You don’t have time for three hours of doomscrolling, twenty half-baked takes, and some guy online screaming READ THE THREAD. We are Front Page Detectives, this is your morning Drive-By, and here is what is real.
Prosecutors say jailhouse recordings captured Weinstein discussing a massive payment to push favorable material toward potential and already seated jurors.
Harvey Weinstein allegedly offered a podcaster $1.75 million to distribute material capable of reaching potential and seated jurors during his New York sex crimes case, prosecutors revealed as the disgraced movie mogul was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Nicole Blumberg told the court that jailhouse recordings captured Weinstein discussing the proposed payment. Prosecutors characterized it as an attempt to “contaminate the jury pool” and frighten his accusers. They have not publicly identified the podcaster allegedly involved.
The allegation immediately generated speculation about Candace Owens, who released her Harvey Speaks series featuring jailhouse videos of Weinstein in 2025. Her spokesperson says Weinstein never paid her. Weinstein’s representative also flatly denies any $1.75 million agreement or attempt to influence jurors, arguing that conversations about media coverage have been misrepresented as a criminal-style scheme.
Weinstein, 74, was sentenced for sexually assaulting former Project Runway production assistant Miriam “Mimi” Haley. His original 2020 conviction was overturned in 2024, but another jury convicted him again over Haley. Weinstein asked for mercy and expressed remorse toward her while continuing to deny being a violent man.
**Hot Take: **Harvey Weinstein already had money, power and some of Hollywood’s best-connected friends. Prosecutors now say that even from a jailhouse phone, he was still trying to produce the ending. If those recordings say what prosecutors claim, $1.75 million buys one hell of a publicity campaign.
Read more
The group behind Mangione’s legal fund is publishing a book examining how his case exposed extraordinary public anger toward America’s healthcare system.
The anonymous collective behind Luigi Mangione’s official legal fund is taking the extraordinary public conversation surrounding his case somewhere more ambitious. *Depose: Luigi Mangione, the Right to Health, and the Unfinished American Revolution *examines what the reaction to Mangione reveals about healthcare, inequality and political frustration in America.
Published by Ill Will Editions and distributed by MIT Press, the book draws together American history, philosophy, true crime and political theory while asking whether the remarkable support for Mangione could become something larger than fascination with one defendant. A New York launch on October 11 will feature December 4 Legal Committee spokespeople Sam Beard and Jamie Peck alongside physicians, artists and editors.
The event will also screen Stanya Kahn’s Deny, Defend, Depose, an experimental 30-minute documentary constructed entirely from social media posts made after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot. Rather than narrating the public response, the film lets Americans speak for themselves, capturing the anger, dark humor and class resentment that erupted online. Whatever ultimately happens to Mangione in court, his case has already forced a conversation about American healthcare that plainly extends far beyond him.
**Hot Take: **Luigi Mangione became a symbol because millions of Americans recognized the anger surrounding his case before anyone wrote a book explaining it.
Read More
The former Senate majority leader will disappear from university buildings, scholarships and programs after his name surfaced hundreds of times in released Epstein documents.
The University of Maine System has voted to remove former U.S. Senator George Mitchell’s name from its buildings, scholarships, programs and funds following renewed scrutiny of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Mitchell’s name reportedly appears more than 300 times among millions of Epstein-related documents released by the Justice Department. Virginia Giuffre previously alleged that Epstein forced her to have sex with Mitchell. Mitchell has denied wrongdoing and has never been criminally charged. The university task force stressed that its decision was not a finding of guilt.
The George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions and George J. Mitchell Peace Scholarship are among the institutions being renamed. University officials said continuing to use Mitchell’s name risked undermining public trust, while dissenting trustee Donna Loring warned against allowing allegations and public pressure to substitute for established facts.
Hot Take: George Mitchell spent decades building a public legacy around diplomacy and peace. Epstein’s shadow has now reached far enough to strip his name from institutions in his home state. No criminal conviction was required. For the University of Maine, association alone finally became too expensive.
Investigators are trying to determine whether the mysterious new message is a genuine communication from her alleged abductors or another hoax exploiting the case.
A possible new ransom note has surfaced nearly eight months after 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie disappeared from her Arizona home, sending investigators back into one of the country’s most baffling missing-person cases.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department and an FBI task force are examining the message and related social media activity but have not disclosed its contents or origin. Two earlier demands were sent to a Tucson television station after Guthrie disappeared February 1. The first demanded $4 million in cryptocurrency and claimed she was alive. The second claimed she had died.
No arrests have been made, and investigators have never publicly established what happened after a masked intruder was recorded interfering with Guthrie’s porch camera. Recent human remains discovered about 15 miles from her home have been ruled unrelated. Her children, including Today host Savannah Guthrie, continue appealing publicly for information.
Hot Take: Eight months later, somebody has decided to put another ransom note into the bloodstream of this case. If it is real, investigators finally have a fresh thread to pull. If it is fake, someone is tormenting a family that has already spent most of a year wondering whether their mother is alive.
Read More
Her lawyers want the case dismissed and are demanding an investigation into Michael Desronvil, whose vote prevented an 11-1 insanity verdict from becoming unanimous.
Lindsay Clancy returns to court Tuesday for the first time since her triple-murder trial collapsed, with her lawyers mounting an aggressive attempt to prevent prosecutors from ever putting her before another jury.
Attorneys Kevin Reddington and Martin Weinberg argue that retrying Clancy would violate double jeopardy protections because Judge William Sullivan had alternatives to declaring a mistrial. They also want holdout juror Michael Desronvil investigated over his jury-selection answers and conduct during deliberations. Eleven jurors favored finding Clancy not criminally responsible for killing her three children. Desronvil wanted a conviction.
Desronvil says he had no doubts about his decision, while his attorney Edward Paltzik has condemned Reddington’s effort to investigate him and threatened a bar complaint. The defense is separately asking Sullivan to enter findings of not guilty based on insufficient evidence. Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz has yet to publicly announce whether prosecutors will seek a retrial.
Hot Take: Reddington couldn’t persuade the twelfth juror, couldn’t persuade the judge to remove him and now wants the man investigated after the trial. Desronvil’s vote counted exactly as much as the other eleven. Treating a holdout juror like a problem to be eliminated because he refused to surrender is a dangerous road.
Read more
His defense wants forensic extraction files containing deleted material, system logs and metadata from phones central to the prosecution’s original murder timeline.
Alex Murdaugh’s attorneys are demanding deeper access to digital evidence from roughly half a dozen phones as they prepare to retry the disgraced attorney for the murders of his wife Maggie and son Paul.
The defense says prosecutors have provided reports containing ordinary phone evidence but not the underlying forensic extraction files used to produce them. Those files could contain deleted entries, system logs and metadata showing when records were created or altered. Phones belonging to Alex, Maggie and Paul Murdaugh are included, along with devices associated with Timothy Gillespie and Christy Murdaugh.
The stakes are obvious. Paul’s phone produced the kennel video placing Alex near the murder scene shortly before the killings, while Maggie’s phone helped prosecutors construct their timeline. Murdaugh’s attorneys argue their experts cannot independently verify the state’s conclusions without the raw data. A judge could hear arguments over the demand October 16.
**Hot Take: **The first Murdaugh trial was built partly inside three cell phones. With the conviction erased and everything back on the table, the defense doesn’t want the prosecution’s interpretation of those phones. It wants to crawl through every deleted file, timestamp and digital footprint itself. This retrial is going microscopic.
Read more
Police and federal agents are digging again at the Olney property linked to possible snuff footage and multiple women who disappeared.
Federal agents and Philadelphia police have returned to the former home of pornographer Raymond “R.C.” Horsch, intensifying their search of the Olney property as investigators continue trying to determine what happened to women connected to the house.
Authorities executed another search warrant Monday and warned neighbors that roads would close while further digging takes place. Investigators have recovered more than one million digital items from the property, including disturbing photographs and videos involving women. Authorities have linked multiple missing women to the investigation and are examining whether women appearing lifeless in the material actually died.
The investigation began after Horsch’s son Eugene was arrested in June on weapons and fraudulent-document charges, leading authorities to the Chew Avenue house. Eugene has not been charged with murder. His father, who died last year, produced violent pornography, leaving investigators with the difficult task of separating staged material from possible evidence of actual crimes.
Hot Take: They have searched the house, hauled evidence out, examined more than a million digital files and now they are digging again. Police still have no bodies and no murder charge. But every return to Chew Avenue makes one thing clearer: investigators are nowhere near finished with whatever happened inside that house.
Read more
