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Vinyl Banners 13 oz Scrim
We use a premium heavy weight 13 oz. scrim vinyl banner. It has a very smooth surface for best printing results. This material is typically used for billboards, building wraps, banners, event flags, trade show signage, parades, etc. Can be printed 2 sides.
Maximum Size: 120″ High X 145′ Wide as one piece. However, we can hem banners together for a bigger size banner.
Resolution: Digitally printed at 720 x 720 resolution
Usage: Indoor or Outdoor; Waterproof and UV safe that will last for years
Double Sided: Our double sided banner features two banners sewn together
Material Options:
13 oz. Gloss Vinyl Banner
13 oz. Matte Vinyl Banner
TO LEARN MORE about our hundreds of different vinyl stocks, many ink types, print and embellishment options, Unlimited sizes options, finishes, coatings, laminates & More
The Choice is yours!
Choose Our Top Selling version of this product (over 80% do)
OR CHAT NOW with a live customer service person CLICK LINK >>>>
OR Get a FREE QUOTE by filling out the quote form below
OR CALL Customer Service Today: East Coast (239)344-8716, West Coast (530)588-0348
The type of vinyl substrate that you order, as well as the options requested and the quality resolution that each order requires or needs will determine where your printing is done. Some equipment is highly specialized and very expensive (hundreds of thousands of dollars or more). Due to complexity other print orders may require highly trained and experienced print staff. Those items will be shipped out to our regional production facilities across the USA — most likely Miami, Dallas, Minneapolis, Sparks NV, and LA CA. However, many projects might, can or will be done locally at our smaller facilities around the USA. We do not limit ourselves there. We also have dozens of other printing equipment that can produce every form/style and quality finished printed vinyl stock items in the world. So no matter what your need we can produce it faster, and better and cheaper than anyone else. That is a fact – not just a boast or claim. Each project is carefully processed to maximize your needs. So if you're looking for Vinyl Wraps for your vehicles, Banners or trade show displays, Or any number of adhesive or no-adhesive vinyl solutions… we have you covered. (Literally thousands of options).
Learn More About Our Product Option...
Understanding Vinyl Type Substrates
Types of Vinyl Card stocks are commonly divided into categories such as Weight, thickness, opacity, Smoothness, flexibility, tensile strength, UV & heat resistance, and over all durability. Then they are modified with additional materials, textures, adhesives, finishes, coatings, laminates and colors, then, finally they are treated with various effects like reflective coatings and writable surfaces. The final outcome is virtually endless.
We pride ourselves in having direct and indirect relationships with every major material, adhesive and vinyl manufacturer and most of the renowned specialty suppliers in the USA allowing us to access just about anything you might want from cheap low cost vinyl films to the toughest banner substrates currently in use in the industry. However, nothing beats buying power and we produce these products by the tons. Due to the amazing quantities of a few of these high end premium stocks we can actually sell most of them for less than our competitors can sell the cheap stuff for.
Vinyl Trends often change based on many factors… technology, economy and equipment being the usual driving factors. With our current digital age, the vast majority of all printing is image based and sub straight materials that provide the best images are the most sought after. Of course cool and unique are very nice but usually come with a much added price tag too. So, current trends lead to using our top selling vinyl and banner stocks.
Understanding Vinyl & Ink Opacity
Types of Coatings
Gloss UV coating is a liquid or film that is applied to the surface of either blank paper or can be applied after printing or even both. Gloss coating adds a smooth even hard nonabsorbent surface to the paper or card stock allowing for extreme detail and clarity to the finished process. It is perfect for photographs or art work where detail images and rich colors are desired.
Matte UV coating is similar to gloss but is designed to not have a shiny finish. Image quality is still very good and makes the print more readable. Best for text, maps or can be chosen as a style preference.
Spot UV coating is adding the gloss coating in specific areas or shapes and applied more link an ink over a matte surface giving areas or designs a very classy and elegant look which actually becomes and enhances the graphic design.
Types of Lamination
Gloss OPP (oriented polypropylene) lamination provides a wide range of uses across the whole spectrum of printed products. The properties of good gloss and strength and the advantages of low cost make it suitable for all the following applications:Company report and accounts, Brochures, Catalogues, Carrier bags, Greeting cards, Book jacket covers, Magazines, Maps, Labels, Point-of-sale and Displays.
Matt OPP – This Matt finish coupled with its smooth texture offers a very high quality image to brochures and book covers. Matt finishes are also particularly suited to surfaces which need to be easily read such as wall maps, but can be prone to scuffing and should be handled with care.
Silk Lamination – This polypropylene film appears midway between gloss and matt OPP film lamination and imparts a smooth natural finish to brochures and book covers, giving excellent clarity to the underlying print. Like matt opp the surface can be prone to surface scuffing and should be handled with care.
Banner Material Basics
Many indoor banners are simply sheets of raw vinyl material imprinted and cannot withstand wind and weight. However, indoor vinyl is a bit smoother and can produce a bit better looking image.
We do make banners on polyester fabrics as well and produce amazing products. Contact our customer service team for details.

subset: commoncrawl


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The Cosmetology department had an awesome time dressing up for
Halloween! The girls really went all out. We had some pretty good costumes.
The students on campus, came into our department and voted on us, while we
were doing clients. Yes, we had to work on clients while we were in full costume!
It was a riot! Here are a few shots of the fun we had!
Yep, that's me! I'm the Wicked Witch of the West!! I had so much fun dressing up!
This is my scary faced friend Jordan. She painted her face all by herself!!
She looked awesome!
Closeup of her awesomeness!
Jamie A.K.A Little Granny. She was a riot!
Little Granny won 1st place, Scary Face Jordan won 2nd and I won 3rd!!
My sweet friend Jenny!
The hippie on the end, is Brooke. She won cutest! She sits next to me and is a living doll!
Me and some of the first semesters. Jodi, is a zombie prom queen and Amy is dressed as Pink.
My teachers Ms. Henery and Ms. Martin
Hippie Tiffany and Firewoman Jordan. These girls make my day everyday!
Kristin is dressed as a Texas Rangers fan/fairy. She is precious!
Here I am doing hair in full costume! My dress did not breathe one bit and
I was melting! Get it? Meeelllltttiinngg!!!
Working on clients. That's my sweet friend, Brittany, poking her head out behind me.
Lauralyn, the bumblebee, was busy all morning giving her client a perm. She worked so hard
and did such a good job!
Here's the whole gang!
How crazy is it, that in my bathroom, my makeup doesn't even look green? Creepy!
I hope you all have a safe and fabulous Halloween!


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Alright Holly Levell, you've won me over. This Monster Munch soft sculpture is stunning (even though I'm more of a Mighty Munch man myself), many an arduous Bus Eireann trip would have been impossible without a flavored corn snack of some kind.
Go to Levell's website to see if she's given the soft sculpture treatment to your favorite snack or make a suggestion of your own!


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Space shuttle Discovery is on countdown for lift-off on Thursday to the International Space Station, with NASA's weather forecast predicting "80 per cent chance of acceptable conditions at launch time".
NASA test director Jeff Spaulding yesterday described the venerable vehicle as "in good shape" to blast off on its 39th and final mission, after a long career which began way back on 30 August 1984.
Discovery will deliver vital spares and the converted multi-purpose logistics module Leonardo, set to become a permanent addition to the orbiting outpost.
On board for the STS-133 mission will be commander Steven Lindsey, pilot Eric Boe, and mission specialists Michael Barratt, Steve Bowen, Alvin Drew, and Nicole Stott.
Bowen replaces the unfortunate Tim Kopra, who fell off his bike last month and can't make the flight. Bowen will become the first astronaut to fly two consecutive shuttle missions, having last May formed part of Atlantis's STS-132 crew.
Weather permitting, Discovery will depart Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39A at 21:50 GMT. ®


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Meat Cards: Business Cards Made of Beef Jerky
We start with 100% beef jerky, and SEAR your contact information into it with a 150 WATT CO2 LASER.
Screw die-cutting. Forget about foil, popups, or UV spot lamination. THESE business cards have two ingredients: MEAT AND LASERS.
As TK Baltimore points out, "OK, but if you eat it, doesn't that defeat the purpose?" [via Boing Boing]


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I watch in dismay as one insurance company after another continues the slow and torturous process of freezing, limiting and withdrawing the benefits from their guaranteed living withdrawal benefits (GLWBs). A week doesn't go by without another shoe dropping. A payout percentage here, an equity fund there, a joint-life option over here and before you know it, your variable annuity (VA) has been neutered.
Even competitors enjoying their moment of schadenfreude must now contend with the inevitable cynicism and distracting questions that follow the fog and confusion. "So, when will you guys cut benefits?" Or, even worse: "Were you the guys that changed features?" These are legitimate questions that even the strongest companies must address as the trend towards lower payouts continues.
So what's next? Will guaranteed rates go as low as the fed funds rate itself? Are we heading towards a GLWB that pays 0% income for life—or even joint life? I'm sure savvy annuity wholesalers can spin a tale to make any dog hunt, but at some point even they will realize the gig is up.
And so, perhaps the next step in the evolution of retirement annuities is to go back to the past. Maybe the annuity of the year 2020 pays out no cash at all, but instead offers an actual retirement service. Allow me to explain.
One of the lesser-known facts about retirement annuities—i.e., annuities that provide an income for the rest of your natural life, when you can no longer work or care for yourself—is that despite their illustrious 2,500 year history, it is only in the last few hundred years that their benefits have been paid in cash.
For the first few thousand years, retirement annuities provided something more reliable and useful than nominal cash or coin. Annuities paid out in units of service.
Case in point. The first known retirement annuity is documented in the Hebrew Bible, in Kings II, Chapter 25, Verse 27-30. Here is a direct translation. "And it came to pass…. that the king of Babylon did lift up the head of the king of Judah out of prison…. And he spoke kindly to him, and he did eat bread continually before him all the days of his life. And his allowance was a daily rate for every day, all the days of his life."
According to most insurance historians, this places the first retirement annuity in the year 550 B.C. And, it was paid out in units of dinner.
During the Middle Ages, wealthy landowners and merchants purchased so-called corrodies from monasteries and abbeys, which provided them with food, clothing and often shelter for the rest of their lives. Wealth they had. It was services they wanted.
On a slightly more amusing note, the famous English poet and author Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400) so enthralled King Edward III, that he was granted a rather unique annuity at the young age of 35. The retirement annuity was one gallon of wine daily for the rest of his life, to be served in the port of London. (That is 16 glasses of wine per day, and a newfound respect for The Canterbury Tales!)
But in all seriousness, only in the 16th century did it become commonplace for retirement annuities to be paid and received exclusively in cash. Until then you purchased the retirement annuity with cash, but the benefit itself was denominated in units of consumption—immune to inflation and the risk of debasing the currency. Perhaps it is time to reconsider the Biblical or Chaucerian annuity.
If this seems farfetched, consider the following. A few years ago, the U.S. Postal Service—an institution that itself might not be around in 2020—started offering what is called a "Forever Stamp." Although the cost of mailing a first-class letter in the U.S. is currently 44 cents, and the price has been steadily increasing by approximately one cent per year, a Forever Stamp comes with no fixed monetary value. The stamp—effectively a financial derivative—entitles the holder to one unit of service, in perpetuity. The holder can use the stamp to mail one first-class letter somewhere in the U.S, forever. Pay the 44 cents today, and regardless of what it should cost to mail a first-class letter next year or 10 years hence, the cost of the service is locked in.
For the Postal Service, this is not as big a gamble as one might expect. First, by not having to print new and costly stamps every time that the price goes up, it saves in printing costs for the millions of people who need one- and two-cent stamps to make up the difference. At the same time, the Postal Service does get to keep clients' money—money it needs—while clients keep the stamps in their drawers for the next decade. All parties are winners, which is critical for true financial innovation to flourish. Other countries, such as Canada, New Zealand and Singapore, offer similar stamps.
Now think of a retirement annuity where the benefit is modeled on a "forever" service. It might cover your water, gas or electric bill for life. Maybe it is denominated in units of days in a five-star nursing home, or units of Lipitor, Fosamax and Plavix. Or, perhaps it is a glass of wine a day. (Call it the Chaucer mini-annuity.)
Here is the bottom line. Remember that money is only a medium of exchange. Even if you do manage to find an entity that will guarantee you an income of $1,000 or $10,000 per month for the rest of your life—and you actually trust they will be around for the rest of your life—you still run the risk those dollars won't be enough to purchase the services you really want. In the language of finance, you are not only incurring credit risk and inflation risk, you are taking on basis risk. That is the mismatch between the retirement assets you own and the liabilities that you face.
In today's abnormally low interest-rate environment, perhaps the hunt for yield should be abandoned in favor of the hunt for institutions that can guarantee services an aging population will need to sustain itself. Would you buy a retirement-service annuity from a utility company? How about from a pharmaceutical company? An oil & gas company? Do you trust them—or like them—any less than your local insurance company?
Sure. There would be a host of regulatory issues these companies would have to contend with if they suddenly jumped into competition with century-old insurance companies and pension funds. But I believe it's high time for someone to be disruptively innovative in the retirement income space. Where is the iPad of the retirement income industry? And, how about another glass of merlot while we wait?
Read one of Dr. Milevsky's prior columns in which he tackles the true cost of retirement.
Check out Rethinking Annuities, a Special Report landing page at AdvisorOne.


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This lesson is a pretty direct interpretation of the Common Core Standard F-TF.A.1: Understand radian measure of an angle as the length of the arc on the unit circle subtended by the angle. When I introduce a new learning target, I like to start by going through the vocabulary in the learning target, and because the word "unit" is so important, that's where we begin.
Teacher's note: Readers may want to review my Prezi before reading on.
In today's opener, students create a set of what I informally call Unit_Shapes. I recognize that the "unit equilateral triangle" does not have the same lore attached to it as the unit circle, but that's not the point here. My goal is just to really get students thinking about the word "unit". I am trying to establish the unit circle as a common-sense mathematical tool (MP5), and in order to do that, I first want students to feel very comfortable with the reasoning behind its naming.
I give students a minute or two to set up their paper by making four sections and drawing the shape indicated in each section. Next I show them the problem for each slide. I move quickly here, allowing no more than a minute of individual time on each problem before leading a brief class discussion. I make the point to students that this should feel like this a review of special triangles, so we're not going to spend too long on it right now.
Over the next few classes, students will make a few documents that will come together to help them make sense of the unit circle. "Unit Shapes" is the first one. See today's Explaining the Math Resource for a few extra notes on this opener.
After students find the circumference and area of the unit circle - a task whose satisfying simplicity never fails to capture their attention - I pose the title question of today's lesson for the first time: "What's so great about the Unit Circle?" I can count on several of them to shout that it "makes things easy," and this is what I'm going for. I will ask this question several times today, in an effort to build excitement about the unit circle, and also to make sense (MP1) of this important mathematical structure. Because we're going to get back to the unit circle, I make sure to leave diagram #4 in a prominent place on the chalkboard.
Learning Target Review
Next we look at the learning target. I put it up on the screen and just ask kids to read it to themselves. Then I ask if anyone has any questions about any of the words in this SLT. Because we just spent the first few minutes of class talking about how great and easy the unit circle is, they're feeling comfortable with that. Compared to other learning targets we've seen, the language here is straightforward and familiar. It's the learning target's claim that radian measure and arc length are equivalent on the unit circle that should build on our budding excitement about this new structure.
I ask students what this learning target is really saying. (I don't tell them this now, but at the end of class, they'll be asked to put this in their own words.) They catch on to the idea that on the unit circle, arc length and radian measure are the same thing. It makes sense to them that this is a possibility, because they already have it in mind that the unit circle is so great. Some ask why this is true, and I say that that's what we're going to look at today.
Because today's new learning target is about arc length we're going to spend a few minutes reviewing that. Together, we look the the formula_for_arc_length, and I ask students what this formula means. I refer back to SLT Circles 3 (CCS G-C.B.5), which defines radian measure as a constant of proportionality between radius and arc length, and I point out that S = r*theta and y=kx certainly have a similar structure (MP7). I'm hoping that students remember that theta must be given in radians for this formula to work. To check for their understanding, I point to theta and ask, "could I just plug in 60 degrees here?" If they're not sure, I don't dwell on it - I just show them the notes. The example exercises will give them a chance to make sure they've got it.
Practice Exercises
There are six practice problems on today's Prezi. The first three have a radius greater than 1, and for the last three r=1. On four of the six problems, theta is given in radians, on two, it's in degrees. I'm really trying to get students to make connections between a few ideas at once, and to be flexible thinkers. I'm also, once again, trying to help students see that the unit circle is great because it makes things easy. Those last three exercises do the trick. We put these up on the board, and for the second time this class period, students are excited to see how simple things can get when r=1. They're buying into the unit circle thing, and I'm building capital for when we dig a little deeper into the topic.
I return the exams that students took in the previous class, and I give them some time to talk about it. I do not worry too much about structure here. There's a culture in my class in which students want to have a little time to discuss their exams with each other, so I allow for that. I also make a firm point that, no matter what their scores on this exam, they shouldn't worry about this. We're going to keep digging into all these ideas. Even "summative" assessments aren't really summative in my implementation of mastery-based grading, because there are always more chances to demonstrate mastery on each learning target.
As I often tell them, I say, "The best way to improve your grade is do your best on what we're doing TODAY!" The next activity we'll do is directly related to the third learning target from Unit 2, so the evidence that I'm not just blowing smoke should be pretty clear to kids.
Problem Set 12 consists of two problems that will get kids thinking about 45/45/90 triangles, two that require them to apply their knowledge of arc length, and three problems in which they start to extend their knowledge of sine and cosine beyond right triangles.
The Figure #1 handout serves as today's exit slip. I tell students that it's ok if they're not done yet, but I'm going to collect their work on Figure #1. (I emphasize that this is not for a grade, just to check in.) "Before the bell rings," I say, "take a few minutes to give Figure #1 a title, then fill in the SLT and answer the question 'What's happening here?' at the bottom of the page." I clarify by saying it's ok if the learning target is not perfect, word for word. In fact, I would prefer students to write it in their own words and tell me what they think they were learning about today. I explain that they can answer the question, "What's happening here?" however they wish.
After the lesson, as I read through the titles, SLTs, and thoughts about what's happening, I get great insight into what kids are thinking about the work. There are very literal interpretations of what's happening: "we are making a circle going up by 15 degrees and searching for radian measure," there are attempts to talk about patterns: "every 90 degrees the denominator repeats itself forwards and in reverse," and there are various rewordings of the learning target. The titles are fun to read, as the span the spectrum from literal to silly. What I like about this exit task is that it is a rich formative assessment that needs no grade. Students have fun with the title, they try to impress me with the SLT, and they reveal their thinking by answering the question.


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This question is cross-posted from math.stackexchange because it might be too technical.
Let $S_n$ be the symmetric group. Recall that the number of inversions of a permutation $\sigma\in S_n$ is the number of ordered pairs $i< j$ with $\sigma(i) > \sigma(j)$. Now, call the number of permutations with $k$-inversions $I_n(k)$. It's easy to see that going from $n-1$ to $n$ we can insert $n$ into spot $j$ to add $n-j$ inversions:
$$I_n(k)=I_{n-1}(k)+I_{n-1}(k-1)+\ldots +I_{n-1}(0).$$
If we let $G_n(t)=\sum_{k=0}^{\binom{n}{2}}I_n(k)t^k$, then the above gives $$G_n(t)=(1+t+t^2\ldots+t^{n-1})G_{n-1}(t),$$
and it quickly follows that $G_n(t)=\prod_{j=1}^n\frac{1-x^j}{1-x}$.
I am interested in something more complicated. Let $I^{\sigma(y)=x}_n(k)$ count the number of permutations $\sigma$ of length $n$ such that for a given (fixed) $x,y$ we have $\sigma(y)=x$. In other words I am forcing $y$ to be in bin $x$. Proceeding by similar lines to the above, I get:
where similar logic was used as before, except now we have to be careful whether we are inserting $n$ to the right/left respectively (inserting to the left shifts $x$ up one bin).
Assuming the above is right, is it at all tractable to derive an asymptotic formula for $I_n^{\sigma(y)=x}(k)$, as $n\rightarrow\infty$?
As far as I understand, the way to derive asymptotics for $I_n(k)$, one needs something akin to the Knuth-Netto Formula:
$$I_{n}(k)=\binom{n+k-1}{k}+\sum_{j=1}^\infty (-1)^j\binom{n+k-u_j-j-1}{k-u_j-j}+\sum_{j=1}^\infty(-1)^j\binom{n+k-u_j-1}{k-u_j},$$
where the $u_j=3(3j-1)/2$ are pentagonal numbers. The above can be "simplified" using Stirling's approximation and a bunch of careful arithmetic to give asymptotics. Here is a reference for such a calculation.
Naively, the above formula comes from the Euler pentagonal number theorem. I would think one needs a specialized form of this theorem for what I am interested in.
Can such a similar asymptotic feat be accomplished for $I_n^{\sigma(y)=x}(k)$?


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The archaeological campaign of 2013 on the Cartier Cetate site, findspot Mithraeum III, from Alba Iulia, Alba District, is part of a multi-annual research project developed by the National Museum of Unification.
Alba Iulia worked together with the Princeton University (USA), Babeş-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca and the Institute of Archaeology and History of Art Cluj-Napoca. The main scope of this campaign, carried out in July – August 2013 and 2014, was to systematically uncover the building identified in a 2008 rescue excavation as the sanctuary of Mithras, using a complex, interdisciplinary approach.The investigations led to the identification of a complex stratigraphy, consisting of several layers belonging to different chronological phases, which were dated according to the archaeological evidence. Besides the structure of the sanctuary, which has a NW – SE orientation, the excavations also uncovered a large refuse pit that predates the building and a part of a rectangular timber structure, both belonging to the Roman period, as well as a part of a medieval house.
The recovered inventory consists of: altars, architectural elements, pottery, objects made of glass, iron, bronze, stone, coins and a large quantity of animal bones. Sets of palynological, archaeobotanical, archaeozoological, soil and radiocarbon samples were also collected.
Our team is two weeks into the second season of the Mithraeum III Project and so far, progress is being made. We have made important finds and are moving in the right direction to understand several layers of different occupation occurring on site. The hope of the site is to unearth the mithraeum structure in it's entirety and to understand the human occupation surrounding. This year we have a geophysical science student collecting geophysical data of unexcavated areas near the excavation and we hope to understand what is happening around the Mithraeum.
We are staying in the University of Alba Iulia's accommodation, about twenty minutes from our site, and our day begins around 7:30am and we work until 4:30pm with lunch and a few breaks in between from Monday to Saturday (Saturday is a half-day). Sunday is our free day in which we go to select locations in the Transylvanian region, such as the mines of Rosa Montana or the Roman capital of Sarmizegetusa as our team visited last year.
As the Student Education Coordinator, I have had the pleasure of working with the directors to plan a weekly lecture for the students and creating a manual for quick archaeological information. This has been a sensational project to be a part of and this season promises to answer many questions our team holds. Thank you to all members of the excavation team, universities, museums, and the city of Alba Iulia for your support!


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COTA, America's F1 track, has roughly nine hundred and eighty three corners, and none of them have wonderful names yet. Let's change that.
Below is a full track map, courtesy of Formula One itself. Click on a corner in the picture to annotate it with a name. The best submissions win... absolutely nothing but my lovve and respect. Well, if they're really good, they'll catch on and go viral and get named. Probably. Maybe. Maybe not. Whatever, it should be fun.
Photo Credits: Getty Images, F1


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Recently the Hiroshima based practice Kazunori Fujimoto Architect & Associates realised this weekend home in the resort town Nasu-town, Tochigi Prefecture. Due to the high building density – typical for Japanese residential areas – it is difficult to keep privacy so the architects decided to place almost all openings towards the inner courtyard.
"It is one-room space that has two big windows and a concrete wall. By the two windows the room connected to the outside environment. Closing the white curtains, all symbols as "house" are hidden, and the color and materials that can be seen are limited, still more, the abstract space is filled calm atmosphere."
more projects by Kazunori Fujimoto Architect & Associates @ Architonic


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I started with two sheets of scrapbooking paper and a roll of clear contact paper.
I cut the paper down to about 9 1/2 x 8 1/2 and stacked the paper with their backs together (good side out).
Then I put contact paper on the front and back sides of the paper and trimmed off all of the excess contact paper. So that I have one piece of paper covered in contact paper.
Then I started to
Then I stitched around the top flap of the envelope.
Now I could fold down the top flap and it looked like a little envelope.
The whole time I was sewing I kept inserting Trouble's passport to make sure the size was right.
I grabbed these little Velcro closures and attached them to the envelope.


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Supreme Court voids Chicago handgun ban, expands gun rights nationwide
By Raw Story
Monday, June 28th, 2010 — 10:18 am
Group: 'People will die because of this decision'
Gun owners upset about states "trampling on their rights" have reason to cheer Monday.
"In another dramatic victory for firearm owners, the Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional Chicago, Illinois' 28-year-old strict ban on handgun ownership, a potentially far-reaching case over the ability of state and local governments to enforce limits on weapons," CNN reports.
The Associated Press adds, "The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Constitution's "right to keep and bear arms" applies nationwide as a restraint on the ability of the federal, state and local governments to substantially limit its reach."
"The justices on Monday cast doubt on a Chicago area handgun ban, but also signaled in their 5-4 decision that less severe restrictions could survive legal challenges," the AP article continues.
The ruling, written by Justice Samuel Alito, decided that the 2nd Amendment "applies equally to the federal government and the states."
The AP adds, "The court was split along familiar ideological lines, with five conservative-moderate justices in favor of gun rights and the four liberals, opposed."
Liberal anti-gun groups are already fuming. Washington, DC's Violence Policy Center Legislative Director Kristen Rand issued the following statement to RAW STORY:
"People will die because of this decision. It is a victory only for the gun lobby and America's fading firearms industry. The inevitable tide of frivolous pro-gun litigation destined to follow will force cities, counties, and states to expend scarce resources to defend longstanding, effective public safety laws. The gun lobby and gunmakers are seeking nothing less than the complete dismantling of our nation's gun laws in a cynical effort to try and stem the long-term drop in gun ownership and save the dwindling gun industry. The 30,000 lives claimed annually by gun violence and the families destroyed in the wake of mass shootings and murder-suicides mean little to the gun lobby and the firearm manufacturers it protects.
"It is our hope that Chicago's citizens will follow the lead of the residents of the District of Columbia–who were stripped of their handgun ban in the wake of the Supreme Court's June 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. In the two years since that decision, only 900 firearms have been registered in the District that otherwise could not have been registered before the Heller ruling. The citizens of DC reject the wrong-headed notion that more guns make us safer. We know the facts prove the opposite and that areas of the country with the highest concentration of gun ownership also have the highest rates of gun death. We urge Chicago residents to consider these indisputable facts before considering bringing a handgun into their homes–an act that could well prove fatal to themselves or a loved one."


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A father's anguish ...
Paul Crotts: Gut wrenchin. Tears your heart out. Just it's, it's just incomparable. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
Anger at the people he says stole his son's youth. Anger at himself for helping them
Paul Crotts: I slapped myself in the face with my fist. I was so bitter at myself for what I had done.
And so, his relentless quest: What really happened in this lonely farmhouse nearly twenty years ago....
David Ross: I've never been around anybody like it. I mean he's really. He's obsessed with it.
Perhaps because of the secret Paul Crotts has harbored himself all these years- has kept even from his son. Especially from his son.
Keith Morrison: Are you worried about how he'll look at you if you tell him?
Paul Crotts: Yeah.
Keith Morrison: Do you need to tell him?
Paul Crotts: Yeah.
Tucked into the corner of this town square in Graham, N.C., is a mom and pop furniture store. It's been here for sixty years - something to depend on in an uncertain world of shuttered textile plants and dilapidated farms. A place to buy a discount couch and chat about the good old days.
Paul Crotts: They'll say, Paul, I remember this little baby that used to be in the bassinet in this part of the store. And they say, who was that baby? It was me.
About everybody in town knows Paul Crotts and not just from watching him grow up in the store his daddy founded.
Paul was a high school football hero. Volunteer fireman. Champion bodybuilder. Paul tried to make his father proud. Which is why the experience with his own son was so hard for him to bear.
Keith Morrison: At the time it was like, where did that kid come from?
Paul Crotts: Oh, yeah.
Keith Morrison: He's not like me at all.
Paul Crotts: Yeah.
Did Paul ever really know his son?
Paul Crotts: The daddy is always the black sheep of the divorce.
Paul's marriage collapsed in the late 1970s. His 10-year-old son, Mark took it hard.
Linda: It was a very difficult time. Cried a lot. Couldn't understand why Daddy wasn't coming home.
Linda is Mark's mother. She set up house a few miles, but a world away from the furniture store. Wrong side of the tracks, maybe, but Mark thrived. He loved the country, loved tracking deer, loved cat-fishing in the ponds. It was freedom to him.
But he dreaded weekend visits with his workaholic dad.
Linda: He was too rough with him when he disciplined him. It scared Mark. Mark, I think, was really afraid of his father.
By the time Mark was in his teens, the visits to town stopped. Mark gravitated to friends and - just like his dad before him - became a high school football star.
But something happened in the 11th grade. And Paul heard about it. Mark was drinking, smoking marijuana...acting out. Mark's mother did what she could. She put him in rehab, helped the 19-year-old set up a taxidermy business in an old barn she rented off the highway. He was good at that.
But he couldn't stop partying. At her wit's end, Mark's mother threw him out of the house/
Paul Crotts: He was penniless, living out of his car.
That's when Paul stepped back into his son's life. Became his partner in that little business...told his son to shape up...thought it was working, until he started getting those phone calls.
Paul Crotts: You need to be aware that Mark is a laughing joke out here, and people are saying that you can go steal anything from him.
Keith Morrison: Was the business making any money?
Paul Crotts: The beginning, yes. The end, no.
To Paul, it looked like Mark was spending the profits, raising Cain at the barn with his drinking buddies. People like his high school sweetheart, Kristen Vincent.
Kristen Vincent: Music really really loud. Really hard heavy metal. And there was alcohol everywhere. I remember several mentions from different people that they had taken acid.
It was behavior Mark's dad just didn't understand. He started dropping by after hours, checking on the inventory with a flashlight in the dark. Then in May 1989, just three months after he had helped his son start over, Paul says he found something unforgivable.
Paul Crotts: As I was exiting the building, I saw the marijuana in a pot. It was about three stalks. And-- that just infuriated me. I said, here he is, growing marijuana. Here he is, an establishment, business, he's growing marijuana.
They say you never really know the moment when you cast the dye in your life. Not till later.
That was Paul's moment. His choice.
Paul Crotts: I can still see the phone booth I made it from.
He called the sheriff's department and turned in his son. Tough love, he thought.
Paul Crotts: I thought maybe I could use scare tactic.
Keith Morrison: Scare him straight, as they say?
Paul Crotts: (nods)
Keith Morrison: Did you think then you'd done the right thing?
Paul Crotts: Yes, I did.
Mark pleaded guilty to misdemeanor marijuana possession and was put on probation. He never knew it was his father who had turned him in.
And Paul wasn't done - he shut down the taxidermy business and brought his 21-year old son back to town, where he could keep an eye on him, at the furniture store. He didn't like what he saw.
Paul Crotts: I found a bag of marijuana under the seat of his truck. I confronted him. We went out back of the store, and we got in a fistfight.
Paul says he beat Mark more than once - his son pleading with him to stop. And Mark, whenever he could, sneaked away with his friends to the old taxidermy shop.
Keith Morrison: What was this thing that worried you the most about Mark in those days?
Paul Crotts: Findin' him dead or drivin' and hurtin' somebody else, an innocent.
Of course, Paul could not have known - who could? - that two innocents were about to die, steps from Mark's rented barn. That party barn.
Paul would be faced with the ultimate choice - to cast out the son he no longer recognized, the son he could not change, or stand behind him when so few others would.
Paul Crotts: I always said if you play with fire long enough you gonna get burnt. And Mark was playing with the red hot coals.
It was a cold, crisp Saturday morning. Thanksgiving weekend, 1990. Paul Crotts went to his furniture store, as usual. Mark Crotts tracked white tail deer in the woods. On a nearby farmhouse porch, a woman sat crying.
She'd just found the bodies of her parents. Stabbed to death. Patrol officer Tim Smith raced toward the crime scene in his squad car.
Tim Smith: It didn't quite make sense. Because the people were really nice. I actually knew the people.
79-year old Bill Gilliam, a retired tobacco farmer and his wife Alma - they were churchgoers, no harm to anyone. Now here they were dead in their den. Bill Gilliam was sitting in his recliner, leg up. Alma was at his feet. She'd been stabbed in the back.
Tim Smith: There's no sign of struggle. It has to be somebody they know.
Keith Morrison: How'd you find out your son had been questioned?
Paul Crotts: Phone calls from out in that area. Told me that they were questionin' Mark.
And of course Mark was an obvious suspect - that barn he rented? It belonged to the Gilliams. Sat right across the street from their farmhouse. And there was no love lost between Mark and his landlord.
Court records showed Bill Gilliam had tried to evict Mark seven months before. And one friend told police he had seen Mark yelling threats from the road. Mark had also been spotted near the crime scene by the owner of a local convenience store.
Tim Smith: She tells me she had seen Mark in the store the night of the murders with a knife saying he's going to find something to use the knife on.
The night after the Gilliams' bodies were found, two detectives staked out Mark at a carwash. They searched his truck and asked a lot of questions. Paul didn't know what to think.
If the cops were talking to his son, surely they must know something. Paul trusted the police. Always had. In fact, when Mark's girlfriend accused him of beating her up one time, she says Paul encouraged her to go to the cops.
Kristen Vincent: He just said I will meet you at the sheriff's department, and we will get him taken care of.
So now?
Paul Crotts: I kept digging at him, diggin' at him, diggin' at him, saying, Mark, do you know anything? What have you heard? Tell me something.
Paul says detectives were dropping by at the furniture store out of the blue, taking him to a nearby park, looking for leads. Did Paul suspect his son? Maybe he did, a little. He tried to be helpful.
Paul Crotts: They were throwing the fish line to me to see if I was gonna take the hook.
Keith Morrison: Did you ever?
Paul Crotts: Oh, yeah.
Keith Morrison: You took the hook?
Paul Crotts: Oh, yeah.
Keith Morrison: You said you thought your son might have been involved
Paul Crotts: Yeah. They asked me, did I think Mark was capable of killing and -and this haunts me too, Keith- is I said, I think anybody is capable of killing if they're pushed so far.
If his son was capable of the boozing and the drugs, what else might he do? But Mark told his Dad again and again - he didn't know anything. And the weeks passed. Paul was now worried about something else: his son's mental health.
Paul Crotts: You'd see Mark talking to hisself. He was just not acting like the normal.
The day after Christmas, 1990, Paul approached the law about his son yet again - said he was making "homicidal threats". Was Paul now afraid of his son? Scared of what he might do? Paul had Mark committed - against his will - to a mental institution for tests. At the hospital, doctors diagnosed a serious mental illness, prescribed ongoing medication, kept him there 5 weeks and then sent him home.
And that's when Paul began to understand how wrong he'd been about his son. He wasn't a bad person a potential killer, he just needed help; his drug use a desperate effort to self-medicate, to fight despair. So then, maybe for the very first time, Paul looked at Mark and saw a fellow human being, suffering.
Paul Crotts: I knew that I'd done so much wrong in this investigation to-- to throw the focus on mark. And I kept telling myself that they'll forget about me telling that Mark or anybody's capable of killing, or Mark was drinking. Or Mark was doing marijuana.
But they didn't forget. And now it was too late. Paul watched in horror as investigators closed in yet again.
Reporter Charles Jacobs.
Charles Jacobs: They found a knife with a broken tip rusted and filthy dirty in a garbage heap out in the back of a former home where mark had lived.
Even though lab reports showed there was no "blood" on the knife, Paul says detectives told him this was the murder weapon. The missing piece of the puzzle.
Paul Crotts: And I said, "How do you know that?" And they said, "Well, we have reasons to know. We have-- ways of knowin'."
On Aug. 5, 1991, Mark Crotts was arrested for the capital murders of Bill and Alma Gilliam.
And Paul couldn't shake the feeling that his secret phone call, turning in his son for marijuana possession, could cost his son his life. His mind raced. Reeling.
Paul Crotts: Mark didn't kill them. What canIi do to help him?
Good question. Even now. Even now.
Paul Crotts: If that courthouse ever caught on fire, as long as there wasn't anybody in there, I would go over and blow to help burn it to the ground.
The Alamance County courthouse towers over Paul Crotts' furniture store. For seven weeks in September 1992, that's where his son was on trial for capital murder.
The prosecutors' case was simple - the murders amounted to an act of vengeance. Mark Crotts had killed farmer Gilliam and his wife because they had shopped him to the cops for marijuana possession (or so he believed). The evidence against him? He was seen the night of the crime in the area of the Gilliam's home. And there was that knife. The knife police claimed was the murder weapon and said they had found buried in the backyard of one of Mark Crott's former homes.
It was a weak case according to Mark's defense attorneys - there was no physical evidence connecting him to the crime.
Paul Crotts: They kept sayin', "they don't have nothin' on him. They won't get a conver-- viction outta this. They're just pullin' straws."
But the defense attorney's bravado vanished with the appearance of the prosecution's star witness - a jailhouse snitch called Billy Joe Wilson - who had a gruesome story to tell.
Mark talked to him in prison, said Wilson, confessed, told him how - like a hunter - he stalked the Gilliams as they prepared for bed, how he killed them with his buck knife, how much he enjoyed it.
It took jurors just a few hours to convict Mark of two counts of first degree murder. His Mom couldn't believe it.
Linda: I automatically put my hand to my heart. 'cause it was like a bullet went through my heart.
Her boy avoided the death penalty by one vote. Just 23. His future essentially over.
Mark was bundled into the back of a squad car for the ride away from the courthouse. His Mom and Dad watched from the parking lot - together for the first time in years
Keith Morrison: You were chasing after the squad car?
Paul Crotts: Yeah, crying, yeah.
Keith Morrison: Have you ever been more helpless in your life?
Paul Crotts: Never.
Keith Morrison: Nor more full of self loathing?
Paul Crotts: 'cause I helped put him there.
If not for his tough love, his interference, his big mouth, would Mark have been suspected, or charged, or convicted? He hadn't even paid for Mark's defense. Linda sold her house to pay for a lawyer. But now Paul made her a promise.
Linda: Paul sat down beside me and said, "Linda whatever it takes. I'll do whatever it takes to prove our son is innocent."
The furniture store would be at the heart of Paul's campaign to clear Mark's name.
Keith Morrison: In a way, this is kind of headquarters. You took calls here, tips here.
Paul Crotts: A lot of people came in the store and gave me information.
Tim Smith was one of them.
Tim Smith: The crime scene was destroyed.
Smith was the first patrol officer to arrive at Gilliam's house after the murder. He told Paul the crime scene was compromised before police even got there. He claimed at least 15 people had tracked through.
Neighbors, the EMT people, looky-loos.
What's worse, when the detectives asked the sheriff to call in the state's mobile crime lab to help them salvage what forensic evidence might be left. He refused.
Tim Smith: I was dumbfounded. The cross contamination was so phenomenal.
Instead of a mobile crime lab, the crime scene technician went to work with a toolbox snatched from his car. He scraped blood off the floor with a knife.
Reporter Charles Jacobs is writing a book about the case.
Charles Jacobs: He did some dusting around the doors and windowsills and so forth. But whatever he sent into the state bureau of investigation to the lab there to be tested, they sent back and said they were unreadable.
And on top of all that was the politics. Unsolved homicides had tripled in the previous year; the sheriff was feeling the heat. He told investigators their jobs were on the line if they didn't make an arrest soon.
Tim Smith: It wasn't a request. It was a demand, and they took their strongest lead and they ran with it.
Their strongest lead was the unruly tenant who lived across the street from the Gilliams: Mark Crotts.
But were there other leads detectives had overlooked? Paul hired a crack team of investigators, including 20-year veteran David Ross, to find out.
David Ross: We started interviewing people, goin' back to the-- to the area.
They kept hearing the same name again and again. Keith Saul - high school dropout and rumored drug dealer. He hung out at Mark's party barn but he seemed a little wilder than the other guys.
Paul's investigators quickly established that Keith's alibi the night of the murder was paper thin. He had asked his cousin to lie for him.
Keith Morrison: You were able to prove that he didn't have an alibi and he was trying to manufacture one?
David Ross: That's right.
Keith Morrison: And yet he wasn't part of the investigation.
David Ross: Can't answer why.
As his investigators worked, Paul brooded. And in the small town it was hard for him to keep his cool. The detectives complained that Paul was harassing them. And Paul, embarrassed now, didn't deny it.
Like the time he followed one of the investigators to a gas station:
Paul Crotts: I told him I'd take that nozzle and put it where he could flush all the bullcr*p out of him. I said, who have you put in jail this week that's innocent? And I meant what I said.
As life went on in Graham, N.C., town hero Paul Crotts was turning into something of a town crank.
And then in August 1994, there was an unexpected break in the case. Mark was granted a new trial on the grounds that his defense attorney had not been up to the job. After three years in prison, Mark was released into the custody of his father.
So, did they celebrate? Well, not exactly.
Paul Crotts: He was gone. I thought, somebody's got him and they're gonna kill him.
In November 1994, Paul Crotts became his son's keeper.
Paul Crotts: I kept telling him, you can't go to the end of the driveway, you can't step off the driveway.
Mark had been released to his father's custody while he waited to be tried for a second time on double homicide charges. He was confined by court order to his Dad's house and horse farm.
And then one night after dinner, Mark stepped outside for a smoke and vanished. Paul searched for him – frantic.
Keith Morrison: Panicked?
Paul Crotts: --oh god, somebody's got him and they're gonna kill him.
Then he heard the groaning. It was Mark, lying in a ditch, steak knife in hand. He had stabbed himself five times in the chest.
Paul Crotts: He said, "Daddy, just let me die. Let me die. I can't go back to prison, why are they doing this to me?"
He lived, but only just. And meanwhile, Paul continued his legal battle from his furniture store, the "war room" for Mark's second trial. He organized petitions, drafted newspaper ads, even sold these "Free Mark Crotts" t-shirts.
But that was small potatoes compared with Paul's big decision: That first lawyer not good enough? Then he'd hire a superstar. And he did! None other than F. Lee Bailey, flushed with victory in the O.J. case. The fee? A quarter of a million dollars.
Paul Crotts: Never forget when he got off his plane, he said, "Are you ready for us to kick ass?" And I said, "I'm ready for 'ya. Do what's necessary."
Trial number two began December 1995, more than five years after the murders. For the town of Graham, it was real legal theater - their small town prosecutor…
Rob Johnson: But who would seek vengeance upon these elderly folks? Who?
.. pitted against one of the most famous attorneys in the world.
F. Lee Bailey: This is tragically an unsolved pair of murders.
The state argued yet again that the crime was a revenge killing. That the only evidence they could provide to show Mark Crotts inside the Gilliam's den with a knife in his hand was the testimony of the jailhouse informant Billy Joe Wilson. And so he was duly trotted out again, to play back that conversation he said he had with Mark Crotts.
Billy Joe Wilson: You in here for killing them old people? He said f yeh, I'm in here for killing them people.
Wilson testified that Mark confessed everything while they smoked marijuana together in his cell.
Prosecutor Rob Johnson: Did he describe to you the sensations that he was experiencing, that he experienced?
Billy Joe Wilson: He said he got off on it.
Would a jury buy that story a second time around? There was still no DNA tying Mark or the knife investigators said was the murder weapon to the scene.
But there was something else, the state argued. A very particular signature the knife had left at the scene. Knife in hand, the prosecutor lunged dramatically again and again, showing the jury how the knife had made scratches in one of Bill Gilliam's overall buttons. In those grooves, the prosecutor argued was a trace of metal from the knife itself.
And that was the prosecution's case. Convincing? Or cannon fodder before the calm but withering assault of that lion of the defense.
F. Lee Bailey: That knife is not only incapable of having committed these murders but is not related in any way.
The prosecution's case was preposterous, Bailey countered. The knife could not have been the murder weapon because the blade was too short to make the wounds it supposedly caused. Look at your own report, Bailey said to the medical examiner.
F. Lee Bailey: And as to wound #4 on the male, you said the wound track estimated at 6-8 inches, correct?
Medical examiner: Correct.
F. Lee Bailey: Now do you know of any cases you've had where a 5.5 inch knife made an 8 inch penetration?
Medical examiner: I can't think of any specifically.
No, Bailey said the knife was a red herring. A distraction. He said there were far more obvious clues investigators had overlooked.
Three blood spots had been found at the crime scene but, according to this lab technician, investigators did not send them to her for analysis until after the first trial had started, a year after Mark's arrest. And no-one had bothered to collect Mark's blood for a comparison.
F. Lee Bailey: When you asked for a sample, you got it, didn't you?
Lab technician: No, sir.
F. Lee Bailey: You didn't?
Lab technician: No, I did not.
But now DNA testing done more than four years after the murders showed that blood scraped off the floor of the Gilliam's den did not match Mark Crotts.
F. Lee Bailey: Mr. Crotts wasn't at the crime scene, but the killer was, and he did leave evidence which was belatedly sent to investigators.
As for the story spun by jailhouse snitch, Billy Joe Wilson, Bailey set out to prove it was nothing more than a fantasy, a tale spun by a professional conman.
F. Lee Bailey: How many different people have you conned out of 1000s of dollars, Mr. Wilson?
Billy Joe Wilson: Several.
... perfectly capable of conning a jury. Or law enforcement. Bailey itemized the benefits Wilson received for his fantastic story about Mark Crotts. A letter recommending criminal charges be dropped in a nearby county. And early parole.
F. Lee Bailey: Were you not paroled the very first time you could legally be paroled?
Billy Joe Wilson: Yes, sir.
Even a personal recommendation from DA, Steve Balog, when Wilson went to rent an apartment for four weeks Paul Crotts watched two lawyers battle over the fate of his son.
Prosecutor: Raw hatred and rage, that's why he would kill 'em.
F. Lee Bailey: There was no hostility of any kind.
Brooding every minute on the part he had played - that secret, fateful phone call turning in his son for marijuana possession.
Two days in to jury deliberations, the courtroom was abuzz. Sheriff's deputies lined the walls. Extra security - just in case. There had been rumors of a death threat against Mark if he was acquitted.
All they could do now, father and son, was wait.
The second trial of Mark Crotts for the murder of that sweet old couple, the Gilliams, transfixed this little southern town.
The famous lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, had so galvanized opinion that he said somebody threatened to kill him.
F. Lee Bailey: I was threatened the first day I got here.
And as the jury withdrew to consider a decision, the town was rumbling with rumors about impending vigilante justice...
Judge: if you'll hand the verdict sheet into the baliff…
And so the tension had reached fever pitch by the time the jury announced it had something to say.
We will never reach a unanimous decision in the case.
It was hung! Bailey's expensive intervention wasn't quite enough. The judge ordered a mistrial and Mark was returned to the custody of his father. To the quiet of the horse farm. Two grown men who had knocked heads so hard and so often over the years were shackled together again. Both doing penance in a way. Learning to forgive each other.
Mark spoke to his Dad's investigators back then.
Investigator: What do you think about your dad now?
Mark Crotts: I love him to death and I think a whole lot more of him than I ever thought of him in my whole life.
But would he still feel that way if Paul ever told him his terrible secret?
As 1996 became 97, the Gilliams had been in their graves nearly seven years. And Mark was on trial again for the third time for their murders. Mark's new attorneys were confident they could prove their client had been railroaded.
They had some new evidence - these lab results. Investigators had recovered DNA from under Alma Gilliam's fingernails - maybe she had scratched her attacker before she was killed - but prosecutors didn't get it tested until 1996, more than five years after the crime. Whose DNA was it?
David Rudolf: I don't think they ever tried to match that to anyone other than Mark. It didn't match Mark. But they never went and looked at who else it might have matched.
This time the conclusion, for the jury, was clear. After six long years Paul Crotts heard the words he'd been praying for: "not guilty." His son was a free man .
Paul Crotts: Best moment of my life, I still feel it - I still feel it right now. He turned around and looked at me and his eyes were as big as 50-cent pieces and he came towards me and grabbed me and we embraced. And he said Daddy, I'm free. I said yeah, we're free, son. We're free.
Free, but for the nightmares. And a constant bewilderment, says Mark, about that dreadful crime. Paul's son didn't testify at his trials but he sat down with Dateline to tell his story in his own words
Keith Morrison: Tell me what it was like to hear them say not guilty.
Mark Crotts: Oh, it was the most relievin' words I'd ever heard in my life.
Especially he says after he'd spent so many years paying for the actions of someone else that bloody night
Mark Crotts: I just couldn't imagine what had happened out there, you know - it just kept running through my mind - what mighta happened to 'em.
Those two elderly people. His landlords.
Mark Crotts: I never did have a confrontation with Mr. Gilliam.
Keith Morrison: Wasn't bad blood between you two.
Mark Crotts: No, sir.
In fact court records show Bill Gilliam's eviction proceeding against Mark had been dismissed - he didn't owe any rent.
Keith Morrison: Is it possible that you really just got so tanked up one night that you committed or helped commit these murders and forgot all about it, and didn't realize what you were doing?
Mark Crotts: No sir, I don't -
Keith Morrison: Any idea who might have been behind it?
Mark Crotts: I don't have any idea.
Linda: He's paid a high price for something he didn't do. And he wants to move on, and be left alone.
But moving on hasn't been easy. Mark says finding work can be tough and he's struggled with his relationships. Friends. A marriage gone bad. But Mark's devoted to his sweet little Austin...and the horse farm he runs for his dad
Mark Crotts: I'm getting older now and I know I'm not ashamed of anything in my past. I'd just like to forget some of it.
Ah, to forget. But forgetting was not something Paul seemed able to do. Not what the police did, nor the prosecutors, nor the system. And most of all, not what he had done.
And now he has decided he wants to face his son, and reveal, finally, that terrible secret of his. Even though he knows the risk is huge.
Keith Morrison: Are you worried about how he'll look at you if you tell him?
Paul Crotts: Yeah.
Keith Morrison: Do you need to tell him?
Paul Crotts: Yeah.
Keith Morrison: Have you ever investigated something for so long in your life?
David Ross: Unh-uh, never have. I've never been around anybody like it. I mean, he's really-- he-- he's obsessed with it.
We are sitting with Paul Crotts' private investigator. More than ten years have gone by since Mark was acquitted of the murder of the Gilliams. But here in the furniture store, in the shadow of the offending courthouse, Paul revisits every bit of evidence, and chases down every new lead he can uncover.
He is determined, he says, to track down once and for all, the killer of Bill and Alma Gilliam. For the sake, he says, of his son.
Keith Morrison: The law says he was not guilty. That's all you had to do. But on you went. Why? On you go now. Why?
Paul Crotts: The fact is even though we've unhandcuffed Mark, I'm gonna clear his name once and for all.
But it is not just love of son that drives Paul Crotts. A terrible guilt is gnawing at him too.
On a cold fall evening, while we sat in his kitchen, Paul made his confession. It was he, he told Mark, who found the marijuana, tipped off the cops, told them his son was capable of killing - made Mark a suspect.
Paul Crotts: It's just the fact that-- that-- I made 'im focus in on you, and-- once they focused in on you, Mark, they-- they looked no-- nowhere else. And-- and that's haunted me through these years. I do not want you to think that I put you in that prison.
Mark Crotts: Well, I don't, Dad. I - I my life for all that you've done to help me to free me. To get out of this. And stood by me.
Paul Crotts: I love you.
Mark Crotts: I love you too, Dad. I sure do appreciate everything. Don't feel bad about that.
Strange what brings a father and son together.
Keith Morrison: You watched him over the years, being obsessed with this case. Would you like him to lighten up a little bit--? Leave some it--
Mark Crotts: I--
Keith Morrison: --behind?
Mark Crotts: --I wish he could. I-- it would make m-- my life a lot easier.
Keith Morrison:Wwhat do you think?
Paul Crotts: Mark, i'm not doin' it-- for you alone. I'm doin' it for your son, too.
Paul Crotts: The case needs to be solved. It needs to have closure.
And now Paul Crotts has an ally of sorts.
Sheriff Terry Johnson: There have been thousands, and I say thousands, of man hours put into this case.
Terry Johnson was elected sheriff of Alamance County in 2002 after pledging to clear the county's backlog of cold cases. The Gilliam case troubles him.
Sheriff Terry Johnson: I will tell you right upfront and it's embarrassing to have to say this on camera. I feel like law enforcement failed.
A bungled crime scene. An unreliable jailhouse snitch. Hardly enough evidence to indict Mark Crotts back in 1992, the sheriff says. Instead, another name jumped out at him from the case file. A name Paul's investigators had mentioned all those years ago. Keith Saul. The wild high school dropout whose alibi didn't check out.
He'd been seen near the Gilliam house that night and, the sheriff revealed, had told more than one person he'd committed the murders.
Sheriff Terry Johnson: Some of these people came forward to law enforcement, but I could not find anything that followed up and pursued any possible leads on Mr. Saul.
In fact, quite the opposite. The sheriff says one witness told him he was turned away by investigators.
And there was more - tucked into the case file was a polygraph test Saul took for police back in 1995. He failed it. -something the defense was never allowed to see
Sheriff Terry Johnson: It's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, but it don't make sense. It don't make sense to me.
The prosecutor says a case was never brought against Keith Saul because the evidence just wasn't there. Anything implicating him in the killing was based on rumor and innuendo.
But the sheriff has his own theory for the way things turned out.
Sheriff Terry Johnson: I do know that there was evidence Keith Sauls was supposedly an informant for the sheriff's office.
Being an informant was something Keith Saul wasn't shy to admit when he spoke to Paul's investigators.
Keith Saul: I have still been working for them to this day. What I do is buy drugs for them. I am like an informant.
But instead of investigating their long time snitch, detectives used him to investigate Mark Crotts.
They listened in as Saul asked Mark, "Did you kill the Gilliams?". "Hell, no," said Mark.
The sheriff insists he doesn't have enough evidence to charge Keith Saul. And he never will. Because? Keith Saul is dead, killed in a traffic accident in 2008. And thus, one might quite properly assume, the end of the trail.
Well, not quite.
Because the sheriff's reading of the crime scene told him that those detectives, all those years ago, got another thing wrong. Two people committed the murder, he says. Not one.
Sheriff Terry Johnson: Had one person gone in there they could not have controlled both those people. I feel like Mr. and Mrs. Gilliam were attacked simultaneously.
And as sure as the sheriff is that Keith Saul was in the Gilliams' den that night, he cannot be so sure that Mark Crotts wasn't there with him. In fact some of the people who claim Keith Saul confessed to them, say he also told them Mark was there too.
Last October, the sheriff asked Mark to take a polygraph. He didn't hesitate.
Mark Crotts: I was just trying to co-operate. I mean you know, I have nothing to hide from 'em.
And, it seems, nothing to hide from Dateline. Mark gave us access to the results of that polygraph even though he knew he had failed it. The sheriff thinks the results prove Mark has something to hide about the murders.
Sheriff Terry Johnson: He may have knowledge of it that he never told anybody. He could've been there, not actually participating or you know he could've participated. Only Mark Crotts can answer that.
Of course, polygraphs don't become evidence in court for a good reason: they're not considered to be very reliable. False negatives. False positives. Just plain false sometimes. But still.
Keith Morrison: Do you think that allows people - who were never convinced of your innocence to continue saying, "Well, I you know, we don't know."
Mark Crotts: Well, I don't, I was found not guilty in the court system. I think that should be enough to clear that up with 'em.
Mark Crotts can't be tried again for the murders but he is all too familiar with the unforgiving court of public opinion. So is his dad.
It's a battle that has cost him so much - money, friends and more than a little peace - and it's a battle beginning all over again.
Keith Morrison: This has been a tough couple of decades.
Paul Crotts: Yeah, it has (crying).
Keith Morrison: What's it done to you?
Paul Crotts: It's made me tougher. It's not a minute goes by and I'm talking about a minute of a day, hour of a day, a week, a month, that I don't think about this.
Keith Morrison: Do you think Paul can ever let this go?
Sheriff Terry Johnson: I think-- that any parent under this situation would have a hard time of letting it go, forever, 'til the day they drew their last breath will he ever know the full truth, or will he ever accept the full truth? I can't say.


text:
When the English tongue we speak
Why is break not rhymed with weak?
Won't you tell me why it's true
We say sew, but also few?
And the maker of a verse
Cannot rhyme his horse with worse?
Beard is not the same as heard,
Cord is different from word,
Cow is cow, but low is low,
Shoe is never rhymed with foe.
Think of hose and dose and lose,
And think of goose and yet of choose,
Think of comb and tomb and bomb,
Doll and roll and home and some.
And since pay is rhymed with say,
Why not paid with said I pray?
Think of blood and food and good;
Mould is not pronounced like could.
Why is it done, but gone and lone –
Is there any reason known?
To sum it up, it seems to me
That sounds and letters don't agree.


text:
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text:
A number of rumors about a possible return to in-home iPhone activations have begun to circulate after Apple Store employees reported seeing a new "Home" activation option during the purchasing process. The news was quickly clarified, and AppleInsider has the details of the actual home pre-qualification program that led to the home activation rumors.
The in-store activation process made our list of iPhone 3G problems in August. The device still needs to be activated in an Apple Store, and unlocked versions aren't yet available. The goods news is that the new pre-qualification may simplify the process a bit, at least for some buyers. When an iPhone purchase occurs, the device appears as full price, but is then discounted by a rebate tied to the buyer's contract. Because some buyers may not be eligible for the rebate or may have corporate plans, AT&T is offering a site that will pre-qualify those iPhone buyers.
Besides allowing users to check their rebate eligibility, the site lets people set up the upgrade and shave a few minutes off of the in-store activation process. Sure, it's not activation in the comfort of your own living room, and it appears that the functionality is limited to current AT&T customers, but now you'll have a few more minutes of free time when you go in to buy your new iPhone.