Where I Can Say Anything.....About Anyone.....ANY TIME!!!
Hey, hey! This is my blog where I will be saying the things that I know you are thinking! About celebrities, the President, current affairs, my life, my husband's murder - ANYTHING! Please feel free to comment below on the messages that I post here.
Don't be afraid - say what you want. I know that I will! So go for it!
Lil Wayne sampled Con Funk Shun's "Honey Wild" (written by me, Louis, and Danny Thomas) for a song on his best selling CD "Tha Carter 3", released in 2008. The new song "Kush", is also on a digital download only EP called "The Leak". There's a long involved back story behind this album, along with how my publishing company, Exxtra Foxx Music, managed to end up owning the copyright in the new work, which I will go into at a later date. I got another multi-platinum plaque for my contribution to the Grammy Award winning CD. Pretty good for an old woman, huh?
Wow! It's been a long time since I've been here to do anything! It's been a rough 12 months....... Louis' murder case ended in a mistrial just hours after it went to the jury. More on that later..... I finally made it to Phoenix, in the middle of the summer, in the hottest year on record for Arizona!......... I've had to fly back and forth to DC because my Moms has Alzheimer's disease. She's getting worse every day. She's still being cared for in our home on Rittenhouse Street, with my 90 year-old father. My siblings are doing a magnificent job but it's becoming too much for them. It would be hard on trained medical professionals......... I was forced to removed many of the photographs I posted here (the real purpose of this website) after a person who will remain nameless (but who co-founded Con Funk Shun with my husband and who plays lead guitar!) "misappropriated" many of the pics of the band for some brochure he passed on a boat ride. We got it straight but his actions spooked me when it comes to what is MY property - photographs which have been part of my private collection for decades......One of the songs I wrote for Con Funk Shun was sampled for Lil Wayne's mega-hit "Tha Carter 3" (see box on the right).
The only good thing about this past year is the fact that me and my children are back together again, in the same state. Lindsay has been here since March 2008 and Chicco moved here in September, after renting out our house in metro Atlanta. I'm still getting used to Phoenix. The hot weather is not nearly as bad as the coldness of the people who live here. I mean, they will got out of their way NOT to speak to a person!! I could say that I'm used to the warm hospitality that the south is known for, except people have been cordial in every place I've lived in before - Washington DC, Memphis TN, Vallejo CA, New Carollton MD, Gaithersburg MD, Fremont CA, Studio City CA, North Hollywood CA, and, of course, the ATL. I've heard that people who live in Phoenix are people who are running from something at home. Maybe...I don't know, but they sure aren't courteous in this place. I haven't decided if I'm going to stay here......
Thanks to all of the folks who sent me (and Con Funk Shun) emails. I've been able to reconnect with old friends whom I haven't heard from in years. Please keep the communications coming!
Sorry for being away so long but I've been so busy. Now I'm making plans to move to Phoenix next month! My house is in a mess, with boxes everywhere. I will keeping a day- to-day blog here, letting you in on my final road trip. Stay tuned!!!
This is a very belated blog entry about the photos on this website. I'd put up close to a 100 photos from my personal collection so that my friends and family, along with Con Funk Shun's fans could see them. Particularly the ones of the band, candid photos which have never before been published. The problem arose last May when my photos were popping up on other websites and even a brochure published by Michael Cooper and Felton Pilate for their "anniversary cruise" earlier this year. Not only were my pictures stolen from this website, some even had my Japanese Haiko watermark, clearly notifying viewers that the photos are MY intellectual property, i.e., I am the legal copyright owner. If you notice, each page on this site has my copyright notice. I had to send Cooper and Pilate, along with the brochure designer, Sheila Chadwick, a cease and desist letter, demanding that they stop using my photos. Cooper and I worked out the problem in a timely manner. However, in doing so, we discovered that many of my photos had been used by others.
Accordingly, I was forced to removed the Con Funk Shun Photo Album, along with my family Albums, because they contained personal photos of the band interacting with me and/or my children. This is very upsetting because the main reason for this site was so that others could enjoy photos of many old school artists which have been sitting in boxes for years. I wanted to be able to share my memories but I can't do it if people insist on stealing my photos. People seem to think that just because something is on the internet, it is in the public domain. THIS IS NOT TRUE! Especially if the owner clearly gives notice of ownership by putting the symbol "©", the year of publishing, and the owner's name - just like I have at the bottom of every page here.
The only way that I can put the photos up is to place a nasty looking watermark across the images, making it hard for people to really see them. This is a time-consuming project which can become very expensive if I have to use digital embedding software. The money is not the problem - it's the TIME that it will take.
As we are celebrating Father's Day, I have two children, who will be missing their father - again. They sent cards to their grandfather, my 88 year-old father whom, thank God, is still around for them as he always has been, particularly in this decade since they lost their own beloved father. I have another card - a sympathy card - sent to us by the former sheriff of the county, which is supposed to be bringing the killer of my children's father to justice.
On June 25, 2007 it will be the 10th anniversary of the execution-style murder of my husband and companion of over 20 years. Our children, now grown at 24 and 27, are forced to not only face another year without their Dad, but they still have no legal resolution to this matter. The Dekalb County District Attorney's office has no communication with us due to the fact that it still blames me for "leaking" the story of the suspect's escape days after he was indicted in January 2007. I didn't talk to the media about the escape, although with my contacts, I could have done so very easily. But, in an effort not to compromise the investigation (or lack thereof), I implored all of my journalist friends to write very little over the past 10 years. My BFF, Nancy A. Williams, is an accomplished journalist and former editor of Essence magazine. Another BFF, Angeline Hartmann, is a producer and correspondent with America's Most Wanted. In addition, my children and I have a working relationship with our local Fox affiliate, having volunteered for a year as part of its "Call For Action" consumer protection staff which supports the investigative reporters, "The I-Team".
When a Fox-5 reporter got wind of the escape, through his own research efforts, I got a call from the DA's office telling me that if Fox aired the story, my family would be "cut out of the "information loop" and treated as if I were the media. I contacted the head DA personally, letting her know that I was not going to be made a scapegoat for her office's incompetence. I had no control over Fox and if the reporter felt that it was in the best interest of the public to know that a suspected killer was on the run in the community, who was I to object?
Throughout this investigation (or lack thereof), I have tried to take my cue from the family of slain Atlanta socialite Lita McClinton Sullivan, the aristocratic Emory and JoAnn McClinton. Their beautiful daughter was executed in 1987 in her foyer by a man hired by her estranged husband, millionaire James Sullivan, just before she was due to face him in a divorce settlement case. Sullivan avoided prosecution for almost 2 decades by hiding out in such far-flung places as Bangkok. The McClintons sat through trial after trial, both criminal and civil, right up until Sullivan was finally convicted of murder in March 2006. They maintained their integrity in the face of agonizing pain, never once losing their dignity or sense of self-respect. Ten years after the first news of Lita's murder hit the airwaves, I was faced with either taking a book from the McClinton's book of media relations or doing what I refer to "The Nigger News": standing outside in the parking lot, surrounded by everyone on the block, with my hair uncombed, a "grandbaby" on each hip, supported by my sisters, brothers, cousins, and "play-cousins" all wearing t-shirts with a picture of Louis either in his high school cap and gown or his "Pimp Daddy" prom outfit and the words "Sunrise", "Sunset", and 'R.I.P." emblazoned across the front and back. The first 6 years I opted not to speak with media at all, having my girlfriend, Nancy Williams, issue a statement that "Mrs. McCall has no comment and is in seclusion with her children". In 2003, I was contacted by Fox-5 Atlanta's "Georgia's Most Wanted" who wanted to feature the story. I had to be talked into it by the new detectives on the case and reporter, Angeline Hartmann, who was with Fox in Atlanta at the time. I did a quick interview but provided Angeline with photos of Louis with his children and with his band, a tape of his Soul Train appearances, and a Best Of Con Funk Shun CD. I wanted the world to see that Louis was more than just a case number, some crime scene photos, and an autopsy report.
After the announcement of the indictment that I fought so hard to get, I went on the news both on CBS-46 and Fox-5 at the request of the District Attorney's Pubic Information Officer Adora Andy. I was reluctant to do it but, after consulting with Angeline Hartmann, I did so with the stipulation that the nexus of the interview be about the county's need for a cold case squad. The DA's office was pleased with my position on the matter since it had a bad relationship with the Dekalb County CEO Vernon Jones, whose office refused to fund such a venture. Andy told me that the DA Gwen Keyes Fleming felt that the plea would have more impact coming from a citizen. On February 8, 2007, I even sent an email to Mr. Jones and every one of the county commissioners, begging that they allocate funds for a cold-case squad for Dekalb County, the second largest county in the state of Georgia. Again with the support and encouragement of the DA. The day after I sent the email, I got the call from the DA's office saying that Louis' killer had escaped from custody. I then made the CEO's office aware of the escape. I never got a reply to either of my emails from Vernon Jones nor any of the 6 commissioners.
I was asked by the Dekalb County Victims/Witness Coordinator to give the FBI and the US Marshal's office a change to recapture the suspect. Although I have been a publicist and writer of news releases since the age of 19 and although America's Most Wanted was a phone call away for me, I respected and honored the request. Then the DA's office went home for the weekend, leaving me without any knowledge of where the suspect was nor any kind of protection for me and my family after I put myself on "front street" by going on the news when the indictment came down. It was through my own efforts that I found out that the suspect had been on the run for three weeks before officials in two jurisdictions even knew he was gone. It was bad enough that a man who had just been indicted for felony murder was "accidentally" released on bail with an electronic monitoring device. I know that "shit happens" and that the law enforcement is understaffed and under trained. And I know that a criminal or two on "house arrest" sometimes puts his anklet around the cat's neck so that he can run to the store for a pack of smokes. But the cat can't call into the probation officer and she sure can't do it for 20 days! And then the District Attorney's office who FAXED a felony murder warrant to another state and never followed up to see if it had been received, casually tells me that the suspect has been gone for 3 weeks and cared not whether the victims family might be in jeopardy, had the temerity to accuse me of "leaking" the escape to the press when it was a matter of public record.
Well, Fox went with the story and, true to its threat, the DA's office refuses to talk to me, other than cursory phone calls from the Victims/Witness Coordinator. This, after I was assured by both the District Attorney Fleming AND the Assistant DA Dan Geary that I could always talk to them if I needed more than the "cookie-cutter" flip-card, boiler point, form-letter verbiage dispensed by the Victims/Witness staff. Yet I went on the air the following day, with my dignity intact and told the reporter that we still had confidence in the District Attorney.
On April 23, 2007, I called the prosecutor on the case to find out if the suspect had been recaptured. Know what he said to me? That he could not talk to me due to "a prior communication problem"! COMMUNICATION PROBLEM?! Oh, you meant because I would not allow your office to accuse me of a "leak" when the issue was really a "cover-up"?! COMMUNICATION PROBLEM?! The fact that I have only received a handful of phone calls or communiqués from Dekalb County, one of them a sympathy card from your former Sheriff who is now doing a life sentence for masterminding the assassination of his successor?
The suspect was finally recaptured on April 29th in Richmond, VA, the same day that I was leaving Washington, DC after a visit with my elderly parents. He was returned to Georgia on May 2. I found out about the arrest that same day, and it wasn't from the Victims/Witness Coordinator. On May 3, I gave my last news interview with Fox-5 reporter Tony Thomas. Although I did manage to maintain my dignity, á la the McClintons, there was a definite change in my tone. Then we were asked to send in a Victims Impact Statement for the judge to review during the preliminary hearings, arraignment, and other such judicial proceedings. I told the Victims/Witness Coordinator that I had to ponder that a bit. Because I felt that we had been victimized more by the justice system (or lack thereof) than by the actual murderer. He did what he did on one night in 1997. But Dekalb County has ignored us, abused us, used us, threatened us, and damaged us so much deeply than Marques Clair, age 28, of Essex County, New Jersey. Maybe if society had paid more attention to his needs, like better schooling or more than mere slaps on the wrist for his criminal behavior, maybe, just maybe, an 18 year-old boy would not have been able to put a bullet in the back of another human being's head. So callously, with no remorse. Yet I can't be mad at him. No matter how how I try - I can't hate him like I should. But I do hate what Dekalb County has done and continues to do to my own children - dragging a simple homicide case out for years as if it were the Ira Einhorn case.
Too smug, perhaps, are these lawyers. When I expressed my dismay in Dekalb's inability to recapture the suspect quickly, I was told that he "was not the brightest bulb on the tree". Yet he not only eluded law enforcement successfully for 10 years, starting while still a teenage, he got away when they finally got him in custody. Too smug and overly confident in their educations and political accomplishments. Well, that's not what it takes to catch a crook. What happened to "street smarts"? The kind that comes from 20 years on the force, developing a sixth sense, knowing when a criminal is bullshitting you by watching the vein in his neck throb uncontrollably during a well-choreographed "Good Cop, Black Cop" pressure session.
Maybe I watch too much television but I thought that the prosecutors worked with the victim's families. To help show the jury that the "deceased" was once a person. A person loved by a mother, a father, a wife, a husband, a son, a daughter, plus sisters, brothers, cousins, nieces, nephews, uncles, aunts, grandparents, grandchildren, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and just citizens who are tired of unnecessary crime.
And so we come upon yet another year. No closure. No justice. And in this case, without the support and communication of the very persons charged with securing justice. No justice for The McCalls. As it has been for 10 years - JUST US.
I'm not talking about MY LINDSAY! My Lindsay would not be in detox - she would be in decomp for acting like such a fool.
How the hell are you in rehab, facing charges for DUI, not your first such incident, and you don't turn 21 until July 2007? And all of your peers are "In The Same Gang": the incredibly stupid Paris Hilton and the incredibly slow Nicole Richie. Each are making public excuses for themselves and each other, as if some virus was responsible for their bad behavior and poor lifestyle choices.
I've read articles that say that money and fame are the reasons for the women's problems with substance abuse and crime. NOOOOOOO! The LACK of money causes people to do desperate and hopeless things. Like robbery, burglary, drug dealing, and even murder.
The problem with Lindsay (not MY Lindsay!), Paris, and Nicole is THEIR PARENTS! I'm not going to allow anyone to say that Lindsay is in rehab and Nicole is looking at doing time because their parents got a divorce. Paris' parents are still married and her skinny ass is about to be locked up in a few days also.
So what is the problem here? It's being raised with no self-respect and no respect of others. It's parents who use cars, trips, and trinkets to babysit for their kids while the parents sun in San Tropez. Why didn't ANY of these girls go to college? Did they even finish high school? Other than Lohan, who has a nice acting portfolio, the other two are famous by omission - the media omitted waiting until Hilton and Richie did something worth reporting about. Being in rehab several times before age 18 or making a porn tape when you don't even have a picture of your graduation day is not "a body of work". These are not even "bodies AT work" - these women are just bums.
Yet society likes to turn its back on minority kids growing up in the inner city, insisting that they don't have to sell drugs to be successful. Hey, Spanky, they are not doing it to be successful - they are doing it to EAT! Lohan didn't have to act to be successful - she could have gone to medical school. Richie didn't have to use heroin - she could have aligned herself with her biological father's family and become a world class percussionist like her real Auntie, Sheila "E" Escovedo.
Where the hell was Brenda Richie? Lunching wth the Ladies at L'Orangerie? My kid's father performed with Lionel Richie and the Commodores when both groups were bringin' the funk in the 70s. I was a "Band Wife" traveling on the road with my husband, from city to city, Holiday Inn to Holiday Inn, just like Brenda Richie, often in the same convoy. But what happened? Lionel pulled ahead of the pack as an award-winning songwriter and performer. The Richies moved to Bel-Air while the McCalls moved to Vallejo, Brenda continued to shop at Neiman-Marcus and Saks while Linda Lou switched to Macy's and Mervyns. We both had philandering husbands. Brenda was unable to conceive so she adopted Nicole while I painfully shit out three children.
Now this is the point where "Loose Logic" shows that something changed. Louis was on the road most of the year, just like Lionel. But Linda Lou kept her foot in her daughter's ass. When I said be home at a certain time, MY Lindsay was in the house. I mandated no make-up or dating until age 16. When MY Lindsay reached the age when young girls leave the house dressed modestly but show up in first period with blue eye shadow, a baby-Tee, and her ass hanging out of her shorts, The Loose One started showing up at the school, unannounced, peeking at MY Lindsay through that little window in the classroom door. I bought her sanitary napkins and I counted them each month - that box better be empty! No doors could be locked in my house and MY Lindsay better not pass me twice with oversized clothes on. I needed to have unfettered access to her navel at all times! She might have managed to get pregnant in spite of my best efforts but she sure as hell was not going to surprise me with the news by being charged with gross negligent homicide after giving birth alone in her closet.
No learners permit until there was a serious need (and that came about when I got tired of driving her everywhere!) No car until she showed me something, like completing two years of college. She and her brother had one year to act out after their father's murder, then I expected them to pull themselves together and make him proud. I made sure that they had all of the professional counseling that they needed and I gave them my undivided attention 24/7 - 365. That meant that I didn't just wait for them to come to me if they felt depressed or they missed their Dad. I watched them like a she-bear with a new litter of cubs for any sign of psychological stressors or change - social isolation, sleeping too much, hiding in their bedrooms, new and strange friends, joining the Aryan Nation - ANYTHING! When my normally ebullient and personable son was about 17, he started being real quiet and never wanted to talk. I called my good girlfriend, Jennifer, who just happened to be a top clinical psychologist and asked her to talk to him. She then expressed concern that he might be suffering from mild depression - three years after never expressing any major reaction to losing his beloved Dad. She called her good girlfriend who just happened to be a psychiatrist and got us an appointment for a consultation that same day. The appointment was for 5:30 pm, on the day before Thanksgiving, in an icy rainstorm, in bumper to bumper traffic, in another county. But I threw my child in the car, made the trip, got the diagnosis, and followed the doctor's instructions. He was back to his old self 2 weeks later, without benefit of Paxil or Luvox. Just lotsa love and heavy dosages of LuMom!
The media want to make these silly girl's ridiculous actions front page news while what going on in Darfur is buried without fanfare just like the genocide victims there. Their parents will take no responsibility for why their kids are fucked up. Stints at Promises and other big-ticket rehab facilities are no replacement for nurturing, love, discipline, and instilling positive values before kindergarten. No one learned from River Phoenix's death - they just made him some kind of James Dean, when James Dean wasn't all that! Paris Hilton's mother is a disgrace as a parent. Read her comments about Paris' sentence in USA Today. And that petition to the Governor asking for clemency is indicative of how delusional rich people are.
Hollywood has always been, well, Hollywood. It began as a place of big money, marginal talent, and media cover-ups and/or sensationalism. But they always get the priority mixed up. The things which are sensationalized need to be covered OVER and the cover-ups need to be made public. I hope that all three of these women (and their other youthful counterparts) do every single day of their sentences. No time off for good behavior because "good behavior" for them is no drugs, no alcohol, no driving with suspended licenses, no partying, no shopping, no tanning - everything that you can't get in jail anyway. No protective custody. They need to be in general population with the very people that Paris and Nicole claim not to know about on "The Simple Life" - people who shot at WalMart, people who can't waste money dressing tiny pet dogs costing $2 grand in designer "doggywear" because they can't even afford a decent place to live, people who grew up surrounded by hopelessness rather than hotels with their names on them, people who sell drugs to survive but don't drive a $500,000 Benz while drugged.
Louis
First, I would like to thank all of the people who sent me such kind and supportive emails about my new site and all of the ridiculous issues that I had to go through to get some justice for my children's father, Louis A. McCall. I will have much more to say about the journey that finally got us closer to a modicum of justice. I can't tell you much more about the status of the case because the District Attorney's office has labeled me persona non grata due to my unwillingness to let them bully me when the news of the suspect's "accidental" escape became known to the media. So now I can't even get the courtesy and respect of a phone conversation with the prosecutor who is trying the case. No matter. I have done what I set out to do - to keep the case from consistently being thrown in a non-existent "cold case file cabinet" when Dekalb County doesn't even have an active cold case squad. If the family of the victim doesn't act a fool like I did, their loved one's case will just be overlooked in favor of the more high-profile cases, particularly the crimes against white people. Die in Dekalb and you will be forgotten. Do you realize that in 10 years, one of the only FOUR communiqués that I received from Dekalb County was a sympathy card from former Sheriff Sidney Dorsey? Know where he is now? In prison for life after he orchestrated the December 2000 assassination of his successor, Derwin Brown, just 3 days before the new Sheriff was supposed to take his oath of office. Then, after one of his "partners in crime". a Dekalb County Deputy Sheriff, decided to testify against him, Dorsey allegedly tried to have the Deputy killed. Oh, well, he shot the Sheriff, but could not kill the Deputy! Instead of compensating Mr. Brown's family for their loss, the county appealed the wrongful death suit won in November 2004. Brown's widow, already incapacitated from strokes after having her husband die in her arms, succumbed to her illnesses almost six years to the day after her husband's death, on Christmas Eve 2006.
So that's the kind of law enforcement agency that I am up against. At this point, I don't care if they convict the alleged killer or not. I have done what I think that Louis would have wanted me to to - fight for him to have his day in court. What he wouldn't want me to do is exacerbate my lupus any further than I have, stressing myself out trying to fight a system which doesn't give a shit about its citizens. I am NOT going to let Dekalb County drive me to an early grave like Mrs. Brown. May she rest in peace and she will always be in our prayers.
© 2007 Linda Lou McCall for Exxtra Foxx Music LLC
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Photographs may NOT be used without prior written authorization. Illegal copying, reproduction, and/or publishing of these photographs will be subject to legal action, pursuant to the US Copyright Act