A federal grand jury in Alabama has delivered an 11-count indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the now-scandal ridden activist group that came to fame by suing Ku Klux Klan organizations

Handling Stress without Falling Apart - Crosswalk Couples Devotional - April 22Handling Stress without Falling ApartBy: Rebecca Barlow JordanAs pressure and stress bear down on me, I find joy in your commands. - Psalm 119:143 NLTA couples’ conference I once attended emphasized that situations don’t cause emotions. And at first, many in attendance resisted that teaching. I’m sure we were...

In the early morning hours of March 19, 1985, 14-year-old Cinnamon Brown crept through her Orange County home into the room where her stepmother, Linda Brown, was sleeping. Standing over the bed, Cinnamon fired a single shot into her stepmothers abdomen followed by a second fatal one shortly afterward.When Linda Brown was found dead later that day, Cinnamon, whose father David Brown had persuaded her that her young age would protect her from a jail sentence, readily confessed to the murder. Meanwhile, an apparently distraught David Brown claimed he had left the house that night to escape his wife and daughters endless bickering.Cinnamon Brown, who was convicted of murdering her stepmother Linda Brown, wipes away tears during her testimony.With all of the evidence against her, Cinnamon Brown was sentenced to 27 years to life in prison for her stepmothers murder.But little did Cinnamon know that her father and his secret lover, Linda Browns younger sister Patti, had since cashed in on his dead wifes life insurance policy and were living the good life.In time, however, Cinnamon Brown would tell the world the truth: that her father had been the one to plan his wifes murder and manipulated Cinnamon into enacting it and going to jail in his place. The Manipulation Of Cinnamon BrownIn 1985, the Browns of Garden Grove, Orange County appeared to be a normal Californian family.The family patriarch, 36-year-old David Brown, ran a lucrative computer data recovery business, according to The New York Times. He and his 23-year-old wife Linda had an infant daughter, Krystal. Cinnamon, Davids 14-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, came to live with her father, and Lindas younger sister Patti Bailey, now 17, had moved in with the Browns when she was 11. But the familys apparent happiness was all an illusion.FacebookThe Brown family before tragedy struck. From left to right: David, Patti Bailey, Linda, Krystal, and Cinnamon Brown.Over the course of two years, David Brown worked to turn Cinnamon and Patti against his wife. He told them, falsely, that Linda Brown and her brother were planning on murdering him to take over his business, and that to save him, they would need to murder Linda first.He claimed he didnt have the stomach to commit the murder himself. And Cinnamon seemed the best candidate to do it in his place.If you loved me, you would do this for me, he repeatedly told Cinnamon, promising her that because of her age, she wouldnt go to jail and instead, would simply be given psychiatric treatment and sent back home.17-year-old Patti Bailey had her own reasons for wanting her big sister dead. Linda stood in the way of her marrying David.Patti had had a troubled, poverty-ridden childhood. Raised by an alcoholic mother and sexually abused by her own brother, Patti believed she had escaped that life of hardship when at the age of 11 she moved in with her sisters idyllic family. Instead, she fell into David Browns clutches. Shortly after she moved in with the Browns, David began sexually abusing her. Thinking this behavior was normal, Patti soon fell in love with the man that in her eyes had given her everything.I just thought thats the way it went . . . in a normal house, she later testified, according to The Los Angeles Times. Before long, a Patti and Cinnamon Brown began plotting with David to kill Linda.David, meanwhile, was privately taking out several life insurance policies on his 23-year-old wife, including two policies purchased within the two months before her death. According to court documents, these would amount to a total of $842,793. The Night Linda Brown Was MurderedPast midnight on March 19, 1985, Cinnamon Brown and Patti Bailey were abruptly woken up by David Brown.Girls, it has to be done tonight, he told them, as reported by the Greensboro News and Record. Months of planning were put in motion as Cinnamon was handed a gun. FacebookLinda Brown in the months before her murder, seen here holding baby Krystal as David Brown grins behind her.David also handed her the cocktail of pills that Cinnamon would take to fake her suicide afterward. David had previously coached Cinnamon on how to draft suicide notes, convincing her it would give her a more lenient punishment. David then left the house and headed out to a local convenience store, making sure the clerk noticed him so he had an alibi. Later, he would tell the responding officers that he had left earlier that night, exasperated by the constant arguing between his wife and daughter. Meanwhile, as Patti stood nearby holding baby Krystal, Cinnamon stood over her sleeping stepmother and, using a pillow to muffle the shots, fired a single shot into her abdomen. The guns hammer snagged on the pillow, and Linda Browns whimpers soon joined the cries of her baby. Cinnamon fired again. The second shot was fatal.According to The Orange Count Register, when homicide detectives arrived later that day, they checked the familys backyard, where they discovered Cinnamon Brown lying in the doghouse, covered in her own vomit and urine and clutching a ribbon-tied note in her hand that read, Dear God, please forgive me. I didnt mean to hurt her. Cinnamon had suffered a prescription drug overdose. Detectives believe that if Cinnamon had not vomited, she would have died and provided her father with a convenient patsy. The motive for Linda Browns murder appeared to be the endless friction between Cinnamon and her stepmother. And though she quickly confessed to killing Linda, Cinnamon Brown was shocked when, in 1986, she was sentenced to 27 years to life, despite her fathers promises that she would get off easy.Still, case investigators suspected there was something more sinister afoot. And soon they would discover the sordid truth.Uncovering Her Fathers CrimesAfter his wifes death, David Brown took out enough life insurance payouts to buy himself a nice home in Anaheim Hills as well as several new cars. With Linda out of the way, he was also free to be with her teenage sister Patti. The two secretly married in 1986, and they had a daughter a year later, making up a name for the father.Patty Bailey in court.Meanwhile, incarcerated in the California Youth Authority, Cinnamon Brown was gradually becoming disillusioned with her father and his lies. He continued to disappoint her through lack of visits, and Cinnamons parole considerations were denied because she continued to claim, as David had advised her to do, that she could not remember the murder.Then, she learned about the life insurance policies, and before long, she also learned about her fathers relationship with Patti. Enraged, Cinnamon decided her father and Patti were equally culpable in her stepmothers murder. She began working with district attorney investigators to bring the truth to light.In August 1988, Cinnamon began secretly wearing a wire during visits with her father. David quickly incriminated himself by acknowledging that hed mixed Cinnamons drug cocktail on the night of Lindas murder. He told her she couldnt tell the truth about that night because he couldnt survive in prison, but promised her he would persuade Patti to confess to the murder so she could take Cinnamons place.When David and Patti were arrested just a few weeks later, David denied everything. But when he learned that his conversations with Cinnamon had been recorded, he changed his story completely, admitting to certain elements of Cinnamons story while still putting the blame on Cinnamon and Patti.Patti, meanwhile, cooperated with the prosecution and went on to testify against her new husband.Cinnamon Brown Finally Gets VindicationWhile being held at the Orange County jail ahead of his trial, David Brown continued to to scheme. He offered a soon-to-be-released inmate, Richard Steinhart, up to half a million dollars to murder Patti, as well as two members of the district attorneys office, believing this would delay his trial and give him an advantage.Instead, Steinhart met with the prosecution and agreed to tape his conversations with David. He called David, telling him, falsely, that he had committed the murders. Wonderful! Youre a good man, David Brown replied, according to the Los Angeles Times.David Brown in the Orange County jail.At his trial in 1990, both Cinnamon and Patti testified that David Brown was the mastermind behind Linda Browns murder, and he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. He eventually died in prison in 2014.Pattis case was heard in juvenile court, as she had cooperated with the prosecution and was 17 when her sisters murder took place. She was sentenced to a reformatory.Cinnamon Brown served seven years of her sentence, earning a high school diploma and completing an associate of arts degree before being paroled in 1992.During her fathers trail, she told the court that it was her devotion to her father that led her to kill Linda Brown.I loved him, she said, according to the Greensboro News and Record. I didnt want to lose my father Why would he tell me to do something that wasnt all right?After learning about Cinnamon Brown, read about Dylan Redwine, the boy whose father murdered him over a collection of lewd photos. Then, learn why JonBent Ramseys father was a suspect in her murder.The post The Tragic Story Of Cinnamon Brown, The Teenager Manipulated To Commit Murder By Her Father appeared first on All That's Interesting.

The 2014 film Unbroken tells the story of Louis Zamperini, a former Olympian track star who became a prisoner of war in Japan during World War II. While imprisoned, Zamperini was routinely tortured by a prison guard that he and the others called The Bird.The mans real name was Mutsuhiro Watanabe, and he was far more brutal than the film suggests. Public DomainMutsuhiro Watanabe, the prison guard known as The Bird.A Japanese corporal during the war, Watanabe was sadistic and cruel, and took great pleasure in beating prisoners. He reportedly became so excited by the beatings that he would even froth at the mouth, and Zamperini learned to watch out for him like I was looking for a lion loose in the jungle.So who was Mutsuhiro Watanabe? This is everything we know about the sadistic Japanese prison guard from Unbroken, who was once considered one of the most wanted war criminals in Japan.Mutsuhiro Watanabes Privileged Early LifeBorn on Jan. 18, 1918, in Japan, Mutsuhiro Watanabe enjoyed a privileged childhood. As Laura Hillenbrand wrote in Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, her 2010 book about Louis Zamperini that inspired the 2014 film, Watanabes family had amassed riches through their ownership of Tokyos Takamatsu Hotel as well as other real estate. Waited on by servants, Watanabe had a luxurious childhood and spent many happy moments swimming in his familys private pool. As a young adult, he went on to study French literature at Tokyos Waseda University. Shortly after he graduated, however, World War II began and Watanabe eagerly enlisted.According to Hillenbrand, Watanabe expected that his education and pedigree meant that he would immediately become an officer. But instead, he was assigned to be a corporal. YouTubeMutsuhiro Watanabe eagerly enlisted in World War II, but was outraged that he wasnt immediately made an officer.By all accounts, this was the moment that derailed him, Hillenbrand wrote, leaving him disgraced, infuriated, and bitterly jealous of officersevery part of his mind gathered around this blazing humiliation. Assigned to prisoner-of-war camps, Mutsuhiro Watanabe soon gained a reputation as a cruel and hated guard even among his fellow soldiers. The Cruel Sadism Of The BirdWhile working at several different prisoner-of-war camps in Japan, Mutsuhiro Watanabe quickly gained a negative reputation amid both his fellow guards and the prisoners under his control. Even among the Japanese, he was disliked, Yuichi Hatto, a guard at the Omori Camp, stated in a 1998 CBS Sports documentary about Zamperini. He was hated[He had] no patience. He was so violent.For the prisoners, of course, Watanabe was even more terrifying. Since he spoke some English, they called him The Bird, a word with neither negative nor positive connotations. One of his main targets was Louis Zamperini, an American track star and Olympian who was transferred to the Omori Camp in September 1944. In an affidavit Zamperini wrote after the war, he described Watanabe as a frog-faced man who treated Zamperini and his fellow prisoners with cruelty. National ArchivesLouis Zamperini examining damage to his plane. The former Olympian was captured during World War II and spent years in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps.Zamperini described one incident when Watanabe called for 10 of the prisoners, who took five minutes to stop their work and report to his office. Watanabe apparently thought this was too long and came running after us, Zamperini wrote. He was swinging a big leather belt with a buckle. He hit all 10 of us officers across the face about four times with this steel buckle.Hillenbrand describes another incident between Watanabe and Zamperini, when the guard swung a belt made of heavy brass into Zamperinis left temple and ear. When Zamperini fell to the ground, Watanabe approached him with tenderness, and offered him a piece of toilet paper to press to his ear.But when Zamperini stumbled to his feet, Watanabe hit Zamperini again with the belt in the same place and Zamperini couldnt hear out of his left ear for two weeks. At another point, Watanabe forced Zamperini to pick up a beam of wood over six feet long and hold it up above his head, which the former Olympian managed to do for an astounding 37 minutes.Watanabe was also reportedly a sexual sadist who got gratification out of the beatings. Prisoners remember him frothing at the mouth while torturing prisoners, and Hatto later wrote that Watanabe did enjoy beating POWS. He was satisfying his sexual desire by hurting them.Bettmann/Getty ImagesLouis Zamperini, center, upon his return home after World War II.And Mutsuhiro Watanabe didnt only physical beat the prisoners he tortured them psychologically as well. As Hillenbrand wrote, hed destroy photographs of the prisoners family members and force them to watch as he burned their unopened letters from home. Watanabe also alternated wildly between violence and kindness, and would sometimes give the prisoners candy or discuss literature with them. This kept the POWs constantly on edge. Then, in 1945, World War II ended with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Zamperini and the other POWs went home to the United States. Mutsuhiro Watanabe vanished for decades.Mutsuhiro Watanabe After World War IIAfter the war, stories of Mutsuhiro Watanabes cruelty spread. General Douglas MacArthur even listed him as the 23rd most wanted war criminal in Japan out of a list of 40. But the Bird was nowhere to be found. Indeed, Watanabe had hidden himself to the extent that even his own mother thought he was dead, and built a shrine in his memory. Meanwhile, Watanabe was hiding in the mountains above Nagano. He remained there for seven years, then quietly emerged and established a lucrative career as a life insurance salesman. In 1952, all charges against him were dropped. He said virtually nothing about his actions during the war until 1998, when Zamperini was chosen to carry the Olympic torch ahead of the Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan. Then, appearing briefly in a CBS Sports interview,Watanabe defended himself.YouTubeMutsuhiro Watanabe in a 1998 interview.Beating and kicking in Caucasian society are considered cruel behavior, he stated. However, there were some occasions in the prison camp in which beating and kicking were unavoidableI wasnt given military orders. Because of my own person feelings, I treated them strictly as enemies of Japan.During his return to Japan, Louis Zamperini wanted to to meet and forgive his former tormenter, but Watanabe refused. He remained unrepentant about his actions during the war until his death in 2003. After reading about Mutsuhiro Watanabe, the cruel Japanese soldier who tormented POWS during World War II, discover the story of Shoichi Yokoi, the Japanese WWII soldier who refused to surrender until 1972. Or, learn the surprising story behind the photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.The post The True Story Of Mutsuhiro Watanabe, The Sadistic Japanese Prison Guard From Unbroken appeared first on All That's Interesting.

Comme chaque semaine, Steam continue de gter ses utilisateurs avec une nouvelle salve de jeux gratuits, quil est possible de conserver vie. Mais il faut faire vite pour en profiter.

Aprs l'arrive de deux nouvelles sries exclusives depuis le dbut du mois, Apple TV accueille cette fois le retour d'une autre exclusivit apprcie.

En plus de produire des quantits satisfaisantes d'nergie, il a t dcouvert que ces fermes solaires franaises ont un second effet bnfique inattendu.

The Nonwoven Fabric Market refers to the global industry producing engineered fabrics bonded through mechanical, thermal, or chemical processes rather than weaving. These materials are widely used in hygiene products, medical supplies, automotive applications, and construction due to their durability, cost-effectiveness, and versatility. The market is witnessing strong global expansion, driven...

SpaceX's Polaris Dawn Falcon 9 rocket sits on Launch Complex 39A of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., as it prepares for another attempt to liftoff on Sept. 9, 2024. Joe Raedle/Getty

By John G. West, Op-ed contributor Wednesday, April 22, 2026The US Declaration of Independence is on display at Sotheby's in New York on June 25, 2024. The document is expected to fetch between $2.5 million