*News Anchor *Street Reporter *Naughty Blogger "Let he who is without sin, go ahead, but I get the first question"
Hal Lamb is NOW booking select voice talent projects. For rates e-mail: hallamb2001@yahoo.com
SATURDAY 6am-1pm HEADLINE NEWS HIBACHI w/ Hal Lamb Tampa Bay's breaking news, hand-rolled in wry spice then dry-rubbed with sad irony and double-dipped in dramatic detail. News Team 970 serves it up sizzling hot with a smoldering side-dish of belly-bloating satisfaction.
Co-Starring:
*The Captain Mel Berman Show ~ 6-9am *AM Tampa Bay Weekend Edition ~ 9-11am *The Mutual Fund Show w/Adam Bold ~ 11am-Noon *The Cigar Dave Show ~ 12-2pm *On The Grill w/Tony Fatso ~ 2-4pm *The Rush Rewind ~ 4-7pm *Free Talk Live ~ 7-9pm *Somewhere In Time w/Art Bell ~ 9pm-1am *Coast to Coast AM w/Ian Punnet ~ 1-6am SUNDAY 6am-1pm
SHOCK & AWE SUNRISEw/ Hal Lamb News Team 970 battles the relentless armies of darkness threatening Tampa Bay and tracks the body count. We conquer the brutal crime-blotter and arrest the ugly morning headlines because victory is a bitter-perp and a richer cup of coffee.
Co-Featuring:
*Vitameatavegimin Show du jour ~ 6-7am *Florida Gardening w/Stan and Mark ~ 7-9am *The Jesus Christ Show ~ 9am-Noon *The Wall Street Journal This Weekend ~ 12-1pm *Newsweek Magazine On The Air ~ 1-2 pm *Leo LaPorte the Tech-Guy ~ 2-6pm *The Allen Hunt Show ~ 6-10pm *Bill Cunningham ~ 10pm-1am *Coast to Coast AM ~ 1-5am
________________________________________________
HAL LAMB'S BIOGRAPHY
1995 Associated Press; "What A Storyteller!"
During nearly 25 years in the news business, Hal Lamb has earned numerous broadcast excellence awards from Associated Press, the Michigan Association of Broadcasters and the Michigan News Network, among many others. His aggressive, even abrasive, news gathering techniques deliver jaw-dropping interviews, nowhere-else exclusives and one-of-a-kind reporting.
Hal cracked the conspiracy club against Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan and stuck the national media's nose in the raunchiest story of the decade. He offered Dr. Jack Kevorkian a warm bed when his was occupied by two assisted suicides, Dr. Death's first double-header. Hal's reporting exposed the morally corrupt social forces behind the pain filled babynapping of Jessica DeBoer.
Hal's radio and television roots run deep. Within two years of his first broadcasting job he solo anchored daily television newscasts on WILX-10, the NBC affiliate in Lansing, Michigan and spent many more years writing, producing and reporting for television stations in top 25 markets including WPRI-12 Providence, WTSP Tampa Bay's 10 and WFLA News Channel 8.
He also flourished in news and talk radio and spent seven years with WJR; Detroit's 50,000 watt, "Great Voice of the Great Lakes." Hal reported on Michigan's Governor, Supreme Court and state politics. He once rejected a lucrative offer to run the GOP controlled house media office and accepted a radio talk show on the Capitol City's WJIM.
News/Talk 1240, didn't even appear at the bottom of the arbitron radar when owners hired Hal Lamb to put the low-power loser on the ratings map in a crowded 30 station market. But his probing curiosity, cutting wit and razor sharp opinions helped jolt WJIM to a top-10 audience grabber. 20 years later, loyal listeners still talk about Hal when they call Lansing's Big-Talker.
He reported nationally for ABC News and regularly contributed to the weekly radio magazine, Perspectives with Hugh Downs. Hal has also held multiple management titles, including Corporate News Director for a five station radio cluster transmitting across three midwestern states.
Born and raised in southeast Michigan, Hal Lamb has called Tampa Bay home for over a decade. In February 2008, he marked five years on FOX Newsradio 970 WFLA.
HAL LAMB'S NEWS-TIP ANONIMITY GUARANTEE All Sources Strictly Confidential: pending subpoena hallamb2001@yahoo.com
HAL'S SPECIAL NEEDS EDUCATION
MSU School of Hard Knocks: Doctored Thesus (1984) Graduate Major: Media ho M.D. Ph.D Undergrad Minor: Wolf in Lambskin (ribbed) Deans list: w/Horrors Fraternity: Gamma Gaffa' Gotcha' Class rank: Anti-salutatorian
HAL'S NEWS NIGHTMARES It's enough to make you drink...
Nancy Kerrigan's Knee-Cap
Hal Lamb was the first reporter in America to broadcast news of the tire-jack attack on Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan.
Just just three hours after "The Whack Heard Around The World" at Detroit's Cobo Arena, his exclusive reporting was the blueprint to a sleaze-filled national scandal that tainted the United States Figure Skating Association and the wide-wide world of sports.
Unbelievably, the mass media missed the story and Hal was forced to set a trap that rapidly snared rival skater Tonya Harding's conspiracy club. Harding became America's ruling queen of tough bitch boxing and her husband sold their wedding-night tapes, which gave birth to a celebrity-sex video craze.
The sordid ice-queen saga produced tabloid headlines for years and set the benchmark for bad girl behavior. (The untold story behind this history making crime. See details below in Hal's Filthy Features)
Oklahoma City Bombing
Squeezing juice from turds focuses the nose. Hal Lamb napped in his news car and dined from a brown bag for two weeks searching for connections to the heroes of hometown hate, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.
Both men were quickly rejected for membership in Michigan's Militia and chose to sew seeds of domestic terror in Michigan's corn country. A rented truck filled with fertilizer exploded outside the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The blast killed 168 people and left 800 others injured.
McVeigh was executed, Nichols is serving life in federal prison. The killers' families and friends were left to harvest a bumper crop of shame. Michigan Militia members also suffered mightily for their brief, tension filled encounter with McVeigh and Nichols when relentless media bias drove hundreds of honorable weekend warriors underground and their proud traditions into oblivion.
Jenny Jones On Trial
Hal Lamb was pictured in People Magazine pushing a microphone into the face of talk show target Jonathan Schmitz as he was led from court back to jail. Schmitz was confronted by a homosexual crush in front of a live studio audience for a taping of the Jenny Jones Show in Chicago.
At home in Farmington Hills, Michigan, the mentally troubled bus-boy was tormented by visions of teasing after the syndicated show aired. Schmitz bought a rifle and recoiled in gay rage and Scott Amedure's psychotic slaughter.
The episode was never broadcast. The "Talk Show Murder" was blamed on shady producers who lied. They told Schmitz his secret admirer was "female not male." He was convicted of murder, twice, and is serving mandatory life in a Michigan prison cell.
Jones' production company lost a 36 million dollar wrongful death lawsuit and the popular syndicated host who got started as a comic on TV's Star Search left the stage. The Jenny Jones Show and her career were the final casualties. Legalized Babynapping
Hal Lamb's reporting follows the soul shattering interstate child custody war for the infant daughter of an unmarried Iowa couple. The long-haul trucker and his one-night stand fought a bitter three year battle against coersion and cruelty at the pinnacles of hyper-liberalized Michigan society.
A fearless local attorney, a woman, took the hayseed's case. She claimed an atonishing legal victory against a dangerously selfish woman, the University of Michigan law school and the impenetrable fortresses of justice in two states. The media forces who promoted this legalized babynapping, were far less willing to re-examine their own subhuman judgments.
(The real life drama of pitiful parents vs politics, power and public relations. Scroll down)
College Co-ed Corpse
Tina Biggar's college term paper on prostitution and AIDS scores a Grade-A, for awful, at Oakland University in suburban Detroit. The killer claimed, Tina fell during an after-sex money dispute and hit her head on a safe next to his bed.
"It was an accident," said Ken Trancheda, who finally told the truth before he stood trial. The timid brute with a 72 IQ confessed "ending her financial misery" and dumping Tina's corpse at a remote cottage, once owned by his aunt.
The decomposing remains were found deep inside a thicket of lilac bushes. Tina's rotting tissues eerily clung to its gnarled, twisted, fingerlike branches. When god's creatures were done feasting, chunks of bone and mangled flesh were all that remained of a scholarly girl with a compassionate heart and a soul born to serve.
Just then, Hal's socks felt moist. Tina's gelatinized body fluids had penetrated his Pay-Less loafers. The price, he thought, for standing on death's door.
Hal used a scorching summer day to track the killers roots to a filthy upstairs flat in Detroit's notorious Cass Corridor. Several knocks on the door produced no answer... but there was something alive on the other side, the life Trancheda once knew. He grabbed the unlocked knob, threw it open and stepped inside the stench-filled livingroom.
Hal watched two pairs of eyes roll slowly toward the door and lock on him. A quadraplegic man lay baked in his own rancid excrement, his meek voice gurgled loudly attempting to speak through bubbling phlegm and sweltering city heat. Close by, an old woman sat half-dead drenched in sweat, her lungs heaving against the suffocating humidity and a faulty oxygen mask.
There would be no interviews today.
Hal was spooked to his core. He exited rapidly out the apartment door and down the staircase to the equally squalid city street below...then glimpsed his shoe's, "those damned shoe's," this time, he reckoned, they gotta' go.
A crime so ugly, it colours your world.
Hank Earl Carr Killing Spree
A luntatics rampage leaves five people dead... one sweet boy, three good cops and one warped killer.
Tampa Police arrested Hank Earl Carr for shooting his girlfriend's 4 year old son in the face, then handcuffed him for a short ride to headquarters, Carr freed himself with a key hidden around his neck and executed two beloved Tampa detectives with their own guns.
He stole high-powered rifles from the squad car trunk and carjacked a pest control truck to drive north, stopping only to visit his mother and tell her goodbye. At a traffic signal 15 miles away, Carr executed an unsuspecting FHP trooper at close range, with a rifle shot through the windshield. He drove another 20 miles and took a convenience store clerk captive.
Two massive central Florida interstate systems and three clogged state highways were transformed into delicate forensic laboratories as the murderous rampage unfolded and cops played catch-me-if-you-can with pure evil. At the same time, thousands of frightened motorists found themselves hostage to a cold blooded killer and Florida's sweltering heat.
Carr ended the day-long police stand-off with a bullet to his own brain, but the treacherous traffic nightmare lived well into the night. News Channel 8 anchors Bob Hite and Gail Sierens tossed the unfolding drama to Hal Lamb, who went live with road closures and shifting crime scenes that spanned three counties. A crisis as fluid as the blood.
Sex, Lies & Sunday School
Ann Arbor's top-cop publicly brands Hal Lamb, "a pedophile's best friend!" Hal led a 17 month investigation to expose the immoral and illegal atrocities committed against two church elders, accused of raping dirt poor brats on a Sunday school bus ride.
Both men of god were jailed and demonized for sodomizing the kids with a tire iron. Although both were ultimately cleared, two years of legal persecution and screaming headlines left them twisting in hell.
Over 100 innocent children are forgiven and cleansed of all blame but greedy parents, unapologetic police and unrepenant prosecutors face satan's eternal inferno.
Child sex abuse hysteria at its inhuman worst. Read the sickening truth below)
Riot In God's Waiting Room
St. Petersburg's peaceful old folks' image burns after a white cop kills a dark angel and fires light the night.
News executives at WTSP Channel 10, quietly ordered staff writers, producers, reporters and anchors to parrot the propaganda from city hall, characterizing widespread destruction and death as a "civil disturbance."
Hal Lamb argued it should be called what it was, "A DAMNED RIOT." He lost the battle, but never considered quitting in protest. Sadly, he needed the drinkin' money.
OJ's Blood Splatter
Motown race relations are disemboweled by "not guilty" verdicts from the Bundy Drive butchery of Nicole Brown-Simpson and dashing stud Ron Goldman.
OJ Simpson's ebonics exoneration gave Detroit's 82.2% black population an easy excuse to erupt in racially polarizing Motor City mayhem. Another gaping wound to the hearts of suburban whites, driven from the Car Capitol a generation earlier by ruinous citywide riots and a honky-hating black mayor named Coleman A. Young.
Plus, the house guest from hell, Kato Kaelin, asks Hal Lamb to dance. Yummy, but who leads? Dr. Death Does Detroit
To this day... Hal Lamb waits for a direct answer to his first question to the law. If lost souls and loving families use death to escape hell, where is the crime?
Hal Lamb watches prosecutors toil for years to seat a jury that will finally send Doctor Jack Kevorkian to prison for murder. Instead, the law spends years on a painful poison drip when a jury of his peers repeatedly sets him free to do it again.
Dr. Death, as he was known, claimed over 130 people died in his controversial quest to end human suffering and promote euthanasia with his hand crafted suicide machine.
What the law could not do, a TV show did. Dr. Kevorkian gave Mike Wallace a sit down interview and handed CBS 60 Minutes an incriminating videotape that put his fingerprints on the suicide switch. (The real man behind the murders, a personal journey just ahead)
Cereal City Slaughter
Battle Creek, Michigan; TV news anchor Diane Newton King's children are strapped in their carseats and play witness to mommy's murder and daddy's one true love - himself.
The evidence proves criminal justice professor, Brad King, blew his wife's face off with a shotgun then shoved it barrel-first into the bed of a snow covered creek. A good plan, until summer heat evaporated the water and a gun butt emerged from the mud.
This was the crime that launched CourtTV, now named TruTV, onto the national media scene.
Hit And Run Horror
A mentally handicapped girl's new job at a local restaurant allows her to buy a highly coveted bicycle. Days later, she is killed by a drunk driver while riding home.
Her bumper-battered body is tossed like a stage-prop among the ghouls, goblins and gravestones of a homeowners elaborate roadside halloween display.
Trick or Treat! Her broken corpse went undisturbed for days until she was finally recognized by kids collecting candy. Hal's radio headline... "She was learning disabled, not a holiday dummy" drew the ire of ARC, the Association of Retarded Citizens.
1992 Presidential Debates
Hal Lamb was among only three local reporters allowed inside the Clinton vs. Bush vs. Perot debates at Michigan State University in 1992. He went elbow-to-elbow with [then] Clinton press secretary George Stephanopoulous (genuine a**hole)
ABC's Britt Hume (3" wild hair protruding from center of nose)
NBC's Andrea Mitchell (deep acne scars, before botox)
NBC's Jim Micklashewski (4'2" elf, cute as a button)
ABC's Bob Jameson (worst breath ever smelled)
ABC's Cokie Roberts (very nice woman)
In 2008, the little general's "giant sucking sound," becomes the "giant flushing sound." Adios, W!!!. But keep that plunger handy, the sewage is backing up on Hillary, Obama and McCain.
HAL LAMB GOT A JOB WHEN HE WANTED ONE not in order of appearance or compensation
WJR AM - Detroit, MI - Political and Investigative Reporter / News Anchor.
Lake Cities Group - Angola, IN - Corporate News Director for 5 Station Radio Group.
===================== HAL'S FILTHY FEATURES
"THE WHACK HEARD ROUND THE WORLD"
Hal Lamb delivered breaking news across the midwest for ABC radio, while stationed in Detroit at WJR 760AM. He led the network news coverage of a black-jack attack against figure skater Nancy Kerrigan. The seemingly random crime occured during a preliminary Olympic competition at Detroit's Cobo Arena on January 6, 1994.
In a Michigan blizzard, Hal got there first and broke the story about Kerrigan's clubbing for every hourly network newscast. At the same time, he overturned rocks for clues. He pushed witnesses for anything they heard or saw and pursued police sources for all they knew and hoped to discover during the coming investigation. And Hal picked the filthiest rocks to look under.
Less than three hours after the assault, he went live, coast to coast on ABC Radio with a shocking new angle. Hal confidently reported, "evidence of an inside job... someone who knew the buildings layout, wanted Kerrigan on ice and out of the Olympic games."
To much, to soon, to sketchy most reporters would tell themselves, not Hal, his exclusive reporting stood-out and he stood alone for days. Undoubtedly, this story was huge but it was frought with dangers for a lone reporter to perform at the network level on thin ice and he felt the heat.
Hal knew finding the truth would be complicated and costly, and went to the top for an open-ended expense account. "ABC doesn't invest in hunches," said a note scribbled across the paper. He was on his own. Without financial resources to track the players failure was certain and without more evidence his unrivaled reporting could prove career-crippling.
The Detroit media had yet to catch the scent of scandal and the national press focused its glare on the Olympic games. As the days passed, it was clear the story was hiding under the radar and in danger of sliding off the screen. Hal's only option, bait an irresistible trap and force America's broadcast behemoth's to take a big bite!
As the press conference began, Hal was wrapping up his cell phone report live on WJR radio. Suddenly, a Chicago reporter screamed, "shut the f**k up! Without missing a beat, Hal tossed it back to the studio and ignored the skirmish, he was here to win a war.
A bandaged, limping and whimpering Nancy Kerrigan, positioned herself on the stage above of a rabid press corps. She was joined by officials from the United States Figure Skating Association, and oddly, her own parents. Inside the massive Cobo Hall, scribes from around the world clamored for heart wrenching details about her suffering and the upcoming Olympic games in Lillehammer, Norway.
They hit Kerrigan again, this time with queries; "How do you feel? -- Will you skate? -- Can you win?" Shouting questions and recording understandable answers is difficult under normal circumstances at big press events, but this was an unprecedented media swarm. A thousand hovering hornets with poisonous personalities and a million journalistic agenda's, each one relentlessly fighting for the next question and a place in the story. Hal Lamb had to unalterably change the topic and he would get only one chance. An instant. A Flash. One brief shot to inject the toxin dripping from his perverbeal stinger.
Hal's booming voice pierced the herds thunderous roar, and took dead aim on Nancy's visibly fragile and stone-blind mother. "Mrs. Kerrigan, MRS. KERRIGAN," he demanded; "I have information of a staged attack. Who, inside the U.S. Figure Skating Association wants to hurt your daughter?"
Cobo's quivering mass fell breathless. Bitter silence. TV, radio and print reporters from every corner of the globe waited for Nancy's mother to speak. Every one wanted to script her response. The hush was finally shattered by a mouthpiece for the USFSA who angrily declared, "There's no truth to that... next question!"
Bulls eye!... Hal Lamb hit his mark. Newspaper editors from New York to Los Angeles, TV networks from NBC to CNN, and weekly news magazines from TIME to the National Enquirer ordered reporters to get the real Kerrigan story. Follow every lead, rattle every source, turn every stone, pay any price! With the dominoes set in motion it took only days for a grotesque conspiracy to collapse.
On January 14, 1994, detectives from Detroit, Michigan and Portland, Oregon implicated rival skater Tonya Harding and her shifty eyed husband Jeff Gillooly. He paid three grimey goons, led by Shawn Eckardt to carry out the beating and remove Kerrigan from his wife's path to Olympic gold. Under police questioning, Harding's 350 pound bodyguard cracked faster than Kerrigan's knee-cap. Eckardt admitted hiring the others to deliver the blow and "felt ugly" about his role in the attack.
The sordid ice-queen saga was dubbed, "The Whack Heard Around The World!" For a suddenly slobbering mass media, the crimes committed by Harding's gang echoed louder than Nancy's notoriously noxious; "Why, Wwwwhy?" The sleazy scandal sizzled with 24/7 cable news heat, but there was no FOX, no MSNBC, no Greta and no Grace. They wouldn't start broadcasting for another three years - but they weren't missed anyway - the story was already ripe with hype.
Hal Lamb now accepts complete, utter and total responsibility for the squalid news nightmare that never seemed to end...
Nancy Kerrigan's Main Street parade at Walt Disney World where she was caught on camera muttering to Goofy, "this is stupid." (quick, somebody hit her again)
Jeff Gillooly's video release of a full-frontal screen-gem starring Tonya Harding's butt-ugly assets and featuring his own bit part. (they gave birth to today's celebrity-sex video craze.)
Tonya Harding's painful premier as pop-princess of tough-bitch boxing. (oh my god, she was out front on that too!)
For pulling back the curtain on this tawdry tale, Hal Lamb confesses today... you're welcome. Thanks for the memories.
UNHOLY HELL ON UNGODLY EARTH
Two law-and-order prosecutor's aggressively pursue horrendous child rape charges against Mark Foeller, a church deacon and Timothy Leonard, the associate pastor at North Sharon Baptist Church. "At least 100 victims," said prosecutor Brian Mackie. "These children were brutally assaulted" the second prosecutor told Hal Lamb during a telephone interview. "Some of these kids were sodomized with a tire iron," he claimed.
Both men of god were immediately arrested, jailed and demonized in Detroit's voracious media machine.
The children were very young, very poor and mostly from a dingy mobile home park that sat square on the county line, between the cities of Jackson and Ann Arbor, Michigan, The location prompted questions about which prosecutor would prosecute. So, the legal-eagles divided the spoils. Each claimed one pigeon for his prey at the high-flying trials ahead, knowing a hungry flock of media vultures wanted a rotten meal of road kill. Hal included.
TV exposure and rapid convictions would guarantee easy re-election campaigns for each prosecutor.
For months, Hal attended scheduled fact-finding hearings against Tim Leonard at Ann Arbor's Washtenaw County courthouse. Prosecutor Brian Mackie and his legal assistants paraded victims to the witness box. They were just babies, barely three or four years old. Under oath and direct questioning about sexual assault, the toddlers responded with little more than giggly goo-goo, gah-gah.
"I can't trust this testimony," the judge barked to prosecutors in open court. "Bring me a case with children old enough to be sworn!" He roared. The crusty old judge refused to let any of the kids take the stand at trial.
An amazing ruling in this hyper-tense political climate. The elected jurist had nothing to gain by rejecting the state's witnesses. He could have let a sworn jury decide their truthfullness. Hal Lamb had never seen or read a more principled legal decision, before or since.
Babies were all prosecutors had left in the victim crib after the oldest child, a girl no more than seven, took the witness stand and stubbornly refused to parrot the fables she'd obviously been fed. The bright and bubbly youngster was visibly uncomfortable, not with court decorum, but with tales of rape. The crime's prosecutors described were not her experience. The visions they explored were foreign to her brain. Her words would be useless at trial and could prove damaging. Legal motions and appeals flew fast and furious to seat the tot's testimony, which slowed Washtenaw counties criminal case against Leonard to a legal crawl. He was released from jail on bond.
Hal smelled a load of crap and set out to prove it wasn't the diapers that were dirty. Month's passed, season's changed. Hal worked the story as time and events dictated, producing a steady drumbeat of reports for broadcast on Detroit radio station WJR.
During the same period, Jackson's obsession with deacon Foeller marched in lock-step to a full-blown criminal trial. For weeks, the jury heard from the pitiful alleged victims, the same toddlers another judge, in a neighboring county, ruled were simply to young to be considered truthful under any legally acceptable definition.
Prosecutors presented child abuse experts and hundreds of evidence exhibits including a church bus tire iron. They tried to sell the idea it was used with cruel brutality during trips to and from Sunday School. Prosecutors argued the steel shaft was repeatedly inserted into the children's innocent anuses, but medical records showed no tearing, or bruising, not even unusual inflammation.
The prosecution however, chafed like a nasty rash.
Within four hours of Foeller's jury retiring to consider the evidence, they returned "not guilty" verdicts on more than a dozen grotesque counts of child rape. The judge rapidly dismissed the case "with prejudice" barring prosecutors from filing charges again. A rarely used ruling reserved for only the weakest criminal cases. Its use implies official misconduct.
Finally free from a jail cell, Mark Foeller tearfully collapsed into the loving arms of the seven young daughters he'd missed so mightily locked behind bars with only faith in god and a bible at his side. The reunion with his engineering job at Chrysler was not so sweet. Now that one jury was on the public record and not even one alleged victim willing, able or allowed to testify, Brian Mackie had no other option and dropped all charges against pastor Leonard. Over 19 months after the sensational headlines began the men's ungodly nightmare was finally over.
Yet, neither portrayed any bitterness - only praise for their lord and savior, Jesus Christ.
Outside the courtroom, a throng of Detroit media had the tapes rolling, live-trucks ready and microphones hot, all broadcasting Mr. Mackie's explanation for this astonishing legal failure. Suddenly, Ann Arbor's top law enforcement officer angrily turned to Hal Lamb and inexplicably broke from his script.
"YOU are a pedophyles best friend!" Mackie shouted, his voice crackling with contempt. His emotional outburst and shocking disdain were obvious references to what most reporters already knew. Hal Lamb and his colleagues at WJR; Detroit's 50,000 watt blowtorch, had exhumed the legal systems vicious attempts to bury two innocent men in a lifetime of earthly hell and their tiny church in public condemnation and financial ruin.
Led by Hal's probe, WJR's formidable talk show personalities were convinced sex abuse hysteria had fed the inferno, but skullduggery sparked the fire. The stations news coverage was difficult to miss, reaching 36 states and five nations.
Hal's stories flatly discredited the claims of child psychologists and engorged a public debate over false sex abuse claims, years before California's appalling McMartin pre-school case was exposed as a stunning legal travesty. He obtained audio tapes of babbling innocent victims, whose rambling regurgitations were evidence police and prosecutors had spoon fed children a simple gruel of repugnant lies.
Hal reported the chief investigator for Michigan's State Police had bragged to powerful friends he was postponing retirement because "this was the case that would crown his career." He revealed Jackson Counties lead detective used the high profile case "to cover-up the theft of police union funds and divert attention from a massive embezzlement."
WJR talk-show lines lit-up with anonymous relatives, eager to expose their white-trash kin as oscar-worthy liars, who "took a chance to win life's lawsuit lottery," from money collected by the struggling church.
Washtenaw County re-elected Brian Mackie, but voters in Jackson were less forgiving of their prosecutors outrageous conduct. They sent him packing to resume a failed private law practice. And when their deliverence from persecution was assured, the lead pastor and his parishoners at North Sharon Baptist Church issued a single heartfelt invitation to join them in joyous Sunday worship. Hallelujah, Hallelujah!
Hal Lamb graciously accepted a richly embossed edition of the new testiment, then stood to collect the enriching embrace of an exuberant flock. Each spirit lifted in heavenly praise, every soul humbled by earthly gratitude. Thank the Lord.
FISH ROTS FROM THE HEAD DOWN
Hal Lamb's choice of words and reporting style became the issue for K-Mart CEO Joseph Antonini when his botched leadership sent spin-off franschise Builders Square into a death-spiral, years before K-Mart crashed and burned.
Hal sneaked into an ugly shareholder revolt and emerged with audio from pitiful mom and pop investors whose money losing K-Mart stock left them broke with no end to their losses in sight. Days later K-Mart's board removed Antonini.
After he was fired, but before he opened his $3 million dollar golden parachute, Joe phoned Hal Lamb in the newsroom to complain. Mr. Antonini didn't accept the term 'fired" as factual and objected to the aquisition and broadcast of the shareholder's sentiments.
Antonini demanded and offered no correction, retraction or recourse. Attention K-Mart shoppers... dim-bulb special on aisle 5.
THE HEARTBREAK... OF BABYNAPPING
Baby Jessica DeBoer was a rosy-cheeked, raven-haired, brown-eyed cupie-doll. At birth in Iowa, Jessica's mother hired a shyster lawyer whose only interest in getting the adoption sign-off was the cash pay-off. In Michigan, the infertile couple who took Jessica refused to return her, even when the lactating mommy changed her mind just days later and demanded the child back. The interstate custody battle that rapidly swirled around this baby pitted truth and descency, against legal and societal manipulation at humankind's highest levels.
Exhausting week's and month's, turned into agonizing years, while judges from Iowa and Michigan sided with the couple who became Ann Arbor's hometown heroes.
Jan (pronounced Yahn) and Roberta DeBoer's emotional cause and courtroom expenses were picked up entirely by the University of Michigan law school. Jan worked there as a strangely quiet bohemian janitor who mopped floors and scrubbed toilets. He and his big-boned wife Robby, fast became the ultra-liberal law school's cause celebre'. Every time the court issued a favorable ruling, the U of M law school issued a press release and Roberta scheduled a press conference to tell the babies biology to accept their loss. Go home to Iowa, it was best for little Jessie. Her tears explained It all. Please, please, just fade away.
Such stagecraft became routine as local judges heard new legal arguments from each side. The trauma of removing Jessica now, Robby's lawyers reasoned and paid experts testified, would be psychologically ruinous for the child. And the comfortable home, she and Jan could provide in Ann Arbor, Michigan was clearly superior to the slovenly Iowa hayseeds who had no money, no stability and no class.
The courts were obviously swayed by the unknowable. The U of M law school kept the case alive with vacuous arguments, "the only parents Jessica's ever known" and "irreparable harm" if she were removed. Judge's reacted with rulings based on non-exsistent law. The DeBoer's entire legal theory centered on "best interests" of the baby. A nebulous notion, hostage to rampant interpretation. But, as time passed and the evening news shared Jessica's darling dilemma, the best interest claims gained sympathy and with political and judicial interference grew powerful.
Detroit editorial writers trumpeted the enlightened ruling's as more proof of Jessica's best interests. Michigan newspapers heralded the moral righteousness of keeping the baby in Ann Arbor and with the Deboer's. Civic activisim followed. The press was always invited to support marches and parades, fundraisers and picnics, photo op's and tender family moments together by the fire. And when called upon, Robby's friends picketed and launched letter writing campaigns.
Oh, the happy times.
Clearly, all sides had conspired against birth parents, Daniel Schmidt a long-haul trucker and Cara Clawson his one-night stand. It was Dan, who tirelessly pursued this legal drama to its end after learning an emotionally brittle and mentally broken Cara lied to him. She once claimed their daughter was stillborn. Hal Lamb could not ignore the echoes of ugly social politics and court ordered kidnapping. Afterall, he knew the players to well. This was Ann Arbor, Michigan, rated the fourth most liberal city in America and his stomping grounds for other disturbing news events.
Hal thought muzzles should be slapped over A-squared's gnarling left-wing teeth and the Wolverine School's gnashing legal fangs.
Hal worked closely with Dan Schmidt's attorney, Marian Faupel to reflect the couple's plight and broadcast proof they had it right. Her courtroom performance underscored reason and fact, never wild eyed emotion. After each dissapointing court decision she re-energized and renewed her determination to expose the political underpinnings of a judicial travesty.
To win, Ms Faupel was forced to attack entrenched powers in her own hometown. The same city she hangs her lawyer's shingle and spent a lifetime building a law practice. She endured the spectre of financial ruin, promises of retribution and repeated threats against her life. The fearless councelor proved baby Jessica was coerced from her mother by an unscrupulous lawyer and sold to the DeBoer's. She exposed how Jessica was held hostage by a flawed foundation of court rulings won by a qlique' of social engineers.
Some well intentioned, others, not so much.
Years earlier, Marian had sought out Hal Lamb after a routine court hearing. "Your radio stories are always fair," she said. "If you're interested, I'll show you my case and let you meet the client's." Hal sat down with Jessica's birth parents, their conversation was casual and completely off the record. The couple never had an advocate in Detroit's massive media machine, but now at least, they might have a voice.
The Michigan Supreme Court ultimately considered the evidence and unanimously sided with Dan and Cara Schmidt, who had long since married. The justice's erased hundreds of rulings from judges in two states. At her last press conference, only one reporter dared to ask Roberta; "are you ready to take the same advice you gave the Schmidt's and give up?" Hal Lamb's impudent question punched the oxygen from her lungs. TV cameras rolled and reporters listened as Robby's mouth stammered to silence, her gaze went vacant and she collapsed on stage.
Like consciousness, the war for her tiny soul was also lost. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the DeBoer's final appeal and put an abrupt end to it all. The court set a visitation schedule to soften the handoff.
Days later, NBC, ABC and CBS interupted afternoon soap operas to "Go Live," with baby Jessica's transition to another world. Satellite trucks captured the trauma of a toddler wrenched from her mothers heaving chest; "NO, Please, Don't Take My Baby, God No, No!"... Robby wailed into the nations TV sets. Her outstretched arms groped for Jessie's touch as the baby was loaded into a van and driven away forever. The screaming tot was quietly returned to aching hearts inside a tidy white farmhouse sprouting from an Iowa cornfield. Her new parents allowed their daughter to grow undisturbed in America's heartland.
The press would no longer be welcome to chronicle her life.
When Roberta decided to write a book about her life crushing three year battle for baby Jessica, she called Hal, who found the experience incomprehensable. For years, the two were publicly adversarial and they had never spoken privately before.
While memorializing her misery, Robby came to realize some of the pain she had caused so many other people. "Hal, I always admired your reporting and respected your focus on the law and not always on the tears," she explained. "But, I was never going to give up on Jessie," she continued. "I even liked some of your questions, and you ask some really tough questions," Robby chuckled. "I wanted you to know that I'm writing a book, about Jessica!"
Roberta wanted Hal to have the scoop, and it seemed, get a modicum of his approval in return. Their conversation quickly shifted.
Undoubtedly, Roberta DeBoer's pain was excruciating. But at the instant she decided to wage this unprecedented battle for a child who never belonged to her and never would, the horrendous heartache was self-inflicted. The enabler's who convinced Robby to keep fighting are equally libel for the anguish that follows such a gross miscarriage of justice.
(2003 Anna Schmidt - aka - Jessica DeBoer 1993)
Roberta DeBoer fed the media a gut churning melodrama and swayed many excellent reporters to her side. They were all drawn to the rich storyline and gripping legal drama, but not everyone relinquished their public trust to perform public relations. As Hal followed Jessica's tortured saga he identified a contrarian view worthy of serious journalistic examination. Despite private pressure and public ridicule to strike a new tune, he steadfastly maintained a balanced tone from start to end.
Having those many years of reporting vindicated by the highest courts in America is certainly gratifying, but it pales against the most soul consuming experience of Hal's long career. The high price he paid for rocking the cradle, often vigorously, always alone. And despite the dire predictions of irreparable harm to Jessica, she has grown into a bright and thriving, popular and athletic teenage girl. Her birth name is Anna Schmidt.
Perhaps, that was in everyone's best interests all along.
DR. DEATH DOES DETROIT
From his very first assisted suicide, Dr. Jack Kevorkian appeared to be a humble old man whose mission of mercy seemed genuine, albeit misguided. One winters day from a store front in Royal Oak, Michigan, emergency workers wheeled out Dr. Death's first double header. Two men had just commited "assisted suicide," inside his upstairs flat attached to Kevorkian's much ballyhooed "suicide machine."
It was bitterly cold outside, spitting snow, Kevorkian stood on the sidewalk huddled without a coat. His shoulders were rolled forward, his body frozen in place as the covered corpses passed him by. Kevorkian was glassy eyed, completely detached and utterly alone despite the media frenzy swirling around him.
Hal Lamb turned to the man dubbed Dr. Death and said; "If you need a place to stay, I live just up the street." Kevorkian's lawyer quickly approached and thanked Hal for the offer, then declared the good doctor would be staying with him.
It was among many encounters Hal would have with Dr. Kevorkian and his noted defense attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, through the years. Fieger became a regular guest on WJR Radio in Detroit and dropped by the newsroom often to speak with Hal, once observing; "you are my favorite reporter."
An appreciative recognition of un-biased journalism, no doubt.
Fieger won "not guilty" verdicts for the retired pathologist in two highly controversial trials and beat the prosecution bloody in dozens of legal skirmishes. But in 1998 Kevorkian represented himself and was convicted for the murder of 52-year-old Thomas Youk who struggled to breathe and feared choking to death in the final stages of Lou Gehrig's disease. His family begged Kevorkian for mercy and he gave it.
But unlike all the others, this time Dr. Death injected the lethal cocktail with his own hands instead of inserting the needles and standing back to let the patient pull the suicide switch. And a video-camera recorded it all for a 60 Minutes; Mike Wallace story.
Prosecutors bitterly demanded a first degree murder conviction, the one councelor Fieger denied them all for too long. The law wanted Dr. Death for life. But, even representing himself at trial and a mercy killing on video tape, the jury convicted Kevorkian of second degree murder and sentenced him to between 10 and 25 years. With good behavior he was out in just over eight years.
The men who ended their own suffering inside Kevorkian's apartment, with wive's at their side, have been dead for 15 years now. Today, a trendy night club stands in place of that old brick building wrapped in yellow crime scene tape so long ago. Hal's trophy case still holds an odd rememberance from his chilling brush with Dr. Death on that cold winter day. A single white brick from a real life little shop of horrors.
To this day, Hal Lamb waits for police and prosecutors to answer his first question. If lost souls and loving families use death to escape hell, where is the crime?
INJUSTICE IS COLORBLIND
Perception is everything and some criminal defense lawyers don't like Hal Lamb. Not even one little bit.
Five men were gunned down inside a United Auto Workers Union Hall and the lone survivor fingered a bitter labor buddy.
During a recess in jury selection, Hal prodded the killers defense attorney "Are you stacking the jury with blacks, to set this mass murdering brother free?"
The lawyer went ballistic, screaming at Hal in front of assembled media, "you're a race-a-sist, a race-a-sist!" He vowed no further contact during the trial.
He kept his word, but his client was quickly convicted.
Hal reported the screeching accusation because it was more unexpected than the verdict and the ghettoization of the word racist was fabulous radio.
EXCLUSIVE, BECAUSE WE SAID SO
Television executive's from Detroit's two biggest news stations were outraged by Hal Lamb's radio story that dared to mock their heavily promoted "exclusive series" on the unsolved Oakland County child killings. The psycho snatched two girls and two boys, and kept them alive up to 19 days. The parents of 11 year old Timothy King turned to local media and desperately pleaded for his safe return. To humanize their kidnapped son, they told reporters his favorite food was chicken.
An autopsy showed Timmy's last meal was KFC.
The demon raped the children's bodies and brutalized their souls then ended their lives and dumped the remains along rural roadsides. They were smothered, strangled or shotgunned to death. The corpses were all scrubbed meticulously clean of trace evidence and re-dressed in freshly laundered and neatly pressed clothing. Each savaged body was placed reverently with its arms crossing the chest.
The phantom had eluded the biggest police dragnet in Michigan history for two decades.
Paralyzing fear, horrible memories, another unnerving anniversary. WXYZ-7 and WDIV-4 were ready to peal the scab off a communties heartache and share answers to the shadowy unknown. The television stations ran endless promos promising "shocking developments" and "new leads to catch a killer."
The mystery ends... Tuesday at 6 and 11!
Through swirling graphics, million dollar anchors breathlessly tossed the spotlight to staged reporters with another exclusive first! Top-rated WXYZ 7 Action News splashed milky photographs of a charm laden necklace mysteriously draped across one child's gravestone and just as quickly it vanished. "Could this delicate chain be the missing link to a serial child killer? Is it a macabre momento of mass murder?"... panting journalists, asked rhetorically.
Same bat time. Different bat channel.
WDIVChannel 4 Nightbeat, exhaulted it was the only station in Detroit to show the silver jewelry could be tied to the slaughter of innocents. Each station tooted its own horn, but offered little new and nothing truly newsworthy. The jewelry was probably looped over the headstone by a family member or friend. By shows end, cops were no closer to uncovering the devils identity. Viewers got a re-heated history lesson, tightly scripted and super-sensationalized of course.
Like everyone else, Hal watched the heavily-hyped series with hope for real answers to years of painful questions. Unlike the others, he rolled tape. When high expectations fell victim to total exasperation, Hal rewarded both newsrooms for their tireless pursuit of ratings, as he pursued some himself.
Excerpts from the stations hyperbole newscasts dramatically proved the point. Juxtaposed against each other the clearly self grandizing claims were patently absurd.
"Will a simple charm necklace finally solve the Oakland County Child murder mystery? Tonight, we have a Channel 7 Action News exclusive"... "And you'll see it, only on the News 4 Nightbeat"...
"The Action News Investigators brought you the disturbing photos on 7 News at 6!"... "And tonight, the News 4 I-Team is the only Detroit station with exclusive pictures"...
"Action News is first with the story" ... "The Nightbeat is the only station there"...
Around and around the story goes, one outrageous boast shattered by the next. Gotcha' radio was Hal's specialty. Nobody did it better. "20 years after the slaughter began," he concluded, "the only thing we know for sure, it's sweeps week!"
A cheap-shot swissssh! All air, no net... figuratively and literally.
Like thousands of other WJR listener's, Hal's boss heard the story for the first time during his drive to work inside Detroit's historic Fisher Building. He knew before stepping onto the 21st floor, it promised to be another very long day. Hal's reporting style tended to create light and heat in equal abundance.
"Wow, nice job, nice job!" he said, through a wide grin while strutting across the newsroom toward his corner office. That satisfied smurk was wiped-off his face by news directors and general managers at both TV stations, who called to lodge a long list of bitter complaints. Ah, the burdens of news management and the perils of false promise.
Hal wins!... this time, stay tuned.
STEERING WILDLY OFF COURSE
Yes, even the mundane job of Parks and Recreation planning can put you on a downhill slope. A quiet news day is interupted by a newsroom fax inviting reporters to ride Oakland County's new ultra cool toboggan run.
Hal Lamb took the assignment and climbed on board for straighline excitement. The less thrilling ride down Interstate-75, brought a quick detour to mind, so he made a pit stop for the jewelry store's shining perspective.
Everybody got to grease their thermal shorts, when he reported "the superslidecost taxpayer's more per inch... than 14 carat gold!"
After the story hit the air, a gaggle of government spenders hit the phones to complain. Hal's boss inquired, "Can't you just do a nice, simple feature?" He said, longingly. "Sorry, Dick," (yeah that was his name) Hal responded.
Days later, the Detroit Free Press picked up a similar storyline and added the toboggan run was built facing south and even in the dead of winter it melted. More money would be needed for a refrigerated track.
A DEATH IN DETROIT
From 1958 to 1995, Joseph Priestly McCarthy lorded over Detroit and the "Auto Capitol of the World" from his studio at WJR radio. J.P.'s popular morning show was the unbeatable giant in big cities and small towns far and wide. His remarkable reach was built on a 50,000 watt signal beamed to 36 states and five nations, but only J.P. McCarthy, kept listeners glued to 760 AM, "The Great Voice of the Great Lakes."
He epitomized the term, "American Icon" decades before pop-culture robbed its significance.
McCarthy's unbroken ratings success was interrupted only by his own test-drive with KGO-AM in San Francisco and national TV stardom. In the mid-1970's, J.P. auditioned for co-host of ABC's Good Morning America. When ambition hit a ditch, McCarthy gleefully returned to his Motor City home and resumed his unparalleled radio supremacy for another 20 years.
J.P. McCarthy was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1992, the first local broadcaster ever accorded this already rare honor. In the spring of 1995, McCarthy shook listeners awake with a rasping voice and a hacking cough. He swallowed often to overcome the painful dryness. Something was wrong, desperately wrong.
J.P. and his worried audience worked through the uncomfortable distractions for many anxious hours on the radio until the day McCarthy had to confess, he would be forced off-air by chemotherapy and he promised to return after conquering the blood-borne cancer that promised to kill him. "In a few week's, we'll talk again," McCarthy reassured friends, briefly flashing his gentle trademark tone.
Station executives told WJR's staff precious little about his diagnosis or prognosis in more than three months, it just wasn't discussed. As fate would have it, Hal Lamb was temporarily in charge of news operations while his boss huddled upstairs with the general manager.
Inside the busy 21st floor newsroom a trickle of urgent phone calls became a raging torrent. Reporters with the Associated Press, two Detroit newspapers and three major television stations were hearing J.P. McCarthy was dead. The statewide media machine wasn't very far behind and they all pushed for official confirmation.
It only takes one credible reporter calling someone to see if they know something about a big story to get a media circle jerk started, but this was an unseen monster and it had WJR on speed-dial until it got fed.
Newsroom telephones were suddenly paralyzed and news gathering efforts were abruptly crippled. A stable of skilled news anchors and street reporters were saddled with running interference and forwarding every call to the center desk in the middle of a frantic news day. Co-workers were only to happy to let Hal handle the media deluge. As they watched him negotiate the perilous cliffs, several colleague's warned Hal was treading to far - others hoped he might finally jump off. WJR radio's superstar was dead and talking out of turn was career suicide.
Hal repeatedly rang the GM's office to relate his dueling dilemma's, "Look, we've taken 200 media calls for a statement on J.P.'s death and our newsroom is dead in the water until we get it!" He remarked, to an increasingly frustrated secretary, "I'm sorry Hal, but they're still in a meeting, I'll let them know right away," she said. "And yes, I gave them your other messages." she added.
Nobody had to say it, anxious managers waited for a grief stricken call from the esteemed widow, Mrs. McCarthy, who made heads roll when she felt wronged. While WJR's brass paced upstairs, everyone else clawed their way up the Golden Tower for a written release from the Fisher Building.
Hal sympathized - but he was the opposite of a politician. J.P.'s death was huge news and he wanted the big story, let the pink slips fall where they may.
Hal had fended off voracious reporters from every corner of the state for nearly an hour, but as irreplacable news minutes ticked away, he couldn't wait any longer. Somebody had to find the answers rabid journalists wanted and deserved, but where was J.P. McCarthy getting cancer treatments when he died? It was obviously a closely held secret because nobody had a clue. Hal went to the office rumor mill which put J.P. at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
It was twice the tragedy knowing water-cooler gossip was the only lead to confirm J.P.'s death and Detroit's biggest story.
Hal cleared a line and dialed out. Within five minutes he was talking to the oncology nurse on-duty. (years before strict health privacy laws) She recited a brief hospital statement; "Joseph McCarthy died at 11:07 a.m., while undergoing treatment at Memorial Sloan-Ketteringfor acute lymphoblastic leukemia."
Hal was extremely lucky to find this woman so quickly, but he rejected the pedestrian press release and pushed for something provocative. He antagonized her - demanding she speak frankly and off the record. "Sir, Mr. McCarthy suffered multiple system failures over the last few days. To be blunt, malignant blood cells raced out of control and his major organs were liquified," she observed clinically.
This sounded so macabre it had to be true. Hal didn't have time to find another source anyway, she was it! There was zero time for error. He asked her again, "Are you absolutely positive... we are both talking about Joseph P. McCarthy of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan... a talk show host on WJR radio in Detroit? "Yes, ofcourse," she said. "I'm very sorry, goodbye."
Hal's reflex mashed the next flashing button and found reporter Kevin Deitz from WDIV Television at the other end. "You got anything new?" he wondered on the NBC station's behalf. "Yeah, J.P. McCarthy IS dead," Lamb responded, in stunned disbelief himself.
Losing all self-control - Deitz screamed into the receiver - "He's Dead, we've got it... J.P. IS DEAD!"
News 4 anchors delivered the bulletin through rising orchestral hymns and glowing television graphics. "The Death of J.P McCarthy" hit like a midwestern tremblor. The earth moved for thousands of afternoon TV viewers whose daily routine was fractured forever with the news Detroit's most popular morning man was gone. Almost in unison the memorial was joined by WXYZ-ABC 7 and WJBK-TV 2. Obviously, they had long prepared for this moment, but they also fed off each other like sharks because Lamb had only told Deitz about McCarthy's death.
There was no time to call anyone else. Without exageration, from the instant Deitz yelled into Lamb's ear to 4's first bulletin took under 15 seconds, Channel 7 flipped the switch less than 10 seconds later and TV-2 was on board in about one minute. All three network affiliates dumped the daily collection of mayhem and murder for non-stop, wall-to-wall coverage of J.P's untimely death.
The stations moved rapidly beyond news into the stupifying unknown.
Few people had more loyal friends and everyone had a story to tell. From the studio set, local news stars Bill Bonds and Mort Crim shared personal memories of Detroit's beloved J.P. and elegant taped tributes gave producers a few more minutes to get community leaders on the phone. Chairmen from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler took time to recall McCarthy's personal commitment to the automotive industry.
William Clay Ford, heir to the automaking empire broke into tears.
Nobody outside their circle cared more deeply about domestic car making success. J.P. was the national voice for GM's Chevrolet Motor Division for over 10 years, four decades after entertainer Dinah Shore made famous the melody "SEE THE USA, IN YOUR CHEVROLET" J.P. was the lifelong talent for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan, the nation's largest health care co-operative and many other public and private interests.
Now, Sparky Anderson, Al Kaline, and Ernie Harwell ran the broadcast bases. The Tiger baseball legends hurled spitball's about J.P's storied career and batted grand slam home runs with tales of his unvarnished personality. TV's troika shared boundless calls from endless adoring fans. The little kids who grew up forced to listen with their parents had grown to love J.P. too.
J.P. often quipped, "It's not the money, it's the amount!"
In the near future the media marketplace promised a proliferation of personalities each one rendering the next forgettable. But, Joseph McCarthy ruled during a unique time with a truly unique talent. From the end of John Kennedy's administration to the start of Bill Clinton's presidency, he was signing radio and commercial talent contracts worth millions.
J.P. drove top-drawer Cadillac convertible's and spent three month's on vacation every year. He owned a hill-top mansion in Bloomfield Hills and harbored his 60 foot Yacht on Lake St. Clair.
On the radio, "Admiral McCarthy" openly relished the opulent lifestyle a great fortune could buy and he was generous with words. McCarthy's stories transported listeners to a place where good friends meet to share life's little toys. J.P. never
"Let he who is without sin, go ahead, but I get the first question"
