Who says there's no honor among thieves

Well, this is Holy Week, the days leading up to Easter, and the week is full of special observances. At least as I recall from my 24/7, ultra-Catholic upbringing. Yesterday was Spy Wednesday, the "anniversary" of Judas' betrayal of Jesus Christ. It was best known among parochial school kids as a half-day, and the day we got out for Easter break.

Today is Holy Thursday, which commemorates the Last Supper, and tomorrow is Good Friday, the day of Christ's crucifixion.

On Good Friday, during my childhood, my family drove around the Diocese of Worcester to pay visits to three churches, which entitled you to a plenary indulgence. (Don't ask.) I think it was mainly an excuse for my 24/7, ultra-Catholic mother to check out three churches she hadn't been into before - bonus points (but not a more plenary indulgence granted) if the church was a new build - so we got in the car, found the churches my mother had plotted, and traipsed around the church for a few. To achieve the indulgence, I believe you had to say a couple of prayers, but it doesn't take all that much effort to rattle off a Hail Mary or two.  

As an ultra 24/7 ex-Catholic, I don't spend a ton of time thinking about Holy Week and Easter. As long as my sister Trish gives me a Peep or two, I'm good.

But a Boston Globe article I saw brought to mind the legend of Dismas, the Good Thief. The Globe story was about a fellow who was busted for drug possession/trafficking after a wannabe car thief discovered cocaine in the trunk of the car he was trying to thieve. The OG article was from January, but things resurfaced when, a couple of weeks ago, there were some follow-on arrests.

The strange sequence of events began on the evening of Jan. 6, when a man notified police that he had found a package of drugs on the side of the road.

But when detectives interviewed the man, he changed his story. According to a police report, he acknowledged that he had found the drugs inside the trunk of a Kia he had broken into.

The car, which police said belongs to Gillespie, was parked at a private commuter parking lot in Hyannis, police said.

The man, whom police did not identify, said he initially planned to steal the car and used a screwdriver to pry open the steering column, but he couldn’t get the car to start, police said.

He opened the trunk to check for valuables and in the tire well found a Target bag containing a duct-taped package that turned out to contain cocaine.

When he realized what it was, he “got scared” and wasn’t sure what to do, so he contacted the police, the report stated.

The owner of the car, Edward Gillespie, 62, of Nantucket, was arrested and charged with trafficking more than 200 grams of cocaine, police in Barnstable said in a statement.

Gillespie was preparing to bring the cocaine from Hyannis to Nantucket when he was arrested on Jan. 8, police said. (Source: Boston Globe)

The bust proved bigger than the initial measly 200 grams.  After a search of Gillespie's home:

In all, police said they seized approximately 1,141 grams of cocaine, 68 grams of amphetamine pills, and approximately $10,000 in cash. 

Like Dismas, the car thief was a criminal. Although death by crucifixion seems a bit harsh for stealing something, there is that "Thou Shall Not Steal" commandment out there. But Dismas had the fortune to be crucified next to Jesus and the two men were said to have struck up a conversation that ended with Christ assuring Dismas that on the day of his death he would be ushered into paradise. 

There is no info on the Hyannis car thief's motives for calling the police. (It is doubtful that he struck up a convo with a Christ figure. Not on a January night in a Cape Cod parking lot.) Was he afraid that he would be tied to the drugs through fingerprint evidence or crime-watch cameras? Did he just say to himself "hey, stealing a car and petty theft from a trunk is one thing, but this looks like some serious criming?" And was he at all concerned that the Cape Cod drug lords would figure out who dimed them and come after him? (C.f., snitches get stitches.) Did his good-thief/good citizen conscience outweigh his fear? The car thief's identity was not revealed, but I suspect that bad guys have a way of finding these things out.

Anyway, I hope that the Hyannis Dismas is okay. I hope that he has seen the error of his ways and is on the path of righteousness. This is, after all, the season of redemption, no?

Meanwhile, Happy Easter to all and to all a good night. And please do enjoy biting the head off of a Peep.

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Image Source: Freepik

Wanna bet?

It's no secret that you can bet on pretty much anything. Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket provide a forum for wagering on the outcomes of "traditional" events and occurrences, like golf matches and basketball games, elections and Oscar winners. But you can also bet on what the temperature in LA is going to be tomorrow, where Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift will tie the knot, and when and if the Straits of Hormuz will reopen.

Sports betting sites like FanDuel and DraftKings are sucking folks - mostly young men - into addictive always-on wagering on every nuance of pretty much every sporting event known to man, including darts, chess and ping pong. (The general purpose sites cover sports betting as well.) A lot of the eyes on sports are not those of fans, but of gamblers, riveted on whether the next pitch will be a called strike or not - and whether they've won $200 on that bet.

While the sports betting is not good for the particular or general soul - gambling's always been addictive, but when you're holding your own personal bookie in your hand 24/7, well, truly awful things can happen. And more athletes themselves will be sucked into the easy money of a point here, a point there, which will end up corrupting sports more than they're already corrupted.

But the truly nefarious stuff goes on when insiders on the economic or geopolitical front, those who have knowledge of and/or control over potential outcomes, decide they want to make a bit of coin. Reputedly, there were White House insiders who cashed in on bets on when Iran's Ayatollah would be taken out. (Would any be surprised that members of the Merrily Grifting Trump family wagered an easy-money bet or two. On second thought, maybe not, when there are far larger grifts to grift.)

Then there are the smaller scale betting pools, the kind that a lot of us have been involved with. How many pounds will you your colleague's baby weigh? What team will be left standing in the March Madness bracket? A few bucks thrown in at work or the gym. It can be fun. And pretty harmless

But it's pretty odious when the pool at work is making life-and-death wagers, as is reportedly the case at Camp East Montana, and ICE detention center in Texas that's the nation's largest. (Everything really is bigger in Texas.) At Camp East Montana, guards allegedly have betting pools on who among the detainees under their "care" will be the next to commit suicide. I mean, it's not as if the guards have the power to make someone's life worse, to deprive them of care, to encourage them to kill themselves. Even to report a homicide as a suicide. Nah, ICE guys wouldn't do anything like that, would they?

Predictably, the DHS - an organizational just full to the brim of those of sterling character and moral rectitude - denies that there's any betting going on.

Look, not everyone who works for ICE or Border Patrol is an evil, violent, ill-trained thug. But enough of them are to reinforce such a sordid reputation. And with the decline in recruitment standards and training, the administration's encouragement of maltreatment of those rounded up and detained, out of control thug does appear in many cases to be the profile that the government is looking for and rewarding.

Factor in the amoral/immoral/money-grubbing malaise plaguing our society, and it seems entirely plausible that detention facility guards would try to make some bank betting on which detainee - whether a down and dirty member of Tren de Aragua who deserves deportation (but not maltreatment and torture) or some poor brown-skinned schnook who's been working under the table as a gardner for thirty years - is next for the coroner's wagon.

You don't think it could happen? You think DHS is telling the truth?

I say, wanna bet? 

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Info source: Mother Jones

Image Source: Amazon