that is still performing today. She is a staple of New York Fashion Week, she tours alongside cabaret shows, and DJs around the globe. She was DJ at Van Cleef & Arpels' 40th anniversary party in Paris and for the Standard's Black Out Party, which celebrated the 25th anniversary of Naomi Campbell's fashion career. Lady Bunny is the regular DJ for Empire State Pride Agenda and has served as the in-house DJ for Visionaire and V Magazine. Lady Bunny is a huge music aficionado. Her favorite Blondie song is "Fade Away and Radiate". "Hideaway" by Canadian musical Kiesza is a pop song Lady Bunny regularly spins during DJ sets for its popular and underrated appeal. Lady Bunny has been releasing her own original music since 1996. Lady Bunny has written and run two one-woman comedy shows at LGBT club "La Escuelita", 'That Ain't No Lady!' and 'Clowns Syndrome', the latter receiving praise from the New York Times. Both comedy shows toured globally.


title: Lady Bunny

text: Bunny can put together a full drag look within 20 minutes and maintains that every drag look must include faux lashes and a good wig. Her style of drag performance is comedic and often involves the parodying of popular songs. She most often appears in blonde wigs, and frequently performs at XL Nightclub. She has shared the stage with other popular New York City Drag Queens like Bianca del Rio. Lady Bunny was featured on the European leg of the Werq the World Tour.


title: Lady Bunny

text: Lady Bunny is featured prominently in "The Tyranny of Consciousness", a 2017 five-channel video installation by video artist Charles Atlas, which premiered at "Viva Arte Viva", the 2017 Venice Biennale, curated by Christine Maciel. The video is now in the permanent collection of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.


title: Lady Bunny

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Lady Bunny produced an online drag show called 'Cuntagious'. In January 2021, she launched a podcast, "Ebony and Irony", co-hosted by Monét X Change.


title: Lady Bunny

text: Lady Bunny has appeared in films such as "Party Girl", "", "Wig", "Peoria Babylon", "Starrbooty", "Another Gay Movie", and "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar".


title: Lady Bunny

text: In 2005, she was a roaster on the Comedy Central roast of Pamela Anderson and released her first DVD, "Rated X for X-tra Retarded".


title: Lady Bunny

text: Lady Bunny served on the judges' panel on the spinoff show "RuPaul's Drag U", which aired on the Logo TV network from 2010 to 2012. Lady Bunny was Dean of Drag and had a role of judge in the first season. In season 2 of "RuPaul's Drag U", the Dean of Drag role was expanded into a segment called "Lady Lessons". During the fifth season of "RuPaul's Drag Race", contestant Alaska Thunderfuck 5000 impersonated Bunny for the Snatch Game. Episode 5 ("Roast in Peace") of the fourth season of "RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars" features a roast of Lady Bunny at a mock funeral.


title: Lady Bunny

text: In 2003, Lady Bunny made a guest appearance in the "Sex and the City" episode "Boy, Interrupted", as the emcee at the LGBT prom.


title: Lady Bunny

text: In 2021, Lady Bunny featured in "NewsBeat", a news show written by Luke Evendon with executive producer Clay Aiken.


title: Lady Bunny

text: Lady Bunny worked as a commentator for Star Magazine's 'Worst of the Week' column. She has also written for Paper Magazine, Interview, Out, Time Out, Visionaire, and Huffington Post. According to her own website, she is currently working on a memoir.


title: Perri Lister

text: Perri Lister (born 10 April 1959) is an English former dancer, singer and actress. She was a dancer with the British dance troupe Hot Gossip which appeared regularly on "The Kenny Everett Video Show" in the late 1970s – early 1980s in the United Kingdom. In the 1980s Lister was a backing vocalist for a number of pop music acts, including Billy Idol, with whom she had a nine-year relationship.


title: Perri Lister

text: Perri Lister was born on 10 April 1959 in London, England, the daughter of Bert Lister, a stage manager, dresser and chauffeur, by his third wife, stage actress Gail Kendall. Her paternal grandmother was an amateur opera singer.


title: Perri Lister

text: In 1978, she was a member of the dance troupe Hot Gossip, which performed on British television's "The Kenny Everett Video Show". They were noted for their sexually suggestive costumes and risqué dance routines. Lister was one of the original Blitz Kids, a group of young, flamboyantly dressed people who patronised the elite Covent Garden club night Blitz in the early 1980s, among whom were Boy George, Steve Strange, Spandau Ballet, and Marilyn. She appeared as a dancer in the 1980 musical comedy film "Can't Stop the Music".


title: Perri Lister

text: Lister began a relationship with rock singer Billy Idol in 1980, over whom she allegedly exerted a big influence. She sang the French lyrical backing vocal chorus, "Les yeux sans visage" on his 1984 hit single "Eyes Without a Face", and appeared in several of his music videos, including "White Wedding" in which she played the bride; "To Be a Lover", and she was the girl bound to a cross in the second video for his song "Hot in the City". "Mademoiselle" described Lister's sexy performance in the latter video as "sizzling". She danced topless in the 1982 Duran Duran video for the single release "The Chauffeur", and sang backing vocals for the band Visage, and August Darnell's band Kid Creole and the Coconuts.


title: Perri Lister

text: She was a member of the short-lived pop music group Boomerang, which consisted of two former members of Kid Creole and the Coconuts: Adriana Kaegi and Cheryl Poirier. The group released an album titled "Boomerang" (1986) and a cover version of "These Boots Are Made for Walkin.


title: Perri Lister

text: Lister and Billy Idol together have a son, Willem Wolf Broad, who was born in Los Angeles, California on 15 June 1988. When an American model held a press conference claiming to be Idol's girlfriend, Lister responded by holding one of her own, maintaining that she was "and always had been Idol's girlfriend". The couple broke up in 1989.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: ShopRite is a retailers' cooperative of supermarkets with stores in six states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: Based in Keasbey, New Jersey, ShopRite consists of 50 individually owned and operated affiliates with over 300 stores, all under its corporate and distribution arm, Wakefern Food Corporation. Wakefern itself owns and operates 28 of the locations through subsidiary ShopRite Supermarkets and is the largest affiliate within the cooperative. Several Wakefern members own and operate single ShopRite stores, while most own multiple locations. The average Wakefern member operates six stores.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: ShopRite has been the largest food retailer in New Jersey for close to 70 years and is also number one in the entire New York metropolitan area. Since 2011, ShopRite is also the largest retailer of food in Greater Philadelphia, pushing long-dominant Acme Markets to second place and, in 2013, to third place. , Wakefern was ranked 17th by sales among all supermarket operators in the United States. In a 2022 survey by Newsweek, ShopRite was named the “Most Trusted Grocery Retailer” in the Northeast.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: ShopRite originated in 1946, when a Del Monte Foods sales representative talked to independent grocers in Newark, New Jersey. The grocers were having problems getting reasonable prices for wholesale goods. The Del Monte representative suggested the grocers try cooperative buying. Seven of the grocers agreed, paying $1,000 each to launch Wakefern Food Corp., which was incorporated on December 5, 1946. In 1951, the name ShopRite was created.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: In 1958, ShopRite cut prices by 10% as an alternative to giving away trading stamps, which other supermarkets in New Jersey were doing. The move was successful, drawing customers and helping create more ShopRite stores. By 1961, ShopRite had 70 members, totaling $100 million in annual sales.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: One large member, Supermarkets General, pulled out of Wakefern in the late 1960s, halving the number of stores. The Supermarkets General stores became Pathmark in 1968. The remaining Wakefern members redoubled their efforts, adopted "one member, one vote" as a management principle, and expanded aggressively. By the late 1970s, the volume lost from Supermarkets General's departure was restored.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: For many years, ShopRite and Pathmark were extremely competitive on price in the New York Metro area, and each one had its loyal customer base. A highly leveraged management buy-out in the late 1980s left Pathmark saddled with too much debt, and the supermarket chain had no cash to fix up its stores, or invest in lower prices. At the same time, ShopRite stores were being replaced and rebuilt, stealing market share away from Pathmark.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: The Pathmark chain was sold to A&P in 2007. A&P ran Pathmark as a division, but was unsuccessful in turning around the banner's fortunes. A&P filed for bankruptcy and sold or liquidated its stores in 2015, including approximately 150 Pathmark stores. Wakefern and its cooperative members acquired nine Pathmark locations along with several other former A&P banners with the intention of opening ShopRite, Price Rite and The Fresh Grocer locations.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: In 1971, ShopRite introduced their Can-Can Sale, where canned goods (and eventually other products) were placed on steep discounts, and is held in January. Until the early 1990s, the sale was held in the second and third weeks of January but expanded to the entire month. Animated commercials for this promotion feature a chorus line of cancan dancers and a French artiste, though the style changed on several occasions over the years. In 2002, ShopRite expanded that sale to twice a year when they introduced the Summer Can-Can Sale, held in July.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: In 2018, the Summer Can-Can Sale was discontinued, replaced with the "Can It Get Any Hotter?" sale. The Can-Can Sale has since then been reinstated in January, 2022.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: In 1989, ShopRite introduced the Price Plus Club Card, which eventually merged with the Check Cashing Card (for those that use it for that purpose as well); it is free of charge to acquire. Having a Price Plus Card enables shoppers to receive special weekly discounts, listed in circulars mailed with local newspapers. Most sales are chain-wide regardless of owner but sometimes in a particular region, valid for all area ShopRites, however some stores choose to put special items on sale based on stock. The Price Plus Card also tracks purchases and use of rewards.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: In 1996, ShopRite launched its own line (with Dietz & Watson) of deli meats, cheeses and complements with its private label, Black Bear of the Black Forest, to compete against the expansion of Boar's Head in competitor's supermarkets. In 2011, over 15 million pounds of Black Bear slicing meats and cheeses were sold at ShopRite.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: Since 1999, ShopRite has offered an online grocery shopping service at select stores, under the service name "Order. Pickup. Deliver." (formerly ShopRite from Home until April 2022.) For an additional fee, customers can place an order for pickup or delivery through the ShopRite website or mobile app, ShopRite employees then fulfill a customer's shopping order at a local ShopRite with options for curbside pickup.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: As a result of the cooperative system, there is no set format for building architecture, store layout, or color scheme of storefronts. Most stores are the product of the era in which they were opened, and the owner's style. For example, the ShopRite of West Caldwell, New Jersey, owned by Sunrise ShopRite, has a Japanese motif inside and outside of the store (including rickshaws, an exit sign reading "Sayonara" and two Japanese-style phone booths). The RoNetco family of stores (Netcong, Byram, Newton, Franklin, Sparta, Flanders, Mansfield, and Succasunna, New Jersey) have different looks on the outside (including the shopping carts and cart corrals), although the stores themselves have a similar layout. ShopRite stores that were previously other stores usually contain elements of the previous occupants. As large corporations buy up stores, recent years have brought a homogenization in building design and store layout.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: Currently, ShopRite's base stretches northeast from the Washington metropolitan area in Maryland to the Hartford area in Connecticut, extending as far north as New York's Capital District. While New Jersey is home to the most ShopRite stores, the chain also has a strong presence in the New York City suburbs, and in Pennsylvania (mostly in the Philadelphia area). In 2010, ShopRite expanded its presence in Connecticut through the purchase of 11 former Shaw's stores.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: In 2011–2013, ShopRite returned to the New York Capital District after exiting the market 23 years earlier. The SRS operating division opened stores in Niskayuna, Albany, Slingerlands, Colonie and North Greenbush. The Albany store opened on April 26, 2012; the Slingerlands store opened on September 30, 2012; and the Colonie store opened on April 7, 2013. The most recent addition was the North Greenbush location, which opened in December 2017. ShopRite currently has gas stations at the Albany and Colonie locations. Plans for additional future store locations had not been announced in late 2010. In 2013, ShopRite was the only unionized supermarket in the area.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: On July 20, 2015, competitor A&P filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy and announced plans to close or sell off all of its stores. ShopRite acquired 13 supermarkets in A&P's bankruptcy auction, including some that had been ShopRite locations before Supermarkets General (later acquired by A&P) broke off from the cooperative.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: Wakefern also manages its wholly owned subsidiary, Price Rite, which is a limited-assortment chain of stores found only in Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Rhode Island. As of April 2018, there are currently 66 Price Rite stores; 63 of those are owned outright by Wakefern.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: The Price Rite stores in New Jersey are operated individually by Wakefern's cooperative members; in 2014, Wakefern announced that the Price Rite banner would be made available to all of those members, so they can open and operate their own outlets. The North Jersey locations, in Garfield and Paterson, are operated by Inserra Supermarkets, while the South Jersey location, in Camden, operated by the Ravitz Family closed in 2021.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: The Price Rite name was first used in the early 1990s on Wakefern's failed warehouse club concept stores.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: For many years, Foodarama operated a very small ShopRite Garden Center on Route 130 in East Windsor, New Jersey. In 2004, with the construction of a massive Home Depot directly adjacent to the small store, a decision was made to close the store and Foodarama moved its garden center operations into a former Frank's Nursery & Crafts store. The store had operated as a Franks location for four years before the company was liquidated, and the large building combined of interior selling space with of covered outside selling area, for a total of . The ShopRite Garden Center closed in 2008.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: Wakefern members also operate a cooperative chain of stores which offer wine, beer and spirits called ShopRite Wines & Spirits. Most stores are located adjacent to or inside of ShopRite Supermarkets; however, there are several freestanding stores. One store (in Pennington, New Jersey) offers a bar inside the ShopRite store.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: Members operate 38 ShopRite Wine and Spirits Shops in New Jersey and New York. One in particular, the Clinton, NJ store, is owned by QuickChek.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: Sunrise ShopRites of West Caldwell also operates three (Parsippany, New Jersey, Caldwell, New Jersey and Westfield, New Jersey) ShopRite Sunrise Wine-Cellar locations which offer an expanded selection of high-quality and specialty wines. These stores are generally smaller than their normal ShopRite counterparts, and specialize in wines and related alcoholic beverages.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: In December 2013, Wakefern launched the ShopRiteDelivers.com website to expand their digital footprint outside of their traditional markets in the Northeast. The website, focused on electronics, bulk order baby care, specialty foods, and health and beauty, has been well received, and has shipped orders to customers in all 50 states.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: Wakefern acquired the trademarks of this supermarket chain, which operates primarily in the Philadelphia area when its former owner, Pat Burns, joined the cooperative as its 50th member in August 2013. At the time, the chain had eight stores: five in Philadelphia, one in suburban Upper Darby, one in Wilmington, Delaware, and one in New Brunswick, N.J. The Upper Darby store became a ShopRite, and the New Brunswick and Southwest Philadelphia stores have since closed. The Fresh Grocer stores are smaller than modern ShopRite stores and place a greater emphasis on fresh and organic foods, upscale specialty items and extensive prepared-foods offerings than regular ShopRite stores, giving Wakefern and its members a format that can work in smaller urban locations. Wakefern executives were also quoted in the press as saying that as several The Fresh Grocer stores are located near college campuses, the chain would give Wakefern "new insight into the next generation of consumers" and enable it to reach new customers.


title: ShopRite (United States)

text: (The Fischer Bay, Bayville, Manchester, Lanoka Harbor, Waretown, Jackson and Manahawkin locations were previously owned by the Perlmutter family until December 2021.)


title: Dylan Dreyer

text: Dylan Marie Dreyer (born August 2, 1981) is an American television meteorologist working for NBC News. She is also an anchor on Today's 3rd Hour. Dreyer frequently appears on "Today" on weekdays as a weather correspondent and as a fill-in for Al Roker and Carson Daly. She also appears on The Weather Channel and on "NBC Nightly News". Dreyer joined NBC News in September 2012 after having worked at the now former NBC station WHDH in Boston, Massachusetts since 2007.


title: Dylan Dreyer

text: Dreyer was born and raised in Manalapan Township, New Jersey and attended Manalapan High School, where she played softball and graduated in 1999. She earned a bachelor's degree in meteorology from Rutgers University in 2003. While in college, Dreyer briefly interned at WeatherWorks, a private consulting company in Hackettstown, NJ.


title: Dylan Dreyer

text: Dreyer has worked at WICU in Erie, Pennsylvania; WJAR in Providence, Rhode Island; and WHDH in Boston, Massachusetts.


title: Dylan Dreyer

text: Dreyer was in a car crash while en route to cover a blizzard for "Today" on February 9, 2013, she suffered a mild concussion.


title: Dylan Dreyer

text: In addition to her meteorological duties, Dreyer is the host of the NBC educational nature program "Earth Odyssey with Dylan Dreyer" broadcast on The More You Know block of programming on NBC.


title: Dylan Dreyer

text: Dylan married NBC News producer and cameraman Brian Fichera in 2012. They live in the New York area. On June 10, 2016, Dreyer announced on "Today" that she was expecting her first child. On December 17, 2016, she gave birth to her first child, a son, Calvin. On July 17, 2019, Dreyer announced on "Today" that she was expecting her second child in January 2020. On January 2, 2020, she gave birth to her second child, a son, Oliver. On September 29, 2021, she gave birth to her third child, a son, Russell James. Her last day on Weekend Today was January 29, 2022, but she will remain on the Third Hour.


title: Dylan Dreyer

text: In 1963, Dreyer's grandmother, Doris Milke, was a record-setting winner on the original version of "The Price Is Right".


title: Early Edition

text: Early Edition is an American fantasy comedy-drama television series that aired on CBS from September 28, 1996, to May 27, 2000. Set in Chicago, Illinois, it follows the adventures of a man who mysteriously receives each "Chicago Sun-Times" newspaper the day before it is actually published, and who uses this knowledge to prevent terrible events every day. Created by Ian Abrams, Patrick Q. Page, and Vik Rubenfeld, the series starred actor Kyle Chandler as Gary Hobson, and featured many real Chicago locations over the course of the series' run.


title: Early Edition

text: The show was canceled on May 27, 2000, and it began airing in syndication on Fox Family Channel that same month. Fan conventions about the show were held for multiple years. CBS Home Entertainment released the first two seasons on the DVD format in the United States in 2008 and 2009.


title: Early Edition

text: The show chronicles the life of Gary Hobson, a resident of Chicago, Illinois, who mysteriously receives the "Chicago Sun-Times" newspaper a day in advance, effectively giving him knowledge of the potential future. His newspaper is delivered by a mysteriously unknown entity at least once each day, and is accompanied by a ginger tabby cat, with the first copy arriving every morning at 6:30am, no matter what his physical location is. Armed with knowledge of the future, he then tries to prevent tragedies described in "tomorrow's" "Sun-Times" from occurring, thus changing the story text and headlines in the newspaper to reflect the outcome of his actions. Often, Gary does not wish to be saddled with the responsibility of performing these deeds. The paper presents him with many moral dilemmas where he must choose between helping different people in need of assistance.


title: Early Edition

text: The first season begins by showing Gary coming home from his job as a stockbroker, only to be thrown out of the house (and later divorced) for no apparent reason by his wife Marsha. Upon taking up residence in the Blackstone Hotel, Gary begins receiving a copy of the "Chicago Sun-Times", accompanied by "The Cat", every morning. Slowly, Gary realizes the paper's contents reflect events that are to happen during that day, and confers with his co-workers and friends Chuck Fishman (a former fellow stock broker) and Marissa Clark (the blind former receptionist at the brokerage). After deciding to use his knowledge of the future only for "good," Gary is soon consumed by trying to prevent tragedies and help people, leading him to quit his job. During the season, Chuck consistently tries to use "The Paper" to make money, while Gary develops a precarious relationship with police Detective Marion Zeke Crumb. By the season's end, Gary has begun to uncover some of the mystery surrounding the paper, including confirmation that a man named Lucius Snow received the paper from the cat before him.


title: Early Edition

text: Season two continues Gary's adventures with the paper and his friends. Detective Crumb sometimes joins Gary, Chuck, and Marissa after retiring from the police force. Gary is working part-time at McGinty's as a bartender. Despite being closer to the paper, Crumb does not want to know how Gary gets his so-called "hunches," and never learns of the paper. At the end of season two, Chuck (Fisher Stevens) leaves the show as a regular character, leading to some major changes in season three. Within the course of the series, Gary discovers that a few other people share his gift of receiving a newspaper early. The only people who know about his gift besides Chuck and Marissa are his parents, Meredith Carson, and Erica and Henry Paget, a single mother and her son (Gary gives Erica a job at McGinty's); several times he begins to tell a few people, such as his attorney, and various police officers (Episode 407/408, "Fatal Edition"), but ultimately changes his mind. On some occasions, he is given the ability to wake up in another time (such as in the early 20th century) to change the past. People who encounter Gary often strongly suspect (or know) that he has a secret, but do not know what it is, e.g. Crumb.


title: Early Edition

text: During the course of the series, it is never clearly stated where the paper comes from. In one episode, Gary meets the group of people apparently responsible for giving him (as well as others) the Paper. Nothing much is revealed about them except that they have some sort of supernatural abilities, such as being able to mysteriously appear at any location.


title: Early Edition

text: In season four, episode 20, "Time" (the series finale that aired a few episodes early), it is briefly explained why Gary started receiving the paper. Apparently, he was given the responsibility by Lucius Snow (the man who received the "Chicago Sun-Times" before Gary), after Snow saved Gary's life when Gary was a child. The responsibility is represented by a pocket knife imprinted with the initials of the person next to receive the paper (Lucius gave Gary the red Swiss Army knife). The initials mysteriously change every time the current person decides on a new person to receive the responsibility. At the end of the same episode, Gary passes on the same pocket knife to a young girl named Lindsey Romick who had just lost her grandfather, and it is implied that Lindsey will begin receiving the paper when Gary is no longer able to carry on the responsibilities.


title: Early Edition

text: Chuck was a foil to Gary, being a somewhat cynical, wisecracking realist in contrast to Gary's growing idealism. In early episodes, Chuck seeks to parlay the advance knowledge provided by the newspaper into windfall profits (e.g., sports betting and stock-market 'insider trading'). Over time, however, he begins to take a role in helping and backing up Gary as a problem-solver.


title: Early Edition

text: Marissa often was the voice of reasonable conscience, balancing Gary's earnest idealism against Chuck's skeptical realism. Chuck also did the voice over narration at the opening and closing scenes of the episodes in season one, but this role would diminish during season two, save for a few episodes. Instead a standard line was used during opening credits, and a closing narration remained in a few episodes, but as season three progressed there was no narration for either the opening or closing scenes, and the episodes "Walk Don't Run" and "Deadline" had fictional "Chicago Sun-Times" columnist Molly Greene do the closing narration as part of her column.


title: Early Edition

text: Stevens's departure from the show after two seasons changed the dynamic of the show. The device of his voice-over narration was shifted to at first Gary and then Marissa in season three. This was eventually done away with, the theme music was changed, and there began a revolving door of foils for Gary, including Patrick Quinn (Billie Worley) and Erica Paget (Kristy Swanson). The latter had a romantic subplot with Gary. Stevens made several guest appearances on the show after leaving, and several of the characters stayed (such as the hard-boiled detective Crumb, and Gary's bartender Patrick).


title: Early Edition

text: During the series' run, "Early Edition" also featured many notable guest stars from television, feature films, and other entertainment industries.


title: Early Edition

text: Notable TV actors who appeared include Anna Chlumsky, Fyvush Finkel, Felicity Huffman, Ken Jenkins, Jane Krakowski, Laura Leighton, Robert Duncan McNeil, Cynthia Nixon, Pauley Perrette, Robert Picardo and Michael Shannon.


title: Early Edition

text: Former "Chicago Sun-Times" publisher David Radler appeared several times as the publisher of the "Sun-Times", the newspaper that was delivered to Gary, while movie reviewer Roger Ebert made a cameo as himself. Other cameos include Tara Lipinski, Coolio, Tone Loc, Dick Butkus, Pat O'Brien, and Martina McBride.


title: Early Edition

text: There was a season two cross-over with "Chicago Hope" with Héctor Elizondo, Jayne Brook and Rocky Carroll playing their characters from that show. Also during season three, CBS used an "Early Edition" episode as a promotional vehicle for the network's "Martial Law" TV series starring martial arts expert Sammo Hung. In the fourth and final season, professional wrestlers Tommy Dreamer and New Jack guest starred in the episode "Mel Schwartz, Bounty Hunter". A season two episode ended with a colorized clip of Rod Serling informing viewers they had just watched a tale from "The Twilight Zone".


title: Early Edition

text: The origin of "Early Edition" stems from a collaborative idea between writers Vik Rubenfeld and Pat Page. After meeting each other while playing volleyball in Manhattan Beach, California, the pair began discussing ideas for feature films. While talking on the phone one day, they each contributed key parts for the idea of "Early Edition". Rubenfeld believed the idea was more suited to television than a feature film, noting that, "it was a really unique way to put a character in physical jeopardy each week." The duo proceeded to write a document that described the show's characters and setting, and treatments for the first twelve episodes (a document known as a show's "bible" in the TV industry). In the process they also created a detailed treatment for the pilot episode, which entitled them to "Story By" credit when the Pilot later aired.


title: Early Edition

text: Despite their idea, Rubenfeld and Page still faced the daunting task of finding a way to get the show on network television with limited television production and writing experience between them. Rubenfeld decided to pitch the show to Ian Abrams, who he knew through a group called the Professional Authors Group Enterprise (PAGE). Over lunch at RJ's restaurant in Los Angeles, Rubenfeld and Page pitched the idea of "a guy who gets tomorrow's newspaper today." With Abrams's help, they decided to try to convince Tristar to pick up the show, and went about adding a few ground rules for the story, such as having the paper always accompanied by a mysterious cat. In an effort to rouse Tristar's interest in the show during their pitch meeting scheduled for August 24, 1995, Abrams had a mock newspaper created with the headline "Let's just let it end. O. J. Simpson confesses he is guilty of homicide." The catch to the mock newspaper was that it was dated the next day, August 25, 1995. After presenting the fake newspaper during the pitch meeting, a very lively conversation ensued, until someone realized the paper was dated the following day. "Early Edition" was green-lit not long after.


title: Early Edition

text: Since its debut, the plot of "Early Edition" has been compared to other intellectual properties with similar themes. In particular, the 1944 feature film "It Happened Tomorrow" centered upon a newspaper reporter who received a newspaper a day in advance. However, "Early Edition"s creators claim that "Early Edition" is in no way based on this film.


title: Early Edition

text: The series was filmed in Chicago and many nearby towns in Illinois and Indiana, with interior sets filmed on the Early Edition Sound Stage at Studio City in Chicago. Many famous Chicago locations are seen throughout the series, such as Navy Pier in the season three episode "Play it Again, Sammo." The building used for exterior shots of McGinty's bar, a location of central importance to the series, was formerly used by the Chicago Fire Department, and is located at the northeast corner of the intersection of Franklin Street and West Illinois Street in downtown Chicago. Additionally, Hobson lived in the Blackstone Hotel during the show's first season.


title: Early Edition

text: In the opening credits of each episode, the credit for composing "Early Edition's" title theme music is given to W.G. Snuffy Walden, who later wrote the theme song to another hit TV show starring Kyle Chandler, "Friday Night Lights". During "Early Edition's" original broadcast run in the United States, an edited version of the song "Time Has Come Today" by The Chambers Brothers was used during a revamped opening title sequence from episode 403 until the series' conclusion.


title: Early Edition

text: "Early Edition" premiered in the United States on CBS on September 28, 1996. A total of 90 episodes were produced over the course of the show's four seasons, with the last original episode airing in the United States on May 27, 2000. Its original time slot was Saturday night at 9pm Eastern Standard Time, sandwiched between airings of "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" and "Walker, Texas Ranger". When "Dr. Quinn" ended in May 1998, "Early Edition" then began airing one hour earlier at 8 pm for the remainder of the show's run. In January and February 2000, "Early Edition" went on temporary hiatus as the Dick Clark game show "Winning Lines" aired in its time slot.


title: Early Edition

text: After May 27, 2000 (the end of season 4), CBS decided to end the series' run. Despite fan efforts to save the show, and a "USA Today" poll showing respondents were in favor by a two-to-one margin of keeping the "family-friendly" show on air, CBS did not renew the show for a fifth season. Fans of "Early Edition" continued to show support, even going so far as to stage three fan conventions in downtown Chicago in 2001, 2002, and 2004.


title: Early Edition

text: The Fox Family Channel (now Freeform) was the first entity to acquire syndication rights to "Early Edition", at a price of $500,000 per episode, and the show began airing on Fox Family in May 2000. The series debuted in wider syndication in September 2000, and was aired on channels including Ion Television, FamilyNet, and GMC. From May 2012 to 2013, TVGN aired the series. From May 29, 2018 to August 28, 2018, Heroes & Icons aired the show every Tuesday for eight straight episodes starting at 12PM/11AM central time. From September 3, 2018 to October 14, 2019, Start TV ran the show in the early morning. It currently airs on Decades channel mostly on weekends.


title: Early Edition

text: CBS DVD (distributed by Paramount) released the first two seasons of "Early Edition" on DVD in Region 1 (US only) in 2008/2009.


title: Early Edition

text: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment owns the international DVD rights to the show, although they have not made any releases yet.


title: Early Edition

text: On August 31, 2018, Visual Entertainment released "Early Edition: The Complete Collection" on DVD in Region 1. The 16-disc set contains all 90 episodes including the release of seasons 3 & 4.


title: Early Edition

text: In February 2022, CBS ordered a pilot for a reboot of the original series. The project was to be a co-production between Affirm Television, Sony Pictures Television and CBS Studios, with Melissa Glenn as writer and executive producer for the pilot and DeVon Franklin as executive producer. In March 2022, it was announced that Alice Eve, Charles Michael Davis, Jay Ali and Fiona Rene were cast on the pilot. Eric Dean Seaton was to direct. However, in May 2022 CBS announced that the pilot would not be moving forward.


title: William Heirens

text: William George Heirens (November 15, 1928 – March 5, 2012) was an American criminal and possible serial killer who confessed to three murders. He was subsequently controversially convicted of the crimes in 1946. Heirens was called the Lipstick Killer after a notorious message scrawled in lipstick at a crime scene. At the time of his death, Heirens was reputedly Illinois' longest-serving prisoner, having spent 65 years in prison.


title: William Heirens

text: He spent the later years of his sentence at the Dixon Correctional Center in Dixon, Illinois. Though he remained imprisoned until his death, Heirens had recanted his confession and claimed to be a victim of coercive interrogation and police brutality.


title: William Heirens

text: Charles Einstein wrote a novel called "The Bloody Spur" about Heirens, published in 1953 which was adapted into the 1956 film "While the City Sleeps" by Fritz Lang.


title: William Heirens

text: On March 5, 2012, Heirens died at the age of 83 at the University of Illinois Medical Center from complications arising from diabetes.


title: William Heirens

text: His story was the subject of a 2018 episode of the Investigation Discovery series "A Crime to Remember".


title: William Heirens

text: Heirens grew up in Lincolnwood, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. He was the son of George and Margaret Heirens. George Heirens was the son of immigrants from Luxembourg and Margaret was a homemaker. His family was poor and his parents argued incessantly, leading Heirens to wander the streets to avoid hearing them. He took to crime and later claimed that he mostly stole for fun and to release tension. He never sold anything he had stolen.


title: William Heirens

text: At 13 years of age, Heirens was arrested for carrying a loaded gun. A subsequent search of the Heirens' home discovered a number of stolen weapons hidden in an unused storage shed on the roof of a nearby building along with furs, suits, cameras, radios, and jewelry he had stolen. Heirens admitted to 11 burglaries and was sent to the Gibault School for wayward boys for several months.


title: William Heirens

text: Soon after, he was arrested for theft and sentenced to three years at the St. Bede Academy, where he was an exceptional student. He was accepted into University of Chicago's special learning program just before his release in 1945 at 16 years old.


title: William Heirens

text: To pay his expenses he worked several evenings a week as an usher and docent, but also resumed committing burglaries.


title: William Heirens

text: On June 5, 1945, 43-year-old Josephine Ross was found dead in her Chicago apartment. She had been repeatedly stabbed, and her head was wrapped in a dress. Dark hairs were clutched in hand. No valuables were taken from the apartment.


title: William Heirens

text: Police were unable to identify a dark-complexioned man reportedly seen loitering nearby or running away.


title: William Heirens

text: On December 10, 1945, Frances Brown was discovered with a knife lodged in her neck and bullet wound to the head in her apartment. Nothing was taken, but a message was written in lipstick on the wall:


title: William Heirens

text: Police found a bloody fingerprint smudge on the doorjamb of the entrance door. A witness heard gunshots about 4 am, and the building's night clerk said a nervous man of 35 to 40 years old, and weighing 140 pounds, got off the elevator and left.


title: William Heirens

text: On January 7, 1946, six-year-old Suzanne Degnan was discovered missing from her first-floor bedroom in Edgewater, Chicago. Police found a ladder outside her window, and a ransom note: "Get $20,000 ready & wait for my word. Do not notify the FBI or police. Bills are in 5's & 10's. Burn this for her safety."


title: William Heirens

text: Chicago Mayor Edward Kelly also received a note:This is to tell you how sorry I am not to not get ole Degnan instead of his girl. Roosevelt and the OPA made their own laws. Why shouldn't I and a lot more? At the time, there was a nationwide meatpackers' strike and the Office of Price Administration (OPA) was talking of extending rationing to dairy products. Degnan was a senior OPA executive recently transferred to Chicago. Another executive of the OPA had been recently assigned armed guards after receiving threats against his children and, in Chicago, a man involved with black market meat had recently been murdered by decapitation. Police considered the possibility the Degnan killer was a meat packer.


title: William Heirens

text: Acting on an anonymous tip, police discovered Degnan's head in a sewer a block from the Degnan residence, her right leg in a catch basin, her torso in another storm drain, and her left leg in another drain. Her arms were found a month later in another sewer. Blood was found in the drains of laundry tubs in the basement laundry room of a nearby apartment building.


title: William Heirens

text: Police questioned hundreds of people, gave polygraph examinations to about 170, and several times claimed to have captured the killer, though all were eventually released.


title: William Heirens

text: The coroner fixed the time of death at between 12:30 and 1:00 am and stated that a very sharp knife had been used to expertly dismember the body. A basement laundry room near the Degnans' home was located in which it appeared that Degnan had been dismembered, though it was determined that she was already dead when she was taken there. A coroner's expert stated that the killer was "either a man who worked in a profession that required the study of anatomy or one with a background in dissection...not even the average doctor could be as skillful, it had to be a meat cutter"; the coroner added that it was "very clean job with absolutely no signs of hacking."


title: William Heirens

text: 65-year-old Hector Verburgh, a janitor in the building where Degnan lived, was arrested and touted as the suspect. Police told the press "This is the man," despite discrepancies between Verburgh's profile and the one that was developed by them as to what kind of skills the killer had, including him having surgical knowledge or at least being a butcher. Police cited such evidence as Verburgh frequenting the so-called "Murder Room", and the grimy state of the ransom note suggested it was written by a dirty hand such as that of a janitor. The police pressured Verburgh's wife to implicate her husband in the murder.


title: William Heirens

text: Police held Verburgh for 48 hours of questionings and beatings that severely injured him, including a separated shoulder. Throughout, Verburgh denied involvement in the murder. Verburgh's Janitor Union lawyer got Verburgh released on a writ of habeas corpus. Verburgh said of the experience:Oh, they hanged me up, they blindfolded me ... I can't put up my arms; they are sore. They had handcuffs on me for hours and hours. They threw me in the cell and blindfolded me. They handcuffed my hands behind my back and pulled me up on bars until my toes touched the floor. I no eat. I go to the hospital. Oh, I am so sick. Any more and I would have confessed to anything.


title: William Heirens

text: Verburgh spent 10 days in the hospital. It was determined that Verburgh, a Belgian immigrant, couldn't write English well enough even by the crude standards of the ransom note itself for him to have written it. He successfully sued the Chicago Police Department for $15,000; his wife received $5,000.


title: William Heirens

text: Another notable false lead was that of Sidney Sherman, a recently discharged Marine who had served in World War II. Police had found blonde hairs in the back of the Degnan apartment building, and nearby was a wire that authorities suspected could have been used as a garrote to strangle Suzanne Degnan. Near that was a handkerchief the police suspected might have been used as a gag to keep Suzanne quiet. On the handkerchief was a laundry mark name: S. Sherman. The police hoped that perhaps the killer had erred in leaving it behind. They searched military records and discovered that a Sidney Sherman lived at the Hyde Park YMCA. The police went to question Sherman but discovered that he had vacated the residence without checking out and quit his job without picking up his last paycheck.


title: William Heirens

text: A nationwide manhunt ensued. Sherman was found four days later in Toledo, Ohio. He explained under interrogation that he had eloped with his girlfriend and denied that the handkerchief was his. He was administered a polygraph test, which he passed, and was later cleared. The handkerchief's real owner, Airman Seymour Sherman of New York City, was eventually found. He had been out of the country when Suzanne Degnan was murdered. He had no idea how it could possibly have ended up in Chicago and the presence of the handkerchief was determined to be a coincidence.


title: William Heirens

text: After Suzanne Degnan's disappearance, the Degnan residence received phone calls demanding ransom. A local boy, Theodore Campbell, later said that another local teenager, Vincent Costello, had killed Suzanne Degnan.


title: William Heirens

text: Costello, who lived a few blocks from the Degnans, had been convicted of armed robbery at age 16 and sent to reform school. Campbell said that Costello admitted to kidnapping and killing Suzanne Degnan, and had told him (Campbell) to make the calls to the Degnans. Costello was arrested, but polygraph tests indicated that neither Campbell nor Costello had knowledge of the murder.


title: William Heirens

text: In February 1946, Suzanne Degnan's arms were found by sewer workers about a half mile from her home after her remains had already been interred. By April, some 370 suspects had been questioned and cleared.


title: William Heirens

text: By this time, the press was taking an increasingly critical tone as to how the police were handling the Degnan investigation.


title: William Heirens

text: Richard Russell Thomas was a nurse living in Phoenix, Arizona, having moved from Chicago. At the time of the Chicago investigation, he was imprisoned in Phoenix for molesting one of his own daughters but he was in Chicago at the time of the Degnan murder. A handwriting expert for the Phoenix Police Department first informed Chicago authorities of the "great similarities" between Thomas's handwriting and that of the Degnan ransom note, noting that many of the phrases Thomas had used in an extortion note were similar and his medical training as a nurse matched the profile suggested by police. Although Thomas lived on the south side, he frequented a car yard directly across the street from where Suzanne Degnan's arms were found. During questioning by Chicago police, he freely admitted killing Suzanne Degnan. However, the authorities were intrigued by a promising new suspect reported to the paper the same day the Thomas development broke. A college student was caught fleeing from the scene of a burglary, brandished a gun at police and possibly tried to kill one of the pursuing policemen to escape. By this time, Thomas had recanted his confession, but the press didn't notice in light of this new lead.


title: William Heirens

text: According to Heirens, he drifted into unconsciousness under questioning and was interrogated around the clock for six consecutive days, beaten, and starved. He was not allowed to see his parents for four days. He was also refused the opportunity to speak to a lawyer for six days.


title: William Heirens

text: Two psychiatrists, Doctors Haines and Roy Grinker, gave Heirens sodium pentothal without a warrant and without Heirens's or his parents' consent, and interrogated him for three hours. Under the influence of the drug, authorities claimed, Heirens spoke of an alternate personality named "George", who had actually committed the murders. Heirens claimed that he recalled little of the drug-induced interrogation and that when police asked for "George's" last name he said he couldn't remember, but that it was "a murmuring name". Police translated this to "Murman" and the media later dramatized it to "Murder Man". What Heirens actually said is in dispute, as the original transcript has disappeared. In 1952, Dr Grinker revealed that Heirens had never implicated himself in any of the killings.


title: William Heirens

text: On his fifth day in custody, Heirens was given a lumbar puncture without anesthesia. Moments later, Heirens was driven to police headquarters for a polygraph test. They tried for a few minutes to administer the test, but it was rescheduled for several days later after they found him to be in too much pain to cooperate.


title: William Heirens

text: When the polygraph was administered, authorities, including State's Attorney William Tuohy, announced that the results were "inconclusive."


title: William Heirens

text: On July 2, 1946, he was transferred to the Cook County Jail, where he was placed in the infirmary to recover.


title: William Heirens

text: After the sodium pentothal questioning but before the polygraph exam, Heirens spoke to Captain Michael Ahern. With State's Attorney William Tuohy and a stenographer at hand, Heirens offered an indirect confession, confirming his claim while under sodium pentothal that his alter-ego "George Murman" might have been responsible for the crimes. That "George" (which happens to be his father's first name and Heirens's middle name) had given him the loot to hide in his dormitory room. Police hunted all over for this "George" questioning Heirens's known friends, family, and associations, but came away empty-handed.


title: William Heirens

text: Heirens was attributed as saying while under the influence that he met "George" when he was 13 years old; that it was "George" who sent him out prowling at night, that he robbed for pleasure, and "killed like a cobra" when cornered. "George" related his secrets to Heirens. Heirens allegedly claimed that he was always taking the rap for George, first for petty theft, then assault and now murder. Psychologists explained at the time that, in the same way children make up imaginary friends, Heirens made up this personality to keep his antisocial feelings and actions separate from the person who could be the "average son and student, date nice girls and go to church..."


title: William Heirens

text: Authorities were skeptical regarding Heirens's claims and suspected that he was laying the groundwork for an insanity defense, but the confession earned widespread publicity with the press transforming "Murman" to "Murder Man".


title: William Heirens

text: While handwriting analysts did not definitively link Heirens's handwriting to the "Lipstick Message", police claimed that his fingerprints matched a print discovered at the scene of the Frances Brown murder. It was first reported as a "bloody smudge" on the door jamb. Furthermore, a fingerprint of the left little finger also allegedly connected Heirens to the ransom note with nine points of comparison. As Heirens's nine points of comparison were loops, this could also provide a match to 65% of the population. At the time, Heirens's supporters pointed out that the FBI handbook regarding fingerprint identification required 12 points of comparison matching to have a positive identification.


title: William Heirens

text: On June 30, 1946, Captain Emmett Evans told newspapers that Heirens had been cleared of suspicion in the Brown murder as the fingerprint left in the apartment was not his. Twelve days later, Chief of Detectives Walter Storms confirmed that the "bloody smudge" left on the doorjamb was Heirens's.


title: William Heirens

text: Police searches (without a warrant) of Heirens's residence and college dormitory found other items that earned publicity. Notably recovered was a scrapbook containing pictures of Nazi officials that belonged to a war veteran, Harry Gold, that was taken when Heirens burgled his place the night Suzanne Degnan was killed. Gold lived in the vicinity of the Degnans. This, once again, put Heirens in the circle of suspicion.


title: William Heirens

text: Also in Heirens's possession was a stolen copy of "Psychopathia Sexualis" (1886), Richard von Krafft-Ebing's famous study of sexual deviance. In addition, among Heirens's belongings police discovered a stolen medical kit, but they announced that the medical instruments could not be linked to the murders. No trace of biological material such as blood, skin or hair were found on the tools. Moreover, no biological material of the victims was found on Heirens himself or any of his clothes. The medical kit tools were considered to be too fine and small to be used for dissection. Instead, Heirens had used the four-inch-long medical kit to alter the war bonds he stole.


title: William Heirens

text: A gun was found in his possession that was linked to a shooting. A Colt Police Positive revolver had been stolen in a burglary at the apartment of Guy Rodrick on December 3, 1945. Two nights later, a bullet crashed through the closed eighth-floor apartment window of Marion Caldwell, wounding her. Heirens had that gun in his possession and, according to the Chicago Police Department, the bullet that injured Caldwell was linked through ballistics to that same gun.


title: William Heirens

text: A witness told police he saw a figure walking toward the Degnan residence with a shopping bag; he described the man as 5 feet, 9 inches tall, 170 pounds, 35 years old, and wearing a light-colored fedora and a dark overcoat, but could not make out the man's face. The witness did not recognize a photo of Heirens as showing the man he saw, but a few days later he identified Heirens in person at a court hearing. Before the trial, inconsistencies in the witness's original statement had led many to dismiss his evidence. In court it was pointed out that the witness told police that darkness had prevented his seeing the man's face, while in court he testified that he had seen Heirens walk in front of a car's headlights.


title: William Heirens

text: Heirens's defense attorneys "felt" he was guilty. Their task, they believed, was to save Heirens from the electric chair. Tuohy, on the other hand, was not certain he could get a conviction.The small likelihood of a successful murder prosecution of William Heirens early prompted the state's attorney's office to seek out and obtain the cooperative help of defense counsel, and through them, that of their client. All the prosecution had in the Degnan case was a partial fingerprint on the ransom note. … And it was at this stage of the investigation that defense counsel moved forward in cooperation with my office. —State's Attorney Tuohy


title: William Heirens

text: Heirens's lawyers pressured him to take Tuohy's plea bargain. That deal, which was the topic of that closed-door meeting with Tuohy, stated that Heirens would serve one life sentence if he confessed to the murders of Josephine Ross, Frances Brown, and Suzanne Degnan. With the help of his lawyers, he began drafting a confession using the "Chicago Tribune" article as a guide:As it turned out, the Tribune article was very helpful, as it provided me with a lot of details I didn't know. My attorneys rarely changed anything outright, but I could tell by their faces if I had made a mistake. Or they would say, 'Now, Bill, is that really the way it happened?' Then I would change my story because, obviously, it went against what was known (in the Tribune).


title: William Heirens

text: Both Heirens and his parents signed a confession. The parties agreed to a date of July 30 for Heirens to make his official confession. On that date the defense went to Tuohy's office, where several reporters were assembled to ask Heirens questions and where Tuohy himself made a speech. Heirens appeared bewildered and gave noncommittal answers to reporters' questions, which he years later blamed on Tuohy:It was Tuohy himself. After assembling all the officials, including attorneys and policemen, he began a preamble about how long everyone had waited to get a confession from me, but, at last, the truth was going to be told. He kept emphasizing the word 'truth' and I asked him if he really wanted the truth. He assured me that he did... Now Tuohy made a big deal about hearing the truth. Now, when I was being forced to lie to save myself. It made me angry...so I told them the truth, and everyone got very upset.


title: William Heirens

text: Tuohy withdrew the previously agreed sentence of one life term with a few minor charges, changed it to three life terms to run consecutively, and threatened Heirens with the death penalty if he went to trial. They threatened to charge him with another murder (Estelle Carey) even though Heirens was attending the Gibault School for Wayward Boys, a boarding school in Terre Haute, Indiana, at the time. Heirens's own attorneys were angry at their client for reneging on the plea bargain, spurring the Chicago Tribune headline "Mute Heirens Faces Trial – Killer Spurns Mother's Fervent Plea to Talk."


title: William Heirens

text: Tuohy announced that he would press ahead to try Heirens for the deaths of Suzanne Degnan and Frances Brown.


title: William Heirens

text: Heirens agreed with the new plea agreement. The public allocution was held again in Tuohy's office. This time, Heirens talked and answered questions, even reenacting parts of the murders to which he had confessed. Ahern changed his opinion and believed he was culpable when he heard how familiar Heirens was with victim Frances Brown's apartment.


title: William Heirens

text: In his confession, Heirens stated that he disposed of the hunting knife with which he said he cut up Suzanne Degnan on the elevated subway tracks near the scene of the murder. The police never searched the El tracks; however, learning of this, reporters enquired with the track crew if they had found a knife. They had found it on the tracks and they kept it in the Granville station storage room. The reporters determined that the knife belonged to Guy Rodrick, the same person who had his Colt Police Positive .22 caliber gun stolen and found in Heirens's possession. On July 31, he positively identified the knife as his. Heirens acknowledged that he threw the knife there from an El train, claiming he didn't want his mother to see it.


title: William Heirens

text: Heirens took full responsibility for the three murders on August 7, 1946. The prosecution had him reenact the crime in the Degnan home in public and in front of the press. On September 4, with Heirens's parents and the victims' families attending and Chief Justice Harold G. Ward presiding, Heirens admitted his guilt on the burglary and murder charges. That night, Heirens tried to hang himself in his cell, timed to coincide during a shift change of the prison guards. He was discovered before he died. He said later that despair drove him to attempt suicide:Everyone believed I was guilty...If I weren't alive, I felt I could avoid being adjudged guilty by the law and thereby gain some victory. But I wasn't successful even at that. ...Before I walked into the courtroom my counsel told me to just enter a plea of guilty and keep my mouth shut afterward. I didn't even have a trial...


title: William Heirens

text: On September 5, after further evidence was written into the record and the prosecution and defense had made their closing statements, Ward formally sentenced Heirens to three life terms. As Heirens waited to be transferred to Stateville Prison from the Cook County Jail, Sheriff Michael Mulcahy asked Heirens if Suzanne Degnan suffered when she was killed. Heirens answered:I can't tell you if she suffered, Sheriff Mulcahy. I didn't kill her. Tell Mr. Degnan to please look after his other daughter, because whoever killed Suzanne is still out there.


title: William Heirens

text: Within days of his confession in open court, Heirens denied any responsibility for the murders. Mary Jane Blanchard, daughter of murder victim Josephine Ross, was one of the first dissenters, being quoted in 1946 as saying:I cannot believe that young Heirens murdered my mother. He just does not fit into the picture of my mother's death ... I have looked at all the things Heirens stole and there was nothing of my mother's things among them.


title: William Heirens

text: Heirens was subjected to an interrogation under the influence of sodium pentothal, popularly known as "truth serum". This drug was administered by psychiatrists Haines and Roy Grinker. Under its effects he allegedly stated that a second person named George Murman actually committed the killings.


title: William Heirens

text: This form of interrogation, which was done without a warrant and administered with neither Heirens's nor his parents' consent, is believed by most scientists today to be of dubious value in eliciting the truth, due to high suggestibility of subjects under the influence of such substances.


title: William Heirens

text: By the 1950s, most scientists had declared the very notion of truth serums invalid, and most courts had ruled testimony gained through their use inadmissible. However, when Heirens was arrested in 1946, growing scientific opinion against "truth serum" had not yet filtered down to the courts and police departments.


title: William Heirens

text: During Heirens's post-conviction petition in 1952, Tuohy admitted under oath that he not only knew about the sodium pentothal procedure, he had authorized it and paid Grinker $1,000. The same year, Grinker revealed that Heirens never implicated himself in any of the killings.


title: William Heirens

text: In 1946, after Heirens underwent two polygraph examinations, Tuohy declared the results inconclusive. However, John E. Reid and Fred E. Inbau published the test findings in their 1953 textbook, "Lie Detection and Criminal Interrogation", which seem to contradict that assertion. According to the book, the test was not inconclusive, writing, "Murderer William Heirens was questioned about the killing and dismemberment of six-year old Suzanne Degnan ... On the basis of the conventional testing theory his response on the card test clearly establishes (him) as an innocent person."


title: William Heirens

text: During the Degnan murder investigation, the Chicago Police Department contacted "Chicago Daily News" artist Frank San Hamel to examine a photograph of the ransom note. Three days after the murder, Hamel told the police and the public that he had found "hidden indentation writing" (writing impressions from a note written on an overlying piece of paper, leaving a ghostly impression). At this news, Storms broke the chain of custody and provided Hamel with the original note for him to examine directly. Since the chain of custody was broken by this action, the note was rendered useless in court no matter the result. After Heirens was arrested for the Degnan killing, Hamel reported that it implicated him. The FBI had previously issued a report on March 22, 1946, that it examined the note and declared that there was no indentation writing at all and Hamel's assertions "[...] indicated either a lack of knowledge on his part or a deliberate attempt to deceive."


title: William Heirens

text: Even the actual handwriting on the note has been apparently discredited. Most handwriting experts, both attached to the Chicago police and independent at the time of the original investigation, believed that Heirens had no connections to either the note or the wall scribble. Charles Wilson, who was head of the Chicago Crime Detection Laboratory, declared Heirens's known handwriting exemplars obtained from Heirens's handwritten notes from college agreed with the Police Department experts who could not find any connection between Heirens, the note, and the wall message. Independent handwriting expert George W. Schwartz was brought in to give his opinion. He stated flatly that "The individual characteristics in the two writings do not compare in any respect."


title: William Heirens

text: A third handwriting expert, Herbert J. Walter, whose credentials included working on the Lindbergh baby kidnapping in 1932, was brought in. After examining documents written by Heirens, Walter declared that Heirens wrote the ransom note and the lipstick scrawl on the wall and attempted to disguise his handwriting. However, this was in direct contradiction to what he said several months before, at which time he said he doubted that the two writings were authored by the same person. He was quoted as saying there were "a few superficial similarities and a great many dissimilarities."


title: William Heirens

text: In 1996, FBI handwriting analyst David Grimes declared that Heirens's known handwriting did not match either the Degnan ransom note or the infamous "Lipstick Message", supporting the two earlier results of the original 1946 investigation and Herbert J. Walter's original January 1946 opinion. In addition, the handwritings of the two notes don't match each other.


title: William Heirens

text: Among evidence suggesting Heirens's guilt is the fingerprint evidence on the Degnan ransom note and on the doorjamb of Frances Brown's bathroom door. However, suspicions on the veracity of doorjamb fingerprints found at the Brown crime scene have arisen, including charges that the police planted the fingerprint since it allegedly looks like a rolled fingerprint, the type that you would find on a police fingerprint index card. Both sets of prints have come under serious question as to their validity, good faith collection and possible contamination; even the possibility of their being planted.


title: William Heirens

text: On or about June 26, 1946, State's Attorney Tuohy announced that "there can be no doubt now" as to Heirens's guilt after the authorities linked Heirens's prints to the two prints on the ransom note. It was this assertion, unchallenged by Heirens's defense counsel at sentencing, that helped prompt him to confess to the murders with which he was charged. In a 2002 clemency petition, however, his lawyers question the validity of those prints on the ransom note due to the timing of discoveries of fingerprints on the card, the broken chain of evidence and its handling by both inexperienced law enforcement and civilians.


title: William Heirens

text: The Degnan ransom note was first examined by the Chicago Crime Detection Laboratory, but they couldn't find any usable prints on the note. Captain Timothy O'Connor took the note to the FBI crime laboratory in Washington, D.C. on January 18, 1946, with the idea of enlisting the FBI's more sophisticated technology in finding any latent prints. The FBI subjected the note to the then advanced method of iodine fuming to raise latent prints. The process was similar in execution to today's polycyanoacrylate "super glue" fuming in which Cyanoacrylate is heated to a vapor. This vapor sticks to the skin oils on the friction ridges of a latent fingerprint. The older Ninhydrin method, which is a liquid that is sprayed on paper to detect latent prints on paper is similar. The FBI were able to raise two prints which they photographed promptly because, unlike modern polycyanoacrylate, fuming prints revealed by the iodine process fade quickly. Captain O'Connor later testified at Heirens' sentencing hearing that he only saw two prints on the front of the note and did not mention the existence of any on the back.


title: William Heirens

text: Upon his return to Chicago, he turned over the photographs of the revealed prints on the note to Sergeant Thomas Laffey, the Chicago Police Department's fingerprint expert. After his examination he stated to the press that they were "... so incomplete that it is impossible to classify them." Despite checking these "incomplete" prints with everyone arrested between January 1946 and June 29, 1946, he was unable to find a match even though William Heirens was previously arrested and fingerprinted on May 1, 1946, on a weapons charge. Heirens was arrested for burglary on June 26, 1946; three days later Sergeant Laffey announced a nine-point comparison match to Heirens left little finger with one of the prints. Then a match was announced between Heirens and the second print. In a news conference, State's Attorney Tuohy declared that "[...] there could be no doubt now" about the suspect's guilt but then incongruously also stated that they didn't actually have enough evidence to indict Heirens.


title: William Heirens

text: Months after the FBI had returned the note and the photograph of the note to the Chicago police, the police announced that Laffey had discovered a palm print on the reverse side of the note also matching Heirens to 10 points of comparison. No other prints were found on the note, prompting Police Chief Walter Storm to say: "This shows that Heirens was the only person to handle the note."


title: William Heirens

text: Indeed, even before the police crime lab got a chance to examine the note, Charles Wilson, the chief of the Chicago Crime Detection Laboratory, stated "When we got the Degnan note it came late after other people had photographed it and handled it." In the same vein, a March 22, 1946, FBI report noted "[...] it is evident that the note has been handled considerably."


title: William Heirens

text: These statements are in direct contradiction to Chief Walter Storm's assertion that no one else but Heirens handled the note.


title: William Heirens

text: Further, Laffey testified during the September 5, 1946, sentencing hearing that one more fingerprint on the reverse side of the note was linked to Heirens to 10 points of comparison. He also increased the points of comparison of the palm print to Heirens from 10 to the FBI standard of 12.


title: William Heirens

text: As to the fingerprints on the front of the note that were discovered by the FBI in January 1946, Laffey only identified one and did not say it belonged to Heirens when he testified at the sentencing hearing. Only the prints not found by the FBI and allegedly discovered after Heirens's arrest were mentioned at the sentencing hearing and not the two front prints that were supposedly "indisputable" proof of Heirens's culpability. They were hardly mentioned, nor were they linked to Heirens, in a court hearing in which the witnesses had to testify under oath.


title: William Heirens

text: As a further indication of what could be called ineffective defense by Heirens's lawyers, none of these issues were raised at the sentencing hearings and no objections were made, nor did they bring up chain-of-custody issues.


title: William Heirens

text: A "bloody, smudged" print of an end and middle joint of a finger was found on the doorjamb of a door between the bathroom and dressing room in Frances Brown's apartment. A photograph of the print was taken, but no match was made with anything on file. After Heirens was arrested on June 26, his prints were compared with the Degnan note. When Laffey claimed a match with Heirens and the prints on the Degnan note, an attempt was made to match him with the doorjamb print. It was unsuccessful, and the police declared him cleared of the Brown murder because the print at the crime scene was not his. Twelve days later, however, it was declared to match Heirens's prints to 22 points of comparison, well above the FBI standard.


title: William Heirens

text: At Heirens's sentencing, Laffey testified that the end joint of the bloody print had an eight-point comparison to Heirens's and the middle joint a six-point comparison. The middle joint didn't live up to Laffey's personal standard of seven or eight points to make a positive identification match.