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| Hawkins,George April 3 1961; Newport,Kentucky 48 years old | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: May 6 2007, 09:36 AM (1,099 Views) | |
| monkalup | May 6 2007, 09:36 AM Post #1 |
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
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http://charleyproject.org/cases/h/hawkins_george.html George Hawkins ![]() Above Images: Hawkins, circa 1961 Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance Missing Since: April 3, 1961 from Newport, Kentucky Classification: Endangered Missing Age: 48 years old Height and Weight: 5'8, 190 pounds Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian male. Hawkins wears dark-rimmed eyeglasses. One of his legs is an inch shorter than the other and he wears one built-up shoe to compensate. Hawkins wears a full set of dentures. Clothing/Jewelry Description: Dark blue trousers, a red and black flannel shirt under a dark blue jacket with yellow lining, a blue/gray hat, a yellow gold watch with a leather band, and a yellow gold ring with a Masonic emblem. Details of Disappearance Hawkins was last seen on April 3, 1961 in Newport, Kentucky. He resided in Persimmon Grove, Kentucky at the time. He was employed as a law enforcement officer and also ran a small general store. He lived on the upper floor of the store. On the day of his disappearance, Hawkins fixed his daughter's breakfast and saw her off to work, then said goodbye to his wife and left in his tan two-tone 1959 Plymouth station wagon. At 1:00 p.m. he called home, saying he had stopped by his attorney's office to meet with him about his upcoming Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audit. Hawkins did not sound troubled at the time of the conversation, and stated he was on his way home. He never arrived and has never been heard from again. On April 7, authorities found Hawkins's car in Dayton, Ohio, parked at the edge of a river. It had half a tank of gasoline and the key was still in the ignition. There was muddy water inside the vehicle; it appeared as if the car had been rinsed in muddy water and then wiped with a muddy rag. There was no sign of Hawkins at the scene. Authorities believe organized crime was involved in Hawkins's disappearance. There is evidence that he was taking bribes from organized crime figures, including people who ran gambling businesses, in his capacity as a peace officer. Allegedly, Hawkins kept increasing his prices and the criminals were tired of paying him, and arranged to have him murdered as a result. No one has been charged in connection with his disappearance, however; it remains unsolved. Investigating Agency If you have any information concerning this case, please contact: Kentucky State Police 800-222-5555 Source Information The Cincinnati Post http://www.cincypost.com/ The Doe Network http://www.doenetwork.org/ |
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Lauran "If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. | |
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| monkalup | May 6 2007, 09:39 AM Post #2 |
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
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http://www.cincypost.com/2004/04/24/oegg042404.html Disappearance 43 years ago still haunts By Shelly Whitehead Post staff reporter April 3, 1961, started like any other Monday for Campbell County Constable George Hawkins. A long list of errands awaited -- most of them 15 miles away in Newport. That morning showed no signs of the twist Hawkins' life would take by sundown, when a decades-long darkness would descend on his family and when every trace of George Hawkins would be wiped from the face of the earth. Most everybody believes Newport's then-thriving mob is to blame. This month marks the 43rd anniversary of Hawkins' still unexplained disappearance. Neither he nor his remains have been found. All he left behind was a muddy Plymouth station wagon on the riverfront, a grieving family, hushed whispers of "Leave it alone" and a nickname, the "Egg Man." Files are missing from the Kentucky State Police archive. And Campbell County and Dayton police -- the other two legal agencies on the still-open case -- also say no evidence or information was retained. Private investigators, aware of what they might find, have refused to take the case. But Hawkins' daughters are still looking for answers about what happened to their dad, who along with his job as a lawman also ran a small general store. They do it with one eye out for the organized crime world they believe swept him from their lives. "Judy, she was 19," said Hawkins' youngest daughter, 53-year-old Anita Boyer, of her big sister, Judy Barber, now 62. "She still has a big fear about what happened and what could still happen." The Hawkins family is mindful of the fact that their father wore a badge at a time in Newport when law enforcement officers often were corrupt. Allegations that Constable Hawkins was on the take swirl through Sin City's legendary past. On the morning of the day he disappeared, Barber said, her 46-year-old father fixed her breakfast before seeing her off to work. Then he hugged his wife, Mary, and 10-year-old Anita, and headed out in his tan 1959 station wagon. The Hawkins lived in Persimmon Grove, a small community in southern Campbell County. "We lived over the top of the store," Boyer said. "I remember we had a big old over-stuffed chair right over at the window. I just sat there and watched for his car until way after dark. I remember mom was upset." Hawkins called home around 1 p.m., saying that he stopped by Charlie Lester's office but was on his way home. Nothing in his voice suggested any trouble. Lester, now dead, was a prominent Fort Thomas attorney in 1961. He represented a number of Newport's organized crime leaders and was a power player in the political and business activities of the wide-open gambling city run by the Cleveland syndicate. Lester also represented George Hawkins, and that April day the two met about Hawkins' looming Internal Revenue Service tax audit. As far as the Hawkins family knows, Charles Lester was the last man to ever see George Hawkins. The family grew worried as evening broke. "We closed the store about 6 p.m., and we all went out looking," Barber said. In the coming days, their search would widen to include more people and more area. That week's Kentucky Post described efforts by Campbell County police to backtrack the constable's movements. On April 7, Dayton police found Hawkins' two-tone Plymouth station wagon parked at the river's edge with a half-tank of gas and the key still in the ignition. But, The Post reported, every other scrap that could be taken into evidence was gone. The next week state police took over the investigation and learned a woman had seen a man in a light gray topcoat parking Hawkins' car on Second Avenue the Monday he disappeared. But since Hawkins was last seen in a dark blue jacket and trousers, the information was deemed irrelevant and apparently police never tried to determine the topcoat-clad man's identity. "When we went down to pick the car up there was absolutely, positively not anything -- not even a chewing gum wrapper -- in the car," said Barber, echoing the observations of a detective at the time who was quoted as saying that the car's empty state was "very mysterious." "But there was muddy water in that car, like it had been washed out with it. -- "I remember most the passenger side door. It was like somebody had taken a dirty rag and wiped it. And it was very unusual for there not to be anything in there." Barber said the car was immediately returned to her family, with no police effort to pull fingerprints or take crime scene photos. In fact, the brief police investigation into Hawkins' disappearance never turned up so much as a strand of hair. There is no case file to mark what remains today an open case of a Kentucky peace officer's disappearance. Missing records State Police Sgt. Phil Crumpton asked the agency's records custodian staff earlier this month to physically search through the 1961 case file boxes in Frankfort for Hawkins' file. Nothing was found. Though the agency retains files as far back as 1948, the notes detailing the investigation into Hawkins' disappearance have vanished. The lead state police detective assigned to the Hawkins case that April 1961 is unable to recall any information about the investigation. When contacted at his home in Frankfort in March, retired state police Police Bureau of Investigation Commander Algin Roberts said simply, "I just don't remember a thing about it." Some say the lack of any records is itself a strong indication of what killed George Hawkins: The underworld is expert at eliminating even the bulkiest paper trails. And in 1961, the mob had a hold on Newport that's hard for people to fathom today if they weren't around Sin City back then, according to experts on the subject like Eastern Kentucky University Justice and Police Studies Professor Gary Potter. Potter, who authored a case study of Newport's Syndicate-steeped years called "Sin City Revisited," paints a picture of a city so saturated with organized crime that it almost crossed into an alternate reality. The best attorneys were calling shots for the mob behind the scenes, Potter said, and the top cops were organizing mob "hits" and bribery schemes. Many believe Hawkins was a player in that topsy-turvy Sin City world. And like so many lawmen and other pillars of justice of the day, Hawkins had worked up his own little scheme to survive and thrive on the wild and lawless streets of Newport, they say. If true, it may have been his undoing. According to at least three political leaders of the 1960s in Campbell County, George Hawkins was known on the street in those days simply as the "Egg Man." The nickname was one Hawkins earned through a bribery scheme he allegedly ran one that managed to unite his roles as constable, general store operator and Sin City player into one money-making venture. Though technically Hawkins was elected constable for the largely rural 7th Magisterial District in Campbell County, he had statutory authority to enforce the law throughout the county. Hawkins' daughters say if they knew one thing about their father, it was that "he just loved being a cop." And in 1961, if you loved being a cop, Newport was where you wanted to be. As one of the few still-living figures from the Sin City days, and one of the many who did time for felony convictions, former Newport Mayor Johnny "TV" Peluso recalled how the Egg Man's alleged scheme worked. "He'd sell a basket of eggs to every joint and the price of his eggs was $100 an egg. That was his shakedown for each gambling joint," Peluso said, "because he was constable, and the constable had the same powers in the city to shut 'em down. Every week he'd collect the money. Every Tuesday was pay-off day." By Peluso's telling, it was no coincidence then perhaps that the last day and place anyone ever saw George Hawkins was a Monday afternoon in Newport. Two other major political players of the day, former Campbell County Sheriff George Ratterman and former state Sen. Art Schmidt, also remember Hawkins as the Egg Man. Ratterman probably knows the ways of the mob as well as anybody outside organized crime. He became well known in May 1961 when he ran for sheriff backed by the Committee of 500, a group set up to run the mob out. The mob counter-attacked. Charles Lester arranged to drug Ratterman, strip him naked and send pictures to newspapers of him in bed with a notorious Newport stripper, April Flowers. Ratterman won anyway. When reached at his Colorado home earlier this month, Ratterman said the early 1960s were rife with mob-orchestrated schemes and violence. "There was an awful lot of that kind of stuff going on then," said Ratterman, now 77. Schmidt, reached at his Northern Kentucky home, said he was still a Cold Spring councilman in 1961. But he remembers Hawkins' disappearance and the scam he allegedly ran among the gambling houses of Newport around that time. "I do remember that Egg Man thing. He'd go in and it was obviously a threat. And they were afraid not to do it because he did have police powers. So for a couple hundred bucks, they could shut him up," Schmidt said. "But he just disappeared. I think the stories were that if they drained the Ohio River, they'd probably find him there. He wasn't going to just come floating up. But I don't know if they really ever will know for sure if he was murdered." Was it a mob hit? Peluso said he, for one, is nearly certain Hawkins was murdered by the mob. In fact, he said he has a pretty good idea of how the hit went down. Peluso said the word on the street was out that spring: Egg Man's days were numbered. As Peluso put it, the price of eggs was skyrocketing. And the mob figures that ran the gambling joints and other illegal trade of the day had grown tired of paying the steep price Hawkins required to look the other way while the lawbreakers played. "First it was $100 an egg, then $200, and then he jumped it to $500 an egg. That's what it was," Peluso said. "I don't know what he did with the money because I know they took care of him for a couple of years. But he was greedy, I guess, and thought he'd up the ante or somehow he threatened to shut down every one of 'em." Though not yet much of a power player in Newport in 1961, Peluso said he was "connected" through his work in television repair for some top mobsters like Albert "Red" Masterson and Frank "Screw" Andrews. It was on a repair call for Masterson that Peluso said he heard Masterson order the hit. "He ran an establishment down there on Fourth Street, with gambling, roulette wheels and poker," Peluso said. "I went in to do some service for him. He was going to tell me what he wanted me to do out at his house. "I was waiting, and I heard him say, 'The Egg Man has to go.' I couldn't really say anything about it then because I didn't see him transfer any money. But I knew it was going to happen because I knew about the price of eggs." Peluso and other Sin City regulars might have known the hit on Hawkins was coming, but Hawkins' family hadn't an inkling. In fact, Hawkins' daughters only first learned of their father's nickname and alleged "egg-selling" practices a few weeks ago, through The Post's interviews with Peluso. After 43 years of searching for mere possibilities to explain their father's disappearance, Barber and Boyer said hearing Peluso's recollections was like finding some of the missing pieces to a puzzle they've worked most of their lives. "He sold eggs, so that makes sense. I remember he used to take like crates of eggs to town," said Boyer, referring to the eggs local farmers sold through her father's store and in Newport. "Judy had her 16th birthday party at Beverly Hills (the Southgate club that, in those days, was reputedly a gambling joint), and I know that he took eggs there, too. That's very interesting. It makes sense, in a way." Judy Barber, who now lives in north-central Kentucky, also said the egg-selling scheme makes sense, but also raises questions. "It's not out of the question. -- But for $100 an egg? That's just ridiculously high for those years. -- And if that were the case, we sure didn't see any of the money. Let's put it that way," Barber said. "And I can't feature Red Masterson -- calling the hit on him. I put it more on Screw Andrews and Charlie Lester." All three of those Sin City power players are now deceased. None is believed to have said anything publicly concerning Hawkins' disappearance, according to his family and newspaper records. "Mom and I went to see Lester after Dad had been gone for quite some time. And Mom was asking him about it. I can't remember his exact words, but he as much as told her that Daddy was dead," Barber said. The date of George Hawkins' disappearance too, is the date that the Kentucky Bar Association identified as the date Charles Lester started coordinating the ill-fated plot to discredit George Ratterman, the clean-up sheriff candidate. According to the disbarment complaint filed on Lester, it was on April 3, 1961 -- the day the Egg Man disappeared -- that Lester "entered into an understanding with Anthony (Tony) Bucieri, Tito Carinci and others to aid, abet, counsel and advise in procuring Thomas Withrow, free-lance photographer, to go to the Glenn Hotel and talk with Marty and to have Thomas Withrow at some future date take a picture of one George Ratterman, candidate for sheriff of Campbell County, in a compromising position." Was Hawkins approached about helping? Was his IRS probe the first overture by Robert Kennedy's Justice Department to get him to turn over bigger fish? Did Hawkins just walk away from his family? Or, was the price of eggs just too high? "My theory is that Daddy was pushing their buttons. And whatever buttons he pushed, they just decided to eliminate the problem. My theory is they got him that afternoon, and they put him in concrete." Potter -- the "Sin City Revisited" author -- thinks Hawkins' disappearance had more to do with the times and possibly, the IRS than with the skyrocketing price of eggs. "In Newport in 1961, Red (Masterson) certainly would have had no trouble arranging a hit. And selling eggs at $100 and raising the price seems like a good way to get killed in 1961," Potter said. "But I would be very interested to know more about the IRS audit though. The family says they never saw the bribe money. But it went somewhere. Was Lester holding it? Investing it? Laundering it? "Financial revelations at a time when they were all coming under IRS investigation would have been a far more likely motive than corruption. Someone who threatened to reveal clandestine investments or the repository for laundered money could do considerable damage. And if you were hiding money in Newport in 1961, it would have gone through Charles Lester, too." A family's hardship Barber and Boyer say not only did they never see any windfall that might intimate their father's involvement in a bribery scheme, they also lost the $500-plus in general store receipts their father took to Newport the day he disappeared. Many of their friends and community connections disappeared, as well, in the weeks following that April day. There was just too much fear. So Hawkins' surviving family was left feeling abandoned and alone, with matriarch, Mary Dell Hawkins, not knowing quite where future meals would come from. She could not collect Social Security survivor benefits until her husband was declared legally dead, so she tried to make a go of Hawkins' General Store. Ultimately though, the business failed, too. For then 10-year-old, Anita, it was a sudden, bitter lesson in self-sufficiency that lasted a lifetime. That brand of dogged determination has served the Hawkins' daughters well in their steady pursuit of answers about their father's disappearance. Over the last four decades, they've turned to private investigators, police, even former Sin City players for help. Most have said the same thing: Let it go. "Just leave the whole thing alone" was the advice of a private investigator Barber hired in the 1970s to search for her dad. "Go home and keep yourself out of it. You'll be safe." More than a few suspected Hawkins' body was sunk into the wet concrete being poured for the foundation for Screw Anderson's New Sportsman's Club on the Newport riverfront at the unlikely hour of 1 a.m. the night he disappeared. But when that club's foundation was torn up for the Newport Aquarium in 1999, a cursory probe of the chunked concrete produced nothing more than a little live local television news coverage. The unidentified human remains found nationally since 1961 number in the hundreds. Presumably, the remains of someone with George Hawkins' unique stature -- one leg was an inch shorter than the other -- might be relatively easy to find among all the other remains. But unfortunately, even the impressive database of unidentified remains maintained by the Doe Network revealed few possible matches for Hawkins. Still, officials at the Internet-based missing persons network have agreed to post information about George Hawkins on their Web site. And the Doe Network's Todd Matthews is investigating whether any of the current records of remains found since Hawkins' disappearance match the description of George Hawkins. Hawkins' daughters admit frustration with the dearth of information about their long-lost father. But they are not dissuaded from the search. In fact, Hawkins' granddaughter, Holly Boyer, has taken up the quest now with a single-minded determination that sometimes amuses her mother, Anita Boyer. The Hawkins women have been nearly as victimized by what happened that April 3 as their father, suffering first as "untouchables" in the mob-phobic Northern Kentucky of the 1960s. And now, from the same lifelong fear that something could suddenly take all they love away. "One thing I told Mom about this is that the fear has been instilled in me even though I didn't know him and wasn't involved in the situation at all," said Holly Boyer. "I remember my mom sleeping with a gun next to her, and I'm sure that was still from her fear from when her Daddy disappeared. It just never left." Anita nods at daughter's words, seeming a little weary of it all. In some ways she still seems to be that same 10-year-old girl in the big over-stuffed chair, waiting to see her daddy's headlights through the dark. Publication Date: 04-24-2004 |
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Lauran "If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. | |
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| monkalup | May 6 2007, 09:39 AM Post #3 |
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
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http://z13.invisionfree.com/PorchlightUSA/...pic=10528&st=0& |
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Lauran "If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. | |
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| monkalup | Jul 23 2008, 05:03 PM Post #4 |
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
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Lauran "If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. | |
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| hrcamacho | May 8 2011, 07:59 PM Post #5 |
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Newbie
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50 years later and my family has not found him. I suppose it will be something that my mother and God talk about when she is gone. Our family has greatly suffered from his loss. I, although never met my grandfather, have grown listening to wonderful stories about this man, and he is missed everyday. |
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| Ell | May 21 2017, 06:05 AM Post #6 |
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Heart of Gold
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http://local12.com/news/local/solving-a-mo...-vanished-in-61 NEWPORT, Ky. (WKRC) - There is still an unsolved mystery from Newport¡¦s days as a mob-controlled ¡§Sin City¡¨ with gambling and prostitution. Constable George Hawkins vanished in 1961. His daughters are still afraid to talk about their father's disappearance, but there is little question the Newport mob had George Hawkins killed. However, the mystery could soon be solved. The exhumation of Esttella Hawkins from the Persimmon Grove Baptist Church cemetery in Campbell County is to get her DNA, all to find out if a certain skull with a head wound belongs to her son, George. The skull was found along the Ohio River in Carroll County in 1980 ‡ç NEWPORT, Ky. (WKRC) - There is still an unsolved mystery from Newport¡¦s days as a mob-controlled ¡§Sin City¡¨ with gambling and prostitution. Constable George Hawkins vanished in 1961. His daughters are still afraid to talk about their father's disappearance, but there is little question the Newport mob had George Hawkins killed. However, the mystery could soon be solved. ADVERTISING The exhumation of Esttella Hawkins from the Persimmon Grove Baptist Church cemetery in Campbell County is to get her DNA, all to find out if a certain skull with a head wound belongs to her son, George. The skull was found along the Ohio River in Carroll County in 1980. "If you look at the roundness of the eyes¡K mouth structure¡K there is a likeness,¡¨ said Detective Endre Samu of Kentucky State Police Post 5. A likeness to George Hawkins if compared to a facial reconstruction built over the skull. George was an elected Newport constable who disappeared after an appointment with his attorney in 1961. "The last person was Charlie Lester, George¡¦s attorney for an IRS audit,¡¨ said Marvin Record of the Newport Historical Society. Aren't many people who disappear off the face of the earth,¡¨ said Record. But George Hawkins seemingly did. Some in Newport said there was a hit on the so-called ¡§egg man,¡¨ Hawkins' nickname for his shakedown of gambling joints. He owned a market in Persimmon Grove, where farmers brought eggs. He sold them for a $100 apiece to gambling and strip clubs, then the price went up to $500 apiece. Remember, a constable has police powers. Sometimes that meant something to the tune of: "I¡¦m a county constable, I won't come in as long as you pay me this¡K I¡¦ll turn the other way if I see something illegal" Four days after Hawkins disappeared, his Plymouth station wagon was found parked at the river's edge in Dayton, Kentucky. The key was still in the ignition. When they found his car, it had been sanitized to the point no trash no chewing gum wrapper scrubbed down by river water. If things are unraveling and they had to take care of ¡§loose ends¡K¡¨ was George Hawkins a loose end? Was he one of the people gave info to the IRS? Things were unraveling. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy called out Newport to show the evils of gambling. There were IRS audits and several lawmen faced indictment. George Ratterman was campaigning for sheriff on a promise to drive out vice. Hawkins disappeared the day before hundreds of people gathered at the library in support of Ratterman. Then Ratterman, the married former football star, became the center of sin city's most sensational scandal. He was drugged, stripped naked and put in bed with stripper, April Flowers, to derail his campaign. It didn't work. Ratterman's arrest became the talk of the town, not George Hawkins disappearance, but there was talk about what happened to him. He ended up wearing a ¡¥Newport nightgown,¡¦¡¨ said Detective Samu, who explains that the ¡§nightgown¡¨ is made of concrete. That means they encased him in cement, or they put him totally encased in a new construction zone. Years later, Hawkins' chief deputy gave George¡¦s wife his masonic ring and his watch. He said he got it from Lester. There was never a police investigation. The only case file on Hawkins is the one on Detective Samu's desk. He believes the egg selling scheme is what George did to support his family. He didn't live lavishly, wasn't indicted, so same chooses to see the good side. George was a constable¡K should be remembered with dignity,¡¨ said Detective Samu. If the skull is George¡¦s, his family will know for certain he was killed. It won't tell them who or why, but one chapter in sin city's history will have to be rewritten. If the DNA matches George, it will be added to his information in NAMUS, the database of the missing and unidentified. It is available to police and the publi Lester was also the attorney for organized crime leaders in Newport, linked to the Cleveland syndicate. |
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Ell Only after the last tree has been cut down; Only after the last fish has been caught; Only after the last river has been poisoned; Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten. | |
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